Marmee & Louisa (56 page)

³⁰⁸
Temple School students: ABA, December 3, 1868,
Journals
, 389. The Quincy child was Mayor Josiah Quincy’s grandson, who like his father and grandfather became Boston’s mayor.

³⁰⁹
“not myself prepared to say”: Peabody,
Record of a School
, Preface.

³¹⁰
“more genius for education”: displayed at Orchard House School of Philosophy, July 2011.

³¹¹
“methods of discipline”: Shepard,
ABA Journals
, footnote, 476.

³¹²
3 Somerset Court: Beacon Hill and Mount Vernon had already been leveled by 1834, when the Alcotts returned to Boston, but Pemberton Hill was not leveled until 1835. Somerset Court runs off Somerset Street, just below the State House. It is now Ashburton Street.

³¹³
“particularly” Louisa: Shepard,
ABA Journals
, 47, footnote.

³¹⁴
“has more sympathy”: ABA, “Researches on Childhood,” HAP.

³¹⁵
“Some habits, I regret”: ABA, September 19, 1835,
Journals
, 65.

³¹⁶
“delicate and yet necessary”: ABA, October 26, 1834,
Journals
, 47.

³¹⁷
“domestic and parental relations”: ABA, January 21, 1835,
Journals
, 55.

³¹⁸
“If the Divinity wills”: ABA, May 3, 1835,
Journals
, 56.

³¹⁹
another “Record”: ABA, June 24, 1835,
Journals
, 57.

³²⁰
“Abba is in trouble”: SJM to LFM, August 14, 1835, MFPCL.

³²¹
“most precarious contingencies”: AMA to Mary Tyler Peabody, September 2, 1835, courtesy of Megan Marshall.

³²²
built “towers and bridges”: LMA, “Recollections of My Childhood,”
Lulu’s Library
, vii.

³²³
“children are importunate”: AMA to SJM, September 9, 1834, family letters, HAP.

³²⁴
“importance of
moral
education”: AMA to SJM, September 1834, family letters, HAP.

³²⁵
“amount of mischief”: Ibid.

³²⁶
“friend to the colored”: LMA, “Recollections of My Childhood,” in Shealy,
Alcott in Her Own Time
, 33.

³²⁷
“Newfoundland”: Ibid.

³²⁸
“she had become so eager”: SJM,
Memoir
, 23.

³²⁹
“accompany her to visit”: ABA, Oct. 21, 1835,
Journals
, 69.

³³⁰
Garrison’s pregnant wife: Helen Benson Garrison, at whose 1833 wedding SJM presided.

³³¹
“the good man who helped”: LMA, “Recollections of My Childhood,”
Lulu’s Library
.

³³²
“Some of your family”: AMA to SJM, February 22, 1835, family letters, HAP.

³³³
Mobs in Rhode Island: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 125, 202.

³³⁴
“Private assassins”: Ibid., 202.

³³⁵
Garrison stepped out: Ibid., 201.

³³⁶
mainstream Northern press: Ibid., 198, 103.

³³⁷
Samuel Joseph came to Boston: Ibid., 143–44.

³³⁸
American newspapers reported: Ibid., 177.

³³⁹
“the
higher classes
”: William Goodell, ibid., 194.

³⁴⁰
America’s “united South”: James Freeman Clark,
Memorial History of Boston
.

³⁴¹
“not made for . . . turmoil”: SJM to LFM, May 13, 1835, MFPCL.

³⁴²
“one of the best men”:
Portland Magazine
review in Matteson,
Eden’s Outcasts
, 67.

³⁴³
“a wise man”: Ralph Waldo Emerson to Frederic Henry Hedge, Concord, July 20, 1836,
Emerson’s Letters
, II, 29.

³⁴⁴
“dispenser of moral truth”: ABA, September 18, 1835,
Journals
, 63.

³⁴⁵
“an oracular style”: Theodore Dahlstrand, talk on ABA, Orchard House School of Philosophy, July 2011.

³⁴⁶
“my little one”: ABA, September 30, 1835,
Journals
, 67.

³⁴⁷
“As I was queen of the revel”: LMA, Cheney,
LMA’s Life, Letters and Journals
, 27.

³⁴⁸
“a happy breakfast”: LMA,
Little Women
, chapter one.

³⁴⁹
“I could not!”: AMA, quoted in EPP to Mary Peabody, April 1836, Bruce Ronda, ed.,
Letters of EPP
, 163.

³⁵⁰
“made her very angry”: EPP to Mary Peabody, April 1836, ibid., 161.

³⁵¹
“heavy-handed”: Ibid., 157.

³⁵²
this “breach of honour”: EPP to Mary Peabody, May 15, 1836, ibid., 168.

³⁵³
arrogant “self-estimation”: EPP to Mary Peabody, April 1836, ibid., 157–163.

³⁵⁴
Samuel Joseph baptized: ABA, Mary 22, 1836,
ABA’s Journal for 1836
, in
Studies in the American Renaissance, 1878
, Myerson, ed., 59.

³⁵⁵
generally “dissatisfied”: ABA, October 5, 1828,
Journals
, 13.

³⁵⁶
abandoned formal religion: Odell Shepard, ed.,
ABA Journals
, 3.

³⁵⁷
“Your Ascended Father”: ABA to AAP,
Letters
, 97. See also ABA, September 22, 1826,
Journals
, 5.

³⁵⁸
“read about Jesus”: AAP journal entry, October 1839, quoted in Caroline Ticknor,
May Alcott, A Memoir
, 8.

³⁵⁹
“Yes, often”: ABA, in Matteson,
Eden’s Outcasts
, 92

³⁶⁰
“I preach the Gospel”: ABA, February 1837,
Journals
, 84.

³⁶¹
“commune with God”: ABA, June 24, 1835,
Journals
, 57.

³⁶²
“Sabbath exercises”: AMA, January 8, 1843, in
ABA Journals
, 150.

³⁶³
“my own spirit”: ABA, December 20, 1835,
Journals
, 71–72.

³⁶⁴
“feminine subculture”: Kornfeld,
Margaret Fuller
, 10.

³⁶⁵
“We women”: Margaret Fuller, ibid., 20.

³⁶⁶
to support her mother: Blanchard,
Margaret Fuller
, 107.

³⁶⁷
“distrust of Mr. Alcott’s”: Kornfeld,
Margaret Fuller
, 90.

³⁶⁸
class had shrunk: Herrnstadt,
ABA Letters
, xxii.

³⁶⁹
“age hath no”: ABA, November 1837,
Journals
, 96.

³⁷⁰
“severely censured”: ABA, April 1837,
Journals
, 88.

³⁷¹
identified with martyrs: ABA, January 1838,
Journals
, 98.

³⁷²
“doomed”: ABA, October 1837,
Journals
, 92.

³⁷³
“I see not my way”: ABA, May 1837,
Journals
, 90.

³⁷⁴
visited with Emerson: Shepard, Note on 1837,
ABA Journals
, 80–81.

³⁷⁵
“Write!”: ABA, May 1837,
Journals
, 90. Bronson quotes a letter from Emerson.

³⁷⁶
“in a large room”: AMA, Memoir of 1878, HAP.

³⁷⁷
spent two weeks: LFM to SJM, June 13, 1838, MFPCL.

³⁷⁸
“native hills”: ABA, March 13, 1839,
Journals
, 117.

³⁷⁹
“boarders and pupils”: ABA, March 1838,
Journals
, 100. AMA to SJM, December 22, 1833, family letters, HAP, describes AMA’s dislike of boarders.

³⁸⁰
“influences of Nature”: ABA, March 13, 1839,
Journals
, 117.

³⁸¹
“Mammon-king”: ABA, February 26, 1839,
Journals
, 117.

³⁸²
finances: ABA, June 1838,
Journals
, 100.

³⁸³
Alcott House: Shepard,
ABA Journals
, footnote, 169.

³⁸⁴
“Friends in England”: ABA to his mother, December 28, 1839,
Letters
, 44.

³⁸⁵
“cross the water”: ABA quoting AMA, ibid.

³⁸⁶
ban of my scissors: ABA quoting AMA, February 2, 1839,
Journals
, 114.

³⁸⁷
closed school: ABA to his mother, March 17–18, 1839, transcribed in
Journals
, 118.

³⁸⁸
“short respite”: ABA, March 23, 1839,
Journals
, 120.

³⁸⁹
“Every day we sewed”: LMA to Louise C. Moulton, n.d., family letters, HAP.

³⁹⁰
Grandfather May’s house: According to NEHGS register, Colonel JM and his second wife in early 1835 moved from the house on Federal Court to a house at the corner of Washington and Oak streets, where Elizabeth Alcott would have stayed in 1840. AMA to SJM, February 22, 1835, HAP, begins, “Dear Brother, The old house in Federal House is empty and desolate enough, and I never want to go there again.”

³⁹¹
“the creative jet!”: ABA, March 31, 1839,
Journals
, 121.

³⁹²
“A young Hoper”: ABA to his mother, March 17–18, 1839,
Letters
, 42.

³⁹³
“fine boy, full grown”: AMA, 1839 journal, HAP.

³⁹⁴
message from God: see David Hall,
Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment
, and Eve LaPlante,
Salem Witch Judge
.

³⁹⁵
“death’s bitterest beaker”: AMA, journals, HAP.

³⁹⁶
“My thrill of Hope”: ABA, August 1841,
Journals
, 119.

³⁹⁷
“poisons the fountain”: ABA, April 1839, Ms. journals, HAP.

³⁹⁸
of the sixth generation: Harvard graduates in the four previous generations are Judge Samuel Sewall, Rev. Joseph Sewall, Samuel Sewall, and Rev. Samuel J. May. This legacy of access to higher education is an index of the Mays’ affluence: less than 3 percent of Americans had such access in 1870, and only 4 percent did in 1900.

³⁹⁹
Colonel May in 1839: Bedell,
The Alcotts
, indicates Colonel JM was now senile.

⁴⁰⁰
“I go forth”: ABA recounting dialogue with AMA, April 23, 1839,
Journals
, 125.

⁴⁰¹
“Plato held”: ABA, November 10, 1852,
Journals
, 258.

⁴⁰²
under whose “ministry”: ABA, April 29, 1839,
Journals
, 126.

⁴⁰³
met fifteen years earlier: Lydia Maria Child to AMA,
Collected Correspondences of Lydia Maria Child, 1817–1880
, ed. Patricia G. Holland, Milton Miltzer, and Francine Krasno. Microform, 1980. 90/2398.

⁴⁰⁴
“Denied the education”: Karcher,
First Woman in the Republic
, 3.

⁴⁰⁵
“entirely the prerogative”: Ibid., 16.

⁴⁰⁶
“regarded as a
lady
”: Ibid., 2.

⁴⁰⁷
“toiling for the freedom”: Lydia Maria Child quoted in Deborah P. Clifford,
Crusader for Freedom: A Life of Lydia Maria Child
, 2.

⁴⁰⁸
“wrong, blind, and carnal”: Luther Lee,
Autobiography of Luther Lee
, 221–22.

⁴⁰⁹
“preach from their texts”: SJM to Garrison (BPL Ms. A.1.2.V8, 36), in Karcher,
First Woman in the Republic
, 259.

⁴¹⁰
A Boston newspaper:
Boston Gazette
, March 9, 1838.

⁴¹¹
Grimké speech: SES,
Memoir of SES
, 130.

⁴¹²
Lucretia’s opposition to the cause of women’s rights: In 1850, when her husband, her sister Charlotte G. Coffin, and her daughter, Charlotte, were conveners of the national women’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, Lucretia declined to join them.

⁴¹³
“threatens the female character”: Crawford,
Romantic Days in Old Boston
, 133.

⁴¹⁴
“country’s first feminists”: Yacovone,
SJM
, 4–5.

⁴¹⁵
“are not appreciated”: ABA, June 22, 1839,
Journals
, 131.

⁴¹⁶
never taught schoolchildren again: ABA to his mother, June 21, 1840,
Letters
, 48.

⁴¹⁷
“the Book of Nature”: ABA, July 24, 1839,
Journals
, 133.

⁴¹⁸
“I remember running”: LMA, “Recollections of My Childhood,” in
LMA’s Life, Letters and Journals
, 29.

⁴¹⁹
the character she created [Mr. March]: Catherine Rivard said in an email to the author in 2009, “When Louisa conjured up the minister ‘Mr. March,’ she had [her uncle] Sam in mind.”

⁴²⁰
“black, white & grey,”: LFM to Joseph May, June 10, 1854, MFPCL.

⁴²¹
Cold Water Brigade: the chants and newspaper coverage are from the collection of documents concerning SJM at the First Parish Church of Norwell, Massachusetts, formerly South Scituate.

⁴²²
“Self-Culture”: ABA, October 1838,
Journals
,105.