Marmee & Louisa (60 page)

⁷¹⁴
“unmixed pleasure”: ABA, February 14, 1850,
Journals
, 225.

⁷¹⁵
“Webster’s true place”: ABA, March 23, 1850,
Journals
, 230. SJM preached about Webster on Sunday, November 29, 1852, after Webster’s death, according to
The New York Times
the next day. “Rev. Samuel J. May, Unitarian, last night preached a sermon to the memory of DANIEL WEBSTER, in which he pronounced him licentious and intemperate. He was quite severe, saying, the least the Press says of him the better.” The previous spring, not long after the Jerry Rescue, Webster, then U.S. Secretary of State, had given a speech in central Syracuse on the necessity of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law.

⁷¹⁶
“You have come together this evening”: AMA, Fragments of Mrs. Alcott’s Reports on her Missionary Work, March 1850, HAP.

⁷¹⁷
smallpox: ABA,
Letters
, footnote, 156. See also ABA to Chatfield Alcott, September 16, 1850, Letters, 159.

⁷¹⁸
“curious time”: LMA, summer 1850,
Journals
, 62.

⁷¹⁹
in New Hampshire: While scholars have thought Elizabeth Alcott contracted scarlet fever in the summer of 1856, an AMA letter at HAP dated July 29, 1855, mentions the family’s experience with scarlet fever and how “very sick my Lizzy has been.”

⁷²⁰
“children Mother nursed”: LMA, June 1856, Journals, 79.

⁷²¹
“maternal pelican”: LMA, “Recollections of My Childhood,”
Lulu’s Library
, xiv.

⁷²²
“wonders of art”: Margaret Fuller, “Farewell to New York,”
The Tribune
, August 1, 1846, in Miller,
Margaret Fuller, American Romantic
, 251–52.

⁷²³
“beautiful finish”: AMA, summer 1850, journals, HAP.

⁷²⁴
“
school-marm
”: LMA, summer 1850,
Journals
, 63.

⁷²⁵
“imaginary children”: LMA, February 3, 1865,
Letters
, 107.

⁷²⁶
“best American”: Barton,
Transcendental Wife
, displays the broadside for AMA’s Intelligence Office, 105.

⁷²⁷
“a shelter”: LMA, Stern,
Critical Essays on LMA
, 101.

⁷²⁸
“flummery”: Barton, “Ballast to Bronson’s Balloon,” unpublished essay.

⁷²⁹
her first novel: Scholars Myerson and Shealy write in the introduction to
The Inheritance
, xviii, “None of Alcott’s extant letters or journals or the private writings of her family and friends provide any details of the novel’s composition.” Years after LMA wrote this novel she pasted a note on the manuscript, now at Houghton Library: “My first novel / written at seventeen / High St Boston.” The Alcotts did not move to High Street until Louisa was eighteen, so it seems likely that she started it earlier and completed it at High Street.

⁷³⁰
“I don’t
talk
”: LMA,
Journals
, 61.

⁷³¹
“safety valve”: AMA to SJM, April 17, 1845, family letters, HAP.

⁷³²
“try not to covet”: LMA,
Journals
, 61.

⁷³³
mental illness in LMA’s stories: See, for example, Rachel R. S. Luckenbill’s 2005 Villanova University dissertation, “Treating Insanity: Madness, Femininity, and Patriarchal Control in LMA’s ‘A Whisper in the Dark’ and ‘A Nurse’s Story.’”

⁷³⁴
Charles May’s insanity: Yacovone,
SJM
, 9.

⁷³⁵
“mother’s notes”: LMA, 1850,
Journals
, 63.

⁷³⁶
“Why don’t you write?”: LMA,
Little Women
, 481.

⁷³⁷
“romance”: Bedell,
Journals of LMA
, Introduction, 35.

⁷³⁸
“Sexual qualities”: ABA, January 18, 1850,
Journals
, 221.

⁷³⁹
“My dear Miss Littlehale”: ABA to E. D. Littlehale,
Letters
, August 29, 1850.

⁷⁴⁰
“the unforgettable”: Ibid.

⁷⁴¹
“Louisa sat silent”: Frank Sanborn, “Reminiscences of Louisa May Alcott,” in Stern,
Critical Essays on LMA
, 215.

⁷⁴²
“inspiration of necessity”: LMA to James Redpath, unknown date, in Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 178.

⁷⁴³
“confusing business”: ABA to his mother, September 11, 1851,
Letters
, 162.

⁷⁴⁴
scrub floors: LMA, “How I Went Out to Service,” in Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 95. LMA did not elaborate on this experience in her journals except in end-of-year notes for 1850.

⁷⁴⁵
“the connexion”: AMA, January 11, 1850, journals, HAP.

⁷⁴⁶
angry: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 94, states that LMA’s “anger [in the 1850s] had traceable autobiographical causes,” foremost among them “extreme” family poverty.

⁷⁴⁷
“male lords”: LMA, 1851,
Feminist Alcott
, ed. Stern, vii.

⁷⁴⁸
“dead, decaying”: AMA, April 1853, journals, HAP.

⁷⁴⁹
“fat and indolent”: AMA to ABA, October 5, 1854, family letters, HAP.

⁷⁵⁰
Hawthorne paid: He repaired Hillside and renamed it Wayside. That house is a National Monument, open to the public, beside Orchard House.

⁷⁵¹
her trustees: SES to AMA, November 3, 1852, family letters, HAP.

⁷⁵²
“more respectable”: AMA to SJM, December 14, 1852, family letters, HAP.

⁷⁵³
“it is not clear”: Shepard,
ABA Journals
, Note on 1852, 260.

⁷⁵⁴
“Father idle”: LMA, summary for 1852,
Journals
, 68.

⁷⁵⁵
“opened a school”: ABA to his mother, October 19, 1851,
Letters
, 162.

⁷⁵⁶
“Self-sacrificing”: LMA, September 1855,
Journals
, 75.

⁷⁵⁷
“family contrive”: LFM to Joseph May, December 21, 1856, MFPCL.

⁷⁵⁸
“hardscrabble years”: Catherine Rivard, e-mail to the author, 2009.

⁷⁵⁹
“home bird”: LMA, date,
Journals
, 69, 67.

⁷⁶⁰
“getting prizes”: LMA, January 1854,
Journals
, 72.

⁷⁶¹
“Raphael”: LMA, April 1857,
Journals
, 84.

⁷⁶²
“more structured education”: AMA, no date, journals, HAP.

⁷⁶³
“prospects somewhat fairer”: ABA, October 6, 1851,
Journals
, 254. Although Bronson stated that AMAN’s 1851 attendance at a Boston school was the first formal schooling for any of his children, he may have been exaggerating. Both he and Abigail referred to their older daughters attending schools in Concord in journals of the 1840s. AMAN still studied at the Bowdoin Grammar School in January 1853, when she was twelve.

⁷⁶⁴
“Sunlight”: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 256. Myerson and Shealy identify this as LMA’s first published work.

⁷⁶⁵
“Great rubbish!”: LMA, Cheney,
LMA’s Life, Letters and Journals
, 68. The
Olive Branch
was the literary magazine that published this story. LMA later recalled that she wrote her first published short story at age sixteen at Hillside. As she was not yet sixteen when the family left Hillside, she likely wrote the story the next year, in Boston.

⁷⁶⁶
Only after her mother: LMA used nearly the same scene in
Little Women
, in a story also called “The Rival Painters.”

⁷⁶⁷
hundreds of poems and stories: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, lists all known LMA periodical publications, 138–42. LMA sold about twenty serial pieces in the 1850s, more than forty such pieces in the 1860s, and even more during each of the following two decades.

⁷⁶⁸
“approaching crisis”: AMA to ABA, December 25, 1853, family letters, HAP.

⁷⁶⁹
“laborious”: LMA, “Alcott’s Conversation on New England’s Reformers,” May 1863, in Stern,
LMA
, 67.

⁷⁷⁰
“not cold and formal”: LMA, ibid.

⁷⁷¹
“the best man”: Theodore Parker to “Dear Poor Old Ladye,” February 2, 1852, in O. B. Frothingham,
The Life of Theodore Parker
(1874), 299.

⁷⁷²
“the Collegian”: ABA to AMA, September 21, 1854,
Letters
184.

⁷⁷³
“Mother’s undisguised favorite”: CMW, unpublished memoir, private collection.

⁷⁷⁴
Charlotte’s education: Ibid.

⁷⁷⁵
“those Peabody Sister schools”: Ibid.

⁷⁷⁶
“being a school marm!” LMA to CMW, January 2, [1853?],
Letters
, 7.

⁷⁷⁷
“Dear Lottie don’t”: Ibid.

⁷⁷⁸
“Dear Jody”: LFM to Joseph May, undated, probably September 29, 1853, MFPCL.

⁷⁷⁹
“go to your aunt Abba’s”: LFM to Joseph May, Saturday, September 30 [1853], MFPCL.

⁷⁸⁰
text of AMA’s 1853 petition on suffrage: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 152–154.

⁷⁸¹
Similar efforts in Wisconsin: Sally G. McMillen,
Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement
, 71.

⁷⁸²
“
Be
something in yourself”: AMA to SJM, April 12, 1853, family letters, HAP.

⁷⁸³
“good hours with Sam”: ABA to AMA, January 15, 1854,
Letters
, 182–183.

⁷⁸⁴
Gerrit Smith: An antislavery candidate for president of the United States in 1848, 1856, and 1860.

⁷⁸⁵
public opposition: In 1855 the City of Syracuse was home to about 250 free blacks, according to “‘That laboratory of abolitionism, libel, and treason’: Syracuse and the Underground Railroad,” an exhibition of the Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library, July 2009.

⁷⁸⁶
“laboratory”: Ibid.

⁷⁸⁷
Frederick Douglass: Jerry Rescue collection, Onondaga Historial Association, Syracuse, New York.

⁷⁸⁸
“Cozy home”: AMA to ABA, November 18, 1853, family letters, HAP.

⁷⁸⁹
Anna in Syracuse: ABA to AMA, January 15, 1854,
Letters
, 182, mentions Bronson’s plan to return homeward with Anna, who had been boarding in Syracuse.

⁷⁹⁰
quiet garret: LMA, April 1855,
Journals
, 73.

⁷⁹¹
“glory cloak”: LMA, February 1861,
Journals
, 103.

⁷⁹²
“retired from public life”: LMA to CMW, January 2, [1853?],
Letters
, 7.

⁷⁹³
Anthony Burns case: Sanborn,
Bronson Alcott: His Life and Philosophy
, II, 441–44.

⁷⁹⁴
“propaganda weapon”: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 281.

⁷⁹⁵
“contemptible president”: SES,
Memoir of SES
, 102.

⁷⁹⁶
“triumphs of freedom”: Ibid., 101.

⁷⁹⁷
railroad platform: The Syracuse depot was at the intersection of West Washington and Franklin Streets.

⁷⁹⁸
CMW’s appearance: CMW, unpublished memoir, private collection.

⁷⁹⁹
LMA’s appearance: although Edward Emerson said LMA had “black” eyes, Catherine Rivard stated that LMA’s eyes were gray-blue like her father’s and her sister May’s. The April 1881
Phrenological Journal
called her “tall and spare in frame,” with a strong, “distinct” profile, nose, and chin, according to Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 243. LMA felt she had a “whopper jaw,” according to LMA’s note on her copy of
How to Read Character
, described in Ibid., 244, footnote.

⁸⁰⁰
still in Syracuse: ABA to AMA, September 21, 1854,
Letters
, 185.

⁸⁰¹
“exchanged your gloves”: LFM and SJM to Joseph May, September 21–22, 1855, MFPCL.

⁸⁰²
“wifely washerwoman’s”: ABA to AMA, September 21, 1854,
Letters
, 186.

⁸⁰³
“all its faults”: inscribed on the volume, HAP.

⁸⁰⁴
“her good fortune”: ABA to AMA, April 26, 1856,
Letters
, 191.

⁸⁰⁵
invented for children: Some biographers placed her little school in the Emersons’ barn, but LMA said in “Recollections” that she “had for a short time a little school in the barn” at Hillside.

⁸⁰⁶
pleasanter work: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 4.

⁸⁰⁷
“topsy-turvy”: LMA, April 1855,
Journals
, 73.

⁸⁰⁸
“very nervous”: historical documents from Walpole, NH, viewed at Orchard House, October 2011.

⁸⁰⁹
“near poverty”: Herrnstadt,
ABA Letters
, introduction, xxvi.

⁸¹⁰
“cold and dull”: LMA, December 1855,
Journals
, 76.

⁸¹¹
“Mother’s blessing”: LMA, November 1855,
Journals
, 75.