Marmee & Louisa (61 page)

⁸¹²
sent home most of her earnings: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 4.

⁸¹³
“dashing signature”: LMA to Louise C. Moulton, n.d., family letters, HAP.

⁸¹⁴
“business details”: LMA,
The Critic
, March 17, 1888, in Cameron,
Concord Literary Renaissance
, 119.

⁸¹⁵
fair skin: While many biographers said she had dark skin, there is no historical evidence of this, according to Catherine Rivard, in conversation, 2010.

⁸¹⁶
“Louie Alcott Troupe”: Stern,
LMA Unmasked
, xix.

⁸¹⁷
convinced her Syracuse cousins: according to theatrical posters in Orchard House collection, viewed in 2011.

⁸¹⁸
four small roles: on April 22, 1856, John Emerson May played the roles of Byron, Tremaine, Pelham, and Podge.

⁸¹⁹
“such a hard life”: LMA to AAP, November 6, 1856,
Letters
, 23.

⁸²⁰
Charles May’s death: May-Windship-Barker-Archibald Papers, 1775–1922, at MHS, have Charles’s April 1856 obituary. Charles likely returned to Massachusetts in 1842 to claim his inheritance. His four children with his wife, Caroline, were Eliza Dorothy Sewall May, Catharine Dodge May, Annie Bancroft May, and Joseph Sewall May. In
ABA Letters
, 829, to unknown recipient, June 8, 1881, ABA wrote that Charles’s widow and son Joseph were in Dublin, NH, and that his daughter Kate married Robert Kirkpatrick and moved to Montana.

⁸²¹
she worried: ABA to LMA, March 31, 1856,
Letters
, 191.

⁸²²
raced to New Hampshire: ABA, to his mother, August 5, 1856,
Letters
, 193.

⁸²³
water-cure establishment: ABA to AMA, November 13, 1856,
Letters
, 212.

⁸²⁴
Abigail . . . could not leave: Herrnstadt,
ABA Letters
, footnote, 244.

⁸²⁵
“Forlornites”: LMA, winter 1856–1857,
Journals
, 85.

⁸²⁶
“poor child”: LFM to Joseph May, December 21, 1856, MFPCL.

⁸²⁷
“Mr. Alcott’s mark”: LFM to SJM, “Wednesday evening,” 1857, MFPCL.

⁸²⁸
“fidgets me”: LFM to SJM, ibid.

⁸²⁹
“comfortable house”: ABA to AMA, April 18–19, 1857,
Letters
, 242.

⁸³⁰
“supported myself”: LMA, date,
Journals
, 85.

⁸³¹
“The Lady and the Woman” quotation: LMA,
Early Stories of LMA, 1852–1860
, 165.

⁸³²
“a little something yet”: LMA, July 1857, Cheney,
LMA Life, Letters and Journals
, 95.

⁸³³
thin, pale: ABA to his brother Ambrose, May 13, 1857, Letters, 244.

⁸³⁴
“Auntie and Uncle”: LFM to SJM, July 21, 1857, MFPCL.

⁸³⁵
promised Anna and Louisa: ABA to AMA, April 29, 1857,
Letters
, 244.

⁸³⁶
“venerable of appearance”: Odell Shepard,
ABA Journals
, introduction to 1857, 295.

⁸³⁷
sea air: ABA to AMA, August 3, 1857,
Letters
, 246. Mrs. Phillips, a relative of the Mays, is probably the wife of the abolitionist Wendell Phillips, Ann.

⁸³⁸
“brightening prospects”: ABA to AMA, August 15, 1857,
Letters
, 248.

⁸³⁹
consulted medical experts: ABA to Abby May, January 2, 1859,
Letters
, 291.

⁸⁴⁰
“place to plant ourselves”: ABA to his daughters, August 28, 1857,
Letters
, 251; ABA to AMA, August 15, 1857,
Letters
, 248.

⁸⁴¹
repeated her reluctance: ABA to his daughters, September 16–20, 1857,
Letters
, 254–256. See also
ABA Letters
, introduction, xxvii.

⁸⁴²
“anxious and divided”: ABA to AMA, November 16, 1857,
Letters
, 260.

⁸⁴³
“trust me for once”: ABA to his daughters, September 17, 1857,
Letters
, 255.

⁸⁴⁴
“good home”: ABA to AMA, August 23, 1857,
Letters
, 249.

⁸⁴⁵
“friendly competitors”: ABA to AMA, August15, 1857,
Letters
, 248.

⁸⁴⁶
“investments”: ABA to his daughters, September 9, 1857,
Letters
, 252.

⁸⁴⁷
“take the reins”: ABA to AMA, April 29, 1857,
Letters
, 244.

⁸⁴⁸
“central figure” ABA to his daughters, September 9, 1857,
Letters
, 253.

⁸⁴⁹
“I . . . close my bargain”: ABA, September 22, 1857,
Journals
, 301.

⁸⁵⁰
“Mother’s money”: LMA September 1857,
Journals
, 85.

⁸⁵¹
Apple Slump: Lydia Maria Child said Orchard House was “fit for firewood,” Jan Turnquist told the author in 2011.

⁸⁵²
Anna and Louisa helped: ABA to AAP, August 28, 1857,
Letters
, 251.

⁸⁵³
“I feel my quarter”: LMA, November 1857,
Journals
, 86.

⁸⁵⁴
“Betty loves”: LMA, ibid.

⁸⁵⁵
“Anxious and restless”: ABA to AMA, December 1, 1857,
Letters
, 267.

⁸⁵⁶
“I don’t relish ‘the Governess’”: ABA to AAP, November 21, 1857,
Letters
, 264.

⁸⁵⁷
old maids: Anna refers to being an “old maid” in letters to Alfred Whitman, August 1868 and July 21, 1872, family letters, HAP.

⁸⁵⁸
“lamentations”: LMA, February 1858,
Journals
, 88.

⁸⁵⁹
“resurrection”: ABA to his daughters, September 20, 1857,
Letters
, 256.

⁸⁶⁰
felt “right”: ABA to AMA, November 16, 1857,
Letters
, 260.

⁸⁶¹
“Sewall and May”: ABA to AAAP, November 21, 1857,
Letters
, 263.

⁸⁶²
“Italian grammar”: CMW, unpublished memoir, private collection.

⁸⁶³
“warm, comfortable, tidy”: ABA to AAP, November 21, 1857,
Letters
, 262; ABA to AMA, January 1, 1858,
Letters
, 275.

⁸⁶⁴
“quite gay”: LFM to SJM, “Wednesday evening, 1857,” MFPCL.

⁸⁶⁵
housekeeping: Shepard,
ABA Letters
, footnote, 307.

⁸⁶⁶
“much hope”: AAP to Bronson, January 9, 1858, family letters, HAP.

⁸⁶⁷
“no hope”: LMA, January 1858,
Journals
, 88.

⁸⁶⁸
“best be spared”: ABA, January 23, 1858,
Journals
, 303.

⁸⁶⁹
“too heavy”: LMA, March 14, 1858,
Journals
, 88.

⁸⁷⁰
“kissed us”: LMA, ibid.

⁸⁷¹
“Elizabeth ascends”: ABA, March 14, 1858,
Journals
, 307.

⁸⁷²
“freed soul fly”: “Miss Louisa M. Alcott,”
Boston Christian Register
, March 24, 1888.

⁸⁷³
picnic place: Jan Turnquist, June 2011, interview at Orchard House.

⁸⁷⁴
“a bereaved heart”: AMA to SJM, March 19, 1857, family letters, HAP.

⁸⁷⁵
“stay longer”: John E. May to his brother, April 1858, MFPCL. Samuel Greele, who is mentioned in the letter, died in 1861.

⁸⁷⁶
“little May”: LMA, May 1858,
Journals
, 89.

⁸⁷⁷
taller, fairer: Catherine Rivard, in a 2010 interview with the author, described AMAN as 5' 8'' with reddish-blond hair and a large bosom.

⁸⁷⁸
more than thirty: Shepard,
ABA Journals
, Note on 1858, 303.

⁸⁷⁹
Orchard House renovations: In June 2010 Jan Turnquist told the author that ABA had a carpenter remove one of the house’s main corner posts, on the southeast side. This corner post has since been restored as part of extensive renovations to the house. ABA moved the entry of Orchard House to Wayside, where it remains. The well beneath the kitchen dates to the 1600s.

⁸⁸⁰
ABA gardens: Hope Ann Davis,
The Orchard House Landscape, Concord, MA, 1857–1868
, available at Orchard House.

⁸⁸¹
“loved spot”: ABA, August 26, 1869,
Journals
, 398.

⁸⁸²
Lizzy’s Bible: The tiny Bible is in the Alcott collection at Orchard House.

⁸⁸³
“took faithful care”: AMA, journals for 1872, “Fragment of an Autobiography,” HAP.

⁸⁸⁴
“death and love”: LMA, August1858,
Journals
, 90.

⁸⁸⁵
Junius’s suicide: Occurred in upstate New York in 1852, when he was thirty-four.

⁸⁸⁶
“usual hunt”: LMA, October 1858,
Journals
, 90.

⁸⁸⁷
“cared so little”: LMA to her family, October 1858,
Letters
, 34. She wrote that “every one was so busy, & cared so little whether I got work or jumped into the river, that I thought seriously of doing the latter.”

⁸⁸⁸
Mill Dam: An 1858 photograph of the Back Bay from the State House in Nancy Seasholes’s
Mapping Boston
(126) shows what LMA would have seen from the Mill Dam on the day she considered suicide. In the 1850s developers began to dump gravel into the water south of the Boston Neck to create the South End. Late in the decade they were filling the muddy area north of the neck with soil from suburban Needham to create the Back Bay, nearly 600 acres of new land.

⁸⁸⁹
“thought seriously”: LMA to her family, October 1858,
Letters
, 34.

⁸⁹⁰
“so cowardly”: LMA to AAP, November 1858,
Letters
, 38.

⁸⁹¹
inspired a scene: LMA’s Mill Dam experience also inspired a scene in her novel
Work
in which the heroine, Christy, considers suicide on the Mill Dam.

⁸⁹²
“A woman of well-regulated”: L. M. Child,
The Mother’s Book
, 165.

⁸⁹³
“too straitly-bounded”: Margaret Fuller, in Kornfeld,
Margaret Fuller
, 43.

⁸⁹⁴
“Let them be sea-captains”: Ibid., 45.

⁸⁹⁵
“least married group”: Theriot,
Mother & Daughters in Nineteenth-century America
, 117.

⁸⁹⁶
nineteenth-century woman: Megan Marshall,
Peabody Sisters
, 115.

⁸⁹⁷
“peace-offering”: LMA, November 29, 1858,
Journals
, 91.

⁸⁹⁸
“free spinster”: LMA, August 1860,
Journals
, 99.

⁸⁹⁹
“The loss of liberty”: LMA, “Advice to Young Ladies: Being a Series of Twelve Articles by Twelve Distinguished Women. No. 3—Happy Women,”
New York Ledger
, April 11, 1868.

⁹⁰⁰
“intensely close spousal relationship”: Theriot,
Mothers & Daughters in Nineteenth-century America
, 37, 69.

⁹⁰¹
“tremendous need”: Ibid., 64.

⁹⁰²
“far superior”: ABA, December 24, 1859,
Journals
, 311.

⁹⁰³
she usually earned: Dates and fees derive from Madeleine Stern,
LMA Unmasked
, xvii.

⁹⁰⁴
“proper grayness”: LMA, in LaSalle Corbell Pickett’s
Across My Path: Memories of People I Have Known
, 107–108. The possible sources for the initials in AM Barnard are consistent with Leona Rostenberg,
Critical Essays on LMA
, 44.

⁹⁰⁵
“infinite horror”: LMA to James Redpath, n.d., in Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 214.

⁹⁰⁶
Arthur Helps quotation: AMA, Memoir of 1878, HAP, quoting Sir Arthur Helps in
Friends in Council: A Series of Readings and Discourse Thereon
, vol. 1, London: Pickering, 1848.

⁹⁰⁷
potbelly stoves: By the Victorian period, according to Jan Turnquist, there were black potbelly stoves inside the fireplaces.

⁹⁰⁸
“old malady”: ABA to AMA, December 11, 1858,
Letters
, 283.

⁹⁰⁹
“invalid”: ABA, January 1859,
Journals
, 293–96.

⁹¹⁰
“corked up”: LMA, January 1861,
Journals
, 103.

⁹¹¹
“so bravely”: ABA to LMA, February 7, 1859,
Letters
, 298.

⁹¹²
“fatherly care”: ABA to AMAN, January 17, 1859,
Letters
, 294, quoting AAP.

⁹¹³
attended a lecture: Brooks,
Flowering of New England
, 432. Later in 1859 John Brown left Frank Sanborn’s house on his way to Harpers Ferry. Sanborn was arrested after the raid but released when townspeople protested.

⁹¹⁴
“physically attractive”: Ronald Bosco, School of Philosophy, Orchard House, 2009. At the same lecture series, John Matteson raised the possibility of a homosexual attraction between Bronson and John Brown. Ronald Bosco, editor of Emerson’s
papers, also suggested that ABA was attracted to Emerson, based on a late poem about skinny-dipping by ABA addressed to Emerson.