The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (7 page)

Louisa and Anna grinned at each other. They knew something about this phenomenon. “Your sister Catherine must meet our youngest sister May,” Anna said. “I believe they will find they have some things in common.”

A breeze rustled the umber fringe of Joseph’s hair. He waved his hand as if to brush away his frustration. “Why should I begrudge her her childhood? She could be as serious and straight as an arrow, and it wouldn’t change the fact that our father is going to die.”

They sat silently for a long moment. Joseph’s embarrassment was palpable—he seemed to be wishing for a way to withdraw his words. Up on the road at the top of the hill they heard a carriage pass, the hooves of the horses pounding the dusty path. Louisa was grateful when Anna spoke.

“It must feel at times like a great burden, but it snaps life into focus, does it not? We know we must appreciate all that we have been given. It isn’t ours to keep.” Even the tone of Anna’s voice was a balm.

He nodded in agreement, gazing at a squirrel, its cheeks loaded with food, frozen halfway down the trunk of a nearby tree. “Thank you for your kind words.” Joseph noticed the cake, his voice bright once again. “This looks delicious.”

Anna seemed amused by how quickly he flitted from the weighty topic of his father’s illness to the frivolity of dessert. He was indeed scarcely more than a boy.

“And how are you liking Walpole so far?” he asked. “Are you happy with your new drapes?”

“They aren’t finished yet.” Anna tucked a now-dry and unruly curl behind her ear. “It seems we’ve had too many distractions the last few days.”

“Is that so? What have you been up to?”

“Well, Margaret has been so nice to take me along when she calls on friends, and Louisa too,
when
she’ll agree to come.” Anna elbowed Louisa teasingly. “It has been hard to tear her away.”

“And what is it that has such a hold on your attention, Miss Louisa?” Joseph inquired, affecting his own formal mode of address, to her chagrin.

Off at the edge of the clearing, where the changing tent stood, Nora and Margaret were wringing out their swimming costumes and refastening their hair, preparing to head home for supper. “Please—call me Louisa. It’s probably nothing you’d be interested in,” she replied curtly, eager to turn the focus away from herself.
Blast Anna and her loose lips!
she thought.

“Don’t be so sure,” Joseph replied with a grin. “We dullards can surprise you.”

Louisa colored, her pulse beating like a hummingbird in her throat. She couldn’t decide if she should apologize for the rude comment he’d overheard, or if that would only draw more attention to it. After a few perilous seconds she managed to croak out, “I’ve been reading a new collection of poetry. It only just appeared last month.”

Joseph swallowed the last bite of the cake, licking the icing from his fingers. “Would this be the work of the indecorous Mr. Whitman?”

Louisa’s jaw fell. “How do
you
know about that?”

“Miss Alcott, as I get the distinct impression that you dislike being proven wrong, you’ll be disappointed to know that your initial judgment of my character is turning out to be incorrect. I am a ravenous reader and have a cousin in New York who sends me all the new volumes. But how did
you
come by yours?”

“Mr. Emerson is our neighbor—well,
was
our neighbor, when we lived in Concord. He is a close friend of my father’s and . . . has taken an interest in my literary education.” It wasn’t really a lie. Mr. Emerson
had
given her books in the past. Just not this one.

Joseph’s eyebrows leapt. “Emerson was your neighbor? How fortunate you are!”

“Louisa is a published author herself,” Anna said, reliably eager to bolster her sister. “Perhaps you have heard of
Flower Fables
?”

Joseph shook his head. “I can’t say that I have, but nonetheless, how intriguing. Perhaps you will be so kind as to lend me a copy.”

“I’m sure I don’t have the book here in Walpole,” said Louisa, her chin raised. “But perhaps you could secure one at the bookshop in town.”

Joseph chuckled. “Protecting your sales numbers, I see. Well, I can hardly blame you for that. Authorship is not a lucrative career. You must make the most of it.”

“On the contrary.” The late afternoon sun cast long shadows behind them and Louisa paused to check her defensive tone. “My work is going quite well, and I have a few more irons in the fire. I’ll be off to Boston soon to get some real writing done.” Anna smiled, amused as usual by her sister’s stubbornness.

Louisa tried once again to redirect the conversation. “Anna is an avid reader as well. And she also loves the theater.”

“Really?” Joseph turned toward Anna and Louisa breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Do you put on plays yourself?”

Anna nodded. “I
adore
the theater. If it weren’t for my bad ear, I would have tried to make it on the stage in New York. There’s just nothing like it. As a substitute we do like to put on plays for fun. In fact, we were just discussing on the way here that we might like to stage something in Walpole. Do you think the others would be interested? ”

“Certainly. You could call it the ‘Amateur Dramatic Company of Walpole.’ Which play were you thinking of taking on?”

Louisa piped up then, as she hoped to have her say before Margaret tried to take over and boss them into some unbearably frivolous charade. “What about
The Jacobite
by J. R. Planché? That’s an old favorite.” As she said it she wondered why she should even bother pressing for a particular play. She didn’t plan to be around by the time it was performed. “Have you read it?”

Joseph nodded and gave an indifferent shrug.

“You don’t share my sister’s good opinion of it, I see,” Anna said with a grin.

“It’s fine. Probably just right for this group. Anyway, you shouldn’t consult me. I probably will not be able to participate. The store takes up all of my time these days.” He crumpled up the empty newsprint. “Have you ever staged
Hamlet
? It’s my favorite play.”

“Why, that’s Louy’s favorite as well. Isn’t it, Lou?” Anna and Joseph turned back to her once again. Louisa felt exasperated that the focus of the conversation kept returning to her, and for some reason it rankled her to know Joseph had read all the same books she had.

Joseph surveyed her face and broke into the infuriating grin Louisa was beginning to realize he wielded like a weapon. “I think I’ve got you figured out, Miss Louisa: the more I impress you, the angrier you get,” he said. Anna suppressed a giggle with her slender fingers.

Louisa’s jaw ached from clenching it against one of a few biting replies careening through her mind. She summoned a benevolent smile and a calm tone, reminding herself that the only thing that could trump her pride was her desire to keep from embarrassing her sister in front of this young man she obviously favored.

“Anna, Marmee will be wondering where we are. We should be getting home.”

The three of them stood, brushing crumbs from their laps and shaking hands good-bye. Louisa and Anna began up the steep hill, still wearing their mostly dry swimming costumes, as the other boys had folded up the changing tent and taken it with them. Joseph lingered a moment, inspecting the clearing to ensure that nothing had been left behind. He glanced up at the girls, happily chatting with their backs to him, then to the rock where they’d sat to eat their lunches. As Louisa would discover many years later, her comb, adorned with a steel chrysanthemum, lay forgotten by her in the grass. Joseph crouched down and slipped it in his pocket.

 

 

 

W
hen Louisa and Anna arrived back at Yellow Wood, they found Abba in a distressed state. Bronson had spent the day in his study sketching elaborate plans for the garden he’d begun planting. He whistled and plotted space on the paper for corn, asparagus, and beets, with sweet william for decoration. Louisa and Anna exchanged a glance, wondering when he would realize it was too late in the season for planting the vegetables.

Meanwhile, Abba continued the overwhelming task of scrubbing the floors, beating the dust out of the furniture, and airing the rooms. No one could settle in comfortably until these tasks were completed. May, full of resentment that she was too young to have been invited to the swimming party, reluctantly joined Anna and Louisa in coming to Abba’s aid. Lizzie was feeling the early signs of a cold and had retired to her room to rest.

As the evening breeze dried the floors, Abba and May hung the woolen carpets out on the line to be beaten, though Louisa suspected it was Abba who did most of the work. May had been blessed with a slender physique and petite shoulders. Anna and Abba would say that her features were simply God’s design, but Louisa sometimes wondered if they resulted from a lack of hard work. No matter who did the chores, once the carpets were sufficiently free of dust, someone would have to roll them to be stored in the attic and lay the simple painted oilcloth across the boards until the weather cooled again.

Anna and Louisa began the particularly smelly task of dipping candles. The family’s present budgetary constraints put whale oil for lamps out of reach, and candles were the next best thing. Anna heated a kettle of sheep tallow on the stove until the acrid smell of burning fat engulfed the kitchen.

“Did you know,” Anna began, stirring the burping sludge with a flat piece of wood reserved for the task, “that the brick house at the corner of River Road and Westminster Street belongs to the Sutton family? The house with the two chimneys? ”

Louisa worked a dull knife through the cotton cord, cutting equal lengths for the wicks. “Oh, that house is lovely.”

“As a boy, Nicholas’s grandfather built it with his father.”

“Is that so? How lucky to be a Sutton!”

“Indeed.”

Louisa counted the pieces of cord. “Does Marmee want us to make the extra this time, for the charity collection?”

“I think Mrs. Parker organizes it here. I wonder whether Marmee has met her.” The last solid hunks of fat had dissolved in the pot.

“I’d better go ask her before we begin.” Louisa looked into the parlor but Abba wasn’t there. She passed back through the kitchen and down the hall. The door to Bronson’s study was open, and she heard the voices of her parents within. Abba’s grew sharp and Louisa froze, a few steps away and out of sight.

“I do not see how working for
bread
implies unworthy gains.”

Louisa heard the familiar sound of her father absently shuffling through his papers. He did not like any of them to come into his study when he was working, certainly not to question or criticize him. “Wife, I must be true to this philosophy, no matter what the cost.”

Abba responded with an irritated sigh. “Give me one day of practical philosophy. It is worth a century of speculation and discussion.”

Bronson’s voice was measured. He rarely lost his temper. “I know this is the righteous path.”

“What could be righteous about taking food out of the mouths of your own children?”

“I am teaching them that acts of commerce divide man from man, lead to greed and selfishness,” he explained, as if he were speaking to a small child. “I am teaching them not to let their bellies lead them through life. When we abstain from physical comforts, inside we are made whole. If I work for pay, I violate my conscience.”

“If you don’t work, you violate mine.”

“And God in his wisdom made the
husband
the head of the household.”

It was silent a long moment. Louisa bit her lip in anticipation of her mother’s reply. She had heard her father talk at length on the “woman question,” advocating for the rights to vote and be educated the same as men. She had never heard him evoke his supremacy in this way. Perhaps he had shocked Abba into silence.

“It’s August,” she said. “We always manage in the summer with vegetables and fruit. People here have been very generous indeed. But it is a sin to rely on charity when you can do for yourself—that is
my
philosophy. When winter comes, we will not have enough wood to keep that fire going.” Louisa thought of the cherished little coin purse concealed in the lining of her trunk and felt a wave of guilt. How could she let her mother suffer under the burden of this worry when that money from her advance could help the family, at least for a little while? But behind the guilt was despair—how could she let the money go when the dream of her freedom in Boston meant everything in the world?

Louisa heard Bronson clear his throat. “You would have me write to Emerson again, I suppose . . .”

“No—I would have you work enough to feed our family.”

“God will provide, if we trust . . .”

Louisa backed quietly down the hall away from Bronson’s study. In the past her mother had always deferred to his wisdom on matters of housing and provision. Louisa had never heard her speak so bluntly before, but she was glad Abba was questioning his decisions. After all, it was easy for Bronson to claim allegiance to his philosophy when it was Abba who suffered, Abba who had to quietly ask the neighbor to spare a few eggs, Abba who arranged free housing from a sympathetic relation. Why should they eat potatoes for every meal when they had a healthy father who
could
work but instead sat reading in his study all day?

And yet Louisa knew better than most that it wasn’t so simple. She couldn’t bear to give up the money that would buy her the freedom to write, just as her father would not consent to set aside his philosophy to work as a clerk in a stifling office. Men in Boston respected her father not only because of his ideas but because of the ways in which he challenged himself and others to go beyond the talking and
live
them. She had heard the story from Mr. Emerson of the previous May, when Bronson proved his allegiance to ideas of equality and compassion. Anthony Burns, a twenty-year-old runaway slave from Virginia, was arrested in Boston and taken to jail. President Pierce was hell-bent on enforcing his pet law, the Fugitive Slave Act, which dictated that northern states must return runaway slaves to the southern states from which they’d escaped, or face federal sanction. Despite the protests of Massachusetts officials, Pierce sent a federal marshal to Boston to retrieve Burns.