“One. I'm trying to be slim. But you are too thin, Louisa,” she said sternly. “You must eat more.” She stirred her tea and eyed the little cakes beside the white teapot. They had been frosted with pink icing, which I found very disagreeable but Sylvia obviously found tempting.
“I need little,” I protested, “and eat as appetite demands.”
“Not like the old days,” said Sylvia. “Remember those breakfasts you put away in Walpole? Bacon and ham and porridge and toast. Then eggs. You ate like a field hand and stayed slender.”
“Perhaps because I had to eat quickly before Father returned from his morning ramble and found me in the kitchen gorging on forbidden meats.”
We laughed, thinking of Father's stern vegetarianism and the ruses the rest of the family had used to avoid that strict regimen. Our laughter turned from bright to sad when we also thought of the iniquitous crimes of that strange summer, the sense of loss and waste that accompanies memories of premature death. Sylvia eyed the pink cakes again and looked so wretched that I put one on a plate and handed it to her.
“If you absolutely insist, Louy,” she said, eagerly attacking it with a fork.
Outside the window, past the shoulder frills of Sylvia's plaid frock, I watched the gardener clear away a thick mass of last year's leaves from the lavender beds in preparation for spring, and it reminded me of the lavender bed beside the kitchen door in Walpole, New Hampshire, and just steps away from that country garden, the ravine where I ran each morning.
I was revisiting in my memory those granite cliffs, the clear blue sky with hawks circling overhead, when I heard Sylvia sigh and was brought back to the parlor, to the red plush chairs and carved table and striped wallpaper.
“I can't quite remember, Louisa. That summer, did you perform your comic scene before or after the body was found in the potato cellar? What a strange place to find a body! I still feel faint when I think of it.” Sylvia shivered.
“It did put us off potatoes for quite a while, as I recall. Another cake?”
“I couldn't. Well, maybe a small one. Perhaps you should write about that summer in Walpole,” she suggested. “Do you still have your journal from that time?”
I did, but even without my diaries I remembered clearly what I had written about that summer. It was an abbreviated entry, which meant, of course, there was much I did not say. I had written of the ease of the journey and the kindness with which my cousin and uncle greeted me, and of country pleasures and friendly neighbors.
Friendly neighbors, indeed. Except for the occasional murderer.
Â
Louisa May Alcott
CHAPTER ONE
The Curtains Are Hung
“IS IT STRAIGHT, Louisa?” asked Sylvia Shattuck, holding a framed watercolor of Kilburn Mountain against the blue sprigged wallpaper of my new parlor. She stood precariously on a footstool, stretching to place the picture over her head against the wall, and displayed to advantage the graceful arm movements and balance achieved during her private lessons with an Italian dancing instructor.
“A little higher on the left corner,” I said, considering. “There. Now it's perfect.”
We had just swept and dusted the parlor and equipped it largely with leftovers from my cousin Eliza Wells's amply stocked attic. The two blue brocade settees were of that style known as “worn”; the lace curtains were gently moth-eaten; the thick braided rug had sentimental burn holes from the hearth.
To make up for any deficiencies of decor, Sylvia and I had added jars of wildflowers to the mantel and a special “Abba's corner,” consisting of a comfortable chair close to the hearth, a footstool, and a table and lamp, so she could sew and knit in comfort in the evenings.
And because this cottage, given to us rent-free by Abba's brother-in-law, Benjamin Willis, was soon to hold my beloved family, it did come close to being perfect.
In June of that year I had received a letter from Cousin Eliza and Uncle Benjamin, inviting me to come spend time with them. Yes, he was the unfortunate owner of the already mentioned potato cellar, but I must not rush the story. Pacing is important.
Abba, my mother, had been concerned for me, since in the weeks before, I had endured far too many hours exploring the darker and often dangerous side of family life when large fortunes are at stake. We Alcotts, at that time before our removal to Walpole, lived in a little run-down house on Beacon Hill, though even the rent for that modest residence was becoming difficult to meet. It had been a winter of hard work and frugal vegetable broths.
That day the invitation from Uncle arrived, Abba was cooking potato soup, I'm afraid to say, though I did not yet know the association I would soon make with that vegetable. “I haven't had a letter from them for years, I believe,” I said. “What can this be about?” I sat on a stool near the stove to warm myself and tore open the envelope. “I have no idea,” said Abba, stirring the pot and looking, to use a phrase, like the cat that swallowed the canary.
The letter was on old shipping letterhead, for Eliza's father, Benjamin, had done well in that industry before settling in Walpole with his books and various hobbies and family members. It was also brief.
Come visit, my dear,
Eliza had scrawled.
Fine weather up north, though I understand it's sodden in Boston. I've a litter of kittens for you to play with.
“Does Eliza know my age, Abba?” I asked, looking up.
“She has a houseful of young children and two grown men to care for. I doubt she knows her own age,” Abba said. “But there's more, Louy. She wrote on the back side, as well.”
I turned the paper over. “It's a postscript. She says âThere's a theater here.' ” The spidery writing with the arabesque capitals continued. “ âThe Walpole Amateur Dramatic Company, a flock of young people who would look kindly upon your joining them.' ”
Abba was humming as she stirred and looked up at the cracked, flaking ceiling.
“You've arranged this,” I said, giving her a quick hug.
“You need time away.” With her free hand, Abba sketched a circle in the air that encompassed my household duties, the young students I taught in our parlor to earn money, my baskets of take-in sewing with which I earned a little more money. Father was a philosopher, and while they make for very interesting conversation, philosophers do not provide much leisure time for their offspring.
In my mind, I was already thinking of the plays I would write and help produce with the Walpole Amateur Dramatic Company, for I have always loved the stage. My plays would all be comedies. I'd had enough of tragedy and death.
It would seem, though, that they hadn't had quite enough of me.
I accepted the invitation with alacrity, believing as I often did in those earlier days that what I most needed was time away from my beloved family, time alone, to be simply me, not daughter or sister. I thought I wanted privacy, solitude. Indeed, I had risked Father's impatience by quoting a little too frequently from Charles Dickens's
Bleak House
: “I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.”
“Be a butterfly,” said Abba.
I had tried. But in Walpole I had grown lonely without my family.
And now they were joining me, and Sylvia and I were putting the final touches on the new Alcott parlor. Her voice called me out of my reverie.
“Is it straight?” she asked again. “Maybe another picture over the doorway,” she suggested. “There's plenty of room for an embroidered motto or something long and narrow.”
I pretended to consider so as not to hurt her feelings, but the answer was no. Sylvia, when she wasn't with me, lived in her mother's Commonwealth Avenue mansion amidst a plethora of embroidered mottoes, watercolors, bronze gargoyles, chinoiserie cabinets, and other clutter. When it came to decorating, the Shattuck women did not know when to cease. In that, they were indicative of the times. Abba, however, and my father, Bronson Alcott, the philosopher of Concord, preferred simplicity in their immediate surroundings, less rather than more, so that when one walked into a room one did not feel quite menaced by the many fragile objects lurking within. It was a question of finances as well as aesthetics. The Alcotts could not afford fripperies.
Sylvia read my expression and grinned. “No embroidered mottoes,” she agreed. “No shelves of porcelain shepherdesses. Then we are done. I don't think I have ever worked this hard.”
“We are done, and your labor will be rewarded,” I promised. I sat on the blue settee and looked around, sensing those other rooms that could not be seen. They were waiting, as was I, for the three-o'clock omnibus that would bring the rest of the Alcotts to Walpole.
I admit, dear reader, to feeling a certain pleasure and even pride, though Father would have disapproved of such a lack of humbleness. The cottage on Main Street was the first house I had ever prepared for habitation without Abba's guidance. All the while, as I had mopped floors, wiped windows, placed furniture, I had been guided by Abba's invisible presence, and I was certain she would approve.
This was what a house for the Alcott family must contain: one room with wall-to-wall bookcases for Father, who often forgot to pack his hairbrush but never traveled without at least five trunks of books; a little room with a rented piano for shy Lizzie, who had no ambition other than to master the more difficult Chopin preludes; a mudroom for fifteen-year-old May to contain her paint boxes and smocks; a lady's room with a desk stocked with writing paper and envelopes for older sister Anna, who had friends in many parts of the country; a sewing room for Abba and myself, since our income often came from that occupation. However, I was on vacation that summer.
Flower Fables
had earned me forty dollars. Not a fortune, like the fortune that would come many years later, but a goodly sum nonetheless, one that purchased new afternoon dresses for all the Alcott women and allowed me a little more time for my writing.
So, of course, the new household also contained my writing roomâno longer in the attic, as in our Beacon Hill house, but in a little outdoor shed that I shared with a solitary pitchfork and several handsome spiders. My desk was a plank set on two sawhorses; my rug was the graveled floor under my feet. The only decoration was three topsy-turvy umbrellas dangling from the roof to catch the seeping raindrops. The shed was a paradise.
Out of an empty house I had, with Sylvia's help and Abba's unseen guidance, created a home.
“There was mention of a reward for my labor,” said Sylvia, sitting on the other settee. Her blond hair had escaped its snood and curled around her face in rascal ringlets; there was a smear of dust on her nose and grime under her nails. Her costume was strange, with a high, tight collar and long bell sleeves that had been trailed through mopping buckets and looked much the worse for wear. Sylvia, when she had arrived the week before, had announced she was now a student of Confucius.
She had quarreled with her mother over her marital status, which remained single despite several proposals; hence her flight to join me in Walpole. She had also become disillusioned with the Roman Catholic faith, abandoned the idea of joining a convent, and now quoted the Chinese philosopher whenever possible.
This moment seemed to offer such a possibility.
She folded her arms in those strange long sleeves and tried to rearrange her face in what she thought was a serene expression. How anyone with such unruly curls and such highly arching brows could achieve serenity was beyond me.
“Confucious said: âA greater pleasure it is when friends of congenial minds come from afar to seek you because of your attainments.' That's me, come up from Boston. Will you grant a wish for greater pleasure?”
“As you wish.”
Sylvia's gaze landed on my dress pocket, from which peeked a corner of white paper. “My reward shall be a reading,” she said. “Is that a new story, Louy?”
“It is.” I took the papers from my pocket and gave them a caress, for luck. “A story about the true nature of woman.”
“Read on,” ordered Sylvia, resting her feet on an ottoman and making herself quite comfortable.
I shook out the paper, which had gotten damp from the mopping activities of the morning. “It is barely begun,” I explained. “But there is a young woman, Kate, who has suffered much adversity and learned to be both strong and independent. She herself describes the ideal woman: âI would have her strong enough to stand alone and give, not ask, support. Brave enough to think and act as well as feel. Keen-eyed enough to see her own and others' faults, and wise enough to find a cure for them. I would have her humble; self-reliant; gentle though strong; man's companion, not his plaything; able and willing to face storm as well as sunshine and share life's burdens as they come.' ”
Sylvia was silent for a while. Then: “I feel quite fatigued from the responsibilities. But it is nicely stated, Louy. Very nicely said.”
A knock sounded on the front door, which caused us both to sit up straighter, alert, since we were expecting no one until the arrival of the omnibus. The front door creaked open. A man's voice boomed down the hall to where we sat.
“Is anyone at home?”
“In here!” I called back, wondering.
Dr. Peterson Burroughs stuck his long, red nose into the doorway.
“Ah,” he said. “The two young ladies are at home. I have come to see that all is well. Two women alone often encounter difficulties, you know, without a man for guidance and protection. Have you overexerted yourselves? Do you need salts?”
Sylvia's face was so screwed up with displeasure I almost laughed. She had met Dr. Burroughs once before, in the town square, when he had stopped us with similar statements about the dangers of two young ladies shopping alone, unescorted.