Alcott, Louisa May - SSC 14 (4 page)

 
          
The
mainstay of their business was The Flag of Our Union, a miscellaneous weekly
designed for the home circle. Though, according to its publishers, it contained
“not one vulgar word or line,” it did seem to specialize in violent narratives
peopled with convicts and opium addicts. It was for that periodical that Louisa
May Alcott under the pseudonym of A. M. Barnard produced her bloodiest and most
thunderous thrillers.

 
          
A
series of five letters from James R. Elliott to Louisa M. Alcott written
between 1865 and 1866 reveals her relations with the
Boston
trio, their terms, and their reactions to
her effusions:

 
          
Jan.
5. 1865.

 
          
I
forward you this evening the 3 first copies of the "Flag" in its new
form.

 
          
I
think it is now a literary paper that none need to bush for, and a credit to
contribute to its columns, rather than otherwise.

 
          
Now
I have a proposition to make you. I want to publish your story 'V.V' in it, in
place of publishing it as a Novelette in cheap style, as I had intended, and
will give you $25.
more
for the story provided I can
publish it under your own name.

 
          
Please
look the “Flag" over & let me know as early as
Saturday.
. . ,

 
          
Louisa
resisted the additional twenty-five dollars and “V.V.: or, “Plots and
Counterplots,” its authorship unacknowledged, appeared as a four-part serial in
The Flag of Our Union in February, 1865. It was later reprinted as No. 80 in
the firms series of Ten Cent Novelettes of Standard American Authors—this
standard author bearing the name of A. M. Barnard. Elliott’s subsequent letters
reflect his own growing addiction for the productions of that standard author
and his repeated desire to use the name of Louisa May Alcott, known now for her
Hospital Sketches, in place of A. M. Barnard:

 
 
          
Jan.
7. 1865.

 
          
I
should he pleased to have you write me some stories for the Flag, of about 25
to 40 pages of such Ms. as “V.V.” I want them over your own name of course,
& will give you $2.00 a column (short columns you will notice) for them.
That rate will be fully equal to $16.00 for a first page story in the
((American Union” . . . 1
have
entered your name on
our gratis list, & you will receive the “Flag” regularly. . . .

 
          
P.S.
I will purchase another Novelette of you at any time you may wish to dispose of
one. . . .

 
          
On
January 21, 1865
, Elliott followed this with the brief but revealing note that was to
provide the clue to the Alcott pseudonym:

 
          
You
may send me anything in either the sketch or Novelette line that you do not
wish to “father”, or that you wish A. M. Barnard, or “any other man” to be
responsible for, & if they suit me 1 will purchase them.

 
          
...
I will give you $3
,00
per column (run in inside
length) for sketches under your own name.

 
          
Let
me hear from you.

 
          
Between
January and June of 1865, when the next extant letter is dated, Elliott did
indeed hear from Miss Alcott, for her “Marble Woman” was run in May and June.
The insatiable publisher demanded more, writing on June 15:

 
          
Have
you written anything in the novel line you would like to have me publish “by A
M. Barnard, author of “
V.V.
”
“The
Marble Woman” &c. &c.?
If not can you furnish me with a
sensation story of about 145 to 150 pages such Mss. as your last “The Marble
Woman” so that I can have it by the middle of July? 1 dont care about even any
particular name, if you prefer any other nome [sic] de plume for this one
story, use it, as it is for one of my cheap Novelettes.

 
          
I
will give you $50.
for
such a story, & dont want
it to exceed 150 pages of Mss. the size of “The Marble Woman,” 140 pages will
answer, or 145 will be better.

 
          
By
the way my friends think the “Marble Woman” is just splendid; & I think no
author of novels need be ashamed to own it for a bantling. I am sorry you
should have had any feeling in regard to the nome [sic] de plume. I am sure
that I have not given currency to the idea that “A. M. Barnard" &
yourself
were identical.

 
          
Please
let me hear from you hy return mail, if possible; in regard to the short novel.

 
          
In
August, 1866, the last extant letter in this extraordinary correspondence was
written:

 
          
The
story entitled "Behind
A
Mask" is accepted.
I think it a story of peculiar power, and have no doubt but my readers will be
quite as much fascinated with it as I was myself while reading the Ms. I will
give you $65.
for
it. .. .

 
          
I
should like another by the 20th of September.

 
          
Can
I have one? . . .

 
          
The
source of supply seemed as limitless as the demand. “The Abbot’s Ghost”
followed “Behind a Mask,” and in 1867 both The Skeleton in the Closet and The
Mysterious Key appeared in paperback—the former in the Ten Cent Novelettes
series as No. 49 along with Perley Parker’s The Foundling and the latter as No.
50.

 
          
There
is little doubt that Louisa enjoyed not only the monetary rewards for her
surreptitious labors but the use of a pseudonym, the secret correspondence with
her publishers—the whole clandestine procedure involved in producing thrillers
from “behind a mask.” There is little doubt too that she would have enjoyed the
story of the discovery of her pseudonym and of her anonymous and pseudonymous
narratives. If the ghost of A. M. Barnard still haunts an earthly realm it will
surely hover close at hand as that mystery is unraveled.

 
          
The
unmasking of Louisa May Alcott took place while the country was engaged in
another conflict, the Second World War. I was at work on a biography of Louisa
May Alcott. With my lifelong friend and future business partner—Dr. Leona
Rostenberg, printing historian and founder of our firm, Leona Rostenberg—Rare
Books—I visited a distinguished Alcott collector. Carroll Atwood Wilson was a
handsome and urbane gentleman, an attorney and a bibliophile who showed his
bookish treasures with an enthusiasm equaled only by our intense interest. He
knew his Alcott well, and his Alcott characters, especially Jo March of Little
Women, who, it will be recalled, offered sensational stories to the publishers
of the Weekly Volcano and Blarneystone Banner. Mr. Wilson showed us many
volumes by Louisa May Alcott, among them the copy of The Mysterious Key that
was used in the preparation of the present collection. And as he dusted off the
books, handing them to us one by one, he remarked, “Miss Stern, you must get
yourself a Guggenheim Fellowship and complete your biography of Louisa May
Alcott.” Then, mindful of Leona Rosten- berg’s preoccupation with
bibliographical problems and printing history, he turned to her. “Miss
Rostenberg, we know that Louisa Alcott wrote blood-and-thunder stories just as
Jo March did. And we know she had some sort of pseudonym. We don’t know what
the pseudonym was and we don’t know anything about the stories. You identify
the pseudonym and locate the stories.”

 
          
Both
Miss Stern and Miss Rostenberg proceeded to carry out Mr. Wilson’s injunctions.
At Houghton Library,
Harvard
University
, where we delved through piles of
manuscript and mountains of family letters, Leona came upon the five letters
from James R. Elliott of Elliott, Thornes & Talbot to Louisa May Alcott
that revealed the pseudonym, the titles of three of the thrillers and the name
of the periodical that issued them. For the Sherlock Holmes of Houghton Library
the rest was elementary—or would have been elementary had the exigencies of war
not
intervened.

 
          
The
Flag of Our Union, it appeared, was and is, in the language of booksellers, an
uncommon periodical. The Library of Congress boasts one of the more complete
runs. To wartime
Washington
, therefore, Sherlock Rostenberg repaired, having paved the way with the
necessary correspondence. Armed with her deerstalker and her magnifying glass,
not to mention the all but intolerable anticipatory palpitations of the scholar
bent on discovery, she awaited the arrival of the Civil War run of The Flag of
Our Union, only to be informed that the periodical had been placed in
safekeeping “for the duration.” Despite this frustration, Leona Rostenberg was
able to announce her extraordinary discovery in an article entitled “Some
Anonymous and Pseudonymous Thrillers of Louisa M. Alcott,” published in the
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America in 1943. In the thirty years
that have followed that announcement the discovery has been referred to in
bibliographies, biographies, and publishing histories. But it is not until now
that the stories themselves have been unearthed and reprinted.

 
          
The
author herself, whose secret was so well hidden, viewed her clandestine
productions with some ambivalence. Like her illustrious mentor Ralph Waldo
Emerson, many critics objected strongly to the "yellow-covered literature
of the Sylvanus Cobb. Jr.
stamp
/’ and Louisa was
sometimes inclined to agree with this denunciation. When she converted The Flag
of Our Union into the Blarneystone Banner and Frank Leslie s Illustrated
Newspaper into the Weekly Volcano as media for Jo March's “necessity stories
. ”
she might have had her tongue in cheek but she was also
looking down her nose. Later, reprinting “The Baron s Gloves” in a collection
of Proverb Stories, she explained her motive: As many girls have asked to see
what sort of tales Jo March wrote at the beginning of her career, I have added
‘The Baron's Gloves, as a sample of the romantic rubbish which paid so well
once upon a time. If it shows them what not to write it will not have been rescued
from oblivion in vain.”

 
          
Yet
there was another side to the complex Louisa May Alcott. Her thrillers were
“necessity stories” of course, but the necessity was not merely monetary. In a
revealing conversation she once doffed her mask and confessed her addiction to
blood-and-thunder:

 
          
I
think my natural ambition is for the lurid style. I indulge in gorgeous fancies
and wish that I dared inscribe them upon my pages and set them before the
public. . . . Flow should I dare to interfere with the proper gray ness of old
Concord
? The dear old town has never known a
startling hue since the redcoats were there. Far
be
i:
from me to inject an inharmonious color into the neutral tint. And my favorite
characters
..
Suppose they went to cavorting at their
own sweet will, to the infinite horror of dear Mr. Emerson.
who
never imagined a
Concord
person as walking off a plumb line stretched between tire pearly clouds
in the empyrean. To have had Mr. Emerson for an intellectual god all ones life
is to be invested with a chain armor of propriety. . . .

 
          
And
what would my own good father think of me ... if I set folks to doing the
things that I have a longing to see my people do? So, my dear, I shall always
be a wretched victim to the respectable traditions of
Concord
.

 
          
Actually,
Louisa May Alcott was a victim less to “the respectable traditions of
Concord
' than to her own success. In September of
1867 she noted in her journal,
Niles
, partner of Roberts, asked me to write a
girls’ book.
Said I'd try.”
The result was Little
Women, the first part of which appeared in 1868, the second in 1869. The
families of
New
England
, the merchants
of
Boston
, in time the American public itself laughed
and cried over a story destined to become a perennial best seller. The girl who
had gone out to service and hemmed pillowcases to fill the gaps in the Alcott
Sinking Fund had made her fortune. At the same time, the author who had
dispatched thrillers to Frank Leslie and James R. Elliott had presumably found
her style. The niche she had walked into with Little Women was too comfortable
to abandon. Henceforth Louisa May Alcott would have neither the necessity nor
the time to play A. M. Barnard.