Eden's Outcasts (66 page)

26.
Abigail May Alcott to Samuel J. and Lucretia May (“Sam and Lu”), Germantown, Pa., 20 February 1833, MS Am 1130.9.

27.
Biographers of the family have seen this shift in emphasis in ways that tend to suggest that Bronson loved Louisa less than Anna. They take his more speculative focus as evidence of a “retreat within himself,” revealing a lack of interest in this second baby or a failure to see her as anything other than an abstraction. Saxton,
Louisa May
, 76. Surely the most bizarre interpretation is offered by the usually perspicacious Madelon Bedell, who insinuates that Bronson's downplaying of Louisa's physical aspects arose from his attempt to repress a sexual attraction to the infant. Bedell,
Alcotts
, 65–66. The fact that Alcott's reading had assumed a more metaphysical character at the time of Louisa's birth seems to offer a simpler and less accusatory explanation.

28.
Strickland, “Transcendentalist Father,” 32, 34.

29.
A. B. Alcott, February 1833,
Journals
, 36.

30.
A. B. Alcott, Journal, 23 April 1834, in Strickland, “Transcendentalist Father,” 39.

31.
Ibid.

32.
Abigail May Alcott to Samuel and Lucretia May, Philadelphia, 22 June 1833, MS Am 1130.9.

33.
Strickland, “Transcendentalist Father,” 38.

34.
A. B. Alcott, “Observations on the Life,” 10 July 1831.

35.
A. B. Alcott, 12 June 1834,
Journals
, 44.

36.
Dahlstrand,
Amos Bronson Alcott
, 103.

37.
A. B. Alcott, 28 April 1834,
Journals
, 42.

38.
A. B. Alcott, June 1832,
Journals
, 31.

CHAPTER THREE: THE TEMPLE SCHOOL

1.
Marshall,
Peabody Sisters
, 107.

2.
Ibid., 295.

3.
McCuskey,
Bronson Alcott
, 51.

4.
Marshall,
Peabody Sisters
, 295.

5.
Peabody,
Record of a School
, 70.

6.
A. B. Alcott to Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Boston, n.d., in
Letters,
21.

7.
A. B. Alcott,
Conversations
, 200.

8.
Peabody,
Record of a School
, 2.

9.
Ibid., 145.

10.
Martineau,
Society
, III, 175.

11.
Peabody,
Record of a School
, 35.

12.
Ibid., 9.

13.
Emerson,
Nature
, in
Essays and Lectures
, 20.

14.
A. B. Alcott, “Observations on the Spiritual Nurture,” 121.

15.
Ibid., 84.

16.
Ibid., 124

17.
A. B. Alcott, “Researches on Childhood,” 23.

18.
A. B. Alcott, “Observations on the Spiritual Nurture,” 69.

19.
Ibid., 235–36.

20.
Ibid., 80.

21.
Ibid., 59.

22.
Ibid., 239.

23.
Ibid., 23.

24.
A. B. Alcott, “Researches on Childhood,” 79–80.

25.
Ibid., 105.

26.
A. B. Alcott, “Observations on the Spiritual Nurture,” 23, 25.

27.
Ibid., 37.

28.
Ibid., 239.

29.
Ibid., 240.

30.
One instance of spanking is recounted in detail in “Observations on the Spiritual Nurture,” 109–10.

31.
A. B. Alcott, “Researches on Childhood,” 123.

32.
A. B. Alcott, “Observations on the Spiritual Nurture,” 161.

33.
Ibid., 107.

34.
Ibid., 170, 164.

35.
A. B. Alcott, “Researches on Childhood,” 27, 84.

36.
A. B. Alcott, “Observations on the Spiritual Nurture,” 136.

37.
A. B. Alcott, 21 January 1835,
Journals
, 55.

38.
A. B. Alcott, 24 June 1835,
Journals
, 57.

39.
“Critical Notices,”
New-England Magazine
, September 1835;
Portland Magazine
, 1 September 1835;
Eastern Magazine
, October 1835;
The Western Messenger
, November 1835.

40.
Frederic Henry Hedge, “Coleridge's Literary Character—German Metaphysics,”
The Christian Examiner
14 (March 1833), in Hochfield, ed.,
Selected Writings,
124.

41.
A. B. Alcott, October, Week XLII,
Journals
, 105.

42.
Julian Hawthorne, quoted in Richardson,
Emerson
, 195.

43.
Emerson,
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks
, II, 239.

44.
Richardson,
Emerson
, 126.

45.
Emerson,
Early Lectures
, I, 26.

46.
A. B. Alcott, 5 February 1835,
Journals
, 56.

47.
Dahlstrand,
Amos Bronson Alcott
, 131.

48.
Richardson,
Emerson
, 214.

49.
A. B. Alcott, 20 October 1835,
Journals
, 69.

50.
A. B. Alcott, 10 April 1875,
Journals
, 456–57.

51.
Emerson, “The American Scholar,” in
Essays and Lectures
, 62.

52.
Ralph Waldo Emerson to Frederic Henry Hedge, Concord, 20 July 1836, in
Letters
, II, 29.

53.
Shepard,
Pedlar's Progress
, 152.

54.
Richardson,
Emerson
, 212.

55.
Ralph Waldo Emerson to Frederic Henry Hedge, Concord, 20 July 1836, in
Letters
, II, 30.

56.
L. M. Alcott, “Recollections of My Childhood,” in Shealy, ed.,
Alcott
, 33.

57.
Ibid.

58.
Bedell,
Alcotts
, 81–82.

59.
Cheney, ed.,
Louisa May Alcott
, 18.

60.
A. B. Alcott, 2 August 1836 and 11 September 1836,
Journals
, 78.

61.
Because the lines of the “poet” are not taken from any identified manuscript, some have disputed whether Alcott was the bard to whom Emerson was indebted. How ever, the ideas expressed are, as Odell Shepard notes, “Alcottian throughout.” In A. B. Alcott,
Journals,
78n.

62.
Ralph Waldo Emerson to Amos Bronson Alcott, Concord, 27 February 1836, in
Letters
, II, 4–5.

63.
Ibid., 5.

64.
A. B. Alcott, “Researches on Childhood,” 105.

65.
A. B. Alcott, “Observations on the Spiritual Nurture,” 112.

66.
Ibid., 38–39.

67.
When he used the word “genius,” Alcott typically intended something other than an “exceptionally gifted person.” He sometimes meant the unique motivating force within a given human being or, as here, a meaning derived from classical Latin, that of a “guardian spirit.” Thus, this journal entry was not quite the expression of egotism that it appears, though there was certainly arrogance aplenty in Bronson's opinion of himself as a parent.

68.
Marshall,
Peabody Sisters,
320–22.

69.
A. B. Alcott,
Conversations,
254–55.

70.
Ibid., 255.

71.
Ibid., 66.

72.
Ibid., 185.

73.
Franklin,
Autobiography
, 101; Marshall,
Peabody Sisters,
318–19.

74.
Bedell,
Alcotts
, 122.

75.
A. B. Alcott,
Conversations
, 63.

76.
Ibid., 91, 242.

77.
Ibid., 63n, 228n.

78.
Ibid., 68n.

79.
A. B. Alcott, Autobiographical Collections, 1834–39, MS Am 1130.11(3), p. 123, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

80.
Ibid., 131.

81.
Ibid., 134.

82.
Dahlstrand,
Amos Bronson Alcott
, 141.

83.
Capper,
Margaret Fuller
, 198; Bedell,
Alcotts
, 131.

84.
Margaret Fuller to Frederic Henry Hedge, 6 April 1837, in
Letters
, I, 265.

85.
Capper,
Margaret Fuller
, 209.

86.
(Elizabeth Palmer Peabody), “Mr. Alcott's Book and School,”
Christian Register and Boston Observer,
29 April 1837, quoted in Marshall,
Peabody Sisters
, 326.

87.
Ralph Waldo Emerson to Amos Bronson Alcott, Concord, 24 March 1837, in
Letters,
II, 61.

88.
A. B. Alcott, April 1837, Week XV,
Journals
, 88.

89.
Emerson,
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks
, VIII, 212.

90.
A. B. Alcott, April 1837, Week XV,
Journals
, 88.

91.
Louisa May Alcott, “Recollections of My Childhood,” 33.

92.
Dahlstrand,
Amos Bronson Alcott
, 146.

93.
Ralph Waldo Emerson to Amos Bronson Alcott, Concord, 24 March 1837, in
Letters
, II, 62.

94.
A. B. Alcott, “Psyche,” 260.

95.
A. B. Alcott, November 1837, Week XLV,
Journals
, 94.

96.
A. B. Alcott to Anna Alcox, 18 March 1839, in
Letters
, 42.

97.
Bedell,
Alcotts
, 147.

98.
Ibid., 149.

99.
A. B. Alcott, 5 February 1839,
Journals
, 115.

100.
Dahlstrand,
Amos Bronson Alcott
, 156.

101.
A. B. Alcott, 5 December 1839,
Journals
, 137.

102.
Dahlstrand,
Amos Bronson Alcott,
180; A. B. Alcott, 18 October 1839,
Journals
, 136.

CHAPTER FOUR: “ORPHEUS AT THE PLOUGH”

1.
Thoreau,
A Week on the Concord,
8.

2.
A. B. Alcott to Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, Concord, 24 June 1840, in
Letters
, 50.

3.
Anonymous, “Rambles in Concord, Part I,” in A. B. Alcott, Autobiographical Col lections, 1868–71, MS Am 1130.11(7), Houghton Library, Harvard University.

4.
L. M. Alcott to the
Springfield Republican,
Concord, 4 May 1869, in
Selected Letters
, 127.

5.
Thoreau,
Walden
, 103, 106.