Marmee & Louisa (58 page)

⁵²⁴
“strictly of the pure”: LMA, “Transcendental Wild Oats,” 38–39.

⁵²⁵
Fruitlands rules: ABA and William Lane, “Letter to Herald of Freedom,” August-September 1843, in ABA, MS Autobiographical collections 1840–1844, 239–295, HAP.

⁵²⁶
“Only a brave woman’s”: LMA, “Transcendental Wild Oats,” 39.

⁵²⁷
“spare the cattle”: Samuel Sewall Greele, MS letter at Fruitlands, in Francis,
Fruitlands
, 243.

⁵²⁸
The poet W. Ellery Channing: a nephew of the Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing, for whom he was named. Bronson and Lane’s traveling companion, Henry Wright, had left the community, disillusioned, in the spring of 1843 and possibly returned to England; he died not long afterwards.

⁵²⁹
“amiable” and “active” Miss Page: AMA, journal for 1843, HAP. LMA later wrote in “Transcendental Wild Oats” that Ann Page, a “stout lady of mature years, sentimental, amiable, and lazy, wrote verses copiously.”

⁵³⁰
She alone was responsible: ABA to his brother Chatfield, August 4, 1843,
Letters
, 107.

⁵³¹
On Tuesday, July 18: AMA, July 24, 1843, in
ABA Journals
, 154.

⁵³²
train a black woman: SJM also offended the Normal School administration by taking a class to a rally for a fugitive slave.

⁵³³
a “kind sympathy”: AMA to SJM, August 1843, family letters, HAP.

⁵³⁴
“quite ill”: AMA to Charles May, August 31, 1843, Memoir of 1878, HAP.

⁵³⁵
“by what human aids”: AMA to SJM, August 1843, family letters, HAP.

⁵³⁶
“content to wait”: ABA to Junius Alcott, April 6, 1845,
Letters
, 121.

⁵³⁷
“sepulchral tones”: W. Ellery Channing, in AMA to SJM, August 1843, family letters, HAP.

⁵³⁸
never spent any time together: ABA to AMA, September 21, 1854,
Letters
, 184.

⁵³⁹
Elizabeth Willis Wells: this niece of Abigail’s is probably the mother of Elizabeth May Wells, born August 20, 1839, who in 1866 married her first cousin once removed Samuel Sewall Greele, who was born October 11, 1824.

⁵⁴⁰
one visitor as he departed: James Kay.

⁵⁴¹
“I told mother”: LMA, November 29, 1843,
Journals
, 47.

⁵⁴²
“deport themselves”: AMA, September 1, 1843, journals, HAP.

⁵⁴³
“must not tease my mother”: LMA, September 1, 1843,
Journals
, 45.

⁵⁴⁴
“not very pretty”: LMA to AMA, October 8, 1843,
Letters
, 3.

⁵⁴⁵
“I wish I were rich”: LMA, October 8, 1843,
Journals
, 46.

⁵⁴⁶
“We saw but little”: AMA, August 26, 1843, in
ABA Journals
, 154–55. Details of the following scene derive from that journal entry.

⁵⁴⁷
“A good remark and true!”: Ibid.

⁵⁴⁸
“separation”: Cynthia Barton,
Transcendental Wife
, 87.

⁵⁴⁹
“keep [at bay]”: Bedell,
The Alcotts
, 241.

⁵⁵⁰
“The rule was to do”: LMA,
Transcendental Wild Oats
, 52–53.

⁵⁵¹
“I wish we could be together”: LMA, January 1845,
Journals
, 46. LMA may be reminiscing about Fruitlands.

⁵⁵²
“try to fortify myself”: AMA to SJM, November 1843, family letters, HAP.

⁵⁵³
note to Anna: Barton,
Transcendental Wife
, 93.

⁵⁵⁴
Abigail singing: AMAN to AMA, August 10, 1870,
Little Women Abroad
, Daniel Shealy, ed., 184. May wrote to AMA from Vevey, Switzerland, “As I lie in my bed till late these fine mornings, I imagine I hear mother saying at the foot of the stairs, ‘Come girls, morning glories all out, and a beautiful day. Breakfast nearly ready, come do get up for these are the most [lovely?] hours of the day.’ So I call to Lu, in remembrance of home, but we don’t get up.”

⁵⁵⁵
“not dead yet”: AMA to her brother Charles, November 1843, family letters, HAP.

⁵⁵⁶
“Even our passions”: Ibid.

⁵⁵⁷
“fortify” herself: AMA, Diary for 1841–1844, HAP.

⁵⁵⁸
“pitiable moodiness”: Ibid.

⁵⁵⁹
“very unhappy”: LMA, December 10, 1843,
Journals
, 47.

⁵⁶⁰
“Rosamond”: poem by Christopher Pearse Cranch, poet born in Massachusetts in 1815.

⁵⁶¹
“sifting everything”: AMA to SJM, November 11, 1843, family letters, HAP.

⁵⁶²
“extreme mental depression”: Herrnstadt,
ABA Letters
, 116, footnote.

⁵⁶³
he wished to die: Shepard,
ABA Journals
, Note on 1840–1841, 140.

⁵⁶⁴
“Then the tragedy began”: LMA, “Transcendental Wild Oats,” 55–58.

⁵⁶⁵
“Mrs. Alcott gives notice”: Lane to Oldham, November 1843, in W. H. Harland, “Bronson Alcott’s English Friends,”
Resources for American Literary Study
, vol. 8 (1978), Joel Myerson, ed.

⁵⁶⁶
“quite uncomfortable”: AMA to SJM, December 1843, family letters, HAP.

⁵⁶⁷
“In the morning mother”: LMA, December 23, 1843,
Journals
, 48.

⁵⁶⁸
“a little merry-making”: AMA, December 25, 1843, in
ABA Journals
, 155.

⁵⁶⁹
“appropriateness of this song”: LMA,
Journals
, 50.

⁵⁷⁰
“Christmas is here”: AMA, December 25, 1843, in
Journals of LMA
, 48.

⁵⁷¹
“completely blocked up”: AMA, December 25, 1843, in
ABA Journals
, 155.

⁵⁷²
“I have concluded”: AMA, January 1–7, 1844, in
ABA Journals
, 156.

⁵⁷³
“I will not abide”: ABA to Junius Alcott, January 2, 1845, and October 28, 1844,
Letters
, 117 and 115.

⁵⁷⁴
“There is nothing”: AMA, February 3, 1844, in
ABA Journals
, 157.

⁵⁷⁵
“live [Bronson’s] principle”: AMA, January 1844, family letters, HAP.

⁵⁷⁶
“a great revolution”: Samuel E. Sewall’s
Legal Condition of Women
, 54, in
Memoir of SES
, 136.

⁵⁷⁷
Marital law improved: Ibid., 164. Sewall mentioned specific legal improvements: “1. To equalize the descent of real estate between husband and wife. 2. To equalize the descent of personal property between husband and wife. 3. To equalize the custody of minor children. 4. To legalize conveyances, gifts, and contracts between husband and wife. 5. To provide for testamentary guardians for wives as well as widows. 6. To repeal the act limiting the right of married women to dispose of real estate by will.”

⁵⁷⁸
“very fault of marriage”: Fuller,
Woman in the Nineteenth Century
.

⁵⁷⁹
“carve out our own”: AMA, August 22, 1842, in
Journals ABA
, 146.

⁵⁸⁰
“hired a small house”: AMA, Memoir of 1878, HAP.

⁵⁸¹
her beloved books: a photograph of AMA’s “Catalogue of my books—1844” appears in Barton,
Transcendental Wife
, 101.

⁵⁸²
the middle of January: in
Fruitlands
, 255, Francis concluded, based on a letter from Emerson to his brother and AMA letters to SJM, that Lane left the farm on January 6 and AMA and her girls left on January 16.

⁵⁸³
he moved with his family: Barton,
Transcendental Wife
, 97.

⁵⁸⁴
story that evokes this drama: “Pauline’s Passion and Punishment,” a thriller LMA wrote and published under a pseudonym in 1862, later that year won a hundred-dollar prize from
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper
.

⁵⁸⁵
“richly sexual
femme fatale
”: Stern,
Critical Essays on LMA
, 55.

⁵⁸⁶
deemed “too sensational”: LMA’s novel
A Long Fatal Love Chase
, which James L. Elliot considered that year.

⁵⁸⁷
woman who had met the Alcotts: Mary Gove, of Lynn, Massachusetts, speaking in November 1842, in Francis,
Fruitlands
, 105–106.

⁵⁸⁸
“Abigail took control”: Cynthia Barton, “The Ballast to Bronson’s Balloon,” unpublished essay shown to the author in 2010.

⁵⁸⁹
Louisa “suffered the most”: Elbert,
Early Stories of LMA
, introduction, 10.

⁵⁹⁰
“Mr. Lane’s efforts”: AMA, January 16, 1844, in
ABA Journals
, 157.

⁵⁹¹
“I love his faith”: AMA, January 28, 1844, in
ABA Journals
, 157.

⁵⁹²
Hannah Robie: Born in Halifax in 1784, sixteen years before Abigail, Robie was
actually the aunt of Abigail’s cousin SES. She was an unmarried sister of SES’s mother, Mary Robie Sewall, who was the wife of Dorothy Sewall May’s younger brother Joseph Sewall, who went into partnership with his nephew Samuel Salisbury, Jr., importing dry goods, as Sewall & Salisbury, a large and prosperous enterprise. As a sister-in-law of Abigail’s mother, Hannah Robie functioned in the May-Alcott family as an aunt. She lived part-time in Halifax and part-time in Melrose with her sister, brother-in-law, and nieces and nephews, including SES. For more on the Robie family see
Memoir of SES
, 10.

⁵⁹³
“soul-sickness”: AMA, March 22, 31, 1844, in
ABA Journals
, 158.

⁵⁹⁴
labor “unremittedly”: AMA, April 24, 1844, in
ABA Journals
, 158.

⁵⁹⁵
“my Paradise at Fruitlands”: ABA, April 6, 1850,
Journals
, 230–31.

⁵⁹⁶
“the sole person”: ABA to Junius Alcott, June 15, 1844,
Letters
, 111.

⁵⁹⁷
“wish you success”: AMA, July 15, 1844, in
ABA Journals
, 158–59.

⁵⁹⁸
“I am angry”: LMA,
Little Women
, Chapter 8.

⁵⁹⁹
“two verses”: LMA,
Journals
, 50–51.

⁶⁰⁰
“great thoroughfare”: map of Syracuse in 1834, Onondaga Historical Association, Syracuse, NY.

⁶⁰¹
sprawling Federal-style frame house: LFM and SJM to their son Joseph May, September 21, 1854, and SJM, Diary for 1860, MFPCL.

⁶⁰²
horse-drawn chaise: Yacovone,
SJM
, 21.

⁶⁰³
new baby: SJM and LFM’s fourth child, George B. Emerson May, was named for his father’s closest Harvard friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s cousin George B. Emerson (1797–1881), a teacher, amateur naturalist, and president of the Boston Society of Natural History. After SJM’s death George B. Emerson coauthored
Memoir of SJM
with Samuel May Jr. and Thomas J. Mumford.

⁶⁰⁴
rapidly growing city: Syracuse’s population grew from 60 people in 1803 to 2,500 in 1830 and to 22,000 in 1852. The May family spent the entire summer of 1844 in Syracuse, returned to Lexington for a few months, and moved permanently to Syracuse in April 1845.

⁶⁰⁵
Underground Railroad: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 277.

⁶⁰⁶
“convenient shipping-point”: Reverend Luther Lee,
Autobiography of Luther Lee
, 332.

⁶⁰⁷
“over a thousand fugitives”: SJM collection, Onondaga Historical Association, Syracuse, New York.

⁶⁰⁸
accompanied some: Yacovone,
SJM
, 139–40.

⁶⁰⁹
“than Boston Gold”: ABA to Junius Alcott, January 2, 1845,
Letters
, 117. Abigail’s portion of the estate had now grown to about $3,100.

⁶¹⁰
“as good to me”: LMA, October 12 and December 23, 1843,
Journals
, 46, 47.

⁶¹¹
“little room I have wanted”: LMA, March 1846,
Journals
, 59.

⁶¹²
Louisa’s little room: Room location derives from a National Park Service tour of Wayside House, formerly the Alcotts’ Hillside, July 2010.

⁶¹³
arrived at Hillside: According to Herrnstadt,
ABA Letters
, 118, footnote, the Concord house purchased by the Alcotts for $1350 in 1845 and named Hillside was sold in 1852 for $1500 to Hawthorne, who renamed it Wayside, as it is known today.

⁶¹⁴
male cousin: Frederick Llewellyn Willis, in
Alcott in Her Own Time
, Daniel Shealy, ed., 177.

⁶¹⁵
“made a plan”: LMA, March 1846,
Journals
, 59.

⁶¹⁶
“half-educated tomboy”: LMA to ABA, December 12, 1875,
Letters
, 206.

⁶¹⁷
“to
work really
”: LMA, March 1846,
Journals
, 59.

⁶¹⁸
“making great effort”: AMA, March 16, 1845, journals, HAP.

⁶¹⁹
“DEAR MOTHER”: LMA, January 1845,
Journals
, 55.

⁶²⁰
“God comfort thee”: LMA to AMA, 1845, copied by AAP into her diary, in Barton,
Transcendental Wife
, 129.