Marmee & Louisa (60 page)
Authors: Eve LaPlante
714
“unmixed pleasure”: ABA, February 14, 1850,
Journals
, 225.
715
“Webster’s true place”: ABA, March 23, 1850,
Journals
, 230. SJM preached about Webster on Sunday, November 29, 1852, after Webster’s death, according to
The New York Times
the next day. “Rev. Samuel J. May, Unitarian, last night preached a sermon to the memory of DANIEL WEBSTER, in which he pronounced him licentious and intemperate. He was quite severe, saying, the least the Press says of him the better.” The previous spring, not long after the Jerry Rescue, Webster, then U.S. Secretary of State, had given a speech in central Syracuse on the necessity of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law.
716
“You have come together this evening”: AMA, Fragments of Mrs. Alcott’s Reports on her Missionary Work, March 1850, HAP.
717
smallpox: ABA,
Letters
, footnote, 156. See also ABA to Chatfield Alcott, September 16, 1850, Letters, 159.
718
“curious time”: LMA, summer 1850,
Journals
, 62.
719
in New Hampshire: While scholars have thought Elizabeth Alcott contracted scarlet fever in the summer of 1856, an AMA letter at HAP dated July 29, 1855, mentions the family’s experience with scarlet fever and how “very sick my Lizzy has been.”
720
“children Mother nursed”: LMA, June 1856, Journals, 79.
721
“maternal pelican”: LMA, “Recollections of My Childhood,”
Lulu’s Library
, xiv.
722
“wonders of art”: Margaret Fuller, “Farewell to New York,”
The Tribune
, August 1, 1846, in Miller,
Margaret Fuller, American Romantic
, 251–52.
723
“beautiful finish”: AMA, summer 1850, journals, HAP.
724
“
school-marm
”: LMA, summer 1850,
Journals
, 63.
725
“imaginary children”: LMA, February 3, 1865,
Letters
, 107.
726
“best American”: Barton,
Transcendental Wife
, displays the broadside for AMA’s Intelligence Office, 105.
727
“a shelter”: LMA, Stern,
Critical Essays on LMA
, 101.
728
“flummery”: Barton, “Ballast to Bronson’s Balloon,” unpublished essay.
729
her first novel: Scholars Myerson and Shealy write in the introduction to
The Inheritance
, xviii, “None of Alcott’s extant letters or journals or the private writings of her family and friends provide any details of the novel’s composition.” Years after LMA wrote this novel she pasted a note on the manuscript, now at Houghton Library: “My first novel / written at seventeen / High St Boston.” The Alcotts did not move to High Street until Louisa was eighteen, so it seems likely that she started it earlier and completed it at High Street.
730
“I don’t
talk
”: LMA,
Journals
, 61.
731
“safety valve”: AMA to SJM, April 17, 1845, family letters, HAP.
732
“try not to covet”: LMA,
Journals
, 61.
733
mental illness in LMA’s stories: See, for example, Rachel R. S. Luckenbill’s 2005 Villanova University dissertation, “Treating Insanity: Madness, Femininity, and Patriarchal Control in LMA’s ‘A Whisper in the Dark’ and ‘A Nurse’s Story.’”
734
Charles May’s insanity: Yacovone,
SJM
, 9.
735
“mother’s notes”: LMA, 1850,
Journals
, 63.
736
“Why don’t you write?”: LMA,
Little Women
, 481.
737
“romance”: Bedell,
Journals of LMA
, Introduction, 35.
738
“Sexual qualities”: ABA, January 18, 1850,
Journals
, 221.
739
“My dear Miss Littlehale”: ABA to E. D. Littlehale,
Letters
, August 29, 1850.
740
“the unforgettable”: Ibid.
741
“Louisa sat silent”: Frank Sanborn, “Reminiscences of Louisa May Alcott,” in Stern,
Critical Essays on LMA
, 215.
742
“inspiration of necessity”: LMA to James Redpath, unknown date, in Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 178.
743
“confusing business”: ABA to his mother, September 11, 1851,
Letters
, 162.
744
scrub floors: LMA, “How I Went Out to Service,” in Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 95. LMA did not elaborate on this experience in her journals except in end-of-year notes for 1850.
745
“the connexion”: AMA, January 11, 1850, journals, HAP.
746
angry: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 94, states that LMA’s “anger [in the 1850s] had traceable autobiographical causes,” foremost among them “extreme” family poverty.
747
“male lords”: LMA, 1851,
Feminist Alcott
, ed. Stern, vii.
748
“dead, decaying”: AMA, April 1853, journals, HAP.
749
“fat and indolent”: AMA to ABA, October 5, 1854, family letters, HAP.
750
Hawthorne paid: He repaired Hillside and renamed it Wayside. That house is a National Monument, open to the public, beside Orchard House.
751
her trustees: SES to AMA, November 3, 1852, family letters, HAP.
752
“more respectable”: AMA to SJM, December 14, 1852, family letters, HAP.
753
“it is not clear”: Shepard,
ABA Journals
, Note on 1852, 260.
754
“Father idle”: LMA, summary for 1852,
Journals
, 68.
755
“opened a school”: ABA to his mother, October 19, 1851,
Letters
, 162.
756
“Self-sacrificing”: LMA, September 1855,
Journals
, 75.
757
“family contrive”: LFM to Joseph May, December 21, 1856, MFPCL.
758
“hardscrabble years”: Catherine Rivard, e-mail to the author, 2009.
759
“home bird”: LMA, date,
Journals
, 69, 67.
760
“getting prizes”: LMA, January 1854,
Journals
, 72.
761
“Raphael”: LMA, April 1857,
Journals
, 84.
762
“more structured education”: AMA, no date, journals, HAP.
763
“prospects somewhat fairer”: ABA, October 6, 1851,
Journals
, 254. Although Bronson stated that AMAN’s 1851 attendance at a Boston school was the first formal schooling for any of his children, he may have been exaggerating. Both he and Abigail referred to their older daughters attending schools in Concord in journals of the 1840s. AMAN still studied at the Bowdoin Grammar School in January 1853, when she was twelve.
764
“Sunlight”: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 256. Myerson and Shealy identify this as LMA’s first published work.
765
“Great rubbish!”: LMA, Cheney,
LMA’s Life, Letters and Journals
, 68. The
Olive Branch
was the literary magazine that published this story. LMA later recalled that she wrote her first published short story at age sixteen at Hillside. As she was not yet sixteen when the family left Hillside, she likely wrote the story the next year, in Boston.
766
Only after her mother: LMA used nearly the same scene in
Little Women
, in a story also called “The Rival Painters.”
767
hundreds of poems and stories: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, lists all known LMA periodical publications, 138–42. LMA sold about twenty serial pieces in the 1850s, more than forty such pieces in the 1860s, and even more during each of the following two decades.
768
“approaching crisis”: AMA to ABA, December 25, 1853, family letters, HAP.
769
“laborious”: LMA, “Alcott’s Conversation on New England’s Reformers,” May 1863, in Stern,
LMA
, 67.
770
“not cold and formal”: LMA, ibid.
771
“the best man”: Theodore Parker to “Dear Poor Old Ladye,” February 2, 1852, in O. B. Frothingham,
The Life of Theodore Parker
(1874), 299.
772
“the Collegian”: ABA to AMA, September 21, 1854,
Letters
184.
773
“Mother’s undisguised favorite”: CMW, unpublished memoir, private collection.
774
Charlotte’s education: Ibid.
775
“those Peabody Sister schools”: Ibid.
776
“being a school marm!” LMA to CMW, January 2, [1853?],
Letters
, 7.
777
“Dear Lottie don’t”: Ibid.
778
“Dear Jody”: LFM to Joseph May, undated, probably September 29, 1853, MFPCL.
779
“go to your aunt Abba’s”: LFM to Joseph May, Saturday, September 30 [1853], MFPCL.
780
text of AMA’s 1853 petition on suffrage: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 152–154.
781
Similar efforts in Wisconsin: Sally G. McMillen,
Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement
, 71.
782
“
Be
something in yourself”: AMA to SJM, April 12, 1853, family letters, HAP.
783
“good hours with Sam”: ABA to AMA, January 15, 1854,
Letters
, 182–183.
784
Gerrit Smith: An antislavery candidate for president of the United States in 1848, 1856, and 1860.
785
public opposition: In 1855 the City of Syracuse was home to about 250 free blacks, according to “‘That laboratory of abolitionism, libel, and treason’: Syracuse and the Underground Railroad,” an exhibition of the Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library, July 2009.
786
“laboratory”: Ibid.
787
Frederick Douglass: Jerry Rescue collection, Onondaga Historial Association, Syracuse, New York.
788
“Cozy home”: AMA to ABA, November 18, 1853, family letters, HAP.
789
Anna in Syracuse: ABA to AMA, January 15, 1854,
Letters
, 182, mentions Bronson’s plan to return homeward with Anna, who had been boarding in Syracuse.
790
quiet garret: LMA, April 1855,
Journals
, 73.
791
“glory cloak”: LMA, February 1861,
Journals
, 103.
792
“retired from public life”: LMA to CMW, January 2, [1853?],
Letters
, 7.
793
Anthony Burns case: Sanborn,
Bronson Alcott: His Life and Philosophy
, II, 441–44.
794
“propaganda weapon”: Nye,
Fettered Freedom
, 281.
795
“contemptible president”: SES,
Memoir of SES
, 102.
796
“triumphs of freedom”: Ibid., 101.
797
railroad platform: The Syracuse depot was at the intersection of West Washington and Franklin Streets.
798
CMW’s appearance: CMW, unpublished memoir, private collection.
799
LMA’s appearance: although Edward Emerson said LMA had “black” eyes, Catherine Rivard stated that LMA’s eyes were gray-blue like her father’s and her sister May’s. The April 1881
Phrenological Journal
called her “tall and spare in frame,” with a strong, “distinct” profile, nose, and chin, according to Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 243. LMA felt she had a “whopper jaw,” according to LMA’s note on her copy of
How to Read Character
, described in Ibid., 244, footnote.
800
still in Syracuse: ABA to AMA, September 21, 1854,
Letters
, 185.
801
“exchanged your gloves”: LFM and SJM to Joseph May, September 21–22, 1855, MFPCL.
802
“wifely washerwoman’s”: ABA to AMA, September 21, 1854,
Letters
, 186.
803
“all its faults”: inscribed on the volume, HAP.
804
“her good fortune”: ABA to AMA, April 26, 1856,
Letters
, 191.
805
invented for children: Some biographers placed her little school in the Emersons’ barn, but LMA said in “Recollections” that she “had for a short time a little school in the barn” at Hillside.
806
pleasanter work: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 4.
807
“topsy-turvy”: LMA, April 1855,
Journals
, 73.
808
“very nervous”: historical documents from Walpole, NH, viewed at Orchard House, October 2011.
809
“near poverty”: Herrnstadt,
ABA Letters
, introduction, xxvi.
810
“cold and dull”: LMA, December 1855,
Journals
, 76.
811
“Mother’s blessing”: LMA, November 1855,
Journals
, 75.
