The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (8 page)

Bronson heard of the case and immediately began to organize a group of abolitionists to free Anthony Burns. Bronson led the mob to the jailhouse steps. They broke down the door and forced their way in, but the sheriff and his men fought them back out into the street.

Bronson looked at the defeated crowd and said, “Why are we not within? ”

He then ascended another staircase alone, unarmed. Even when pistol shots could be heard within, he stood firm before the massive oak doors. Though there was nothing the men could do to stop the captured slave’s prosecution, Bronson proved that night that he was a man of more than just words. When the case was lost, the president sent two thousand troops to ensure that Burns was returned to slavery in Virginia. They lined the path to the courthouse with their bayonets drawn. Louisa would never forget the scene—the windows of Boston draped with black crepe in silent protest, as she stood in the early summer heat holding her mother’s hand. Burns was led to his ship in shackles. It surprised her to see that Burns was just a boy, his eyes wide with fear, his cheeks smooth, save for the deep scar of his master’s branding. Bronson watched the scene with his jaw clenched tight, his anger barely contained. For the next twenty-four hours he did not speak, except when the family gathered for a solemn supper of cold vegetables and hard rolls.

“Lord, bless this food to our use and us to Thy service,” Bronson murmured, his voice near breaking. “And make us ever mindful to the needs of others. Amen.”

 

 

Anna looked up, annoyed,
when Louisa came back to the kitchen. “Well, that took long enough. What does she say?”

Louisa knew her mother would tell them to make the extra candles—she always gave to charity, even when they had nothing to spare. But they would need every penny this winter, and someone—Louisa perhaps—had to be the voice of reason. “She says we do not need to make the extras. Mrs. Parker received a large donation just last month.”

“Well, that’s a blessing,” Anna said. “I can scarcely stand this smelly job long enough to make the candles
we
need.” She turned back to the stove and began stirring again. “So, as I was going to say before, despite having this wonderful house of his grandfather’s, Nicholas is building his own.”

“Ah, to be a man,” Louisa said wistfully. “To be able to say, ‘I would like a house,’ and simply begin to build it.”

“Well, he won’t be able to do it
all
on his own. Samuel and Joseph are helping him with the construction.”

Joseph sprang into her mind like a bird roused from a bush. She remembered how he had stalked to the river’s edge but entered the water almost reverently, walking in up to his waist, smoothing his palms in two arcs over its surface. She recalled a line of Mr. Whitman’s.
As he swims through the salt transparent greenshine . . .

“It is just down the lane from the first. They started on it back in the spring. It sounds like they’re a little crowded over at the elder Mr. Sutton’s, now that Nora is back home for good, probably. That poor girl.” Anna held the center of the length of wick and dipped the two ends into the tallow, pausing a moment and pulling them back out. She waited for the tallow to harden, then plunged them back into the kettle. “Did you know she was meant to be married to a man from New York City?”

Louisa shook her head absently.

“Anyway, Nicholas told me about the house today at the party. Don’t you think that’s interesting?”

Anna draped the finished candle over the wooden rack to dry and put out her hand to take the next wick. Louisa stared out the window over the sink, thinking of the saturated folds of Joseph’s shirt . . .
lies on his back and rolls silently with the heave of the water.

“Louy?” Anna touched her arm. “Did you hear me?”

Louisa shook off the reverie. Why on earth was her mind floating off this way? Perhaps there was such a thing as too much poetry. It was making a mess of her thoughts. “I’m sorry, Anna. Yes, I did hear you. Building his own house. Joseph must be so pleased.”

“Joseph? Louisa, I don’t think you
are
listening to me. I was talking about Nicholas Sutton, not Joseph.”

“Of course—Nicholas. That’s what I meant to say. I’m sorry, Nan. I think I had too much sun today.”

Anna looked curiously at her. “I think it’s
who
was sitting near you in the sun that’s got you out of sorts,” she simpered. “Miss Lou, I think you have a little crush.”

Louisa gave her a scandalized stare. “I don’t know to
what
or
whom
you are referring, but if it has anything to do with Joseph Singer, you can leave off right there. Even if we were the last two left on earth, I’d still remain a happy spinster.”

Anna rolled her eyes. “This is all part of it, you know—the defensiveness, insulting him, telling me how he is the
last
man on earth you’d consider. Come now—I know you have read more romances than I.”

Louisa shook her head. “Anna, I assure you that Joseph Singer is too much in love with himself to begin to dream of loving anyone else. And if he ever did, I should take pity on the object of his affections. This short life would be unendurably long with him by your side.”

Anna gave her a skeptical glance, then turned her attention back to the bubbling tallow. She wiped a film of sweat from her forehead. Both of them had grown pale from the smell of the burning fat. “You may be in for trouble, then. He seemed quite taken with you.”

“Nonsense—have you not noticed that he talks that way to every young lady who crosses his path? Don’t put any stock in it—your sister is safe with you at home, and at home I will
stay
.”

“Love will change you,” Anna said.

Louisa shook her head. “Perhaps you, my dear. But not me. For me it is a disease I am lucky not to catch.”

She believed what she said, but Anna’s comment needled its way into her mind. Louisa felt a fluttering in her ribs like the pages of a book fanning out in a breeze, a sensation that something was beginning that she wouldn’t be able to stop. She rushed to divert the conversation.

“And now to more important matters. When shall we begin rehearsing the play?”

 

 

When the candles hung drying
and the supper dishes were washed, Louisa and Anna joined Bronson, Abba, Lizzie, and May in the small parlor off the kitchen. Bronson held his Bible open on his lap—he often read passages to them in the evening and asked for his daughters’ thoughts on the quandaries of Christian theology. Louisa plucked at the front of her dress a few times to cool her damp underarms. The heat from the kitchen had been stifling, and the small parlor window let in only a hint of a breeze.

“My daughters,” Bronson began, his high forehead gleaming in the light of a candle, “what have you written today about our journey?” Abba turned expectantly to them, her face revealing a bit of sympathy. When would they have had time to write on this of all days? But Bronson believed in the importance of self-discipline above everything else, and he often asked to read his daughters’ reflections to ensure they were adhering to the routine of writing each day.

And in truth, this chore seemed small in comparison to what he had asked them to do in the past in the service of his philosophical searching. Years back, Bronson had dragged his wife and daughters into an experiment in communal living. He envisioned building a new Eden, where his natural family and new chosen family, Abba and the girls as well as other like-minded people, could live according to Transcendental ideals. As pioneers, they would abstain from commerce of any kind and spare animals the enslavement he believed they suffered. This meant no meat or milk or eggs, no leather, wax, or manure. No ox would work the plow, and Bronson forbade the planting of root vegetables for fear they would upset the worms in the soil. Though he spent a great deal of time searching for just the right site and participants, Bronson failed to plan for the practical aspects of such a harsh life. When the group was established at Fruitlands, a rocky farm fifteen miles from Concord, it became clear that keeping the children warm and free from hunger would be Abba’s burden. Several months into the experiment, as the winter descended, Bronson had to accept that the experiment had failed. Around Christmas, the Alcotts moved back to Concord.

Devastated, Bronson began to contemplate the idea of setting himself free from his family obligations. He was interested in the ideas of free love, a philosophy that cast doubt on whether traditional marriage could or should be sustained. True to form, rather than leave in the night or hold a private conversation with his wife on the matter, Bronson called a family meeting to discuss whether the family should split up. Anna was only thirteen, Louisa twelve, Lizzie only eight, and May just a toddler. In the end he hadn’t left, though the knowledge that he had even considered it was a betrayal from which the Alcott women never quite recovered.

After surviving this difficult chapter, keeping a journal now hardly seemed like something to complain about. Bronson began with May, whom they all freely admitted was already more beautiful than her three older sisters combined. Unlike the others’, her tawny hair held a natural curl, and she tied it back from her face with a ribbon.

“May writes about a woman in our train car on the journey here,” he said, skimming over the pages. “She wore fine lace that ‘must have been from France’ and carried a basket covered with a cloth. May wondered what delicious treasures might have been inside.”

Bronson smiled tolerantly at his youngest daughter. His full gray hair and wiry brows gave him a stern appearance, but his blue eyes softened his face. “You have an artist’s eye for detail, my dear, but your words reveal a covetous nature. Remember that fine things make us their prisoner. It is in having nothing that true freedom can be found, freedom as
we
are blessed to experience it.”

May nodded, her blue eyes far away and a sweet smile on her lips that Louisa knew meant his warnings passed out of her head the moment they were issued. Louisa herself felt amused by her father’s claim that the hunger they had experienced on the train, the hunger that still rumbled unsated in their bellies, represented freedom.

Bronson turned his attention to Lizzie, who rested her cheek on Abba’s shoulder. She stifled a small yawn as she sat upright and tucked a wisp of her fine hair back into its plain bun. Lizzie moved to retrieve her journal from the table but Abba clutched at her elbow.

“Rest, child. You’ve had plenty of exertion for today.”

“But Marmee, I’ve written something as well. Shouldn’t I read along with my sisters?” Louisa often had to remind herself that her younger sister was a woman of twenty. Lizzie still had the voice and mien of a much younger girl.

Bronson hesitated a moment as if he were weighing the risk of taxing his soft-spoken daughter against enabling any self-indulgence. Abba spoke before his mind was settled.

“No, little bird. Your sisters are strong and healthy, but your burden is a weaker constitution. We must at all times be cautious.”

“But Marmee,” Lizzie said, touching her forehead to prove she did not have a fever. “I’m well.”

“It may seem so, but you’ve only just recovered from that dreadful spring cough. Please—rest.”

Lizzie looked at Bronson and he nodded, giving her a gentle smile Louisa rarely saw. Lizzie seemed to think it over a moment longer and relented. “Perhaps tomorrow, then,” she said.

“You can read mine now, Father.” Anna handed over her journal and sat back with her hands folded on her lap. They were white and fine like two little doves.

Bronson glanced over her pages, his eyes full of pride. “Anna writes that she was sad to leave Pinckney Street but eager for the challenge of a new town. ‘Hard work,’ she says, ‘is God’s design for our bodies and minds, and we must not question His will.’ She is grateful for the new embroidery needles from Mrs. Emerson and longs to put them to use in readying the new home.”

Anna beamed as she saw she had won his coveted approval once more. It was among these sisters nearly as important as water or oxygen.

Bronson looked in turn at each of his daughters. “I wish we were all as diffident and unpretending as this sister of yours.”

Louisa nodded with a clenched jaw and thought about how her father had approached child-rearing like a scientific study. He collected evidence, keeping written observations of his subjects and, as the girls grew, reviewing their own journals. And like any scientist worth his salt, Bronson formed theories and then constructed experiments to test their veracity. One of Louisa’s earliest memories was of such a test, designed to assess his young daughters’ moral fortitude.

Bronson sat five-year-old Anna and four-year-old Louisa in two chairs in his study that faced his desk, on which he placed a polished apple. He glanced deliberately at the fruit to ensure the girls had noticed it, then addressed Anna. “Anna, should little girls take things that do not belong to them, things they might like to eat or drink?”

Anna’s face grew solemn. “No, Father, they should not.”

He nodded and turned to Louisa. “And you, little one—would you do such a thing?” Louisa shook her head.

“Very good,” Bronson said, then crossed the room toward the door. “Now I must go fetch some wood for the fire. I shall return in a moment. Please keep your seats—and remember what you said.”

“Yes, Father,” the girls replied in unison. Bronson closed the door softly behind him and Anna and Louisa were alone with the beguiling fruit. When he returned with an armload of cedar the girls remained in their places, but the apple had been reduced to a spindly core.

Bronson pressed his lips into a line, more intellectually intrigued than angry. He pointed at the apple core. “What is this?”

Louisa’s legs were too short to reach the floor and they swung beneath the seat of her chair. “Apple,” she said.