The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (2 page)

“I’m sorry, Anna. I
did
hear you.” She felt her flushed cheek with the back of her hand. The attic room was unbearably hot and it was only ten in the morning. “If the Hillside drapes are in use, we may have to make some new ones.”

Anna nodded. “Singer Dry Goods—Margaret Lewis said we might try there for the things we need to get settled. They’ll have fabric. I believe it’s across from the post office.”

Louisa retrieved their bonnets from the top shelf of the wardrobe. They fastened them as they descended the stairs, calling out clipped good-byes in the hopes of escaping the house before May heard about the outing and insisted on tagging along.

But they weren’t quick enough to thwart their youngest sister, who had lost “the whole of society,” as she put it, when the family left Boston, and was desperate for a little adventure.

“Louy, I’m coming along with you,” May cried from the parlor as she threw down her needlework. “Just give me a minute to arrange my hair.”

Louisa sighed as May dashed toward her room. Louisa loved her sister, but she sometimes felt May came by that love in spite of herself. It was hardly her fault. May was only fifteen, and the time before she was born had been the most difficult for the family. Bronson’s determination to live out his philosophies—transcending material pleasure, developing the soul through tireless self-examination—had never been stronger, and consequently the Alcott women lived without many domestic comforts. Over time, Bronson was forced to concede that some of his beliefs worked better in the abstract than on the ground. May was born after the family had overcome the worst of its poverty and privation, and Louisa resented that the youngest Alcott walked through the world with the posture of a girl who hadn’t known true sacrifice.

“May,” Anna called after her, anxious to be on their way. “Another day—tomorrow. I promise. I’ll take you with me into town tomorrow.”

They closed the heavy front door against May’s shrill protests and made their way down the path. Louisa thought about how she missed the familiar woods of Concord. As a girl, she ran there every day, darting through the narrow spaces between the trees on a path Henry Thoreau had shown her years before, when he’d taken her to see a family of whip-poor-wills he’d discovered at dusk. She ran, she said, to keep up her strength, but in truth she was desperate to escape the crowded house and chores that always waited for her. Washing, knitting, mending, baking, weeding. She longed for quiet so that she could read and spin her tales, but sometimes even that required more concentration than her vibrating brain could muster. Running calmed and focused her thoughts. While she thudded along, her skirts rustled the leaves at her feet, picking up burrs and spiders she’d later have to shake off before going into the house. Louisa felt a pang as she thought back on those carefree days. A girl of twelve could be odd and sullen and race through the woods without fear of reproach; a woman of twenty-two had to concern herself with matters of propriety.

The family hadn’t wanted to leave Boston and Concord. Bronson liked living near Emerson and his Transcendental friends, like Theodore Parker, the Boston minister, and the provocative abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and the girls had finally managed to make friends after years of moving from place to place. But they could not stay. Bronson had not earned a regular income in sixteen years, so he and Abigail May—“Abba” to her husband and friends and “Marmee” to her daughters—depended on the charity of family and friends.

The Alcotts worried most about how Lizzie would adjust to another upheaval. One summer five years back, Abba’s ever-present charity work brought her into contact with an impoverished family suffering from smallpox. She and Bronson became desperately ill. The girls’ infection had seemed mild in comparison, but this consolation was short-lived. Though the other three bounced back after a few days, Lizzie never fully recovered her strength and had since suffered from a weakened constitution. Any stress was enough to send her to bed for a week. Though moving was sure to be a trial, Bronson and Abba knew they had little choice and only prayed they could find a suitable situation.

Financial mercy came when Abba’s brother-in-law Benjamin Willis offered the use of a house he owned in Walpole, a New Hampshire town of fifteen hundred souls, and Bronson did not have the luxury of refusing. The house was known in town as Yellow Wood. Originally a saddler’s shop, it was admired for its lilacs and golden autumn maples. Yellow Wood sat on a hill at the top of Wentworth Road, which snaked a quarter mile north and bisected the town center. Uncle Willis filled the shed with firewood and wrote to the family promising they could stay until Bronson’s fortunes changed.

The first meager supper the night before had not satisfied bellies hungry from a long day of travel and unpacking, but they had to make do with the hard rolls and preserved vegetables in the pantry. When Louisa was writing, she could forget about every worldly thing, including food. The previous night she had begun a new story about a woman named Natalie, rejected and cast out by her lover when he discovered she had worked as an actress and could bring shame to his wealthy family. She filled her pages with ink late into the night, when her rumbling stomach finally broke her concentration.

Soon Abba would visit the orchard they’d passed on their way into town and establish a line of credit for food. They had no money to pay for it now, but Bronson had promised to embark on a new tour of conversations, his name for speeches he made in parlors across New England about famous philosophers. He refused to sell tickets to the events, as he was morally opposed to all acts of commerce, but he had in the past been unable to refuse donations. So a new tour held the tenuous promise of a little income. Abba knew better than to count on it, though. She knew all too well that her husband’s lofty aims rarely deigned to find their way down to earth. His philosophies were concerned with ideals and symbols but rarely realities. Two winters ago he had set out for a tour of New York and Ohio, promising to earn enough to pay off their debts and finally provide a comfortable life for his family. Six months later he returned home with only one dollar.

It was true providence that Mr. Emerson had been their neighbor in Concord. He and Bronson were friends and intellectual equals, but Emerson was shrewd in pecuniary affairs. It was well known that he received a fortune when his tubercular first wife died at the age of twenty, and he and his second wife, Lidian, did not want for money. Though Bronson was proud of his refusal to sully himself with base economic affairs, he accepted Emerson’s assistance with a surprising lack of protest. And the Alcott women thanked God for that small mercy.

 

 

Louisa had been to Walpole
only once before, when she was quite young, so she tried to notice each storefront and memorize its contents to report back to her mother. The sisters were experienced at moving. As children they’d lived in several different houses, and they knew all about the work each move made for the women—stocking the kitchen, dressing the windows, planting a new vegetable garden. It helped to get the lay of the land and meet the shopkeepers early—especially, Louisa thought with dread, since they would soon be testing those shopkeepers’ generosity by asking to buy things on credit.

As they descended the hill, they turned west on Middle Street and then north into Washington Square, where the town’s few shops were clustered. The butcher’s shop occupied the southwest corner of the square. Bronson’s aversion to meat made Anna and Louisa a little skittish about the carcasses hanging in the windows, and they looked away as they passed by. The square contained two village bookstores that were local centers of political discussion. On the west side of the square, men interested in the philosophy of the waning Whig party argued over what to do about slavery and how modern technology like the railroads might change the country. Directly opposite, on the east side of the square, Democrats stood with their arms crossed, some pensively fingering their beards, as they lamented the death of the idyllic farming society President Jefferson had envisioned in their grandfathers’ time. And the men who cared for neither politics nor books gathered at the tavern that sat between the stores, to imbibe and gamble until their wives prevailed upon them to return home for supper. Abba was at least lucky on one account: Bronson was a temperate man and never once set foot in
that
place of temptation.

Louisa fought back the welling irritation that made her jaw feel tight. Walpole seemed to her wholly unremarkable. Over the last few years she had felt herself growing restless, yearning for freedom from the domestic obligations that came with continuing to live at home. Though the chaos of Boston frightened her—the noise and heat of the trains, the looming shadow of steamers discharging immigrants at India Wharf, where vendors sold peppered oysters soaked in vinegar near the overcrowded tenements—she loved the excitement and freedom of the city. With her family she had bounced between Boston and Concord over the years but never had the chance to live in the city on her own, to have the space and time to think and write.

Since her father had announced the solution to their current financial woes, his plan to move the family here to Walpole, Louisa had been scheming for a way to get back to the city as soon as possible. She had promised herself she would accompany them to her uncle’s house, help unload the trunks and be on the train from Bellows Falls back to Boston by the end of the first week. She still had most of the money left from the ten dollars she earned for “The Rival Prima Donnas,” a story she wrote under the name Flora Fairfield, and the advance on
Flower Fables
, her collection of fairy tales published in a tiny local run the previous fall. The publisher had sent her a mere thirty-two dollars for that work, though even this small sum had astonished her at the time. She gave a portion to her father for the good of the household and squirreled the rest away, professing an oath to Anna and her mirror that she would safeguard the money for one express purpose.

“I, Louisa Alcott, do swear—”

“—do
solemnly
swear,” Anna offered, her hands cradling the green leather Bible on which Louisa rested her palm.

“—do solemnly swear to resist temptations large and small, be they in the form of particularly bewitching bonnets, slippers . . .”

“Gloves?” Anna asked with her eyebrows raised.

Louisa nodded. “Gloves . . .”

Anna was quick to test her sister’s conviction. “Even if they happen to be the sort that close with those tiny pearl buttons?”

“
Especially
if they have pearl buttons. As well as chocolates, pecans, new books, fine pens . . .”

“And cream laid writing paper. Don’t forget that.” Anna pressed her lips together to suppress a smile.

Louisa groaned and closed her eyes. “The very thought of it tests me this moment! Yes, yes—no fine writing paper. Now, where was I? Oh, yes . . . resist temptations large and small, so noted, in the service of my especial aim: to secure for myself in the city of Boston a
place apart
and a room in which I might write my stories and sell them to the highest bidder.”

“Well done!” cried Anna. And the oath was sealed.

The savings was enough to pay her room and board for a few weeks until she sold a story or two, or found some other way to earn her bread. She pictured a cozy rooming house, perhaps a little dilapidated, with a long dining table full of boarders swapping tales of their travels. It wouldn’t be hard to convince her father to let her go. Obtaining her mother’s blessing would be the more difficult task.

But now that they had arrived in Walpole, Louisa could see the route to freedom wouldn’t be smooth. Her uncle’s house hadn’t been lived in for some time. Linens moldered in a damp cabinet; spiders nested in the corners of the parlor; and the kitchen was in lamentable shape. How could she leave all this work for her mother and sisters while she went off on her own to spin her tales and merely hope to earn a little income? Louisa fought hard against her rising despair and tried to muster the patience that often eluded her.
I’ll stay on until they get settled,
Louisa promised herself.
Until the house is fit to live in and Marmee has her kitchen up and running. It won’t be so very long. And then I’ll be on my way
.

 

 

They passed the Elmwood Inn
and at last came to Singer Dry Goods. When the bell jingled as Louisa first stepped inside, it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light after the searing July sunshine. The floor creaked under her boots as she followed her sister, who had already scurried over to the rows of dress fabrics, ribbons, and lace. Despite their father’s warnings, Anna couldn’t help being enamored with the beautiful dresses her wealthier cousins had. The fashions seemed to change so quickly, and she felt hopelessly left out of the running. She ran her hand along a bolt of shot silk and noticed a few magazine pages pinned on the wall featuring crinolines so wide she wondered how the wearer traversed a doorway.

Louisa rolled her eyes and found the shelf of calicos that would make a simple set of drapes. She didn’t dare admit, even to herself, that she ached to touch the pale mousseline the color of an eggshell and imagine her broad shoulders slimmed by a flattering sleeve. The spirit of self-denial that colored every aspect of her family’s life was strong in her, but so was a yearning to, just once, have the things others had.

“Good afternoon, Miss. Have you found something you like?”

Louisa looked up. She felt her cheeks color, as if she had been speaking her thoughts aloud. A freckled young man stood tall in brown suspenders and grinned at her. She shook her head, feeling suddenly shy, and turned quickly back to the fabric to avoid his eyes.

He shrugged and turned toward the counter, where a woman stood waiting to place an order. Louisa peered at her from behind a post. She wore a light cotton dress and a straw spoon bonnet with a cluster of daisies over her left ear.