The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (4 page)

“No, I don’t know.” Louisa sat stiffly, her body aware of the conversation’s direction before her mind could catch up. At twenty-four, Anna had so far been content to resist any attachments that might take her away from home and instead remained with the parents who adored her.

“There are choices. There are different sorts of men. Different from Father.”

Louisa looked at her, surprised to hear this veiled criticism from her angelic sister, their father’s favorite.

“There’s love. That’s something. Wouldn’t you like to be in love, Lou?”

Henry Thoreau appeared in her mind, his sodden boots, his beard snagged with leaves, a notebook clutched in the black half-moons of his fingertips. He had been another of their Concord neighbors. Love was a foreign country Louisa didn’t care to visit, and the only time she’d ever come close to the feeling was developing a pupil’s adoration for her teacher. Henry could peel a wide strip of birch bark with one deft slice of his knife and fold it into a box to hold the leaves and flowers and stones they collected on their explorations. Once, they found a store of Indian spearheads poking out of the earth beneath a huckleberry bush. They would walk all afternoon until the sun baked them red. When she shrank from the delicate brush of a cobweb, he told her it was a handkerchief dropped by a fairy.

From the time she first walked alone with Henry as a girl, she dared to hope he saw in her a like mind, a ruminator. But Henry only loved his trees, his work, his solitude. Louisa had heard through the Concord gossip that her tutor Sophia, a young woman closer to Henry’s age, confessed her love and hopes to marry him. She’d left town the following year, shattered by his rejection. Henry grew still more reclusive then, no longer inviting the children to walk with him. When Louisa’s breasts began to fill out, he hardly spoke to her at all, except to wave from a distance.

“I didn’t know it was as simple as deciding to do it. Why are you bringing this up now, Anna?” Louisa’s voice was cross.

“Because I’m trying to tell you about me. About what I want.”

“And what is that?”

“Oh, Louisa, you are so
trying
sometimes.
I
want to be in love.
I
want to get married. I want to have a different kind of life than this one. My own life.”

Louisa turned to her, softening her voice with all her might. “You believe getting married is going to let you have your own life? Don’t you think the way to do that is to
avoid
marriage?” For Louisa, marriage and love had almost nothing to do with each other. Love, or at least what she had been able to glean about love from books, represented a kind of sweet and everlasting acceptance, a companionship, an adoration that aimed to preserve its object, not wrestle it to the ground. Marriage was something else altogether. Once Abba had told Louisa, “Wherever I turn, I see that women are like beasts of burden, under the yoke, dragging their lengthening chain.” Louisa had never forgotten that image, the hopelessness of it. Marriage was no kind of freedom.

Anna struggled to be patient with her sister, who always seemed to make the simplest things difficult. “It depends on what kind of ‘own life’ you mean, I suppose. I want a husband. I want children.

My own home, even if it is a humble little place. And rugs and china and furniture.”

Louisa was quiet a moment. “Well, I want to be a writer. I
am
a writer. Did you ever hear of a married woman writer?”

“I’m sure there are plenty,” Anna sighed. “Why should you have to choose, if you find the right sort of husband? One who would indulge your interests.”

“I don’t want to be indulged,” Louisa shot back, rankled. “I want to
work
. And besides, when, amongst all the birthing and bathing and china washing and rug sweeping and fire stoking do you think I’d have time to write? Or should I let my family go hungry and languish in frayed clothes while I place my work above their needs, as Father has done to us?”

Anna’s scolding was more provocation than her restrained temper could resist. She flew to her feet. “Well, why shouldn’t I say it? It’s the truth! It’s selfish and neglectful. Marmee has done her best for us, but in
spite
of him, not with his help. I could never put my children through that, knowing how it felt to me as a child.” She sat back down, her eyes full of tears. “Don’t you see? I do have to choose. I have inherited Father’s love of ideas and books but I also know how that love can separate you from the people who need you most. And yet, I can’t imagine my life without books. I don’t even know who I’d
be
then.”

“Oh, poor Louy.” Anna put her arm around her sister, pulling Louisa’s head down onto her shoulder. “To me you’d still be you—exactly the same. Funny and kind and working yourself into a frenzy.”

“As
soon
as I can—as
soon
as you’re all settled in—I’m leaving for Boston. It’s as if—” Her voice had taken on a childish whine that embarrassed her, and she stopped short.

“What?” Anna asked. “As if what?”

“. . . as if my life depended on getting out on my own, away from all this. And I intend to send home my wages, but . . . well, do you think wanting to go is awfully selfish?” Louisa felt her cheeks grow hot with shame.

Anna shook her head. “No, I don’t. I think it is honest. But it doesn’t matter what I think.”

“Of course it does!” Louisa exclaimed, looking up at her.

Anna shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. Not when it comes to deciding how to make a happy life for yourself. And you will.”

Though Louisa faced the trees, Anna knew just the look that was on her face: brows wrenched skeptically, her lips a twisted prune.

“You will,” she said again.

Leaves of Grass . . . is too frequently reckless and inde cent. . . . His words might have passed between Adam and Eve in Paradise, before the want of fi g-leaves brought no shame; but they are quite out of place amid the decorum of modern society.

—CHARLES A. DANA,
New York Daily Tribune,
July 23, 1855

 

 

 

B
ronson balanced his weight on one knee and patted the soil into place around the delicate sprout of a pumpkin vine, newly emerged from the ground just that morning. It had been ten days since he drew up his plan for the garden, and he was pleased to see the plants taking root. He chose not to dwell on the fact that it was nearly August; this vine would not produce fruit until at least November, assuming there was no frost before then. No matter—he felt a provider’s pride. He was making food for his family out of a few seeds and a patch of earth.

Louisa stood nearby, hanging laundry on the line. Tuesday mornings they washed the linens, and she’d volunteered for the chore of hanging the wet laundry out of sheer self-preservation. She felt if she did not get out of the washroom, away from the bubbling vat of soap, she might pick up a chair and hurl it across the room. She didn’t trust herself to keep her temper. It seemed she was getting less patient, less able to accept her duties, despite the fact that she wanted desperately to be good. All her life she had observed Anna as a scientist observes the object of his experiment; she watched for patterns that might reveal how Anna was able to move through life with ease while Louisa trailed behind her in fits and starts. But Louisa couldn’t seem to discern Anna’s secrets. She doubted Anna herself understood them.

And now Anna wanted to get
married
. How she could come to that conclusion after watching their mother suffer all these years was baffling to Louisa. Abba’s entire adult life was one test of endurance after another. She’d birthed five children, one too early to survive, and had the misfortune of a husband who floated through the world, his feet rarely touching the ground. When she fell in love with Bronson and his ideas, she knew his philosophy and teaching would not provide the means for a life full of fine things. It mattered not to her—dresses and fine furniture were dull compared to Plato and Shakespeare. But Abba had underestimated just how little he thought of practical things, like how they might pay for a place to live, or how they would raise healthy children on a diet of vegetables and bread alone. Abba tried for her daughters’ sakes to bear up, but the strain showed. Louisa had decided from an early age that she wanted her life to be nothing like her mother’s.

Bronson stood up and arched his back, his eyes closed a moment to the glare of the sun. He glanced over at Louisa as she stretched to pin a sheet on the line. “You make a lovely tableau, my daughter.”

Louisa noticed a bit of dirt trapped in the cloud of his wiry side-burn and smiled, feeling her heart swell in response to this rare bit of praise. No matter what she wanted to achieve, who she wanted to be, it was her father’s love and approval she wanted more than anything else in the world.

“Ho, Alcott! ”

Father and daughter looked up to see the familiar gait of their Concord neighbor Mr. Emerson as he moved up the path, clutching a large glass jar between his elbow and ribs.

Bronson stepped forward to shake his hand. “Hello, my friend. I knew this promised to be a pleasant day.”

Emerson smiled, the deep creases in the outer corners of his eyes stretching to his temples. “I’ve come to see how you’re settling in.” He held out the jar. “Lemon preserves for your wife, with best wishes from Mrs. Emerson. Good morning, Miss Louisa,” he said, tipping his hat in her direction.

“Good morning,” she replied, her voice barely louder than a whisper. Mr. Emerson was sober and polite to most, but the Alcotts awakened a joviality in him. When Louisa was fourteen, he patiently read her writing and offered encouraging words. The attention astonished her and she began to wrestle with the question that would trouble her all her life: Why would God give a woman talent if he meant her to be confined to the kitchen and washtub? Though to her father he was simply Waldo, Louisa never forgot she was in the presence of a great man and couldn’t help but be self-conscious around him. Bronson placed his hand on Emerson’s shoulder and turned him toward the house.

“Let’s go inside to talk.” Bronson pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and used it to mop his face. “Perhaps Louisa will be kind enough to get us something cool to drink.”

Bronson and Emerson retired to the parlor and Louisa turned toward the kitchen carrying the preserves. Abba stood at the sink, her knife poised above a half-peeled potato. A mountain of the knobby root vegetables and a large cabbage that looked to be half rotten lay heaped at her elbow. She gazed out the window toward the woods at the edge of the garden. Louisa looked out in the same direction to see what had captured her mother’s attention, but nothing was there. She reached for the metal pitcher that hung on a rusty hook above where Abba worked.

Abba’s knife clattered to the floor. “God in
heaven
—you startled me!”

Louisa touched her mother’s arm. “I’m sorry, Marmee. You looked lost in thought—I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

Abba blinked at her daughter, as if she knew she should recognize her but didn’t. Then the vacant expression disappeared and Abba stooped to pick up the knife. “Did you finish hanging the laundry?”

“Yes. Father was working in the garden and Mr. Emerson has come. He brought you some of Mrs. Emerson’s preserves.” Louisa placed the jar on the worktable. “I was going to take them something to drink in the parlor.”

Abba already had turned back to the sink and was digging a black spot out of a potato with the tip of the blade. Louisa observed Abba’s stooped posture and the silver streaks in her hair. Abba spoke over her shoulder. “It’s nearly eleven. Perhaps they would like something to eat as well.”

Louisa brought the pitcher of water into the parlor a few moments later, along with half a loaf of brown bread and some butter from the larder, and placed the tray on the low table between the sofa and armchairs that faced the hearth. Behind the sofa was a narrow shelf with two chairs and Louisa slipped into one, quietly taking up a stocking from the mending basket and hoping for a chance to listen to the men talk without being noticed by them or by Abba, who would likely find a chore for Louisa to do.

“Well, my friend, how do you find Walpole so far?” Emerson’s face was dominated by his Roman nose and prominent brow. “Have you gone much into town?”

“I have stopped in at the village store but haven’t spent much time there,” Bronson said. “In general I find the men here have a tendency to pontificate endlessly.”

Louisa bit her bottom lip and jabbed the needle into the toe seam to stifle a giggle.

She could see the irony of the comment did not escape Emerson either, but he continued kindly. “What have you been reading lately? I have something intriguing that I think you’ll quite enjoy.”

“All my old texts—
Pilgrim’s Progress
,
Aids to Reflection
, Plato. You know how I feel that one must read the same works again and again to truly extract the meaning. But let no one say Alcott’s mind is closed to the new.”

Emerson grinned at the proclamation. Bronson fancied himself a grand man, and though his lofty way of speaking endeared him to Emerson, it sometimes earned him ridicule from others.

“This appeared just a few weeks ago, out of the ether.” Emerson pulled a volume the size of a prayer book from his jacket pocket. The book was bound in green cloth with gold-stamped type on the front cover and spine, and Louisa strained to see the title. “The poet calls it
Leaves of Grass
. And—you will not believe this when I tell you—his name is nowhere to be found on the cover.”