Authors: Eve LaPlante
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.