Authors: Eve LaPlante
915
“angel of light”: Tony Horwitz noted in his biography of John Brown that on October 30, 1859, Thoreau read aloud an oration, “A Plea for Captain John Brown,” calling Brown an “angel of light.” At the Music Hall, Emerson said Brown was like Christ, “the new saint awaiting his martyrdom” who will “make the gallows glorious like the cross.”
916
begun to speak out: Ronald Bosco said at Orchard House School of Philosophy in summer 2009 that “Emerson moved toward the abolition movement kicking and screaming until the 1840s, and to the women’s movement until the 1850s. Until the 1860s he thought ‘better’ women wouldn’t want to vote.”
917
“beatify”: Matteson, lecture at Orchard House School of Philosophy, July 2009. Ironically, according to Matteson, Brown’s raid effectively ended Transcendentalism.
918
“entirely obliterated”:
Memoir of SES
, 103–4.
919
“hero”: In Boston on the day of Brown’s execution, SES presided over a Tremont Temple meeting at which Garrison read aloud Brown’s “Address to the Court.”
920
“Saint John”: ABA wrote a sonnet and LMA wrote a poem to John Brown, according to LMA, 1859,
Journals
, 95.
921
“beginning of sorrows”: SJM, Diary for 1859, MFPCL.
922
“usual vigor”: ABA to William Russell, December 31, 1859,
Letters
, 307.
923
“Anna’s expected marriage”: ABA to his mother, April 12, 1860,
Letters
, 310.
924
bringing in enough money: ABA to his mother, August 1861,
Letters
, 322. Bronson wrote to his mother that Louisa “has been waiting almost since the year came in for her money, that she might send some to you. I wish it were more . . .”
925
“Genius burned”: LMA, January 1861,
Journals
, 103.
926
“moral obligation to remain”: Elizabeth Lennox Keyser,
Little Women: A Family Romance
, 9.
927
“partakes largely in”: ABA to William Russell, December 31, 1859,
Letters
, 307.
928
“personal and family history”: ABA, February 25, 1861,
Journals
, 337.
929
annual salary was $100: ABA to his sister Betsey, June 5, 1860,
Letters
, 313.
930
“pink of a party”: ABA to AMA, October 29, 1860,
Letters
, 317.
931
“many sweethearts”: Anna to Alfred Whitman, July 21, 1872, family letters, HAP.
932
“grub for my help”: LMA, December 1860,
Journals
, 100.
933
“someone to help her”: LMA, February 1864,
Journals
, 128.
934
“took dinner at Charlotte’s”: SJM, Diary for 1860, MFPCL.
935
“goes out like a taper”: James Russell Lowell,
A Fable for Critics
(1848), 43.
936
“fitness and beauty”: ABA, May 23, 1860,
Journals
, 326.
937
Anna and John crept up: Catherine Rivard, in conversation, 2010.
938
“Uncle S. J. May married them”: Although “Mr. Bull the magistrate” made the marriage legal in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, SJM performed the ceremony.
939
Bridge and Pratt house: The wooden structure near the Chelsea River known as the “Old Pratt house” was torn down in 1953.
940
took a nap: ABA to AAP, May 23, 1660,
Letters
, 311.
941
Sanborn’s students: Brooks,
Flowering of New England
, 432.
942
“I am desirous”: SJM, Diary for 1860, MFPCL. Later that year George E. May returned to the West Newton School.
943
“Mrs. John Brown”: Anne and Sarah Brown, two of John Brown’s older daughters, boarded with the Alcotts a few years later, according to Stern,
LMA
, 103.
944
“went and worshipped”: LMA to AAP, May 27, 1860,
Letters
, 54.
945
“earnest talk”: SJM, Diary for 1860, MFPCL.
946
“Samuel Jay May’s plea for peace”: Ednah Cheney, “Reminiscences of Ednah Dow Cheney,” 83, 118.
947
the newlywed Pratts: SJM diary for 1860, MFPCL.
948
“A Modern Cinderella”: published in the
Atlantic
, October 1860.
949
“people wrote to me”: LMA, September and April 1860,
Journals
, 100 and 98.
950
“wife is very well”: ABA to his sister Betsey, June 5, 1860,
Letters
, 314.
951
“lives in her family mostly”: ABA to his mother, June 24, 1863,
Letters
, 342.
952
“Louisa writes stories still”: ABA to his mother, November 1861,
Letters
, 324.
953
May moved to Syracuse: ABA to AMA, November 16, 1857,
Letters
, 260.
954
“More luck for May”: LMA, December 1860,
Journals
, 100.
955
“to vary a little”: ABA to AMAN, February 10, 1861,
Letters
, 320.
956
“very hopeful”: Ibid.
957
“I hope good things”: AMA, quoted in ABA to his mother, December 30, 1860,
Letters
, 318.
958
ear trumpet: Mentioned in several letters between the Alcotts. According to Catherine Rivard, in conversation in 2010, AAP was growing deaf by 1860.
959
“entertaining and witty”: ABA, February 25, 1861,
Journals
, 337.
960
“life, aspiration, tact”: AMA to SJM, March and September 8, 1858, family letters, HAP.
961
“wit and go-ahead-ativeness”: AMA to SJM, December 8, 1860, family letters, HAP.
962
manacled slave: Yacovone,
SJM
, 139.
963
“beginning to reap in the storm”: AMA to SJM, April 13, 1861, family letters, HAP.
964
“longed to see a war”: LMA, April 1861,
Journals
, 105.
965
sewed: ABA, Note on 1861,
Journals
, 333.
966
“felt very martial”: LMA, May 1861,
Journals
, 105.
967
Civil War: Three million men fought in the war, and more than 600,0000 died.
968
opened a kindergarten: ABA, January 6, 1862,
Journals
, 345.
969
“Lu’s peculiar faculty”: AAP to Alfred Whitman, December 1861, family letters, HAP.
970
a distant cousin: Hernnstadt,
Letters ABA
, footnote, 326.
971
“good fruits”: ABA to William Russell, January 20, 1862,
Letters
, 326.
972
“against my own wishes”: LMA, in
ABA Letters
, 326, footnote.
973
“I
can
write”: LMA, May 1862,
Journals
, 109.
974
“blood & thunder tale”: LMA to Alfred Whitman, June 1862,
Letters
, 79.
975
“I enjoy romancing”: LMA, June, July, August, 1862,
Journals
, 109.
976
“best of health”: ABA, September 1, 1862,
Letters
, 328.
977
“pathetic family”: LMA to her second cousin Adeline May, July 1860,
Letters
, 57; and to her grandmother Anna Alcox, December 1862, ibid., 80.
978
Emerson’s descriptions: Perry Miller,
Margaret Fuller, American Romantic
, xxv.
979
“I never began the year”: LMA, January 1, 1863,
Journals
, 113.
980
“feel helpless”: Sophia Hawthorne to her daughter Una, December 1862, in Ticknor,
May Alcott
, 53–54, quoting AMA.
981
“big bee hive”: LMA to Hannah Stevenson, December 26, 1862, MHS Online Collections, accessed at
www.masshist.org
, March 2012. Union Hotel Hospital was an imposing three-story building on Georgetown’s main street.
982
“really good nurse”: Myerson and Shealy, eds.,
LMA Journals
, 112, footnote.
983
“When I peered”: LMA, “Hospital Sketches,” Ch. 3, in Elaine Showalter, ed.,
Alternative Alcott
, 21.
984
“a womanly man”: LMA to Hannah Stevenson, December 26, 1862. MHS Online Collections, accessed at
www.masshist.org
, March 2012.
985
“prince of patients”: LMA, January 1,1863,
Journals
, 113.
986
“odd, sentimental”: LMA, January 4, 1863,
Journals
, 115.
987
“chief afflictions”: LMA to Hannah Stevenson, December 26, 1862, MHS Online Collections, accessed at
www.masshist.org
, March 2012.
988
“sharp pain”: LMA, January 1863,
Journals
, 115.
989
“ignominious to depart”: ABA to AAP, January 25, 1863,
Letters
, 333.
990
shaved her head: Ibid.
991
“derivative”: Stern,
Plots and Counterplots
, Introduction, 16.
992
“went to heaven”: LMA, January 1863,
Journals
, 117.
993
opened her eyes: ABA, January 16, 1863,
Journals
, 353.
994
“Enfeebled”: ABA to AAP, January 25, 1863,
Letters
, 332.
995
“clash of arms”: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 119.
996
“costly experience”: LMA to Mr. Rand, October 24, [n.y.],
Letters
, 339.
997
“men’s jobs”: O’Connor,
Civil War Boston
, 168.
998
“look unprofessional”: Ibid., quoting Ann Douglas, “The Literature of Impoverishment,”
Women’s Studies
I (1972), 6.
999
“pretty prattle”: Caroline Kirkland, “Literary Women,” in
Scribbling Women
, Elaine Showalter, ed., xxxvii.
1000
“business potential”: Showalter, ibid., xxxix.
1001
except Marmee: ABA to AAP, January 25–February 4, 1863,
Letters
, 333–35.
1002
anxious but hopeful: ABA, January 25, 1863,
Letters
, 354.
1003
“nothing against”: ABA to AAP, January 25, 1863,
Letters
, 333.
1004
part-time maid: ABA to AAP, February 4, 1863,
Letters
, 335.
1005
“right mind”: ABA, February 6, 1863,
Journals
, 354.
1006
“clothe herself with flesh”: ABA, March 22, 1863,
Journals
, 354.
1007
“sitting deep in a novel”: LMA to AAP, March 28, 1863, quoted in
ABA Journals
, footnote, 355.
1008
“little grandson”: ABA, October 15, 1863,
Journals
, 359.
1009
“I have no child”: Margaret Fuller,
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli
, vol. 1, 293, quoted in Blanchard,
Margaret Fuller
, 173.
1010
“I sell
my
children”: LMA, January 18, 1868,
Journals
, 163.
1011
“her boy”: LMA, June 1863,
Journals
, 119. CMW’s five-year-old boy, Alfred Wilkinson Jr., as an adult would have a celebrated love affair with Winifred Davis, daughter of the president of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Alfred and Winnie were engaged in the 1880s, but because of her parents’ objections to his family’s politics the engagement was broken. She died soon afterwards. Alfred, my Uncle Fred, lived until 1918 but never married.
1012
“satisfaction of seeing”: LMA to James Redpath, August 28, 1863,
Letters
, 88.
1013
“agreeable to us”: ABA, August 26, 1863,
Journals
, 357.
1014
“time & earnings”: LMA to James Redpath, July 1863,
Letters
, 87.
1015
a collection: Stern,
From Blood and Thunder
, 209.
1016
“My Contraband”: this story first appeared in the
Atlantic
in November 1863 under the title suggested by the editor, “The Brothers,” but LMA always called it “My Contraband.”
1017
Faith Dane: This character, an upright spinster, also appears in LMA’s
Moods
.
1018
“power struggle”: Stern,
LMA Unmasked
, xxvii.
1019
“my natural ambition”: LMA, quoted in LaSalle Corbell Pickett,
Across My Path: Memories of People I Have Known
, 107–8.
1020
“I love nursing”: LMA to Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, November 12, 1863, in Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 188.