Marmee & Louisa (63 page)

¹⁰²¹
“Plantation Sketches”: ABA, October 15, 1863,
Journals
, 360.

¹⁰²²
“irrepressible conflict”: LMA, January 1861,
Journals
, 103.

¹⁰²³
another adult novel: The novel was called
Success
in 1863 and later, when published,
Work
.

¹⁰²⁴
Harper’s Weekly
review: Stern,
Critical Essays on LMA
, 66.

¹⁰²⁵
love affair at Fruitlands: Odell Shepard,
ABA Journals
, 368, footnote.

¹⁰²⁶
“Some fear it isn’t moral”: LMA, February 1865,
Journals
, 139. Also in Cheney,
LMA: Life, Letters and Journals
, February–May 1865, 165–66.

¹⁰²⁷
“very happy tonight”: inscribed in
Flower Fables
, HAP.

¹⁰²⁸
stay awake: ABA, December 25, 1864,
Journals
, 367.

¹⁰²⁹
“forcibly drawn”: ABA, December 30, 1864,
Journals
, 368.

¹⁰³⁰
“her full share”: ABA, June 8, 1864,
Letters
, 356.

¹⁰³¹
“many intermissions”: AMA, January 14, 1865, Diary for 1865, HAP.

¹⁰³²
“gave Louisa was her voice”: Author’s interview with Lisa Stepanski, March 2012.

¹⁰³³
“manipulate whole families”:
Plots and Counterplots
, ed. Stern, Introduction, 8.

¹⁰³⁴
“Unbridled sensuality”: Sarah Elbert, Introduction to
Moods
, xxiii.

¹⁰³⁵
“useful, happy woman”: LMA,
Work
, 268–69.

¹⁰³⁶
“rubbishy tales”: LMA, February 1865,
Journals
, 139.

¹⁰³⁷
made “things comfortable”: Ibid.

¹⁰³⁸
“tried every means”: Stern and Shealy,
From Jo March’s Attic
, xix.

¹⁰³⁹
“paid up the debts”: LMA, Notes & Memoranda for 1865,
Journals
, 146.

¹⁰⁴⁰
“cleaned house & wrote”: LMA, March–April 1865,
Journals
, 140.

¹⁰⁴¹
“touching time”: CMW to Joseph May, June 17, 1865, MFPCL.

¹⁰⁴²
“very delicate”: WLG to SJM, December 10, 1865,
Letters of Garrison
, 1861–1867, 356.

¹⁰⁴³
“old but beautiful”: WLG to Helen E. Garrison, September 10, 1864, ibid., 236–38.

¹⁰⁴⁴
“adored”: CMW, unpublished memoir, private collection.

¹⁰⁴⁵
“turn housekeeper”: LMA, May 1865,
Journals
, 140.

¹⁰⁴⁶
“the center and soul”: Julian Hawthorne, in Shealy,
Alcott in Her Own Time
, 196–97, 207.

¹⁰⁴⁷
“something of a nurse”: LMA, July 1865,
Journals
, 141.

¹⁰⁴⁸
“heart very full”: LMA, 1865,
Journals
, 141. She indicates that her cousin John E. May’s future wife, Kate Pomroy Horton, was also present on the wharf.

¹⁰⁴⁹
leaving Anna Weld: LMA, May 1866,
Journals
, 151.

¹⁰⁵⁰
“I suppose you will avoid”: ABA to LMA, November 29, 1865,
Letters
, 378.

¹⁰⁵¹
absence left a crater: LMA, 1865,
Journals
, 143. “My absence seems to have left so large a gap that I begin to realize how much I am to them in spite of all my faults.”

¹⁰⁵²
“wicked West”: AMA, quoted in ABA to LMA, March 18, 1866,
Letters
, 390.

¹⁰⁵³
“over-burthened”: ABA, March 27–31, 1864,
Journals
, 363.

¹⁰⁵⁴
“children in the summer field”: ABA, July 20, 1866,
Journals
, 383.

¹⁰⁵⁵
“sick & tired”: LMA, July 1866,
Journals
, 152.

¹⁰⁵⁶
“disabled”: ABA to Mrs. Francis Gage, April 14, 1867,
Letters
, 406.

¹⁰⁵⁷
“mask of femininity”: Judith Fetterley, “Little Women: Alcott’s Civil War,” Stern,
Critical Essays on LMA
, 141.

¹⁰⁵⁸
“gave Mother the rest”: LMA, July 1867,
Journals
, 157.

¹⁰⁵⁹
“painful”: SJM to LFC, February 3, 1867, MFPCL.

¹⁰⁶⁰
“be famous, go abroad”: AAP to Alfred Whitman, quoting LMA, July 21, 1872, family letters, HAP.

¹⁰⁶¹
“feeble”: LMA, July 18661,
Journals
, 152.

¹⁰⁶²
“strong, energetic ‘marmee’”: LMA, November 1866,
Journals
, 153.

¹⁰⁶³
“a girls book”: LMA, September 1867,
Journals
, 158.

¹⁰⁶⁴
largely a male profession: Sicherman,
Well-Read Lives
, 39.

¹⁰⁶⁵
“golden age”: Steven Mintz,
Huck’s Raft
, 185.

¹⁰⁶⁶
“I could
not
write”: LMA to Louise C. Moulton, “Note for Mrs. M,” n.d., family letters, HAP.

¹⁰⁶⁷
Beth: Nicknames for Elizabeth Sewall Alcott included Lizzie, Betty, and Beth.

¹⁰⁶⁸
“busiest young women”: AAP to Alfred Whitman, December 8, 1867, family letters, HAP.

¹⁰⁶⁹
Marmee “feels the cold”: LMA, January 7, 1868,
Journals
, 162.

¹⁰⁷⁰
accompanied her father: ABA to William Russell, January 19, 1868,
Letters
, 426.

¹⁰⁷¹
“literary ability”: ABA to AMA, February 19, 1868,
Letters
, 427.

¹⁰⁷²
ABA insecure about writing: Shepard says ABA was a poor writer in his Introduction to
ABA Journals
, xix, and many other scholars concur.

¹⁰⁷³
“I wish I could write” and “my settled conviction”: ABA, August 4, 1835, and June 13, 1880, 60 and 517.

¹⁰⁷⁴
Ellen A. Chandler: ABA’s first correspondence with her is dated March 1868. The 1870 U.S. Census indicates Ellen Chandler was born in 1846, in Maine, and in 1870 lived in Framingham, Massachusetts, and worked as a Normal School teacher.

¹⁰⁷⁵
“on Monday evening”: ABA to Ellen Chandler, November 11, 1868,
Letters
, 451.

¹⁰⁷⁶
“value[d] her acquaintance”: ABA to William Harris, January 15, 1869,
Letters
, 458.

¹⁰⁷⁷
“that I might partake the oftener”: ABA to Ellen Chandler, December 18, 1868,
Letters
, 456.

¹⁰⁷⁸
“fair enchantress”: ABA to Chandler, July 25, 1869,
Letters
, 484.

¹⁰⁷⁹
“the bright incident”: ABA to Frank Sanborn, September 2, 1869,
Letters
, 488.

¹⁰⁸⁰
“When young women cease”: ABA, June 8, 1870,
Journals
, 411.

¹⁰⁸¹
living conditions for former slaves: Fergus Bordewich, “How America’s Civil War Changed the World,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 9, 2011.

¹⁰⁸²
“our work is done”: Frederickson,
The Inner Civil War
, 122.

¹⁰⁸³
“Had we such women”: SJM, in
History of Woman Suffrage
, 578–79.

¹⁰⁸⁴
“denial of this franchise”: SES, “Legal Condition of Women,”
Memoir of SES
, 138.

¹⁰⁸⁵
Sojourner Truth quotation:
New York Tribune
, May 10, 1867, 8.

¹⁰⁸⁶
“gospel according to Abigail”: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 261.

¹⁰⁸⁷
creative intellectual: Barbara Sicherman used this term to describe LMA in
Well-read Lives
.

¹⁰⁸⁸
Mr. March: the minister enters the narrative at the very end of Part One of
Little Women
, which appeared in 1868. Part Two, published in 1869, and Part One are now published together as
Little Women
.

¹⁰⁸⁹
motherless boy next door: Laurie was apparently based on several people, including Alfred Whitman, Ladislaw Wisniewski, and Julian Hawthorne.

¹⁰⁹⁰
Aunt Q: A story that Aunt Q told Abigail, which Abigail surely told her daughters, may have inspired the scene in which Amy March falls through ice while skating. In Boston in 1787, “little Johnny Hancock,” Aunt’s Q’s eight-year-old son, fell on ice while skating and died. Aunt Q’s only other child, a daughter named Lydia, died in infancy.

¹⁰⁹¹
“the first golden egg”: LMA, 1885, footnote to August 1868,
Journals
, 166.

¹⁰⁹²
“gift very precious”: LMA, November 29, 1868,
Journals
, 167.

¹⁰⁹³
“the decline had begun”: LMA, October 8, 1868,
Journals
, 167.

¹⁰⁹⁴
“worked like a beaver”: LMA, December 1868,
Journals
, 168.

¹⁰⁹⁵
“I won’t marry Jo”: LMA, November 1, 1868,
Journals
, 167.

¹⁰⁹⁶
some irony: See also Judith Fetterley’s essay, “Little Women: Alcott’s Civil War,”
Feminist Studies
5 (1979), 369–383.

¹⁰⁹⁷
Meg’s twins: Caroline Heilbrun, “Jo March: Male Model—Female Person,” in Stern,
Critical Essays on LMA
, 144.

¹⁰⁹⁸
“our lofty room”: LMA to Ellen Conway, February 9, 1869,
Letters
, 123.

¹⁰⁹⁹
“if my head holds out”: LMA, January 1869,
Journals
, 171.

¹¹⁰⁰
“like a capital G”: This story, its exact date unclear, derives from Julian Hawthorne’s account in
Alcott in Her Own Time
, 200–201.

¹¹⁰¹
National Anti-Slavery Standard
: Vol. 29, May 1, 1869, 3.

¹¹⁰²
“single New England home”: Stern,
From Blood & Thunder
, 259.

¹¹⁰³
anticipated: ABA, April 30, 1869,
Journals
, 396.

¹¹⁰⁴
Any amount: Julian Hawthorne,
Alcott in Her Own Time
, 200. Neither the exact date nor the amount LMA requested are known.

¹¹⁰⁵
“Hard times”: LMA, January 1869, Cheney,
LMA Life Letters and Journals
, 122. Details about May and AMA are from Julian Hawthorne.

¹¹⁰⁶
“toiling so many years”: LMA to Roberts Brothers, December 28, 1869,
Letters
, 129.

¹¹⁰⁷
books in print: It is possible, according to Lis Adams of Orchard House, that Harriet Beecher Stowe had as many books in print as LMA.

¹¹⁰⁸
“freedom from economic”: Shepard, Note on 1869,
ABA Letters
, 393.

¹¹⁰⁹
“limited Louisa’s”: Judith Fetterley, “Little Women: Alcott’s Civil War,” in Stern,
Critical Essays on LMA
, 141.

¹¹¹⁰
“Success has its dark side”: LMA to Louisa M. Moulton, n.d., family letters, HAP.

¹¹¹¹
Rivière-du-Loup: ABA to Ellen Chandler, June 27, 1869,
Letters
, 479.

¹¹¹²
“Cousin Fred”: LFM to JM, undated, MFPCL.

¹¹¹³
Tablets
: Matteson,
Eden’s Outcasts
, 353.

¹¹¹⁴
“first rank of writers”: ABA, September 4, 1869,
Journals
, 399.

¹¹¹⁵
“If women will only”: ABA, October 11, 1869,
Journals
, 40.

¹¹¹⁶
“possess equal privileges”: Matteson,
Eden’s Outcasts
, 353.

¹¹¹⁷
LMA beginning
An Old-Fashioned Girl
: ABA to J. N. Pardee, September 3, 1869,
Letters
, 490.

¹¹¹⁸
Royalty rates: ABA to Mary Stearns, May 19, 1869,
Letters
, 475.

¹¹¹⁹
“distance herself”: Elbert, Introduction to
Early Stories of LMA
, 16.

¹¹²⁰
“entertainment”: AMA, diary for January 1873, HAP.

¹¹²¹
“Chariot of Glory”: ABA, December 1, 1869,
Journals
, 404. See also Shepard, Note on 1870, ibid., 405. Herrnstadt noted in
ABA Letters
(footnote, 430) that ABA brought home from that trip $700, more than ever before.

¹¹²²
“people were curious”: Theodore Dahlstrand, lecture at School of Philosophy, Orchard House, July 2011.

¹¹²³
“high places of honors”: ABA to Ellen Chandler, December 30, 1872,
Letters
, 580. See also ABA, April 25, 1869,
Journals
, 395.

¹¹²⁴
most popular author: The early-twentieth-century author most similar to LMA in her lifetime is J. K. Rowling.

¹¹²⁵
“far from well”: ABA to Ednah Dow Cheney, October 12, 1869,
Letters
, 490.

¹¹²⁶
numerous medical experts: LMA to her family, April–June 1870,
Little Women Abroad
, 10–86.

¹¹²⁷
“unusually merry”: LMA to Roberts Brothers, December 28, 1869,
Letters
, 129.