Louisa and the Crystal Gazer (31 page)

That was also the year my beloved older sister, Anna, had gone to Syracuse to work as a governess. I missed her every day, every evening, and perhaps my friendship with Sylvia grew even deeper because of that longing for the wise, gentle, absent Anna.

That afternoon, as I finished my work, the slanted light coming through that window indicated it was close to three o’clock, the household dinner hour.

“Well,” Sylvia said impatiently, reading over my shoulder. “Does she leave the stage and pledge herself to the faithless one?”

I considered Sylvia’s question, replacing my pen in its tray. “She must, else there is no story, I fear. But it will not end happily.”

“Claude will love another,” Sylvia guessed, leaning forward eagerly.

“He will be absolutely unreliable,” I admitted. “But Beatrice will have her revenge.”

“How exciting, Louisa!”

“Do you think so, Sylvia? Is it, perhaps, too exciting?”

“Could there be such a thing as too exciting?”

I scratched my nose, leaving a smudge of ink behind, one of my bad habits, I’m afraid. I contemplated the quality of my writing. It was all blood and thunder. My natural ambition was, I suppose, for the lurid style. I could not help but indulge in gorgeous fancies. Perhaps there was no other way for me to write, I thought as I straightened the manuscript pages into a neat pile. Yet there was this impulse, deep inside, to tell a true story, not a fancy.

Even then, before I had published my first work, I sensed what would ultimately be the real value of my work. But that day there were three manuscripts on my desk:
The Flower Fables,
little stories I invented for the Emerson children and was now working into a children’s book; my true short story, “How I Went Out to Service”; and my tale of Beatrice and Therese, which I had just named as “The Rival Prima Donnas.” None had yet been published. Next to “How I Went Out to Service” was a rejection letter. I hadn’t anticipated how much pain a simple envelope could carry. The rejection had suggested—no, stated—that I should pay more attention to domestic duties, as I had no talent as a writer. The story was one of my first “real” stories about real people, rather than inventions such as Beatrice and her fickle lover, Claude. In fact, it was about me, and the rejection had a double sting to
it, for it was my life, my experience that was rejected, as well as the story.

That name Josephine, though. That was not a blood-and-thunder name, nor was it a fairy name for the
Fables
. The name conjured up a fleeting image. A young woman, a character who sprawled on rugs rather than sitting primly in chairs, a woman who cherished books over new bonnets and rich husbands. Was this too ordinary a character for a novel? What would she say if she spoke? The seed that bloomed into Josephine took root that day . . . but I get ahead of myself.

Whilst some authors complain that they cannot work without perfect solitude, at this stage in my life I found being with Sylvia Shattuck more natural and more helpful than being alone. We had been friends since childhood, and we had arrived at that wonderful, intimate stage in which words are often unnecessary, so well does one know the other. Of a far less humble background than I, Sylvia was able to enjoy the frivolity that comes with wealth. Unlike so many members of “society,” however, she possessed a deep conscience and dedication to help those less fortunate, and, for this and her sweetness, my parents had accepted her into the bosom of our family. “She can’t help that she was born wealthy,” Father often said, in the same tone in which another person might say,
He can’t help that he was born lame,
or mute, or some other inescapable and unearned defect of nature.

And so Sylvia was allowed into my attic workroom. When Sylvia and I were alone, and not working for the poor, for women abandoned by their husbands, or for children desperate to learn, she helped me be less serious and indulge my fancies, my whims, my creativity. Looking back, I am certain
that Sylvia was something of an inspiration for me. But I often wondered how we could be frivolous—even silly—when there was so much injustice in the world. Was it that Sylvia and I valued each other not for the fancies and fantasies we indulged, but for what was most subtle in the other’s character, for that mysterious promise of what could be?

“What could be,” I repeated aloud.

“Another gorgeous fancy?” Sylvia asked. Seeing the look on my face, she said, “Are you thinking again of that letter? You must not let it discourage you. Your writing is marvelous and success will come.”

“Sylvia, you are a friend. Meanwhile I write my blood-and-thunders filled with moonlight in Rome, adulteresses with flashing black eyes, madwomen locked in attics, when real life needs to be written. If Father ever read this . . .” I riffled the pages on the desk.

“Now, Louy, you know your father never reads anything more entertaining than
Pilgrim’s Progress
. And you may publish those
Flower Fables,
that sweet collection.”

“Yes. A children’s book. Closer to life, I hope.”

“Louisa! Sylvia! It is almost time!” my mother’s voice called up the narrow stairway.

I carefully placed the manuscript in a drawer, leaving Beatrice to her fate, and locked the drawer. I extinguished the lamp, for the attic was dark even in the afternoon, and stood.

“We must go, Sylvia. Time to face the terrible siblings and the Medusa.”

“Poor Dottie,” Sylvia said, also rising.

Dear reader, I must now explain this profusion of friends.
Mr. Hawthorne, in one of his calmer moments a few years before, had patiently explained to me the importance of pacing, of allowing the characters time to speak, to be known by the reader, before introducing the next. “Think of it as a play,” he had instructed, knowing I was stagestruck in my teens. “Characters appear one at a time, or in couples. Never all at once.”

Suffice it to say that before Sylvia became my sole close companion (for as much as I loved my younger sisters, Lizzie and May, they were too young for the adult conversations I had shared with Anna when she was at home), Dottie had also been a close companion. She had, the year before, married Sylvia’s cousin, Preston Wortham, and embarked on a honeymoon visit to the capitals of Europe. For months Sylvia and I had speculated on Dottie’s daily activities (her visit to Italy had inspired me to place my heroines in peril throughout the Apennines and along the Bay of Naples), and the tea party was our first chance to see her since her return to Boston. Unfortunately, as a price of seeing our friend, Sylvia and I would be forced to endure a visit with Dottie’s sisters, and her aunt, a formidable creature we had nicknamed “the Medusa.”

Mother waited for us at the bottom of the attic stairs, a basket of just-baked rolls in her hands.

“Bring these for Dottie,” she said. “She always liked my raisin cakes. Just imagine, Dottie is a married woman now. Seems like just yesterday she was still in short skirts and afraid of the dark.”

“Oh, Abba, with all you have to do,” Sylvia said, accepting the basket and giving my mother a kiss on the cheek. Like all of us, Sylvia called Mrs. Bronson Alcott by the familiar name, Abba, short for Abigail. Mother usually had high spirits,
but today she looked tired and worn. We worried that she bore too much responsibility on those frail shoulders. Yet she remained my rock, my deepest support in times of difficulty.

“A year seems a long time for a young woman to be away from home and friends.” Abba sighed. “These new customs. Why, after your father and I married at King’s Chapel we went back to his room at the boardinghouse, and after supper he wrote his lecture for the next day of school. We didn’t make such a fuss of things.”

“You and Father are the exception to all customs,” I said, smiling.

“But to invite you for tea instead of supper,” said Abba. “Well, it is time. Send Dottie my love.”

In my mind’s eye, I can still see us rushing out of the house, two pairs of neat, high-buttoned shoes clacking over the wooden floor and down the stairs, and our black cloaks making the whooshing sound of heavy flannel as we dressed for outdoors. I dashed out, chiming the doorbell as I left, both of us laughing with nervousness, dreading the ordeal to come.

Mother, with her housecap askew on her graying hair, waved from an upstairs window and shouted, “Louy, remember to bring back a cake of laundry soap. Now hurry along, or you’ll be late! Don’t keep Dottie waiting!”

“Oh, true and tender guide, we will not forget the soap!” I waved back a farewell. “And we won’t keep Dottie—Mrs. Preston Wortham—waiting!”

Later, I would recall with great sadness the irony of those words.

About the Author

Anna Maclean
is the pseudonym of Jeanne Mackin, an award-winning journalist and the author of several historical novels. She lives in the Finger Lakes area of New York with her husband, artist and writer Stephen Poleskie. Visit her Web site at
www.annamaclean.net
.