March (13 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Bread and Shelter

If a man is to lose his fortune, it is a good thing if he were poor before he acquired it, for poverty requires aptitude. Lucky for me that I knew how to wield an adz and a hoe long before I learned to read a ledger book or negotiate a contract.

While it was true that as newlyweds we lived without ostentation in the home I established in Concord, it is also true that we lived entirely without want. My mission was to provide Marmee with complete liberty of mind so that she might tend to her twin passions-the education of our little women and the cause of abolition-without having to trouble about the least detail of housekeeping. For we had not long passed a year of blissful absorption in our golden Meg than our dark, lusty little Josephine-the image of her mother-arrived to join her.

Marmee’s father had moved in with us, bringing with him his long-time housekeeper, Hannah Mullet. She was a capable soul but crude in her perceptions of what a home might be. I imagined a seminary of society, a place of calm, beauty, and order. At first, Hannah saw the chef, the valet, and the nursery maid I employed as usurpers in her realm, but her grumbling ebbed as Mr. Day’s decline demanded more of her, and she was glad to have the extra time to devote to his care.

Marmee, for her part, chided me that the large staff left her little more to do in a practical way than “tend her pocket handkerchief.” Sometimes, when I came upon her by Jo’s crib, humming some movement from a Beethoven symphony that was by no means a soothing lullaby, or rolling on the grass in some wild tussling play with little Meg, I recalled our first private conversation in her brother’s house and teased her, asking if she had determined yet which of the girls was to be the famous author and which the renowned artist.

In the months that had followed our marriage I quietly conspired to build beauty into our daily life. The house I had purchased was large but charmless. By ordering the removal of a partition here and a set of folding doors there, a pair of boxy sitting rooms became a generous parlor through which light spilled even on the grayest of days. Old ovens and ash holes I had converted into graceful arched alcoves; gradually, and with not a little tact, I replaced the conventional and undistinguished furniture that Mr. Day had gifted us with items of more elegance and lineage. A table of polished elm found its way into the dining room; a set of sofas covered in French silk graced the parlor. I also put in place an ambitious scheme for the garden. It is a pleasure to complete the design of Nature by adding something to the landscape, rather than merely denuding it for the production of fuel and fodder. I extended the stables and added a ring so that our daughters might learn to ride at the earliest opportunity. Along our boundary walls I started espaliered fruit trees-apple, plum, and pear. Because we stood at the foot of a steep slope, I had this terraced and created upon the levels a number of different styles of planting. Some acres I left quite wild, a refuge for the birds and small beasts and pollinating insects. Upon others I devised parterres of a classic formality. I started climbing roses over bowers and devised a pleasance for the children by the brookside. Under the cover of all these improvements made for enjoyment and elegance, I also undertook, in secret, the conversion of an attic stairway to something resembling a “priest’s hole” of medieval times. When it was completed, I brought Marmee upstairs and showed her how an innocent-seeming wainscot concealed our new “railway station,” where a fugitive could rest, in comfort and safety, for as many days as might be needed. Her delight in this exceeded her pleasure in all my other improvements combined.

Freed from the quotidian, Marmee and I spent our first years together most profitably: she would lead me through the hidden paths and byways around Concord that had been her childhood haunts, teaching me to know my new place. In turn, I tried to teach her something about her new place, giving her to understand, with gentle hints and loving guidance, that what might be considered lapses born of high spirits in a young maiden were in no way proper in one who was now a mother and a wife. And just as some of the ways she showed me were stony and bramble-thatched, so, too, did we stumble, from time to time, in our progress upon that other difficult road. But we pressed on, growing in intimacy with each other, and then with those others whom we were most fortunate to call neighbors.

Waldo Emerson was by no means the closed and aloof figure I had conceived him upon our first meeting. At the risk of self flattery, I can say that he came to value my opinions upon the ideas of our time. Before very long it was unusual if we did not spend part of every other day in company and close discussion. Marmee was delighted when Mr. Emerson began to be more outspoken, indeed, passionately eloquent, on the subject of emancipation, and was inclined to take a little credit for the change. But I think the Thoreaus had a greater, if quieter, share of influence there, especially Henry, through his unusual intimacy with Lidian Emerson. Waldo’s wife was the one adult with whom Henry was never awkward or reserved, and to her children he could not have been more affectionate if they had been his own. With my girls, too, he was considerate and interested, and as soon as they were conversible, he elected himself their unofficial tutor in the ways of the natural world and became, perforce, our daily intimate. He delighted to take Meg and Jo into the woods to observe the life within. It was not all science with him: a row of orange fungus was an elven staircase, a cobweb the fairies’ lace handkin.

It was a constant wonder to me that a man who could be abrupt to the point of unkindness with adults had nothing but gentleness and patience for children. One day, he arrived at the door, suggesting to the girls a huckleberry-gathering expedition. I, restless from a morning of quill pushing, decided to accompany them. Henry was a master for such a mission, for he knew with an unerring sense exactly where every variety of the berry might be found, and so could give the little ones swift success in their hunt. Jo had amassed quite a creditable harvest when she tripped on a tree root and fell, spilling the entire contents of her basket. She set up such a howling as would have driven beasts to ground and set the birds aflight throughout the wood. Even then, Jo was showing signs of her mother’s volatile temper, and Marmee absolutely refused to bridle Jo’s outbursts, saying that the world would crush her spirit soon enough. We had exchanged sharp words on the matter, and I was glad that Marmee was not there when I chided Jo and asked her to control herself. My words, however, were to no avail. Meg tried her sisterly best, kindly offered her a share of her own gathered berries, but Jo would have none of it.
Her
berries were lost, and no other berry might replace them.

Thoreau knelt down then and put his massive arm around the tiny heaving shoulders. “Dear little Jo, you could not help but fall just here: Nature’s own fairy folk tripped you up a-purpose. They want little girls to stumble now and then to sow the berries for the next crop. Next year when we come here we will find a grand garth of bushes laden with berries on this very spot, and we will owe them all to you.” At this, Jo’s little mouth ceased trembling and the lips turned upward again in a smile of pride and pleasure.

When Marmee confided that a third child would soon join us, I rejoiced in the news, all the more so as her poor ailing father was finally released from his suffering within a month of the confinement, and it seemed apt that the sweet spirit who is our Elizabeth should arrive from heaven as our consolation.

If Marmee had been ardent in her abolitionism before the birth of her children, their coming into our lives set her on fire. I came upon her one day, nursing little Beth, with Jo curled up asleep, pressed against her lap, and Meg making an imaginary tea party at her feet. It was a delightful scene of maternal tranquillity, except that my wife’s shoulders shook and her face was wet with tears. I came up to her and gently inquired as to the source of her distress, thinking that the fatigue of the new mother and the death of her dear father perhaps had combined to oppress her spirit.

“No,” she sobbed, when I probed her. “I am thinking of the slave mother. How can I sit here, enjoying the comfort of my babes, when somewhere in this wicked land
her
child is being torn from her arms?”

My passionate wife had an uncommon ability to feel within herself what others must be feeling. Sometimes, harsh upon her own nature, she would refer disparagingly to this trait as her “morbid sympathy with human suffering.” At other times, she would use the power of her emotion as a spur to good works. But always she felt that what we did-the speeches, the occasional provision of overnight refuge to a runaway-was none of it enough. Sometimes, the ferocity of her views burst out in that same intemperate rage I had witnessed unleashed upon Mr. Emerson. It was the only cloud marring the amity of our union. I liked it very little when I was the object; even less when it was aimed at one of our intimates.

My wasp of an aunt was, understandably, no great favorite with Marmee, but for my sake she bore a certain amount of forced intimacy. I required this of her because my dear uncle was, that winter, in the last stages of a long illness, and I felt-correctly, as it happened-that he would not be with us come the spring. There was something poignant in watching the old man, who had not had children of his own, sporting with our young ones. Jo, especially, took his fancy, for even before she could read, our writer-to-be was drawn to books. My uncle had a fine library, and he allowed Jo great liberty, letting her build railways and bridges even with his rare volumes. When she wearied of this, he would fetch down an interesting old folio with lavish plates and beckon her onto his lap. It was a pleasure to see Jo perched in the crook of his arm, her dark head nestling against his wattled neck as he turned each page.

It was just such a convivial scene that Marmee’s temper marred one Sunday’s teatime very near to the end of my uncle’s life. I had mentioned that we planned to attend a lecture that same evening, to be addressed by John Brown, who was visiting Concord for the first time. Aunt March, always forthright in her opinions, stated that she found Mr. Brown’s views extreme, and that she herself would never think of attending an address by one so radical. She was not alone in Concord in viewing Brown so; rumors about wild Old Brown had him sleeping with a dagger in his teeth and a pistol for a pillow. “I have always considered,” Aunt March said, in the proud Boston accent she affected, “that slavery is more a matter for prayer than protest. Preferably,” she intoned, peering meaningfully over her half glasses at my voluble wife, “silent prayer.”

Marmee’s anger unsheathed itself Her voice became cutting. “Why, I believe you would decline to keep company with that notorious radical, Jesus, were he to appear in Concord!”

My teacup rattled in my hand. Aunt March’s eyes narrowed. I placed my index finger on my lips-a signal we had agreed upon-when Marmee, remorseful after just such another outburst, had asked me to help her curb her temper. Though she looked straight at me, and could not have missed the gesture, she chose to ignore it. “You are,” she hissed at my aunt, “incapable of appreciating a moral argument.” It was not her words-though these were hostile enough-but the manner in which she uttered them. I cannot recount all she said-my own nature is such that I would repress all memory of such exchanges-but insult followed slur, leaving no room for the attacked party to answer. At such times I thought I would rather live in the midst of a crashing thunderhead than with this Fury of a wife. Aunt March, who had herself no great claims upon an even temper, had turned quite purple.

My uncle, who had many more years of experience than I in averting such scenes, clapped a hand to his breast. Jo slid from his lap, looking up at him anxiously. “I am unwell,” he said, rising unsteadily. “Would you excuse me?” He was, in fact, quite gray in the face, and I felt a stab of my own real anger at my wife, that her outburst should add to his afflictions. Uncle March reached for his wife’s mottled hand, which was trembling with rage. “My dear, would you mind? I need your assistance.” Much against her own inclination, for she was never one to shirk a skirmish, Aunt March gave her husband her arm and the two made unsteady progress toward the door. I did not wait for any further hint, but swept an arm around my own wife’s waist and propelled her from the premises. My idea was to walk off her temper, thinking that the brisk winter air would cool her. But I thought we might have to march to Boston and back before she managed to regain her self-command.

Eventually, she calmed, and we made our way to the town hall to hear the divisive speaker. There were more than one hundred citizens gathered there, no doubt interested, as I was, to lay eyes on the man of whom we had read so much. The hall was ill lit; a few oil lanterns cast sharp shadows on Brown’s severe visage as he made his way to the podium. He was, in type, a true frontiersman. I assumed that this must be an impression he deliberately cultivated, since he wore, upon his arrival at the hall, a coonskin cap. Later, I learned that he was entirely unaware of his own person, and that the cap, made from furs his sons had hunted and his daughters had sewn, was a product of his necessitous circumstances. He shrugged off a heavy woolen military overcoat, revealing square shoulders and sinewy arms formed by long days of land clearing and the other physical toil necessary to establishing himself and his large brood in the harsh landscape of the Adirondacks.

He must have been approaching his fifties. But he had a younger man’s energy, all held in tight reserve. The word that occurred to me was
couchant:
ready to spring at the least rustle in the grass. To continue the predator analogy, his nose was huge and beaked like a rap-tor’s. His eyes, too, were eaglelike; his rufous hair, silvering at the temples, shot backward from a low point on a large brow deeply scored with lines.

Brown knew his audience. He began his oration with a nod to the town’s proud history, commenting on the great justice of what had been done here in 1776; not only, indeed, its justice, but also its inevitability. His argument proceeded then in easy steps to assert that a war to end slavery was equally inevitable. “I tell you this,” he declaimed, “the two most sacred documents known to man are the Bible and the Declaration of Independence. Better that a whole generation of men, women, and children should pass away by violent death than that a word of either should be violated in this country!” This drew a scattering of applause, although not from me. I was not so profligate with the lives of women and children as he. I glanced at Marmee, but instead of the disapprobation I expected, her black eyes were warm and approving. Here, then, was a man intemperate as she, a man whose measure matched her own. Lifting up his voice, Brown proclaimed that he had
no doubt
it would be right, in opposing slavery, not only to accept a violent death, but also to kill. I felt my face settle into a scowl at this. If there is one class of person I have never quite trusted, it is a man who knows no doubt.