The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (10 page)

May nodded. “This scene takes place in the parlor of a public house or roadside inn called the Crooked Billet. Patty and Lady Somerford enter first.” May handed the script to Anna. She and Margaret stepped forward. Margaret assumed the posture she imagined to be a staple of the genteel class, though Louisa observed that she looked rather like she’d injured her neck.

Patty Pottle spoke first.
“It’s all safe, my lady. There’s nobody down here, and mother and John are down in the cellar bottling cider.”
Anna passed the script to Margaret.

“Yes, my lady, our man—he—he—would try to . . .”
Anna stared at the page, blinking furiously. Nicholas examined the skin around his thumb. Anna rushed quietly through the remainder of the line.
“
. . .
kiss me, my lady . . . and I ran away and he ran after me, and somehow or another, I lost it, my lady
.
”

“Anna—” Louisa broke in, oblivious, as usual, to subtexts of any sort, particularly those of the romantic variety. She took her role as director very seriously. “You must speak up.”

Anna nodded, her cheeks flushed. Louisa noticed their color, and, as she glanced at Nicholas, it dawned on her why her sister was losing her nerve. “Cast, let me explain a little more about what is happening in this scene,” she said, turning the attention away from the skittish pair for a moment. “Lady Somerford is fretting over this lost note. Sir Richard is a possessive and powerful man”—Joseph straightened his shoulders and tipped his chin in the air—“and he already suspects the Lady’s love is not true. The lost note was meant to reach Major Murray and urge him come to the Crooked Billet at eight o’clock so the lovers might safely meet. But Lady Somerford fears that if Sir Richard happens upon the note, it will confirm his suspicions.”

“And he intends to challenge the Major to a duel if he finds out about the affair?” Margaret asked.

Louisa shook her head. “It’s not only her secret affair that she means to protect. The Major is an accused Jacobite. Only Sir Richard can pardon him and spare his life, but he’d speed the Major to the executioner if he had an atom of proof that the Lady loves him.”

May shimmied with excitement. “This sounds
very
romantic!”

Nicholas cleared his throat, summoning his nerve. “May I ask you to summarize the plot surrounding John Duck and Patty?” Anna appeared to chomp down on the insides of her cheeks.

“Well, John works for Patty’s mother, helping out around the inn since her husband died. John is in love with Patty”—Margaret gave Anna’s forearm a furtive pat—“but because he hasn’t any money, her mother won’t let her marry him. So Patty won’t own that she loves him and he makes a fool of himself again and again to win her affections. Soon, the widow—that’s me—agrees to consider the marriage
if
John can come up with a sum of one hundred pounds. The widow believes, of course, that it will be an impossible task and Patty will be rid of him forever.”

May gave a little gasp. “Does he get the money? Does he win her in the end?”

“We shall see,” said Louisa, who was fond of a little suspense. As she was drawn in to rehearsing the first scene, long moments passed in which she could scarcely hear the incessant voice in her head urging her toward Boston and freedom.

 

 

 

T
he following Saturday afternoon, Louisa sat at a narrow table in the sweltering attic room she shared with Anna. Bronson had gone to the village store, apparently poised to withstand the endless pontification of the locals if they would let him sit all day without buying anything. The Alcott women had been invited to lunch with Eliza Wells, Abba’s niece, who was the object of much sympathy amongst the town’s women. It was well known that Eliza’s father was partial to drink, and between his episodes and her husband’s ragged temper, she was rarely able to leave the house. Abba urged the girls to come along and try to cheer her, but Louisa was always keen to get an afternoon to herself—no interruptions, no guilt for reading while the others dutifully washed and sewed and baked—and so she asked to stay behind. They didn’t mind granting her request. It was a relief sometimes to leave their moody, pensive sister behind with her thoughts and conduct their social lives in peace.

Once a week the stores in town stocked the newspapers from New York, and occasionally Bronson brought them home. Louisa had the previous week’s edition of the
New York Daily-Times
spread open on the tabletop. She skimmed the page for notices about
Leaves of Grass,
but this edition carried no news of the book. Despite herself, she loved to read about the outrageous crimes of passion sometimes reported—a woman in a jealous rage confronts her husband’s mistress and they both end up dead; a man kidnaps his child to save her from spending her childhood with a heartless mother. As she searched for the scandalous details, an article caught her eye.

Louisa leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, imagining herself sitting in the front row of that crowded room on Broadway. Like everyone else in America—and England, for that matter—the Alcotts had followed the story of Fanny Kemble’s divorce and emancipation, which unfolded throughout Louisa’s teenage years.

The Kemble family had dominated the British stage for generations. Fanny’s mother, father, aunt, and uncle built livelihoods and fame on Shakespeare’s plays, and when her father’s share in the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden looked like it might be in danger, he thrust his twenty-year-old daughter onto the stage. From then on she bounced back and forth between London and New York, living in a hotel with her parents while she was performing away from home. It was well known that Fanny found America to be a little less refined than her native country, though she loved to ride her horse along the Hudson River north out of New York City. An incident at the Park Theater amused her American fans, who liked to see British visitors’ delicate sensibilities challenged by what the Brits still thought of as the frontier. During a quiet soliloquy, a rat emerged from a hole in the stage floor and scampered through the orchestra pit, eliciting quite a scream from poor Fanny.

Fanny’s romantic life caused great speculation amongst Louisa and her sisters. She had many admirers, but one in particular finally convinced her that becoming his wife offered more happiness than a life on the stage. Pierce Butler was the son of wealthy landowners who lived in Philadelphia, and the grandson of one of the founding fathers, his namesake. After they married, Pierce inherited his family’s sea-island cotton and rice plantations in Georgia, and he took Fanny there to live. To the satisfaction of New England abolitionists like Bronson, Fanny was appalled when she saw firsthand the conditions under which the slaves lived and suffered. She found in her conscience that she was opposed to slavery and began to write about her beliefs.

The drama continued to fill the papers when she publicly implored her husband to consider the morality of enslaving fellow human beings, but he refused to be swayed and began to regret having married a woman with so fiery a personality. She agitated the situation further by writing an anti-slavery treatise with descriptions of what she had witnessed on the plantation. Pierce resented her insolence and forbade her to publish it. Eventually, she left the plantation for England to return to the stage, leaving her daughters behind with their father. It was this final act of independence that prompted Pierce to file for divorce. Louisa never forgot the press statement Pierce made, in which he explained that the relationship had failed because of Fanny’s peculiar view that marriage should be “companionship on equal terms.”

What Louisa really admired was Fanny’s determination to go on after the marriage dissolved. She worked and traveled, she made her own money, and she lived her life independently, on her own terms. To Louisa, Fanny’s view of marriage was not brazen and shocking but simply logical—not to mention the only guiding philosophy under which both parties could expect to find happiness. But rather than encourage Louisa to look for a husband with enlightened views, Fanny’s experience seemed to prove the impossibility of equality in marriage.

 

 

A sweating glass of cold tea
sat beside the newspaper and Louisa’s open journal on the table. She always kept a stack of paper and an inkwell nearby just in case a lightning bolt of a thought struck. It was known to happen, and then she’d be off again into her vortex, where she could work without stopping for days on end, to the point of total exhaustion. The fantasy of imagined characters and events gave her a kind of temporary euphoria. She couldn’t choose when to enter that furious state, so she had to be ready to seize it when it flashed by, like a runaway carriage headed for the Commons.

She took up
Leaves of Grass
once again, though she knew soon she would have to slip it back onto her father’s desk or risk being caught with it and having to explain. The room was sweltering and the pages clung to her damp fingertips. She had read the volume straight through once and had begun again that morning. Now she reached the end of the first poem:
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, / Missing me one place search another, /I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Suddenly she heard a soft tapping on the first-floor window. She had every intention of pretending not to hear, so she rose and moved carefully toward the window, shifting the new drapery to the side ever so slightly. It was Joseph Singer.

Louisa froze, her hand still on the fabric. Should she answer the door? No one else was home, and surely he wanted to see Anna. Just as she’d resolved to slink back to her desk and wait for him to go away, he looked up and grinned at her figure in the window.

She reluctantly descended the stairs, drawing her sleeve across her damp forehead before opening the door.

“Good afternoon, Miss Louisa.”

“Hello, Joseph. We weren’t expecting you.”

“I hope you don’t mind.”

She clutched the door with both hands, willing her nerves away from her tongue and into her fingers. “Oh, of course not. But everyone is out. Anna is with my mother and sisters at our cousin’s for lunch. I know she will be disappointed that she missed your visit.”

Joseph smiled, amused by how flustered she was. “It’s always a pleasure to see your sister, and I hope you’ll tell her I said so. But I didn’t come to see Anna. I came to see you.”

Louisa processed this information through her sluggish brain. Perhaps he was coming to inquire after her sister’s feelings. Should she tell him that Anna seemed to favor Nicholas Sutton, at least for the moment?

“Would it be all right if I came inside? I’m likely to melt out here.”

“Of course! Oh, forgive me,” she said, throwing open the door. “Please, come in.”

The skin of his temples was pink and his eyes were bright. The heat from outside wafted in after him. Louisa tried to think of what she was supposed to do next.

“If you don’t mind,” Joseph began, “I would love something cold to drink.”

“Of course!” Louisa knew she was going to have to calm down if she had any hope of carrying on a conversation with him. She felt at any moment she might take wing and crash right through the glass of the front window.
What has come over me?
she thought, angry at herself. Over the years she’d received plenty of her father’s friends, and Abba had trained her well on the duties of a hostess. Perhaps she had felt shy in the presence of some of these men, like Mr. Emerson, who seemed to her like royalty. But never before had she found herself so . . .
flustered
by anyone.

She handed him the cold tea and they sat down on opposite ends of the horsehair sofa. His cheeky self-assurance seemed to have dissolved. He drank a few nervous sips and they sat in silence.

Joseph cleared his throat. “Do I remember your saying you will be leaving for Boston soon? We’ll all be awfully sorry to see you go.”

Louisa sat up straighter, folding her hands in her lap. “Yes, that’s right. Probably just another few weeks and I’ll be on my way.”

“And you’ll go . . . all on your own?”

She disliked his tone; it seemed to question her willingness or determination to follow through with her plan. “Yes, alone. Freedom and independence—that is my aim. Nothing else means anything to me.”

He clamped his lips closed and nodded, chastened. She checked the pride in her voice and decided to change the subject. Louisa had watched Anna fill awkward social pauses with tidbits of gossip. “My mother told me this morning that Samuel Parker has proposed to our friend Margaret and she has accepted,” she said.