The Annotated Little Women

by Louisa May Alcott

  “Use the chicken then, the toughness won’t matter in a salad,” advised his wife.

  “Hannah left it on the kitchen table a minute, and the kittens got at it. I’m very sorry, Amy,” added Beth, who was still a patroness of cats.

  Then, I must have a lobster, for tongue alone won’t do,” said Amy, decidedly.

  “Shall I rush into town and demand one?” asked Jo, with the magnanimity of a martyr.

  “You’d come bringing it home under your arm, without any paper, just to try me. I’ll go myself,” answered Amy, whose temper was beginning to fail.

  Shrouded in a thick veil, and armed with a genteel travelling-basket, she departed, feeling that a cool drive would soothe her ruffled spirit, and fit her for the labors of the day. After some delay, the object of her desire was procured, likewise a bottle of dressing, to prevent further loss of time at home, and off she drove again, well pleased with her own forethought.

  As the omnibus contained only one other passenger, a sleepy old lady, Amy pocketed her veil, and beguiled the tedium of the way by trying to find out where all her money had gone to. So busy was she with her card full of refractory figures that she did not observe a newcomer, who entered without stopping the vehicle, till a masculine voice said, “Good morning, Miss March,” and looking up she beheld one of Laurie’s most elegant college friends. Fervently hoping that he would get out before she did, Amy utterly ignored the basket at her feet, and congratulating herself that she had on her new travelling dress, returned the young man’s greeting with her usual suavity and spirit.

  They got on excellently; for Amy’s chief care was soon set at rest, by learning that the gentleman would leave first, and she was chatting away in a peculiarly lofty strain, when the old lady got out. In stumbling to the door, she upset the basket, and oh, horror! the lobster, in all its vulgar size and brilliancy, was revealed to the high-born eyes of a Tudor!

  “By Jove, she’s forgot her dinner!” cried the unconscious youth, poking the scarlet monster into its place with his cane, and preparing to hand out the basket after the old lady.

  “Please don’t—it’s—it’s mine,” murmured Amy, with a face nearly as red as her fish.

  “Oh, really, I beg pardon; it’s an uncommonly fine one, isn’t it?” said Tudor, with great presence of mind, and an air of sober interest that did credit to his breeding.

  Amy recovered herself in a breath, set her basket boldly on the seat, and said, laughing,—

  “Don’t you wish you were to have some of the salad he’s to make, and to see the charming young ladies who are to eat it?”

  Now that was tact, for two of the ruling foibles of the masculine mind were touched; the lobster was instantly surrounded by a halo of pleasing reminiscences, and curiosity about “the charming young ladies” diverted his mind from the comical mishap.

  “I suppose he’ll laugh and joke over it with Laurie, but I shan’t see them; that’s a comfort,” thought Amy, as Tudor bowed and departed.

  She did not mention this meeting at home (though she discovered that, thanks to the upset, her new dress was much damaged by the rivulets of dressing that meandered down the skirt), but went through with the preparations which now seemed more irksome than before; and at twelve o’clock all was ready again. Feeling that the neighbors were interested in her movements, she wished to efface the memory of yesterday’s failure by a grand success to-day; so she ordered the “cherry-bounce,” and drove away in state to meet and escort her guests to the banquet.

  “There’s the rumble, they’re coming! I’ll go into the porch to meet them; it looks hospitable, and I want the poor child to have a good time after all her trouble,” said Mrs. March, suiting the action to the word. But after one glance, she retired with an indescribable expression, for, looking quite lost in the big carriage, sat Amy and one young lady.

  “Run, Beth, and help Hannah clear half the things off the table; it will be too absurd to put a luncheon for twelve before a single girl,” cried Jo, hurrying away to the lower regions, too excited to stop even for a laugh.

  In came Amy, quite calm, and delightfully cordial to the one guest who had kept her promise; the rest of the family, being of a dramatic turn, played their parts equally well, and Miss Eliott found them a most hilarious set; for it was impossible to entirely control the merriment which possessed them. The remodelled lunch being gaily partaken of, the studio and garden visited, and art discussed with enthusiasm, Amy ordered a buggy (alas for the elegant cherry-bounce!) and drove her friend quietly about the neighborhood till sunset, when “the party went out.”

  As she came walking in, looking very tired, but as composed as ever, she observed that every vestige of the unfortunate fête had disappeared, except a suspicious pucker about the corners of Jo’s mouth.

  “You’ve had a lovely afternoon for your drive, dear,” said her mother, as respectfully as if the whole twelve had come.

  “Miss Eliott is a very sweet girl, and seemed to enjoy herself, I thought,” observed Beth, with unusual warmth.

  “Could you spare me some of your cake? I really need some, I have so much company, and I can’t make such delicious stuff as yours,” asked Meg, soberly.

  “Take it all; I’m the only one here who likes sweet things, and it will mould before I can dispose of it,” answered Amy, thinking with a sigh of the generous store she had laid in for such an end as this!

  “It’s a pity Laurie isn’t here to help us,” began Jo, as they sat down to ice-cream and salad for the fourth time in two days.

  A warning look from her mother checked any further remarks, and the whole family ate in heroic silence, till Mr. March mildly observed, “Salad was one of the favorite dishes of the ancients, and Evelyn”—here a general explosion of laughter cut short the “history of sallets,”13 to the great surprise of the learned gentleman.

  “Bundle everything into a basket, and send it to the Hummels—Germans like messes. I’m sick of the sight of this; and there’s no reason you should all die of a surfeit because I’ve been a fool,” cried Amy, wiping her eyes.

  “I thought I should have died when I saw you two girls rattling about in the what-you-call-it, like two little kernels in a very big nutshell, and mother waiting in state to receive the throng,” sighed Jo, quite spent with laughter.

  “I’m very sorry you were disappointed, dear, but we all did our best to satisfy you,” said Mrs. March, in a tone full of motherly regret.

  “I am satisfied; I’ve done what I undertook, and it’s not my fault that it failed; I comfort myself with that,” said Amy, with a little quiver in her voice. “I thank you all very much for helping me, and I’ll thank you still more, if you won’t allude to it for a month, at least.”

  No one did for several months; but the word “fête” always produced a general smile, and Laurie’s birthday gift to Amy was a tiny coral lobster in the shape of a charm for her watch-guard.

  1. moulding board. A breadboard.

  2. Bacchus. Bacchus, the Roman equivalent of Dionysus, the god of wine and drunkenness, is an apt decoration for a beer barrel.

  3. Amy fell to painting with undiminished ardor. May Alcott filled Orchard House with her artwork, even drawing and painting on the walls. Author and family friend Lydia Maria Child observed, “Gradually the artist-daughter filled up all the nooks and corners with panels on which she had painted birds, or flowers; and over the open fire-places she painted mottoes in ancient English characters. Owls blink at you, and faces peep from the most unexpected places. . . . The walls are covered with choice engravings, and paintings by the artist-daughter” (Shealy, ed., Alcott in Her Own Time, p. 22).

  4. Murillo. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–82) was a Spanish Baroque painter, much admired for his religious canvases.

  5. Rembrandt . . . Rubens; and Turner. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) was the foremost Dutch painter of the seventeenth century. Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) was a great Flemish painter perhaps best known for his fleshy, volu
ptuous nudes. The English Romantic landscape painter J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) was to have special significance in the artistic career of May Alcott. While studying art in Europe, May executed a number of excellent copies of Turner paintings. According to the famous sculptor Daniel Chester French, the renowned English art critic John Ruskin, whose monumental study Modern Painters was largely devoted to Turner, declared May Alcott’s copies “the best reproductions of Turner’s works that had ever been done” (Caroline Ticknor, May Alcott, p. xxi).

  6. as Michael Angelo affirms. Although the quotation “Genius is eternal patience” is widely attributed to Michelangelo, its actual source has proven elusive.

  7. “Maria Theresa air.” The Empress Maria Theresa (1717–80) ruled over Austria, Hungary, Croatia, and numerous other domains from the 1740s until her death. In comparing Marmee to the empress, the March sisters both emphasize and poke gentle fun at their mother’s regal dignity.

  8. “the ugly duckling turned out a swan you know.” The modern fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling” was written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75) and first appeared in 1843.

  9. “cherry-bounce.” (Hannah’s pronunciation of char-a-banc.) Deriving from a French phrase meaning “carriage with wooden benches,” the charabanc was a horse-drawn vehicle, often though not always open-topped. It was a popular conveyance for sightseeing excursions. The fact that the malapropism “cherry-bounce” is ascribed to Hannah, not Amy, subtly suggests that the latter is becoming more mature and precise in her language.

  10. salts and senna. Epsom salts and senna leaves were administered as a laxative. Their taste is bitter, unpleasant, and capable of inducing nausea.

  11. Mrs. Grundy. Mrs. Grundy appears in English playwright Thomas Morton’s 1798 comedy Speed the Plough. Her name has become a synonym for prudishness and excessive propriety.

  12. “Nil desperandum.” A Latin phrase meaning, “Don’t despair.”

  13. “history of sallets.” The same month that saw the publication of Little Women, Part First, Bronson Alcott published a book he called Tablets. In it, Bronson makes historical and philosophical observations about the nature of various plants, including the curious assertion, “Lettuce has always been loyal” (A. Bronson Alcott, Tablets, p. 33). Mr. March’s abortive lecture on salads is very much in the spirit of Tablets. British diarist and gardener John Evelyn (1620–1706), whom Bronson cites in Tablets, wrote a book titled Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets, which prescribes uses for seventy-three different kinds of salad herbs.

  CHAPTER IV.

  Literary Lessons.

  FORTUNE suddenly smiled upon Jo, and dropped a good-luck penny in her path. Not a golden penny, exactly, but I doubt if half a million would have given more real happiness than did the little sum that came to her in this wise.

  Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and “fall into a vortex,” as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Her “scribbling suit” consisted of a black pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who, during these periods, kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally, to ask, with interest, “Does genius burn, Jo?” They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on; in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew, and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew; and not until the red bow1 was seen gaily erect upon the gifted brow, did any one dare address Jo.

  She did not think herself a genius2 by any means; but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh. Sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all too short to enjoy the happiness which blessed her only at such times, and made these hours worth living,3 even if they bore no other fruit. The divine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her “vortex” hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent.

  In this illustration by Alice Barber Stephens, Jo scribbles away in her room.

  She was just recovering from one of these attacks when she was prevailed upon to escort Miss Crocker to a lecture, and in return for her virtue was rewarded with a new idea. It was a People’s Course,4—the lecture on the Pyramids,—and Jo rather wondered at the choice of such a subject for such an audience, but took it for granted that some great social evil would be remedied, or some great want supplied by unfolding the glories of the Pharaohs, to an audience whose thoughts were busy with the price of coal and flour, and whose lives were spent in trying to solve harder riddles than that of the Sphinx.

  They were early; and while Miss Crocker set the heel of her stocking, Jo amused herself by examining the faces of the people who occupied the seat with them. On her left were two matrons with massive foreheads, and bonnets to match, discussing Woman’s Rights and making tatting. Beyond sat a pair of humble lovers artlessly holding each other by the hand, a sombre spinster eating peppermints out of a paper bag, and an old gentleman taking his preparatory nap behind a yellow bandanna. On her right, her only neighbor was a studious-looking lad absorbed in a newspaper.

  It was a pictorial sheet, and Jo examined the work of art nearest her, idly wondering what unfortuitous concatenation of circumstances needed the melodramatic illustration of an Indian in full war costume, tumbling over a precipice with a wolf at his throat, while two infuriated young gentlemen, with unnaturally small feet and big eyes, were stabbing each other close by, and a dishevelled female was flying away in the background, with her mouth wide open. Pausing to turn a page, the lad saw her looking, and, with boyish good-nature, offered half his paper, saying, bluntly, “Want to read it? That’s a first-rate story.”

  Jo accepted it with a smile, for she had never outgrown her liking for lads, and soon found herself involved in the usual labyrinth of love, mystery, and murder, for the story belonged to that class of light literature in which the passions have a holiday, and when the author’s invention fails, a grand catastrophe clears the stage of one-half the dramatis personæ, leaving the other half to exult over their downfall.

  “Prime, isn’t it?” asked the boy, as her eye went down the last paragraph of her portion.

  “I guess you and I could do most as well as that if we tried,” returned Jo, amused at his admiration of the trash.

  “I should think I was a pretty lucky chap if I could. She makes a good living out of such stories, they say;” and he pointed to the name of Mrs. S. L. A. N. G. Northbury,5 under the title of the tale.

  “Do you know her?” asked Jo, with sudden interest.

  “No; but I read all her pieces, and I know a fellow that works in the office where this paper is printed.”

  “Do you say she makes a good living out of stories like this?” and Jo looked more respectfully at the agitated group and thickly-sprinkled exclamation points that adorned the page.

  “Guess she does! she knows just what folks like, and gets paid well for writing it.”

  Here the lecture began, but Jo heard very little of it, for while Professor Sands was prosing away about Belzoni, Cheops, scarabei,6 and hieroglyphics, she was covertly taking down the address of the paper, and boldly resolving to try for the hundred dollar prize7 offered in its columns for a sensational story. By the time the lecture ended, and the audience awoke, she had built up a splendid fortune for herself (not the first founded upon paper), and was already deep in the concoction of her story, being unable
to decide whether the duel should come before the elopement or after the murder.

  She said nothing of her plan at home, but fell to work next day, much to the disquiet of her mother, who always looked a little anxious when “genius took to burning.” Jo had never tried this style before, contenting herself with very mild romances for the “Spread Eagle.” Her theatrical experience and miscellaneous reading were of service now, for they gave her some idea of dramatic effect, and supplied plot, language, and costumes. Her story was as full of desperation and despair as her limited acquaintance with those uncomfortable emotions enabled her to make it, and, having located it in Lisbon, she wound up with an earthquake,8 as a striking and appropriate denouement. The manuscript was privately despatched, accompanied by a note, modestly saying that if the tale didn’t get the prize, which the writer hardly dared expect, she would be very glad to receive any sum it might be considered worth.

  Alcott’s room on the second floor of Orchard House, where “genius burned” from 1858 to 1877. (Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association; photograph by James E. Coutré)

  Six weeks is a long time to wait, and a still longer time for a girl to keep a secret; but Jo did both, and was just beginning to give up all hope of ever seeing her manuscript again, when a letter arrived which almost took her breath away; for, on opening it, a check for a hundred dollars fell into her lap. For a minute she stared at it as if it had been a snake, then she read her letter, and began to cry. If the amiable gentleman who wrote that kindly note could have known what intense happiness he was giving a fellow creature, I think he would devote his leisure hours, if he has any, to that amusement; for Jo valued the letter more than the money, because it was encouraging; and after years of effort it was so pleasant to find that she had learned to do something, though it was only to write a sensation story.