The Annotated Little Women

by Louisa May Alcott

  “It is so beautiful to be loved as Laurie loves me; he isn’t sentimental; doesn’t say much about it, but I see and feel it in all he says and does, and it makes me so happy and so humble, that I don’t seem to be the same girl I was. I never knew how good, and generous, and tender he was till now, for he lets me read his heart, and I find it full of noble impulses, and hopes, and purposes, and am so proud to know it’s mine. He says he feels as if he ‘could make a prosperous voyage now with me aboard as mate, and lots of love for ballast.’12 I pray he may, and try to be all he believes me, for I love my gallant captain with all my heart, and soul, and might, and never will desert him, while God lets us be together. Oh, mother, I never knew how much like heaven this world could be, when two people love and live for one another!”

  “And that’s our cool, reserved, and worldly Amy! Truly love does work miracles. How very, very happy they must be!” and Jo laid the rustling sheets together with a careful hand, as one might shut the covers of a lovely romance, which holds the reader fast till the end comes, and he finds himself alone in the work-a-day world again.

  By and by, Jo roamed away upstairs, for it was rainy, and she could not walk. A restless spirit possessed her, and the old feeling came again, not bitter as it once was, but a sorrowfully patient wonder why one sister should have all she asked, the other nothing. It was not true; she knew that, and tried to put it away, but the natural craving for affection was strong, and Amy’s happiness woke the hungry longing for some one to “love with heart and soul, and cling to, while God let them be together.”

  Up in the garret, where Jo’s unquiet wanderings ended, stood four little wooden chests in a row, each marked with its owner’s name, and each filled with relics of the childhood and girlhood ended now for all. Jo glanced into them, and when she came to her own, leaned her chin on the edge, and stared absently at the chaotic collection, till a bundle of old exercise-books caught her eye. She drew them out, turned them over, and re-lived that pleasant winter at kind Mrs. Kirke’s. She had smiled at first, then she looked thoughtful, next sad, and when she came to a little message written in the Professor’s hand, her lips began to tremble, the books slid out of her lap, and she sat looking at the friendly words, as if they took a new meaning, and touched a tender spot in her heart.

  “Wait for me, my friend, I may be a little late, but I shall surely come.”

  “Oh, if he only would! So kind, so good, so patient with me always; my dear old Fritz, I didn’t value him half enough when I had him, but now how I should love to see him, for every one seems going away from me, and I’m all alone.”

  And holding the little paper fast, as if it were a promise yet to be fulfilled, Jo laid her head down on a comfortable rag-bag, and cried, as if in opposition to the rain pattering on the roof.

  Was it all self-pity, loneliness, or low spirits? or was it the waking up of a sentiment which had bided its time as patiently as its inspirer? Who shall say.

  1. hard work. Jo’s envy of Amy’s good fortune is rooted in Alcott’s occasional feelings of jealousy toward her youngest sister May. Alcott was proud of her younger sister. She often worked to support May’s art studies and was glad to do it. However, she also considered May “a lucky puss” who “gets what she wants easily,” while Alcott herself had to “grub for my help, or go without” (Louisa May Alcott, Journals, pp. 105, 100).

  2. moody, miserable state of mind. The death of Lizzie in March 1858, coupled with Anna’s engagement less than a month later, plunged Alcott into depression. That fall, feeling that “every one cared so little whether I . . . jumped in the river,” she went to the Mill Dam in Boston and gazed at the fetid water, contemplating suicide. However, she wrote, “it seemed so mean to turn & run away before the battle was over that I went home, set my teeth & vowed I’d make things work in spite of the world, the flesh, & the devil” (Louisa May Alcott, Selected Letters, p. 34).

  3. shelter of her mother’s arms. Alcott’s mother was not quite so helpful as Marmee in Louisa’s time of despair. Alcott wrote, “Now that Mother is too tired to be wearied with my moods, I have to manage them alone, and am learning that work of head and hand is my salvation” (Louisa May Alcott, Journals, p. 91).

  4. gave her the help she needed. After Alcott told her parents that she had considered suicide, Bronson Alcott started spending more time with her, escorting her to dinner and to lectures, asking her about her plans and prospects, and encouraging her to send stories to more prestigious magazines (Matteson, Eden’s Outcasts, p. 243). Although their relationship was quite thorny during Louisa’s childhood and adolescence, Bronson and Louisa developed a sincere and high regard for each other as the years passed.

  5. “the church of one member.” Alcott may have been recalling a review of her father’s “Orphic Sayings” that compared the work to “a train of fifteen railroad cars with one passenger” (Matteson, Eden’s Outcasts, p. 94).

  6. all doing for each other. Alcott was sometimes wistful about not having a child of her own to raise. Earlier in the year when she wrote Little Women, she wrote regarding her sister Anna, “She is a happy woman! I sell my children [her stories]; and though they feed me, they don’t love me as hers do” (Louisa May Alcott, Journals, p. 163).

  7. “ ‘perwisin’. ’ ” “Provided that.” Jo borrows the term from Sairy Gamp in Dickens’s 1843–44 novel Martin Chuzzlewit.

  8. climbed the hill called Difficulty. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, on the slopes of a hill called Difficulty, the exhausted and discouraged Christian comes to a pleasant arbor, created by God for weary travelers. While on this hill, he reasons, “To go back is nothing but death, to go forward is fear of death, and life everlasting beyond it. I will yet go forward.”

  9. not only paid for, but others requested. In November 1858, Bronson hand-delivered Louisa’s story “Love and Self-Love” to James Russell Lowell, editor of the Atlantic Monthly (Louisa May Alcott, Journals, p. 92). Published by the Atlantic in March 1860, the story earned Louisa $50 and a wider reputation. In the interim, Alcott published the story “Mark Field’s Mistake,” which, she proudly reported, “was a success, and much praised” (Louisa May Alcott, Journals, p. 94).

  10. “found your style at last.” The authorial project that, according to Alcott, showed her her true style was Hospital Sketches (1863). A fictionalized memoir of her brief but eventful nursing service in a Union army hospital in Georgetown following the Battle of Fredericksburg, Hospital Sketches first appeared in four installments in the Boston Commonwealth between May 22 and June 26, 1863. Much to Alcott’s surprise, they “made a great hit, & people bought the papers faster than they could be supplied” (Louisa May Alcott, Journals, p. 118).

  11. “happy as we are in your success.” Bronson Alcott’s specific reactions to “Love and Self-Love” and “Mark Field’s Mistake” are not recorded. When Hospital Sketches captured the public fancy, Bronson wrote to his mother, “Louisa [is] just beginning to be known as a lively writer, her stories and sketches coming into Notice and winning much favor” (A. Bronson Alcott, Letters, p. 342). We also know the family’s response when Alcott read to them in 1861 from a draft of her early novel, Moods (1864): “Father said: ‘Emerson must see this. Where did you get your metaphysics?’ Mother pronounced it wonderful, and Anna laughed and cried, as she always does, over my works, saying, ‘My dear, I’m proud of you.’ So I had a good time, even if it never comes to anything; for it was worth something to have my three dearest sit up till midnight listening with wide-open eyes to Lu’s first novel” (Louisa May Alcott, Journals, p. 104).

  12. “ ‘lots of love for ballast.’ ” This quotation, if it is one, has not been identified.

  CHAPTER XX.

  Surprises.

  JO was alone in the twilight, lying on the old sofa, looking at the fire, and thinking. It was her favorite way of spending the hour of dusk; no one disturbed her, and she used to lie there on Beth’s little red pillow, planning stories, dreaming dreams, or thinking tender t
houghts of the sister who never seemed far away. Her face looked tired, grave, and rather sad; for to-morrow was her birthday, and she was thinking how fast the years went by, how old she was getting, and how little she seemed to have accomplished. Almost twenty-five, and nothing to show for it,—Jo was mistaken in that; there was a good deal to show, and by and by she saw, and was grateful for it.

  “An old maid—that’s what I’m to be. A literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel of fame, perhaps; when, like poor Johnson, I’m old, and can’t enjoy it—solitary, and can’t share it, independent, and don’t need it.1 Well, I needn’t be a sour saint nor a selfish sinner; and, I dare say, old maids are very comfortable when they get used to it; but—” and there Jo sighed, as if the prospect was not inviting.

  It seldom is, at first, and thirty seems the end of all things to five-and-twenty; but it’s not so bad as it looks, and one can get on quite happily if one has something in one’s self to fall back upon. At twenty-five, girls begin to talk about being old maids, but secretly resolve that they never will; at thirty, they say nothing about it, but quietly accept the fact; and, if sensible, console themselves by remembering that they have twenty more useful, happy years, in which they may be learning to grow old gracefully.2 Don’t laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragical romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God’s sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life if for no other reason; and, looking at them with compassion, not contempt, girls in their bloom should remember that they too may miss the blossom time—that rosy cheeks don’t last forever, that silver threads will come in the bonnie brown hair, and, that by and by, kindness and respect will be as sweet as love and admiration now.

  Gentlemen, which means boys, be courteous to the old maids, no matter how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that which is the readiest to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind, regardless of rank, age, or color. Just recollect the good aunts who have not only lectured and fussed, but nursed and petted, too often without thanks—the scrapes they have helped you out of, the “tips” they have given you from their small store, the stitches the patient old fingers have set for you, the steps the willing old feet have taken, and gratefully pay the dear old ladies the little attentions that women love to receive as long as they live. The bright-eyed girls are quick to see such traits, and will like you all the better for them; and, if death, almost the only power that can part mother and son, should rob you of yours, you will be sure to find a tender, welcome, and maternal cherishing from some Aunt Priscilla, who has kept the warmest corner of her lonely old heart for “the best nevvy in the world.”3

  Jo must have fallen asleep (as I dare say my reader has during this little homily), for, suddenly, Laurie’s ghost seemed to stand before her. A substantial, lifelike ghost leaning over her, with the very look he used to wear when he felt a good deal, and didn’t like to show it. But, like Jenny in the ballad,—

  “She could not think it he,” 4

  and lay staring up at him, in startled silence, till he stooped and kissed her. Then she knew him, and flew up, crying joyfully,—

  “Oh my Teddy! Oh my Teddy!”

  “Dear Jo, you are glad to see me, then?”

  “Glad! my blessed boy, words can’t express my gladness. Where’s Amy?”

  “Your mother has got her, down at Meg’s. We stopped there by the way, and there was no getting my wife out of their clutches.”

  “Your what?” cried Jo—for Laurie uttered those two words with an unconscious pride and satisfaction, which betrayed him.

  “Oh, the dickens! now I’ve done it;” and he looked so guilty that Jo was down upon him like a flash.

  “You’ve gone and got married?”

  “Yes, please, but I never will again;” and he went down upon his knees with a penitent clasping of hands, and a face full of mischief, mirth, and triumph.

  “Actually married?”

  “Very much so, thank you.”5

  “Mercy on us; what dreadful thing will you do next?” and Jo fell into her seat, with a gasp.

  “A characteristic, but not exactly complimentary congratulation,” returned Laurie, still in an abject attitude, but beaming with satisfaction.

  “What can you expect, when you take one’s breath away, creeping in like a burglar, and letting cats out of bags like that? Get up, you ridiculous boy, and tell me all about it.”

  “Not a word, unless you let me come in my old place, and promise not to barricade.”

  Jo laughed at that as she had not done for many a long day, and patted the sofa invitingly, as she said, in a cordial tone,—

  “The old pillow is up garret, and we don’t need it now; so, come and ’fess, Teddy.”

  “How good it sounds to hear you say ‘Teddy’; no one ever calls me that but you;” and Laurie sat down with an air of great content.

  “What does Amy call you?”

  “My lord.”

  “That’s like her—well, you look it;” and Jo’s eyes plainly betrayed that she found her boy comelier than ever.

  The pillow was gone, but there was a barricade, nevertheless; a natural one raised by time, absence, and change of heart. Both felt it, and for a minute looked at one another as if that invisible barrier cast a little shadow over them. It was gone directly, however, for Laurie said, with a vain attempt at dignity,—

  “Don’t I look like a married man, and the head of a family?”

  “Not a bit, and you never will. You’ve grown bigger and bonnier, but you are the same scapegrace as ever.”

  “Now, really, Jo, you ought to treat me with more respect,” began Laurie, who enjoyed it all immensely.

  “How can I, when the mere idea of you, married and settled, is so irresistibly funny that I can’t keep sober,” answered Jo, smiling all over her face, so infectiously, that they had another laugh, and then settled down for a good talk, quite in the pleasant old fashion.

  “It’s no use your going out in the cold to get Amy, for they are all coming up, presently; I couldn’t wait; I wanted to be the one to tell you the grand surprise, and have ‘first skim,’ 6 as we used to say, when we squabbled about the cream.”

  “Of course you did, and spoilt your story by beginning at the wrong end. Now, start right, and tell me how it all happened; I’m pining to know.”

  “Well, I did it to please Amy,” began Laurie, with a twinkle, that made Jo exclaim,—

  “Fib number one; Amy did it to please you. Go on, and tell the truth, if you can, sir.”

  “Now she’s beginning to marm it, isn’t it jolly to hear her?” said Laurie to the fire, and the fire glowed and sparkled as if it quite agreed. “It’s all the same, you know, she and I being one. We planned to come home with the Carrols, a month or more ago, but they suddenly changed their minds, and decided to pass another winter in Paris. But grandpa wanted to come home; he went to please me, and I couldn’t let him go alone, neither could I leave Amy; and Mrs. Carrol had got English notions about chaperons, and such nonsense, and wouldn’t let Amy come with us. So I just settled the difficulty, by saying, ‘Let’s be married, and then we can do as we like.’ ”

  “Of course you did; you always have things to suit you.”

  “Not always;” and something in Laurie’s voice made Jo say, hastily,—

  “How did you ever get aunt to agree?”

  “It was hard work; but, between us, we talked her over, for we had heaps of good reasons on our side. There wasn’t time to write and ask leave, but you all liked it, and had consented to it by and by—and it was only ‘taking time by the fetlock,’ as my wife says.”

  “Aren’t we proud of those two words, and don’t we like to say them?”
interrupted Jo, addressing the fire in her turn, and watching with delight the happy light it seemed to kindle in the eyes that had been so tragically gloomy when she saw them last.

  “A trifle, perhaps; she’s such a captivating little woman I can’t help being proud of her. Well, then, uncle and aunt were there to play propriety; we were so absorbed in one another we were of no mortal use apart, and that charming arrangement would make everything easy all round; so we did it.”

  “When, where, how?” asked Jo, in a fever of feminine interest and curiosity, for she could not realize it a particle.

  “Six weeks ago, at the American consul’s, in Paris—a very quiet wedding, of course; for even in our happiness we didn’t forget dear little Beth.”

  Jo put her hand in his as he said that, and Laurie gently smoothed the little red pillow, which he remembered well.

  “Why didn’t you let us know afterward?” asked Jo, in a quieter tone, when they had sat quite still a minute.

  “We wanted to surprise you; we thought we were coming directly home, at first, but the dear old gentleman, as soon as we were married, found he couldn’t be ready under a month, at least, and sent us off to spend our honey-moon wherever we liked. Amy had once called Valrosa a regular honey-moon home, so we went there, and were as happy as people are but once in their lives. My faith, wasn’t it love among the roses!”

  Laurie seemed to forget Jo, for a minute, and Jo was glad of it; for the fact that he told her these things so freely and naturally, assured her that he had quite forgiven and forgotten. She tried to draw away her hand; but, as if he guessed the thought that prompted the half-involuntary impulse, Laurie held it fast, and said, with a manly gravity she had never seen in him before,—

  “Jo, dear, I want to say one thing, and then we’ll put it by forever. As I told you, in my letter, when I wrote that Amy had been so kind to me, I never shall stop loving you; but the love is altered, and I have learned to see that it is better as it is. Amy and you change places in my heart, that’s all. I think it was meant to be so, and would have come about naturally, if I had waited, as you tried to make me; but I never could be patient, and so I got a heart-ache. I was a boy then— headstrong and violent; and it took a hard lesson to show me my mistake. For it was one, Jo, as you said, and I found it out, after making a fool of myself. Upon my word, I was so tumbled up in my mind, at one time, that I didn’t know which I loved best—you or Amy, and tried to love both alike; but I couldn’t; and when I saw her in Switzerland, everything seemed to clear up all at once. You both got into your right places, and I felt sure that it was well off with the old love, before it was on with the new; that I could honestly share my heart between sister Jo and wife Amy, and love them both dearly. Will you believe it, and go back to the happy old times, when we first knew one another?”