The Annotated Little Women

by Louisa May Alcott

  “We must have our sing in the good old way, for we are all together again, once more,” said Jo, feeling that a good shout would be a safe and pleasant vent for the jubilant emotions of her soul.

  They were not all there, but no one found the words thoughtless or untrue; for Beth still seemed among them—a peaceful presence—invisible, but dearer than ever; since death could not break the household league that love made indissoluble. The little chair stood in its old place; the tidy basket, with the bit of work she left unfinished when the needle grew so heavy, was still on its accustomed shelf; the beloved instrument, seldom touched now, had not been moved; and above it, Beth’s face, serene and smiling, as in the early days, looked down upon them, seeming to say, “Be happy! I am here.”

  “Play something, Amy; let them hear how much you have improved,” said Laurie, with pardonable pride in his promising pupil.

  But Amy whispered, with full eyes, as she twirled the faded stool,—

  “Not to-night, dear; I can’t show off to-night.”

  But she did show something better than brilliancy or skill, for she sung Beth’s songs, with a tender music in her voice which the best master could not have taught, and touched the listeners’ hearts with a sweeter power than any other inspiration could have given her. The room was very still when the clear voice failed suddenly, at the last line of Beth’s favorite hymn. It was hard to say,—

  “Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal”;17

  and Amy leaned against her husband, who stood behind her, feeling that her welcome home was not quite perfect without Beth’s kiss.

  “Now we must finish with Mignon’s song, for Mr. Bhaer sings that,” said Jo, before the pause grew painful; and Mr. Bhaer cleared his throat with a gratified “hem,” as he stepped into the corner where Jo stood, saying,—

  “You will sing with me; we go excellently well together.”

  A pleasing fiction, by the way, for Jo had no more idea of music than a grasshopper; but she would have consented, if he had proposed to sing a whole opera, and warbled away, blissfully regardless of time and tune. It didn’t much matter, for Mr. Bhaer sang like a true German, heartily and well; and Jo soon subsided into a subdued hum, that she might listen to the mellow voice that seemed to sing for her alone.

  “Know’st thou the land where the citron blooms,”18

  used to be the Professor’s favorite line; for “das land” meant Germany to him; but now he seemed to dwell, with peculiar warmth and melody, upon the words,—

  “There, oh there, might I with thee,

  Oh my beloved, go”;

  and one listener was so thrilled by the tender invitation, that she longed to say she did know the land, and would joyfully depart thither, whenever he liked.

  The song was considered a great success, and the singer bashfully retired, covered with laurels. But a few minutes afterward, he forgot his manners entirely, and stared at Amy putting on her bonnet—for she had been introduced simply as “my sister,” and no one had called her by her new name since he came. He forgot himself still farther, when Laurie said, in his most gracious manner, at parting,—

  “My wife and I are very glad to meet you, sir; please remember that there is always a welcome waiting for you, over the way.”

  Then the Professor thanked him so heartily, and looked so suddenly illuminated with satisfaction, that Laurie thought him the most delightfully-demonstrative old fellow he ever met.

  “I too shall go; but I shall gladly come again, if you will gif me leave, dear madame, for a little business in the city will keep me here some days.”

  He spoke to Mrs. March, but he looked at Jo; and the mother’s voice gave as cordial an assent as did the daughter’s eyes; for Mrs. March was not so blind to her children’s interest as Mrs. Moffat supposed.

  “I suspect that is a wise man,” remarked Mr. March, with placid satisfaction, from the hearth-rug, after the last guest had gone.

  “I know he is a good one,” added Mrs. March, with decided approval, as she wound up the clock.

  “I thought you’d like him,” was all Jo said, as she slipped away to her bed.

  She wondered what the business was that brought Mr. Bhaer to the city, and finally decided that he had been appointed to some great honor, somewhere, but had been too modest to mention the fact. If she had seen his face when, safe in his own room, he looked at the picture of a severe and rigid young lady, with a good deal of hair, who appeared to be gazing darkly into futurity, it might have thrown some light upon the subject, especially when he turned off the gas, and kissed the picture in the dark.

  1. “don’t need it.” After Samuel Johnson published his famous dictionary, Lord Chesterfield publicly congratulated himself for having given Johnson financial assistance. Johnson rebuked Chesterfield, reminding him that Johnson had been “repulsed” from Chesterfield’s door and had labored for seven years “without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour” from the self-congratulating lord. He added that Chesterfield’s paltry assistance “has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it.”

  2. grow old gracefully. Alcott had just turned thirty when she joined the Union army as a nurse.

  3. “best nevvy in the world.” An obscure reference. Aunt Priscilla is possibly a semiliterate comic character from contemporary magazine fiction. In December 1896, The Boston Stamp Book, the official publication of the Boston Philatelic Society, published a letter allegedly from “Aunt Priscilla,” stating, “I’ve done something that I said I’d never do. I’ve laid out quite a large sum of munny in stamps, and my nevvy Robbert don’t know a thing about it.”

  4. “She could not think it he.” Alcott quotes from the sentimental song “Auld Robin Gray.” In the song, Jenny’s true love Jamie goes to sea and is presumed lost in a wreck. Auld Robin Gray helps Jenny’s family through hard times and then asks for her hand. Jenny reluctantly accepts and, four days after the wedding, is visited by Jamie’s ghost. Jenny says, “I saw my Jamie’s wraith, for I could not think it he, / Till he said, I’m come back for to marry thee.”

  5. “Very much so, thank you.” May Alcott was single when Little Women was written. Years later, after a brief engagement, she married Swiss businessman Ernest Nieriker in London on March 22, 1878. The couple settled in Meudon, on the outskirts of Paris.

  Ernest Nierikier (1830–1895) married May Alcott. Louisa called him “handsome, cultivated, and good.” (Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association)

  6. “ ‘first skim.’ ” In a bottle of nonhomogenized milk, a layer of cream rises to the top. To have the “first skim” meant to get the cream, or the best part of something, by acting first. Laurie’s “first skim” is being the first to tell Jo that he and Amy are married.

  7. “ ‘gentleman growed.’ ” In Dickens’s David Copperfield, Mr. Peggotty refers to David and his friend Steerforth as “two gent’lmen—gent’lmen growed.”

  8. “doubles one’s duties” Laurie alludes to an essay by the German philosopher and adamantine pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). In “Über die Weiber” (“On Women”), Schopenhauer opined that to marry “means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.”

  9. “sun managed the man best.” In a fable attributed to Æsop, the wind and the sun compete to see which can make a man remove his cloak. The mighty wind causes the man only to pull his cloak tighter around him, but the gentle, warming sun makes him take it off. The moral teaches that persuasion is more effective than force.

  10. châtelaine. From a French word that means “wife of the lord of a castle,” a woman who controls a large house.

  11. slide. A sliding panel in a kitchen wall that permits one to see into another room.

  12. ad libitum. “At one’s pleasure.”

  13. Dodo’s. “Dodo” is a baby-talk nickname for Jo.

  14. “coop (coupé).” A coupé was a closed four-wheel horse-drawn carriage that was cut, or “coupé,” to eliminate the f
orward-mounted, rear-facing passenger seats. Two persons sat in a single set behind the driver, who sat on a box outside.

  15. “Monsieur De Trop.” In French de trop literally means “too much.” Monsieur De Trop is a person whose presence makes one too many and who is therefore not entirely welcome.

  16. wristbands. Not devices to absorb perspiration, but cuffs that could be detached and washed separately from the rest of the shirt.

  17. “that heaven cannot heal.” Beth’s favorite hymn is “Come, Ye Disconsolate” by the Irish poet Thomas Moore. The full stanza reads: “Come, ye disconsolate, where’er you languish, / Come, at God’s altar fervently kneel; / Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish— / Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.”

  18. “citron blooms.” An English translation of the first line of Goethe’s poem “Kennst du das Land,” which the professor first sang in Part Second, Chapter X. The other quoted line concludes the first stanza.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  My Lord and Lady.

  “PLEASE, Madam Mother, could you lend me my wife for half an hour? The luggage has come, and I’ve been making hay of Amy’s Paris finery, trying to find some things I want,” said Laurie, coming in the next day to find Mrs. Laurence sitting in her mother’s lap, as if being made “the baby” again.

  “Certainly; go dear; I forget that you have any home but this,” and Mrs. March pressed the white hand that wore the wedding-ring, as if asking pardon for her maternal covetousness.

  “I shouldn’t have come over if I could have helped it; but I can’t get on without my little woman any more than a—”

  “Weathercock can without wind,” suggested Jo, as he paused for a simile; Jo had grown quite her own saucy self again since Teddy came home.

  “Exactly; for Amy keeps me pointing due west most of the time, with only an occasional whiffle round to the south, and I haven’t had an easterly spell since I was married; don’t know anything about the north, but am altogether salubrious and balmy,—hey, my lady?”

  May Alcott’s home in Meudon, near Paris, was the scene of great, if short-lived happiness. She painted this watercolor of Ernest Nieriker enjoying a book in their salon. (Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association)

  “Lovely weather so far; I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship. Come home, dear, and I’ll find your bootjack;1 I suppose that’s what you are rummaging after among my things. Men are so helpless, mother,” said Amy, with a matronly air, which delighted her husband.

  “What are you going to do with yourselves after you get settled?” asked Jo, buttoning Amy’s cloak as she used to button her pinafores.

  “We have our plans; we don’t mean to say much about them yet, because we are such very new brooms, but we don’t intend to be idle. I’m going into business with a devotion that shall delight grandpa, and prove to him that I’m not spoilt. I need something of the sort to keep me steady. I’m tired of dawdling, and mean to work like a man.”

  “And Amy, what is she going to do?” asked Mrs. March, well pleased at Laurie’s decision, and the energy with which he spoke.

  “After doing the civil all round, and airing our best bonnet, we shall astonish you by the elegant hospitalities of our mansion, the brilliant society we shall draw about us, and the beneficial influence we shall exert over the world at large. That’s about it, isn’t it, Madame Recamier?”2 asked Laurie, with a quizzical look at Amy.

  “Time will show. Come away, Impertinence, and don’t shock my family by calling me names before their faces,” answered Amy, resolving that there should be a home with a good wife in it before she set up a salon as a queen of society.

  “How happy those children seem together!” observed Mr. March, finding it difficult to become absorbed in his Aristotle after the young couple had gone.

  “Yes, and I think it will last,” added Mrs. March, with the restful expression of a pilot who has brought a ship safely into port.

  “I know it will. Happy Amy!” and Jo sighed, then smiled brightly as Professor Bhaer opened the gate with an impatient push.

  Later in the evening, when his mind had been set at rest about the bootjack, Laurie said suddenly to his wife, who was flitting about, arranging her new art treasures,—

  “Mrs. Laurence.”

  “My lord!”

  “That man intends to marry our Jo!”

  “I hope so; don’t you, dear?”

  “Well, my love, I consider him a trump, in the fullest sense of that expressive word, but I do wish he was a little younger and a good deal richer.”

  “Now, Laurie, don’t be too fastidious and worldly-minded. If they love one another it doesn’t matter a particle how old they are, nor how poor. Women never should marry for money—” Amy caught herself up short as the words escaped her, and looked at her husband, who replied, with malicious gravity,—

  “Certainly not, though you do hear charming girls say that they intend to do it sometimes. If my memory serves me, you once thought it your duty to make a rich match; that accounts, perhaps, for your marrying a good-for-nothing like me.”

  “Oh, my dearest boy, don’t, don’t say that! I forgot you were rich when I said ‘Yes.’ I’d have married you if you hadn’t a penny, and I sometimes wish you were poor that I might show how much I love you;” and Amy, who was very dignified in public and very fond in private, gave convincing proofs of the truth of her words.

  “You don’t really think I am such a mercenary creature as I tried to be once, do you? It would break my heart, if you didn’t believe that I’d gladly pull in the same boat with you, even if you had to get your living by rowing on the lake.”

  “Am I an idiot and a brute? How could I think so, when you refused a richer man for me, and won’t let me give you half I want to now, when I have the right? Girls do it every day, poor things, and are taught to think it is their only salvation; but you had better lessons, and, though I trembled for you at one time, I was not disappointed,—for the daughter was true to the mother’s teaching. I told mamma so yesterday, and she looked as glad and grateful as if I’d given her a check for a million, to be spent in charity. You are not listening to my moral remarks, Mrs. Laurence,”—and Laurie paused, for Amy’s eyes had an absent look, though fixed upon his face.

  “Yes I am, and admiring the dimple in your chin at the same time. I don’t wish to make you vain, but I must confess that I’m prouder of my handsome husband than of all his money. Don’t laugh,—but your nose is such a comfort to me,” and Amy softly caressed the well-cut feature with artistic satisfaction.

  Laurie had received many compliments in his life, but never one that suited him better, as he plainly showed, though he did laugh at his wife’s peculiar taste, while she said slowly,—

  “May I ask you a question, dear?”

  “Of course you may.”

  “Shall you care if Jo does marry Mr. Bhaer?”

  “Oh, that’s the trouble, is it? I thought there was something in the dimple that didn’t suit you. Not being a dog in the manger3 but the happiest fellow alive, I assure you I can dance at Jo’s wedding with a heart as light as my heels. Do you doubt it, ma amie?”

  Amy looked up at him, and was satisfied; her last little jealous fear vanished forever, and she thanked him, with a face full of love and confidence.

  “I wish we could do something for that capital old Professor. Couldn’t we invent a rich relation, who shall obligingly die out there in Germany, and leave him a tidy little fortune?” said Laurie, when they began to pace up and down the long drawing-room, arm-in-arm, as they were fond of doing, in memory of the chateau garden.

  “Jo would find us out, and spoil it all; she is very proud of him, just as he is, and said yesterday that she thought poverty was a beautiful thing.”

  “Bless her dear heart, she won’t think so when she has a literary husband, and a dozen little professors and professorins4 to support. We won’t interfere
now, but watch our chance, and do them a good turn in spite of themselves. I owe Jo for a part of my education, and she believes in people’s paying their honest debts, so I’ll get round her in that way.”

  “How delightful it is to be able to help others, isn’t it? That was always one of my dreams, to have the power of giving freely; and, thanks to you, the dream has come true.”

  “Ah, we’ll do lots of good, won’t we? There’s one sort of poverty that I particularly like to help. Out-and-out beggars get taken care of, but poor gentlefolks fare badly, because they won’t ask, and people don’t dare to offer charity; yet there are a thousand ways of helping them, if one only knows how to do it so delicately that it don’t offend. I must say, I like to serve a decayed gentleman better than a blarneying beggar;5 I suppose it’s wrong, but I do, though it is harder.”

  “Because it takes a gentleman to do it,” added the other member of the domestic admiration society.

  “Thank you, I’m afraid I don’t deserve that pretty compliment. But I was going to say, that while I was dawdling about abroad, I saw a good many talented young fellows making all sorts of sacrifices, and enduring real hardships, that they might realize their dreams. Splendid fellows, some of them, working like heroes, poor and friendless, but so full of courage, patience and ambition, that I was ashamed of myself, and longed to give them a right good lift. Those are people whom it’s a satisfaction to help, for if they’ve got genius, it’s an honor to be allowed to serve them, and not let it be lost or delayed for want of fuel to keep the pot boiling; if they haven’t, it’s a pleasure to comfort the poor souls, and keep them from despair, when they find it out.”

  “Yes indeed; and there’s another class who can’t ask, and who suffer in silence; I know something of it, for I belonged to it, before you made a princess of me, as the king does the beggar-maid in the old story.6 Ambitious girls have a hard time, Laurie, and often have to see youth, health, and precious opportunities go by, just for want of a little help at the right minute. People have been very kind to me, and whenever I see girls struggling along, as we used to do, I want to put out my hand and help them, as I was helped.”