by Elise Hooper
May would never know how much time passed. In the end, a cry mewled out—not hers—and the midwife lifted up a red, wrinkled infant in triumph. Hot tears streamed down May’s face as she took the baby in her arms. A daughter. Dark, knowing, ancient eyes looked up at May. She studied the exquisite hand grasping her index finger, the pink leg curled up along her own chest, the rosebud of puckered little lips. “I created you,” May whispered. She closed her eyes, treasuring the heft of the body resting on her chest. Oh, this world.
Chapter 44
Despite the warm breezes wending their way through Boston’s wharves, Louisa shivered. She and Anna were clad in black, although both decided their attire seemed morbid, given the occasion.
“We look like a pair of old crows,” Louisa announced the day before as the two sisters caught glimpses of themselves in the plate glass windows along Beacon Street.
“Well, we can’t have that. I shall trim our hats tonight with some colorful ribbon,” Anna said. “We must look welcoming when we meet the ship tomorrow.”
One of the new yellow ribbons on Louisa’s bonnet flapped against her forehead, and she brushed it back to see a dark speck appearing on the horizon grow larger and assume the shape of a steamship. She rested a hand on her breast as if she could massage away the pounding of her heart. So many things can go wrong on an ocean journey, and every single heart-wrenching possibility had plagued her in the months leading up to the ship’s arrival. She took Anna’s hand. They propped up against each other, waiting for the ship to reach the inner harbor.
Almost ten months had passed since Mr. Emerson had found Louisa at home alone. Before he held up the telegram, Louisa knew the message. She wanted to turn to flee and run through the back door out onto the trails into the woods where she could pretend she was thirteen again, merely escaping the noise of her three sisters and the endless list of chores awaiting her. But now she was almost forty-eight years old, and her days of effortless running were long behind her.
“She’s gone.” Mr. Emerson’s craggy face had looked stricken, and he put out his palm onto the wall to steady his gangly frame. Louisa turned and stared at the portrait of May hanging in a place of honor over the piano. How could May die? It was the cruelest injustice that the healthiest, strongest, and most energetic Alcott was taken long before her time should have been due. Louisa blamed herself. She should have gotten on a ship at the first news of May’s illness. Hell, she should have gotten on a ship during their rift after Marmee’s death; Louisa hated to think she had lost three precious years of her sister’s life, thanks to a stubborn grudge between them. What foolishness. Louisa would have brought the finest doctors in France—in all of Europe—to her sister’s bedside. But instead she had assured herself May would battle and outlive them all, happy in France with the sweet family she had built for herself. Instead, after six weeks in a coma, May had succumbed to the fever that reared up and devoured her immediately after the baby’s birth. And so Louisa’s golden sister, the sister who held so much promise, the sister balanced on the cusp of reaping all of the rewards for her relentless work—this sister was gone after fighting desperately to save herself. Louisa would regret her decision not to go to France for the rest of her life.
Of all of the losses Louisa experienced in her life, May’s death struck her with the hardest punch. The only saving grace was that she would raise her infant niece, May’s daughter. The memories of all the folly caused by May’s thoughtless, young husband still made her neck ache from the tension she had carried for the last ten months. He had been so difficult about bringing her the baby. She had been willing to concede that winter wasn’t the best time to send a baby across the Atlantic, but then more waiting ensued with Mr. Nieriker’s claims of teething, fevers—the entire lot of every excuse he could dream up. All of his delays and silences; she was sure he conspired to wrest money out of her. That’s what everyone wanted from her these days—money. When he sent the telegram from Le Havre announcing his last-minute decision not to accompany the baby to Boston and send his sister instead, Louisa felt only relief. The thought of seeing the man who stole her sister and then let her perish turned her stomach.
A clatter of church bells rang out from a steeple peering down on the wharf and made Louisa jump. Men and women awaiting the steamship pressed closer to the dock, and the sisters were left like two pebbles stranded on wet sand when a wave pulls back to the ocean.
The steamship lumbered in front of them, blocking out the sun’s light. Anna and Louisa huddled closer to the crowd and watched preparations for docking. Stevedores barked to each other in unrecognizable languages, and the crowd shouted greetings, but the sisters remained silent. A stream of passengers trickled down the ship’s ramp. Louisa searched the faces parading by. She realized she was no longer breathing. At last, the tiny round face of a baby held in the protective arms of the captain appeared. The baby’s wide eyes gleamed more brightly than the brass buttons on the captain’s uniform. An attractive woman with chestnut-colored curls followed the man. Louisa guessed her to be young Sophie Nieriker.
Louisa reached for Anna’s hand, and they surged toward the captain and Sophie, eager to claim their cargo. Louisa knew Anna was talking, but she could not hear her voice over the din of the crowd and the thrumming in her own head. When they reached the captain, she leaned in and somehow clearly heard the baby say, “Marmar?” The baby reached to her with a wistful expression, leaving Louisa devastated by the realization of what this baby represented: on the other side of the world, surrounded by people who barely knew her, May had died. This motherless scrap now belonged to Louisa. Motherhood managed to find her, even after all of these years. Although tears made her vision swim and her chest ache, Louisa held out her arms and smiled into the bottomless blue eyes reflecting the Atlantic. Of all the packages and paintings to arrive, this baby was the one remaining piece of May that Louisa most craved.
IN THE EVENING after Louisa rocked her namesake, little Lulu, to sleep, she placed the baby on the bed and peered into May’s steamer trunk. There, amidst tiny embroidered bibs and knit caps, she found the parcel Ernest promised to send. She carefully lifted the package and undid the string to open up a stack of letters. The sight of her sister’s cursive left Louisa’s knees weak and brought a knot to her throat. She opened the top letter.
November 20, 1879
Meudon, France
Dearest Louisa,
If you are reading this, the worst has happened. By now you have my baby. After many long months of waiting, she arrived quickly on November 8th yet I still do not feel like myself. An insufferable headache punishes me relentlessly, but despite my discomfort, my elation over the miracle of this sweet baby knows no bounds. We named her Louisa May Nieriker though we’ve taken to calling her Lulu. I wanted to honor you, but this little rosy, golden-haired cherub doesn’t resemble your dark, brooding nature in the slightest, so it seemed only appropriate to call her by a shortened name with a certain amount of playfulness and style.
Perhaps it’s ironic I’m handing my precious girl to a woman who renounced motherhood in her youth, yet I know of no finer person to watch over this child. Despite our differences, you have always been my true north and have set the course of my life. A sister’s influence is not as obvious as a parent’s, but your influence over me has been indelible in the choices I’ve made and the goals I’ve toiled toward. Because of the love and sacrifice you bestowed upon each member of our family, I can think of no fiercer guardian than you to care for this baby.
The last two years have been the happiest of my life, and I do not regret any of my choices, with the exception of excluding you from my joy. I know you have your own struggles and hope you can find your own fulfillment as I found mine.
Always yours,
May
Louisa studied Lulu’s face in the glow of the candlelight and could see a hint of May in the curve of the baby’s nose. Louisa took the passel of letters and found the papers dated from around the
time Marmee died. Bitter words had been exchanged that never needed repeating. She lit a match from the fireplace mantel and let the flame catch the corner of the paper before dropping the burning letters down onto the grate of the room’s fireplace. They curled and blackened while the flame pirouetted above the pile of papers. When the letters smoldered into charred chunks, Louisa rose and walked back to the trunk to continue her search through its contents.
She lifted out a small red leather book. A diary. Louisa laughed quietly, for May had never embraced the daily journaling Father encouraged over the years. She opened it and found entry after entry, all written as letters to her. A sob escaped from her as she flipped through the pages. Even though the sisters had been at odds, May hadn’t fully relinquished her sister during all that time. She put the diary aside and reached into the trunk to take out several framed paintings.
The rich colors in the small still life from the Salon of 1877 blazed in her hands. But where was the portrait? The painting from last spring’s Salon? She rifled through the trunk, but La Négresse was not in it. She had asked for it in her list of items she wanted sent home, but it appeared May’s husband had ignored the request. With her palm atop May’s red leather diary, she let out a windy exhalation. Fine, if he wanted to keep that painting, so be it. She turned to a watercolor of Orchard House and traced the lines of the house with her finger before grasping both sides of the frame to hold it up to the light for closer inspection. A splinter on the rim of the frame caught at her thumb. As she jerked her hand away from the spot, she felt a lump of paper alongside the back side of the painting. She turned it over to see an envelope tucked into the frame up against the painting. Louisa peeled it off and realized it was the uncashed wedding check she had written out to May almost two years ago. That headstrong girl!
The check trembled in her hands as she studied it. May’s determination to find her own way had been relentless. In her letters, she had put up a cheerful front, but Louisa could tell they were scraping by on Mr. Nieriker’s small salary. All along, she suspected the young man’s interest in May hinged upon access to Louisa’s wealth. But now, with this check in her hands, she questioned everything. Had her imagination led her to dream up a nefarious scheme where there was none? She reread her sister’s letter. Yes, May’s words all indicated true happiness; there had been no front, no scheming upstart of a fiancé, no conspiracy to bilk Louisa of her earnings. Her shoulders slumped forward, and she lowered the check, placing it on the ground next to the watercolor.
Across the room, Lulu lay upon the coverlet with her arms flung up over her head and her chubby legs sprawled out in a position of complete surrender. Louisa climbed onto the bed. She lay down next to her niece, and the baby stirred, rolling closer to her. All this time, she had assumed the worst about Mr. Nieriker and his intentions, but maybe it took ten months for him to let go of this last piece of May. Could she blame him for wanting to keep the baby close? It would be impossible for a young man to raise a daughter on his own, and yet, what had it cost May to deprive her beloved husband of their only daughter? And what did it cost him to respect his wife’s wishes and permit the baby to travel to a distant, foreign country? The depth of the couple’s love and the power of their sacrifice made Louisa bite her lip to keep from crying out.
The baby rolled and nestled her back and buttocks against Louisa’s stomach. Little Lulu’s skin radiated warmth and her velvet skin glistened. The perfection of the little body brought tears to Louisa’s eyes. It amazed her to feel this tiny life, this piece of her sister, lie so intimately next to her as if they were one body. Louisa felt the baby inhale and exhale beside her. Here lay a chance to create something real. A new start. She made a wish and exhaled, watching the baby’s wisps of blond hair tremble like the top of a dandelion in the breeze of Louisa’s own breath.
Afterword
This novel began the day my younger daughter began kindergarten, and I returned to my empty home to face a stack of books about the Alcotts from the Seattle Public Library. With both my girls in elementary school full-time, I could begin a project that had been calling to me for months, or years, depending on how far you want to go back into my fascination with the quirky Alcott family. I grew up near Orchard House, the Alcott family home-turned-museum in Concord, Massachusetts, and along with consuming all of Louisa May Alcott’s books as a girl, I visited the museum regularly with school trips, for drama camp, and to see the house decorated for Christmas. Although Louisa was the focus of these activities, it was always May Alcott’s little bedroom in the back of the house that spoke to me. I found myself drawn to the youngest sister, the one with graceful pencil sketches on her walls, the one who had been known for dreaming of travel and romance.
Because of the fame Louisa May Alcott achieved within her own lifetime, her years are well-documented for posterity. Her diaries, letters, essays, and novels have all been trawled through by scholars to create a complete portrait of this intriguing, complex woman. May, on the other hand, seemed to have been overlooked because of the public’s longtime interest in her older sister, and her life contained enough blank space for me to begin imagining a rich emotional journey. As my research took me deeper into her life, I also found a group of women artists languishing in the margins of the historical record. Boston was filled with women, such as Helen Knowlton, Sarah Whitman Wyman, and Anne Whitney, forging their own artistic careers, despite the limited opportunities at the time. Art schools offering instruction to women could be found in New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, but Boston, otherwise a city known for its progressiveness, was still catching up. As a result, most Bostonians, and arguably most Americans no matter where they lived, traveled to Paris to advance their artistic careers. The capital of France reigned supreme for its role as center of the art world and drew ambitious women, such as May Alcott, Mary Cassatt, Elizabeth Jane Gardner, Anna Klumpke, and Maria Bashkirtseff.
While this book remains true to the major contour lines of May’s life, I allowed myself some leeway to create a story befitting a novel. When I was researching the Alcotts and piecing the facts of May’s life together, I encountered a brief line in a biography on Louisa stating that when Little Women reviews were released, Louisa’s story garnered great critical praise, but May’s illustrations were panned. I read the line again. And again. Ouch, what must that moment have been like for May? This question sparked my imagination to create a complicated emotional life between the two close, ambitious sisters. Although May and Louisa never went through a long period of estrangement like what occurs in this novel, shadows of envy and competition can be detected throughout Louisa’s letters and journals. The fact that Louisa was known for regularly burning letters and rewriting portions of her journals gave me the opening I needed to imagine the inner lives of these two women and the difficulties that can accompany sisterhood. All of the letters in this novel are largely my own creation, although I’ve melded real lines from May’s letters into them in places.
Although May did study art prior to 1868 when her illustrations in Little Women were published, her artwork improved dramatically in the 1870s, so I focused on her instruction during this period of her life. In London during 1873, she experienced a chance encounter with the art critic John Ruskin, who admired her Turner copies and took some of her paintings for his students to study.
May’s time in Paris coincided with a momentous period in art history, because the 1870s mark the beginning of Impressionism, an artistic movement that challenged France’s rigid conventions surrounding acceptable art. Every year the Académie des Beaux-Arts held a juried show in Paris, the Salon, which was intended to exhibit the best artwork. Selected art represented the classical style that French authorities believed best exemplified France’s cultural traditions. Religious and historical scenes and portraiture were esteemed. Landscapes and scenes of everyday life were not. In 1863, Emperor Napoleon III permitted a new show to open, the Salon des Refusés, so the public could see examples of re
jected artwork and laugh, and yes, people visited and laughed, but the new show gave some artists, such as Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, and others who experimented with loose brushstrokes and informal compositions, the idea to form the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, et Graveurs. Despite endless mockery in the press, this group challenged the establishment and exhibited work together annually and eventually became known as Impressionists. May’s friend Mary Cassatt joined this band of renegades, but May persevered with the establishment, and her paintings were exhibited in the Paris Salons of 1877 and 1879, major accomplishments for an artist of the era.
After her mother died in November of 1877, May went through a period of deep grief alone in London. Her whirlwind meeting, engagement, and marriage to young Ernest Nieriker all followed within the brief space of a couple of months. And sadly, it’s true that seven weeks after giving birth to her daughter, May Alcott died of cerebral spinal meningitis, and her baby was sent to Boston to live with Louisa May Alcott ten months later. By all accounts, Lulu Nieriker led a pampered existence with her two aunts, Louisa May Alcott and Anna Alcott Pratt. At this point in her life, Louisa’s health was suffering badly, and she hired a retinue of nannies to care for Lulu, but she continued writing and published several books that she dedicated to her niece. Louisa May Alcott died on March 6, 1888, a mere two days after her father passed away. Anna Alcott Pratt and her son traveled with ten-year-old Lulu to Germany to return her to live with her father. Lulu Nieriker went on to marry and live in Germany until 1975 and died at the age of ninety-six.
Ernest Nieriker never remarried, an unusual thing for a young widower. La Négresse remained in his possession and remains in Europe with his descendants.
