I have loved the books of Louisa May Alcott all my reading life and had the luck and joy to visit Orchard House in Concord some years ago and posted about it here. To my utter dismay I lost my film with all my photos (this was pre-digital) and was so upset and angry. Nothing for it but to revisit one day...
I was really looking forward to reading this excellent biography by Harriet Reisen on Sunday, but l found I had to leave posting about it until today as I had to let my simmering rage and fury die away before I could rationally think about it. The reason for my fury? Two words - Bronson Alcott. This man whose mind was on higher things would have let his family starve if it had not been for friends and relatives. 'God will provide' Bronson would say grandly when his family were living off bread and water and apples and cold and hungry. This utterly selfish man who was revered by his disciples and friends (Emerson being one in particular) is a man of 'sound and fury signifying nothing' and my apologies to Mr Shakespeare for pinching his quote, but it is totally suited to this selfish transcendentalist.
I suppose part of my fury is because we know that Louisa May Alcott is Jo March who, alongside Anne of Green Gables, must be one of the most loved characters in all fiction. Brave, loyal, true, wishing she were a boy, feeling stifled by her womanhood, determined to be independent and make her way in the world, Jo/Louisa is a leading member of Victorian women who worked themselves into illness and death in order to support their families. Odd that women were not allowed to go out to work and yet were allowed to kill themselves at home by writing to exhaustion. The list is pretty long including Lucy Maud Montgomery, Mrs Oliphant, May Sinclair, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Edith Wharton and the subject of this biography.
I have been a fan of Louisa May Alcott since I first read Little Women when I was about twelve. Yes, we all know that the most famous opening line in all literature is deemed to be 'It is a truth universally acknowledged...' but I think 'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents' follows it pretty close. The opening chapter of Little Women with the March family unable to afford presents and living in poverty is straight out of reality, and the visit on Christmas morning to the poor family, the Hummels, also real. Abby Alcott, Bronson's wife and the original 'Marmee' also spent long hours when living in Boston, looking after the poor and needy until her health broke down. This was to earn money to feed her children while her husband visited his friends, went on lecture tours and wrote (badly). Husband and wife loved each other all their lives and Mrs Alcott defended him stoutly, even when writing begging letters to friends and relatives to ask for help. Her brother, in particular, supported them constantly even though he did ask 'I have to go out to work, why can't he?' Indeed....
In Little Women, Mr March is away as a chaplain during the Civil War. This spruced up portrait of a good man is based on Bronson, but Louisa May makes sure he is out of the way for most of the book and it is the strong women that she concentrates on. Of course, we all know that Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth were the Alcott daughters, Anna, Louisa, May and LIzzie and this is what makes this biography so fascinating. As with reading LM Montgomery's journals and recognising so many real incidents in her books, so on my re-reading of Little Women which I did as soon as I finished the Reisen book, and what I found really fascinating is the original 'Laurie' who all her readers wanted Jo to marry. It appears he is based on a young Polish man Louisa met while travelling. She and her companion were staying at Vevey when Ladislaw Wisniewski arrived, a tall stranger "with a thin intelligent face and the charmingly polite manners of a foreigner". Louisa responded to his charms though in her journal she told herself she loved him like a mother (he was in his early twenties, she in her late thirties), though he acted nothing like a son. She called him Laddie "it was impossible for anyone to long resist his pleading eyes".
They became close and later met in Paris. There was speculation about Louisa and Laddie after her death "Did she ever have a love affair? We never knew but how could such a nature so imaginative, romantic and passionate escape it?" We can never know for sure but Louisa's connection with Laddie continued through a sporadic correspondence. He married and had children and settled in Paris. After Little Women was published Louisa acknowledged him as the model for Laurie. There is no picture of him in existence so we will have to turn to Little Women for a description "Curly black hair, brown skin, big black eyes, long nose, nice teeth, little hands and feet and as tall as I am, very polite for a boy and altogether jolly". This is Jo speaking so we can be pretty certain that this is how Laddie looked when he and Louisa first met.
After their meeting in Paris there is a journal entry beginning "a little romance with Laddie", something else written which was later scratched out so forcibly that she tore the paper. Over the tattered area she wrote "couldn't be"
Oh I do hope she had her romance, I really do.
A totally absorbing biography which kept me pinned to the sofa all Sunday afternoon. I found myself crying at the end when I read of her death. Louisa worn out and her health had totally broken down with the strain of nursing her mother, then her father who had a stroke, and being the mainstay of the family and taking on the upbringing of her sister May's daughter. May died in paris shortly after giving birth. Bronson Alcott, with his usual impeccable timing died just before Louisa and Anna had to leave Louisa's sickroom and prepare for his funeral. 'Sometime the next morning, 6 March 1888, Louisa died. She did not know that her father had died two days before. There was no one by her side"
So sad and this book is a marvellous telling of her life and to be recommended. There is one glaring error in it however, that really took me by surprise. When talking about Little Men, Harriet Reisen refers to the now married Jo's two children as Daisy and Demi. Not so, these were the children of Meg and John Brooke. Jo's children were Rob and Teddy and I am really surprised no eagle eyed editor spotted this before going to print though I am pretty sure they will have been told by now....
Going on my list for Book of the Year 2010.
