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IN A PAGE FROM BRONSON'S JO URNALS, OUTLINES OF HIS AND LOUISA'S HANDS OVERLAP. W . W. NORTON & COMPANY (COURTESY OF HOUGHTON LIBRARY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY) New York · London EDEN'S OUTCASTS "Come Up with Me" sample the fruits of her own charity. Louisa May Alcott, now fifty-four, many physicians who took his turn at trying to cure her was Dr. Milbrey began the year 1887 as a patient in Dr. Lawrence's convalescent home on Green, who based his therapy on plant remedies. Louisa was as much attracted to his common sense and positive attitude as to these botanical Dunreath Place, Roxbury. Bronson remained with Anna at 10 Louisburg Square, a very fashion- concoctions. In a letter to Anna, she transcribed the following conversa­ able address in Boston. He was comfortable and alert but still incapable of tion with Green: meaningful work. He had clear memories of all his old friends, and he took Dr. G .... [said] all was doing well and [gave] me a fourth kind of tonic. pleasure in being paid social visits and being in the company of his family. . .. I said, "Well, now the oyster will go into her shell again." The con­ However, his right side had never regained normal function. Just how versation continued: "You mustn't call yourself chat when you are doing much progress he made in learning how to write with his left hand is so nicely. Why, some of my patients have to lie in bed in dark rooms for unclear, but the issue was rendered moot by his mental state. Although he months before I can get them where you are. We are going to have some could carry on simple conversations, he was unable to express complex more fine books in a year or rwo." "Do you honestly think so?" "Cer­ ideas. Once a week, attendants carried him to a waiting carriage for a drive tainly, why not?" & he looked as much surprised as if I'd denied that I around town. His greatest joy remained his books, including, Louisa had a nose on my face. "Oh, I never expect to be well again, only noted, the ones that he had written himself. He kept these near him con­ patched up for a while. At 55 one doesn't hope for much."65 stantly and loved to boast that he had written four of them after the age of seventy.64 The greatest comforts of all, however, may have been the books Louisa both hoped and did not hope. Like her father after his stroke, that only Bronson himself could fully appreciate: the sixty-odd volumes of she was bent on recovery. She was willing to cry any regimen of baths, journals that, but for the tomes from the early forties lost in Albany, gave exotic herbs, or rest cure that might give her the years of health that the such a complete record of an eventful and contemplative life. Indeed, doctors promised her. Dr. Green had said that one or two years of patient Bronson had more than his journals to remind him of old times. He also conformity with his instructions would bring twenty years of productive had kept a collection of books that he called his "autobiographical collec­ life. The plain appearance of things, however, contradicted the bold pre­ tions." These were scrapbooks of memorabilia collected over the course of dictions. In September 1887, she noted her weight as 136 pounds, already decades: newspaper clippings, advertisements for his conversations, almost low for a woman of her large frame. By February 27, 1888, the figure was every scrap of paper imaginable pertaining to himself and his family. down to n3. She jauntily observed, "Now we will see how much I gain in Although his waking hours were bright with memories, Bronson slept the next 6 [months]," but it was getting harder to deny what was happen­ much of the day now. One day, he looked up from a newspaper and ing to her. 66 Her life had become a ceaseless round of reporting symptoms, remarked, "Beecher has gone now; all go but me." He was now one of the absorbing medications, and experiencing pain. last living representatives of a generation that had given a new conscience On March 1, Louisa went to visit Bronson and Anna at Louisburg to America. Once Louisa took up residence in Dr. Lawrence's rest home, Square. She brought flowers, and her father smelled them gratefully. Smil­ she seldom saw her father. During 1887, under doctor's orders mandating ing up from his pillow, Bronson looked sweet and feeble. As Louisa knelt complete rest, Louisa spent weeks at a time without leaving the home, rely­ at his bedside, the dying philosopher made an eerie request. Noticing his ing on che ever-faithful Anna for news of the outside world. When she did benign countenance, Louisa said, "Father, here is your Louy. What are you go to visit her father, it was with the constant awareness chat this might be thinking of as you lie here so happily?" He took her hand in his and, with a gesture toward the ceiling, replied, "I am going up. Come with me." Instead the last meeting before he slipped away. As to Louisa's own prognosis, the doctors were more optimistic, though of being aghast at the suggestion, Louisa replied gently, "I wish I could."67 one may reasonably question the absoluteness of their candor. One of the Her father kissed her. "Come soon," he said. When they parted company, EDEN'S OUTCASTS "Come Up with Me" 425 424

Louisa had much to occupy her mind-enough, apparently, to make her "Free." Written with the suspicion that her death was not far off, it may forget to put on her wrap as she stepped out into the late winter air. have given some comfort to those who found it, reassuring them that Three days later, around eleven in the morning, Amos Bronson Alcott Louisa had greeted death as a blessed liberation. It reads in part: died. As he slipped away, Louisa was across rown at her nursing home on Sing, happy soul! And singing soar. Dunreath Place, unaware that her father's end had come. She wrote a let­ No weary flesh now fetters thee. ter to her friend Maria Porter, who had sent her a photograph of May. Thy wings have burst the narrow cell Knowing that Bronson was near death, Mrs. Porter had expressed her hope And heaven's boundless blue is free. that Louisa would find the same strength to bear her father's passing that Yet cast one graceful, backward glance had been hers when Abba had died. Louisa replied that sorrow had no Toward the life forever done, place in such circumstances and that death was never terrible when it For even when a poor, blind worm, came, "as now, in the likeness of a friend." She would be glad, she said, Thou hadst thy share of shade and sun.7° "when the dear old man falls asleep after this long & innocent life."68 Over long decades, the father and daughter had judged each other often, and Bronson was buried on the morning of Louisa's death. The cemetery not always in the most lenient terms. However, the last adjective Louisa where he is interred, Sleepy Hollow, was itself an offspring of transcen­ ever wrote with reference to her father was "innocent." If ever he had dental thinking. A reaction against the somber aesthetics of the barren wronged her, those wrongs were now forgotten. In a postscript to Mrs. churchyard, it was intended as a place chat would enfold the dead and the Porter, Louisa wrote that she expected to spend another year at "Saint's bereaved in the redemptive beauty of nature. At Sleepy Hollow's dedica­ Rest," the name she had given to Dr. Lawrence's house. Thereafter, she tion in 1855, Emerson had told those gathered, "The being that can share a added, "I am promised twenty years of health. I don't want so many, & thought and a feeling so sublime as confidence in truth is no mushroom. have no idea I shall see them. But as I don't live for myself I hold on for Our dissatisfaction with any other solution is the blazing evidence of 6 immorrali ty."7 1 No one had believed more confidently in truth than Bron­ others, and shall find time to die some day, I hope." 9 That same morning, Louisa wrote a brief note to Anna. She complained son Alcott. In what he deemed to be its earnest service, he had endured of a dull pain and the sensation of a weight of iron pressing down on her ridicule and poverty. With the innocent faith of a child, he had placed all head. As she wrote these two letters, Louisa began to feel feverish. She sent his trust in a voice that had always summoned him upward. On a cheerless for Dr. Green, who expressed concern but offered no specific diagnosis. It March day, the earth of Sleepy Hollow received his body. He had always occurred to her that some rest might do her good. She settled into her bed been certain that a finer part of him would be welcomed elsewhere. and closed her eyes. She opened them once more, just long enough to rec­ The mound above Bronson's coffin was still fresh when, on March 8, his ognize the worried faces of Dr. Lawrence and her nephew John. Before daughter joined him. The funeral was held in the family's home at 10 news of Bronson's death could reach her, Louisa's sleep had deepened into Louisburg Square in Boston, the same place where Bronson's had been a coma. Anna joined the bedside vigil, but there was nothing to do but conducted two days before. The same mourners were there, and the same wait. Before sunrise on March 6, barely forty hours after Bronson's death, minister, Cyrus Bartol, delivered Louisa's eulogy. Then it was tim e for Louisa, too, was dead. When the story of their last conversation circulated Louisa's remains to follow those of Bronson to Sleepy Hollow. It is im pos and people became aware of Bronson's request that his daughter might sible to know the thoughts of Anna, the oldest and now the last of the lit come up with him, it was hard not to entertain the macabre idea that tie women, as she stood on this hill whose soil contained 1101 011 1 so muc I, Louisa had accepted her father's invitation. of the literary life of America, but of her own life as well. Among her papers, Louisa had left an unpublished poem, simply tided Lulu Nieriker, now eight, had lost a second mother. I er father , 1111 to 426 ~ EDEN'S OUTCASTS "Come Up with Me"

visit her after Louisa's death and, the following year, sent a relative to bring the path, alongside her beloved John. The earth beneath one of the stones the girl back to Europe. Anna went with them to assure herself of the fit­ contains nothing; although Louisa had hoped to one day bring May's ness of her niece's new home. She left Lulu there, satisfied that Ernest remains back to Concord, she never succeeded. Bronson's and Abba's Nieriker was "a good man," whom she respected "more and more every youngest girl, perhaps the boldest adventurer of all, never came home. day. " Before her death, Louisa had legally adopted Anna's younger son With this exception, the family is still close together. Of the five who are John, a stratagem that enabled him to inherit her copyrights. These he represented in this neat little row, only Louisa has any additional personal held as a trustee, dividing the income with Lulu, his brother Fred, and his memorial: a narrow marble rectangle that says "Louisa M. Alcott" and a mother. outlived her father and sister by only five years. bronze-colored medallion identifying her as a veteran of the United States Her two sons remained in Concord. Fred Pratt died in 1910. John passed Army. No reference is made to any other accomplishment of this astonish­ away in 1923. Raised in Zurich, Louisa May Nieriker married an Austrian, ing family. Emil Rasim. Sheltered by Switzerland's neutrality from the ravages of two To know what chis family did accomplish, one must descend the hill world wars, she raised a daughter of her own, was widowed early, and lived and walk along Lexington Road to . The Hillside Chapel, to the age of ninety-six.7 2 home of the Concord School of Philosophy, still stands on the property, On Spindle Hill, near a sloping crossroads where the traffic goes too and each summer it still welcomes scholars who gather to discuss the fast, a heavy stone marker indicates the spot near which Bronson Alcott Alcott legacy. But something deeper can be learned from looking at the was born. It is easy to drive by without seeing it, and not everyone who children who never stop coming to Bronson's and Louisa's house. They are lives in the neighborhood knows it is there. In Concord, tourists now eager, hushed, and wide-eyed. They come to see something they cannot come to snap pictures and lay flowers in a corner of Sleepy Hollow Ceme­ describe but most certainly feel, something that comes neither precisely tery known as Author's Ridge. Apart from Westminster Abbey and Pere from the Marches nor the Alcotts, but is perhaps an idea of how life and Lachaise, one doubts that there are many places on earth richer in literary families ought to be. Louisa once wrote to an admirer, 'To all of us comes remains. Barely a dozen paces separate Bronson's grave from Henry [a] desire for something to hold by, look up to, and believe in. "73 In the Thoreau's, and Hawthorne's is nearer still. Emerson lies a short distance eyes of the children who come to Orchard House, it is possible to see not away. His monument, a large, white, rough-hewn monolith, is the only only this desire, but also its partial satisfaction. Louisa May Alcott, who one on Author's Ridge that is in any sense imposing. Although more poured her life's experience into works of fiction, never wrote the great ornate markers were later erected to commemorate both the Thoreau and book for adults of which she thought she was capable. Her youngest sister Alcott families, the original headstones are startling in their simplicity. left a number of attractive canvases and some whimsical drawings on her Thoreau's bears the name "Henry," and nothing more. The grave of bedroom wall. Few people know the other two sisters as anything more Hawthorne ·carries only the last name, and there is nothing but the small than characters in a book. Bronson Alcott spent his life chasing a nameless, floral tributes of admirers to distinguish his place from those of various evanescent ideal and filling up massive journals that only scholars care to other members of the family. The Alcotts lie in an orderly row along an read. Were it not for the pen of her gifted daughter, Abba Alcott, though asphalt-covered path beneath sheltering oaks and pines. The stones are better known than most of the nineteenth-century women who toiled engraved only with dates and initials. ''A.B.A.," the good but enigmatic ceaselessly for their families, would have left a principally invisible legacy. patriarch, is on the far right. Next to him is ''A.M.A.," the sometimes However, through some strange spiritual alchemy, the novelist, her sisters, angry but always loyal wife and mother. Then come three daughters, in the and the parents who raised them created something extraordinary. Louisa order in which they left the world, "E.S.A.," "M.A.N.," and lastly May Nieriker summarized it best in an interview she gave in the last year "L.M.A." Anna, buried as a Pratt, not an Alcott, is a few strides back from of her life. She said, "The Alcotts were large."74 The largeness endures. Iii 428 EDEN'S OUTCASTS

Bronson Alcott expected the world to be miraculous. Talk with anyone who has read and loved , and you may conclude that he was right after all. To the extent that a written page permits knowledge of a different time NOTES and departed souls, this book has tried ro reveal them. However, as Bron­ son Alcott learned to his bemusement, the life written is never the same as the life lived. Journals and letters tell much. Biographers can sift the sands ~ as they think wisest. But the bonds that two persons share consist also of encouraging words, a reassuring hand on a tired shoulder, fleeting smiles, and soon-forgotten quarrels. These contacts, so indispensable to existence, leave no durable trace. As writers, as reformers, and as inspirations, Bron­ son and Louisa still exist for us. Yet this existence, on whatever terms we may experience it, is no more than a shadow when measured against the way they existed for each other.

PROLOGUE: DISGRACE

I. Sales at Auction by J. L. Cunningham, 13 April 1837, MS Am 1130.9(2), Houghton Library, Harvard University. 2. A. B. Alcott, Journal for 1837, Week XlV, MS Am 1130. 12(10), p. 244, Houghton Library, Harvard University. I I 3. Shepard, Pedlar's Progress, 130. 4. Ibid., 240. 5. to Frederic Henry Hedge, Concord, 20 July 1836, in l etters, II, 29. 6. Thoreau, j ournal, I842-I848, 223; / ournal, I853, IOI. 7. N. Hawthorne, "The Hall of Fantasy," in ]ales and Sketches, 1491-92. 8. T horeau, Wal.den, 39. 9. L. M . Alcott, little Women , , Jo's Boys, 229. IO. Sanborn, Recollections, II, 476.

11. Shepard , Pedlar's Progress, 242. 12. Abigail May Alcott, Journal, 5 August 1828, in Bedell , Alcotts, 3. 13. Abigail May Alcott to Samuel]. May, 6 October 1834, in Barron, Tra11scendentalWife, 43. 14. Barton, Transcendental Wife, 56. 15. Abigail May Alcott to Samuel J. May, November 1840, in Barton, Transcendental Wife, 71. 16. A. B. Alcott to Abigail May Alcott, Ham Common, England, 2 July 1842, in letters, So. 17. A. B. Alcott, 4 September 1869,journals, 400. 18. A. B. Alcott, "Observations on the Spiritual Nurture," 152, 161, 151. 19. Brooks, Flowering ofN ew England, 231-32. 20. Milton, Paradise Lost, XlI, I. 648, in Complete Poems, 469.