Kelly OConnor McNees - The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott

Table of Contents

Dont laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often
very tender, tragical romances are hidden
away in the hearts that beat so quietly
under their sober gowns.

Louisa May Alcott approached the ticket window of the Boston passenger station clutching a large case and a black parasol. She asked for the tickets on hold under her nameshed written a week before to reserve them. The clerks forehead gleamed, wet in the heat of his cramped booth. He held her gaze a moment longer than was proper and began to ask a question, then stopped. He seemed to decide that if this well-dressed woman was who he thought she was, he probably shouldnt ask for confirmation. He took the money she offered and gave her back the change.

It was a brisk autumn day and the platform was blustery. Louisa felt the skirts of her slim black dress swirl around her ankle boots, the pair shed had for years, the pair shed worn in Rome in the cathedrals, in Nice, in the parlor of the Paris inn where shed shared wine with a Polish revolutionary as he described the deaths of all his friends. The boots were sturdy but the leather was cracked. She could afford to buy new onesshe could afford to buy just about anything she wanted now, though it hadnt always been that way. In her childhood poverty she had looked with breathless guilty glee at the fashion plates in Godeys Ladys, memorized every ruffle, collar, and bow the Paris girls wore. Now that she finally had the money to dress like a proper lady, she felt she was too old to do it. At forty-eight, shed grown accustomed to her spinsters garb: black dresses, white lace collars fastened high around her neck. Corsets, bustles, scarlet French-heeled boots that buttoned up with pearlsthose were for the younger set, still upright, with color in their cheeks, anticipating life instead of looking back on it.

She expected a smooth journey, provided they did not encounter engine trouble or problems with the track. Winter ice sometimes pried rail ties loose, but by May all the damage to the track had been repaired. Now fall was upon them once again, the destructive ice not far away, and anticipation of the looming chill filled her with weariness.

Once in the rail car, she glanced around at her fellow travelers. At the front of the car two little girls sat together, their spindly legs swinging in time with the rocking train. One girl held her doll in the crook of her elbow and stroked its carefully braided hair of gold yarn. She turned to the side and whispered something in her sisters ear. The girls broke into a shrill giggle before their mother turned to them and thrust her index finger to her lips. Quiet now, they grinned at each other, their eyes dancing.

A few men sat at the other end of the car, reading the newspaper and smoking while they watched trees and cranberry bogs replace Bostons dusty, crowded bustle. She didnt recognize anyone and they didnt seem to recognize her, which helped relax the tightness in her chest. But only a little.

It had been twenty-six years since she had seen the tidy houses and storefronts lined up along Washington Square in Walpole, the lilacs buzzing with honey bees. Twenty-six years, but the place was seared in her brain. The tracks curved through a dense stand of white birch and she realized she was wistful, an emotion in which she rarely allowed herself to indulge.

Louisa reached inside the case at her feet and pulled out the thick envelope of folded paper. She ran her fingers along the irregular edges of the letters she had tried so many times but never quite managed to destroy. Before she could restrain them, images flooded her mind and something cinched tightly around her heart. It was all right to think about it one last time, she supposed, as she unfolded the letters on her lap. Very soon these letters would be nothing more than embers. Her intention that day, the very reason for her journey, was to ensure the letters, and all other traces of that long ago summer, were destroyed.

In Bellows Falls, Vermont, she would hire a Rockaway to take her the rest of the way to Walpole, where Joseph Singer would be waiting.

For now, the train swayed on.

It didnt take long for the Alcott sisters to finish unpacking their clothes. Anna, Louisa, Lizzie, and May didnt have many bonnets or dresses, both because they couldnt afford them and because their father, Bronson, believed a penchant for lace and silk revealed a weakness in ones character.

It feels so nice to put things away, Anna said as she smoothed a worn quilt at the foot of her bed. The narrow wardrobe at her back contained six dresses Louisa and Anna shared between them, though the fabric stretched a bit across Annas slightly wider shoulders. Should we not find something to dress these windows?

Anna and Louisa would also share the stuffy attic room that ran the length of the borrowed house. The sisters small beds were nestled opposite each other in the cozyor constrictive, depending on the moodcorner made by the steep angle of the roof. On stormy nights Louisa and Anna would be forced to raise their voices over the wind whistling through the poorly insulated walls. This room would be uninhabitable in a New England winter, but for the mild summer months it would do, and they were happy to have a room of their own away from the others. Near the head of each bed, a cushioned perch in the twin dormers provided just the right amount of light for reading or sewing.

Anna twisted up her mouth. Oh, I forgotMarmee put the drapes from Hillside up in Lizzie and Mays room. She swung open the lid of her trunk and bent down to dig through the pile of folded fabric. A moment later she stood upright and turned to her sister. Louisa, are you listening to me?

Hmm? Louisa turned her body toward the direction of Annas voice, but her eyes remained fixed in the book she held in front of her face. It was Longfellows Hyperion, a tale of a mans travels through Germany. Mr. Emerson had urged her to borrow it for the summer. Louisa knew that Longfellow admired Goethe, as she didher ostensible reason for wanting to read the book. She also knew that the books romance came from Longfellows real-life fumblings with love. Something about that fact made the story all the more sensational and impossible to put down.

Anna scoffed as she tipped the trunks lid closed. You read too much. Sometimes I think I cant remember what your face looks like from the cheekbones down.

Louisa looked up, finally, and lowered the book. She registered the question that had so far failed to penetrate her mind, as if it were a bird colliding with a windowpane. The mention of Hillside called up an image of the cozy house in Concord where theyd lived for three whole years until she was fifteen and financial woes had forced them back to Boston. The memory of it made her glum.

Im sorry, Anna. I did hear you. She felt her flushed cheek with the back of her hand. The attic room was unbearably hot and it was only ten in the morning. If the Hillside drapes are in use, we may have to make some new ones.