Alcott Louisa May - Fifty shades of Louisa May : a memoir of trancendental sex

2012 L M Anonymous

Illustrations by William Invisible

Published by OR Books, New York and London

Visit our website at www.orbooks.com

First printing 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except brief passages for review purposes.

Any resemblance of characters within this memoir to actual historical figures is completely intentional.

ISBN 978-1-935928-95-9 paperback

ISBN 978-1-935928-96-6 e-book

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CONTENTS

EDITORS NOTE

During the recent renovations of the Orchard House in Concord, Massachusettshome of the famed Alcott familyworkmen repairing rotting beams discovered a handwritten manuscript tightly rolled into a bottle and buried in the earthen floor of what was once the root cellar. Conservators from Harvard Universitys Peabody Museum date the manuscript from the late 1800s. Although the title page bears no signature, there can be little doubt of its authenticity or its author.

The text, published for the first time, will no doubt offend scholarswhile capturing the prurient imaginations of many readers. The authors true purpose is lost to us, save for hints throughout suggesting that writing this mmoire damour served as a cathartic exercise. Only the manuscript remains, and it is offered in unexpurgated form here.

I.

DUSK

I TURN MY PEN to this empty page to recount my hidden history in words that no one else shall ever read. Too long I have written for hungry eyes, eager to divine direction from Aunt Jo. In my books they find inspiration, entertainment, and comfort. In them, I find profits, fuel for the Alcott furnace, for which I am the solitary coal-shovelerfeeding in rubbish as fast as I can scratch words on paper. Had I only diverted some of this ardor from the page to the parlor, perhaps I wouldnt be writing here alone, a thin-waisted spinster, porcupiny and dismal company to all.

Truly, I am the ill-tempered duckling who laid the golden egg. But no lucre will come from my work tonight. These pages shall be a litany of Love, a reminiscence of furtive hands and eager lips, of moments so charged that they light my mind decades later. This evening will put to rest the memories that plague me, that pain me almost as much as the dreaded calomel, its mercury twisting my body and tainting my mind. For the pain of missed opportunities there is no cure. I can only share these episodes with an audience of one, then burn the pages by morning light, scattering the perfumed wind of lost love over the chimneytops, expelling them forever. Like the fair cereleus, my pages will open and blossom in verspertine glory for one night only, then fade forever, leaving me in peace, finally, peace.

The sun sets over sleepy Concord town and the late spring light falls on the last of the evenings travelers. The air is cooling and smells of new leaves sent out from branches grey and dead just a fortnight ago. Spring torments the ancient such as I with its false promise of infinite rebirth. I am brittle and dry as winter branches, yet no buds shall be found on me this spring nor any hence. There shall be no rebirth. I was born but once, and ahead of me awaits only the grave. Yet I can send my gloomy thoughts scuttling with a glass of Madeira from the bottle beneath my desk. Blessed Madeira, sent by Mr. Niles from New York by the caseonly my faithful publisher knows my secret vice. For though I preach temperance by day, nightfall finds my heart beckoning for some sweeter form of solace to still my racing mind and careening moods. Others have loved ones to comfort them, I have a fine collection of tombstones on the ridge of Sleepy Hollow. Others have affection to surround them. I have only false admiration, the pitter-patter of polite applause after luncheons for armies of Little Women, stretching out like soldiers in some vast army of the tedious. Where others have Love, I have only memories.

Now I gather myself here at my desk one last timeI have sold the house of my youth and tomorrow it shall pass to Mr. Harris. I gaze out upon the hardpacked dirt of Cambridge Turnpike and brace myself for tales of lust and love, of the hidden desires that fuel the worlds turning. My new blood and thunder shall be filled with carnal episodes, some amusing, others touching, but all rife with the sighs and heavings of Loves labours, witnessed by my clear, dark eyes. I shall go beyond the mysterious thrillers of A. M. Barnard, further than golden, hazy images of the meetings of young men and women among the hayfields and forests.

We are all Creatures of God, yes. But first we are merely creaturesembodied with desire and encumbered with the dovetailing machinery to spark Loves celestial motion. How that last line sickens me! My mind is veneered with metaphor. For years I have longed to write truer, baser words. And now I will. Unencumbered by Audience, I feel a new freedom. Though I fill the trough with rubbish by day, I shall inscribe these pages with wicked tales more to my liking, writing with my left handthe hand I reserve for the lurid.

Start my hand, guide my pen, and let the storm of words begin.

II.

A HISTORY LESSON

D ESIRE HAS LEFT ME as a letter leaves its envelope, dried and relieved of purpose. Yet the thought of my lusty days brings a familiar blush to my face, a thrilling disarray to my thoughts. Perhaps the heaving heart of my youth still beats beneath my black cretonne (expensive, I might point out, and from France ). I shall start my brief memoir, as many Frenchmen do, with early lustful memories, my first visions of the ways of men and women.

I was a young schoolgirl among a group led by our teacher, Miss Shackleford, who brought her rustic scholars from Mr. Sanborns School to the historic Old North Bridge to teach us of Concords revolutionary history. At this tender age, my knowledge of Love was limited. But already, my fevered imagination had elevated itself to a torrid clime. The true ways of men were a mystery. For me, it was a mystery of all-encompassing interest. Seldom could I pass a statue without running my hand along the cold thighs, wishing they were pulsing with warmth. My older sister Anna hadin whispered words and drawingsinformed me of the baser knowledge that every schoolgirl seeks more than Latin or Greek. I knew what men carried tucked beneath their tunics. And I wanted to clench it tightly in my hand.

On the day of our visit to the historic North Bridge, I paid little attention to Miss Shacklefords edifying words about the progress of the British troops on that fateful day in April almost a hundred years earlier. Her tale was a tedious and longwinded as fathers Orphic rants. I pretended to transcribe in my notebook her fascinating story of the pitched battle that began with a single shot, her recounting of the bloody day, the British dead and the hearty American Minutemen who pursued them. Instead, I sketched my own Minute-man, one who could change from farmer to bedmate in moments, who carried a mighty fluted musket in his breeches. Such were the thoughts of this dour matron back when I was a lusty schoolgirl. O if only I retained a few drops of whatever essence fueled my desire! For it has vanished now like rosewater spilled and left to dry, the life of it gone, leaving only a faint floral ghost.