Historic Neighbors Haunt My River Valley

Having made some acquaintance with the contemporary situation in my new river valley, I felt eager to learn more about the historic figures who peopled Massachusetts in its early days, making Boston unequivocally the intellectual center of America. To that end, Susan Cheever's new Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography (November 2010) popped off the Wayland Public Library shelf and into my book bag. There is hereabouts a certain residual spirit of those heady times.

I had no idea. Papa Bronson Alcott, the lovable, admirable, nearly useless genius. His long-adoring wife upon whose shoulders the weight of Bronson's ineffectiveness fell. The four distinctive daughters, somewhat like the four Louisa Alcott would immortalize in Little Women and its sequels. The impoverished family's many moves to always inadequate housing. Their dependence on handouts from relatives and more notably from Ralph Waldo Emerson, their wealthy friend and neighbor when in Concord.

At first, I did not enjoy Cheever's book design. She alternates segments of the unfolding biography with snippets of her own experience in researching and writing the book. But by the time I reached Louisa's volunteer tour of duty as a nurse in the Civil War, I was so hooked on the Alcotts that I tolerated the Cheevers.  This then-and-now style may have encouraged the author to evaluate the experience of historic characters by comparison to today's mores. Cheever acknowledges the pitfalls of this practice. An example is her reporting of the contact between Bronson Alcott and Mary Baker Eddy, and hence the probable contact of Louisa, the chronically sick former Civil War nurse, and Christian Science.   Cheever's own apparent misunderstanding of the religion and its practice of Christian healing tend to color her evaluation of the Alcotts' brush with the faith. Researchers outside the faith have notoriously had great difficulty in understanding Christian Science, so it is not fair to fault Cheever's other research by comparison with the inaccuracies on this one topic.

So, I am drinking in Little Women. Despite its lectures -- and OK, often because of them -- it's a multi-hankie book. Reading Alcott's creation in tension with what I now know of her own life, I appreciate the novel much more than I did as a child.

I had no idea. This novel, which Alcott resisted writing for years, almost overnight gained such popularity that its publisher had to hire new workers and increase his production capacities. Louisa was the J.K. Rowling of her day, as her popularity lasted through many years. She was instantly able to support her impecunious family, but the long-term battles with illnesses prevented her from ever fully enjoying the financial security of her literary successes.

I hope to visit Orchard House this spring, and the farm in Harvard where Bronson conducted his short-lived Utopian community. I'll find out if LMA's residence in Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill in Boston is commemorated today.  This is fun.