Little Women Letters

Chapter 6

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UPON the lives of all four of her daughters the mother's influence rested like a benediction. It is felt in her letters; it is reflected in the journals of her girls and in the musings of Bronson Alcott, as set down in his voluminous journals. And the mother spirit hovers over Orchard House, where "Little Women" was written and lived.

While letters to Anna from her mother are missing, Anna's journal shows how vital was Mrs. Alcott's power in the upbuilding of her noble character. Louisa in "Little Women" has said that the girls gave their hearts into their mother's keeping, their souls into their father's. Anna's letters bear eloquent testimony to the strong, helpful, cheery influence of the mother upon the child. Among the first was this letter, written by Anna when she was five years old and visiting Mr. Alcott's family at Wolcott:

I have to go away by myself and cry because I want to see you so much, and little sister Lizy and Louisa. Doctor Fuller is coming to cure Grandmother. i shall see you in a few days. You have a splendid husband

I have not had a note from you for a great while. You wanted some wafers yesterday will you accept of them from me There is not many but it is all that I have got. I am very glad my birthday is so near for as I grow older, I hope I shall grow better and more useful to you, I hope soon we shall be settled down in some comfortable little home of our own and then shall be contented and happy I hope. I must go to my sums now, so goodbye dearest mother

I wish that you would come to the table again. I enjoy my meals much better when you are at the table. Was not "Heraclitus" that father read about to-day, a dear good man, it seems as though I wanted to hug him up and kiss him. I wish men had understood his thoughts better than they did he would have been happier I think. I have enjoyed this morning readings and conversations better than I have before for a good while, I suppose, because I talked and I understood it so well. I do not write to you very often dear mother but I love to dearly when I feel like it, and I love to have letters from you. I have not been as good as I wish I had this week. I send a little bunch of flowers to you they are not very pretty but they are beautifully made and I thought you would like them. I had a beautiful time walking this morning with Louisa. Good bye dearest mother from your loving

Many copies of her mother's letters are found in Louisa's journals, showing the daughter's intense, almost idolatrous affection. Louisa admired, respected, and loved her father, but to her mother her tenderest thought was given. Marmee understood the wayward, tempestuous, lovable child as no one else did, not even loyal Anna, or admiring Elizabeth. On her birthday the mother writes to Louisa:

Will you accept this doll from me on your 7th birthday. She will be a quiet play mate for my active Louisa for seven years more. Be a kind mamma and love her for my sake.

Your 10th birthday has arrived, may it be a happy one, & on each returning birthday may you feel new strength and resolution to be gentle with sisters, obedient to parents, loving to everyone & happy in yourself.

Go on trying, dear, & each day it will be easier to be & do good. You must help yourself, for the cause of your little troubles is in yourself, & patience & courage only will make you what mother prays to see you her good and happy girl.

During the Fruitlands period, when Louisa was eleven, she found this little note tucked carefully away in a spot where only she would find and read it:

Thank you for your sweet note and sweeter poetry. The second verse is very good. Your love of nature is pure and true. It is a lovely school in which good lessons may be learned. The happy industry of birds, the beautiful lives of flowers, the music of brooks all help-

"The little fountain flows

So noiseless thro the wood,

The wanderer tastes repose,

And from the silent flood

Learns meekly to do good."

In the following letter, a pretty little deference to the child's own personality is shown by the mother, in that way bringing out in the child respect and deference for others:

I hope you will not consider me an intruder for stopping a moment in your "poet's corner" to admire the neatness of your desk, the sweetness of your poetry, the beauty of the prospect from your window. Cherish this love of nature, dear, enjoy all it gives you, for God made these helps to charm contemplation, and they strengthen the noble desire to be or to do all that is sent for our training & our good. Heaven be about you my child, is mother's Sunday prayer.

Louisa Alcott filled her diary with letters from her mother, occasionally adding in later life annotations of her own. This letter from her mother when Louisa was eleven is an example:

I enclose a picture for you which I always liked very much, for I have imagined that you might be just such an industrious daughter & I such a feeble but loving mother, looking to your labor for my daily bread. Keep it for my sake, & your own, for you and I always like to be grouped together.

I hope that soon dear mother, you & I may be

In the quiet room my fancy has so often made for thee,

The pleasant sunny chamber, the cushioned easy chair,

The books laid for your reading, the vase of flowers fair.

The desk beside the window where the sun shines warm and bright,

And there in ease and quiet, the promised book you write,

While I sit close beside you, content at last to see,

That you can rest dear mother, & I can cherish thee.

Like most writers, Louisa was moody, and in her hours of depression and despondency she looked upon her work as a failure and herself as a useless drag upon the family. At such times Marmee invariably came to the rescue and persuaded her discouraged daughter to use the pen she was ready to lay down. Even in Louisa's childhood, when her only promise of future literary achievement were her tragedies and melodramas of lurid style, little gifts show the mother's faith and pride in her daughter's work. So did her letters, of which this is an example:

I sometimes stray about the house and take a peep into the journal. Your pages lately are blank. I am sure your life has many fine passages well worth recording, and to me they are always precious. Anything like intellectual progress in my children seems to compensate for much disappointment & perplexity in my own life. Do write a little each day, dear, if but a line, to show me how bravely you begin the battle, how patiently you wait for the rewards sure to come when the victory is nobly won.

Oh, may this pen your muse inspire,

When wrapt in pure poetic fire,

To write some sweet, some thrilling verse;

A song of love or sorrow's lay,

Or duty's clear but tedious way

In brighter hope rehearse.

Oh, let your strain be soft and high,

Of crosses here, of crowns beyond the sky;

Truth guide your pen, inspire your theme,

And from each note joy's music stream.

Louisa Alcott owed much to her mother's example and perhaps even more to her mother's influence. This letter, carefully preserved in the daughter's journal, reveals a wealth of mother-love and of God-given wisdom:

Accept this pen from your mother and for her sake use it freely & worthily that each day of this your fifteenth year may testify to some good word or thought or work.

I know there will be born into your spirit new hopes, new gifts, for God helps the loving, trusting heart that turns to Him. Lift up your soul to meet the highest, for that alone will satisfy your yearning, aspiring nature.

Your temperament is a peculiar one, & there are few who can really help you. Set about the formation of character & believe me you are capable of obtaining a noble one. Industry, patience, love, creates, endures, gives all things, for these are the attributes of the Almighty, & they make us mighty in all things. May eternal love sustain you, infinite wisdom guide you, & the peace which passeth understanding reward you, my daughter.

Deeds, not words, characterized Elizabeth Alcott, as readers of "Little Women" will recall. She was about seven when she sent this letter, one of the very few she wrote, to her mother:

I thank you very much for your note. I will try to write better than I have done. I have not always had a good pen. I hope I shall improve in all my studies this summer. I hope I can read German & French very well, and know a great deal about the countries. I must write my journal now so I will bid you good bye.

Birthdays were always celebrated with much rejoicing in the Alcott household, the gift made secondary to the spirit of the day. From the time they were old enough to print, the Alcott children on the mother's birthday made her some little gift, accompanying it with a note. Abba May or May, as she was always called, at nine years old, began in prose but lapsed into poetry:

I wish you a very happy birthday. I hope you will find my present Useful, and when you wear it think of me. I have taken a great-deal of Pleasure in making it for you. Please take this Present mother on your 49 birthday

With Mrs. Alcott, hardship, poverty, the grief of seeing her husband misunderstood and often scoffed at, never lessened her love for him, or her contentment in the marriage relation. The year following her marriage in a letter to her brother she wrote: "My father has never married a daughter or son more completely happy than I am. I have cares, and soon they will be arduous ones, but with the mild, constant, and affectionate sympathy and aid of my husband, with the increasing health and loveliness of my quiet and bright little Anna, with good health, clear head, grateful heart and ready hand,-what can I not do when surrounded by influences like this?"

Ideals were never shattered; illusions, if so they may be called, were never lost by Mrs. Alcott through the stormy years that laid between the first happy months of her married life and the sunset days when all her burdens were laid down. To her, the husband who was so long denied material success and intellectual sympathy ever remained the lover and friend. Her admiration for him was unbounded, her faith in him complete. So high she held him in heart and mind, that it was difficult even for those who loved him most to appreciate her estimate of him as Poet, Philosopher, and Sage.

Concerning the most famous portrait ever made of Bronson Alcott, done in crayons by Mrs. Richard Hildredth, wife of the historian and aunt of the portrait painter, George Fuller, which, beautiful as it was, did not satisfy the wife's ideal, Mrs. Alcott writes:

A tinge of the incomprehensible lies softly around it, a field of atmosphere, as if she had worked with down from an angel's wing rather than with a crayon,-as if the moonlight had cast a shadow on the lights of her picture, and a divinity had touched with a soft shade, the dark portion of the figure. Mrs. Hildredth has changed the costume from a dress suit to a mantle draped about the shoulders. This, I do not like. The chaste simplicity of Mr. Alcott's dress is more in character and keeping with the severe simplicity and rectitude of his life. Louisa admirably describes her father's appearance as she met him at the cars. "His dress was neat and poor. He looked cold and thin as an icicle, but serene as God." After such a testimony, from such a daughter, he can afford to dress shabbily.

Contentment, whatever her lot, was an attribute of Marmee; she underestimated herself always. Unquestionably, Louisa inherited her literary gift quite as much from mother as from father, and flashes of the quaint humor so delightful in the daughter's books are found in the mother's letters. To a friend she writes: "My gifts are few. I live, love and learn, and find myself more content every day of my life with humble conditions."

Louisa Alcott never laid claim to poetic gift, but on a few occasions her verses take to themselves true poetic beauty. One of the most exquisite of these poems was written by her on the death of her mother, and was first published anonymously in the "Masque of Poets" of 1878:

Mysterious death; who in a single hour

Life's gold can so refine,

And by thy art divine

Change mortal weakness to immortal power:

Bending beneath the weight of eighty years,

Spent with the noble strife

Of a victorious life,

We watched her fading heavenward, through our tears.

But ere the sense of loss our hearts had wrung,

A miracle was wrought:

And swift as happy thought

She lived again-brave, beautiful and young.

Age, pain and sorrow dropped the veils they wore,

And showed the tender eyes

Of angels in disguise,

Whose discipline so patiently she bore.

The past years brought their harvest rich and fair;

While memory and love,

Together fondly wove

A golden garland for the silver hair.

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.