Little Women Letters

Chapter 4

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BRONSON ALCOTT wrote the first Baby Book, a book which throws new light on the character of the lovable philosopher, showing one of New England's intellectual leaders as a very human and lovable man as well as "a fond and foolish father."

His Baby Book, however, contains no minute record of the first tooth, or when the baby began to say "Goo" and "Pitty light"; rather it is the father's earnest effort to learn how early in life the infant mind begins to awaken, to indicate comprehension, thought, or logic. As Maeterlinck studied the bee, so Alcott studied his children, and his findings are a revelation, even to-day, when the study of the child has become a science.

Mr. Alcott considered vital the development of the child's individuality and mind; the body seemed to him of secondary importance, for this disregard of the material care of his family he has been severely censured; but, not recognizing in his own life the claims of the body, devoting all his energies to mental growth, it is not surprising that he found his fatherly duty in the guidance of his children's minds. His firm faith in the admonition, "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you," was to him excuse enough for considering the intellect more than the body.

His practical shortcomings reaped a rich and unexpected reward in the next generation, for Louisa M. Alcott would probably not have developed her original and highly entertaining literary gift without the vicissitudes caused by her father's impractical nature and his sublime faith that at all times and in all emergencies the Lord would provide. He did provide; but Louisa was usually the channel, and many of her stories were written under the whip of stern necessity.

Doing without has its advantages. The Alcott children, never overfed, overentertained, overburdened to baby boredom with dolls and toys and games, developed appreciation, observation, and ingenuity. The creative faculty was aroused. They found resources within themselves. What a handbook Louisa might have written on How to be Happy though Poor!

Mrs. Alcott's keen sense of humor, a characteristic inherited by Louisa, often came to her rescue and allowed her to get fun out of a harassing situation. In a letter to her brother, Colonel May, praising her husband's intellect, she laughingly comments upon his disregard of physical necessities: "I am not sure that we shall not blush into obscurity and contemplate into starvation."

But, to get back to the baby book, or, as Mr. Alcott called it, "the psychological history," it was started with a high and unselfish motive; it was developed to an astonishing degree. Its purpose and scope are best expressed in this extract from Mr. Alcott's journal:

The history of a human mind during its progressive stages of earthly experience has never as yet, I believe, been attempted. Faithfully compiled, from verified data, it would be a treasure of wisdom to all mankind, replete with light to the metaphysical and ethical inquirer. Comparative philosophy deduced from an observation of man during all circumstances and stages of his existence is a thing yet unthought of among us. From such a work the unity of Humanity might be revealed.

When Anna was born, the father began keeping a record of her "physical and intellectual progress." When she was seven weeks old, her mother wrote: "It seems as if she were conscious of his observations and desirous of furnishing him daily with an item for this record."

I am much interested in the progress of my little girl, now five months old, which I have recorded from the day of her birth. This record has swollen to a hundred pages. I have attempted to discover, as far as this could be done by external indication, the successive steps of her physical, mental and moral advancement.

On November 29, 1832, his thirty-third birthday and also the natal day of his friend, Ellery Channing, the poet, Mr. Alcott chronicles an "interesting event," how interesting the father little dreamed, nor how important, not alone to the house of Alcott, but to the world. Under the heading of Circumstances, the father thus records the birth of Louisa May Alcott:

A daughter born, on the 29th. ulto., my birthday, being 33 years of age. This is a most interesting event. Unless those ties which connect it with others are formed, the wants of the soul become morbid and all its fresh and primal affections become dim and perverted.... Few can be happy shut out of the nursery of the soul.

While the New England philosopher was studying the development of his little daughters and deducing therefrom facts for his psychological history, these same little daughters were developing him, for, as the child nature unfolded, the father's understanding of childhood expanded.

The influence of children I regard as important to my own improvement and happiness. It is also necessary to the prosecution of my studies. Dwelling in the primal regions which I wish to explore, they are the purest manifestations of its phenomena, and the only subjects from which humanity is to be interpreted in its purity.

I passed some time with the children, fitting up their playthings, conversing with them and learning as far as I could through the subtle meaning of looks, accents and gestures, their thoughts and feelings. The avenues to the spirit are all open, but how dim are our perceptions, how cold our sympathies, to appreciate the pure and bright things which glitter in the arena of the young mind! How little of this fairy land do we know-we, whose early associations have all been swept from the heart-over whose spirits have passed the cold winds, the pelting storms, withering and destroying the heart's young verdure! What is there to unite us with the spirit of a child? What have we in common with its joyous yearning for the beautiful, its trust in human sayings, its deep love for those on whom it relies for attention and support, its vivid picturing of ideal life, its simplicity, its freedom from prejudice and false sentiment? Where are these to be seen in our dim nature?

He might have answered the question by looking within himself. Child companionship kept alive the spirit of the Alcott boy, which constantly shone through the man's philosophy. As the boy saw in every rock and tree and flower an expression of the Infinite, is it any wonder that the man should have recognized God's higher manifestation in the child, and should have written in his journal these lines, which are the very glorification of fatherhood and reveal the sacredness with which he looked upon his stewardship?

He who deals with the child deals-did he know it-with the Infinite. Within the young spirit committed to his care are infinite capacities to be filled, infinite energies to be developed, and on him devolves the amazing responsibility-sacred, personal, all his own-of filling these capacities, unfolding these energies, from the stores and life of his own spirit. This is his office as a parent. But how can he who knows nothing of the Infinite within himself call it forth and direct its forces in others?

From the first, Louisa must have shown strong individuality and unusual tendencies, for Mr. Alcott's notes on Louisa are entitled "Observations on the Vital Phenomena of My Second Child." A more vital, lovable, contradictory specimen of childhood cannot be imagined. Blessed with her father's brilliancy of mind, her mother's quick wit and love of fun, Louisa furnished a problem for endless study. She was less than two years old when her individuality had so asserted itself that her father found himself puzzled and admitted that elements were finding their way into his observations of whose origin he could give no account. "My analysis, however accurate and elaborate, was still imperfect, and I was left in doubt. I had made no provision for the admission of innate influences from the mind itself."

Here is a quaint little record of the Alcott babies' school days, when Anna was four years old and Louisa a little more than two:

At school Anna reads, marks and listens to conversations and stories. Louisa works with her in all except the reading and marking. They have a playroom, where they enjoy their own amusements, uninterrupted by the presence of adults-often a bar to the genuine happiness of childhood. Anna reads simple sentences from Leffanoch's Primer, writes intelligibly on tablets and slates, and is improving in work and manners.

A spiritual and moral inventory of the progress of Anna and Louisa is set down by the father when his daughters had reached the dignified ages of six and four:

The children have improved under my training. Anna, who has been with me more of the time than Louisa, has been greatly benefited. She is happier, more capable of self control, more docile and obeys from love and faith. She has fine elements for excellence, moral and intellectual. If she does not evince a pure and exalted character, it will be our failure, not hers, in the improvement of her natural endowments.

Louisa is yet too young for the formation of just views of her character. She manifests uncommon activity and force of mind at present, and is much in advance of her sister at the same age; example has done much to call forth her nature. She is more active and practical than Anna. Anna is ideal, sentimental. Louisa is practical, energetic. The first imagines much more than she can realize; the second, by force of will and practical talent, realizes all that she conceives-but conceives less; understanding, rather than imagination-the gift of her sister-seems to be her prominent faculty. She finds no difficulty in developing ways and means to obtain her purpose; while her sister, aiming at much, imagining ideal forms of good, and shaping them out so vividly in her mind that they become actual enjoyments, fails, when she attempts to realize them in nature-she has been dwelling on the higher and more speculative relations of things.

Both represent interesting forms of character, both have wide and useful spheres of action indicated in their conformation and will doubtless if continued to us, be real blessings.

I know not how much more spiritual I am from the parental relation (he writes), how much I have been indebted to them for the light that hath dawned upon my own mind from the radiance of their simple spirits. Certain it is that the more I associate with them in the simple ways they love, the more do I seem to revere. Verily had I not been called to associate with children, had I not devoted myself to the study of human nature in its period of infancy and childhood, I should never have found the tranquil repose, the steady faith, the vivid hope that now sheds a glory and a dignity around the humble path of my life. Childhood hath saved me.

Out of his theories, his studies, and meditations came a sublime ambition, a desire to become a laborer in the "Field of the Soul."

Infancy I shall invest with a glory-a spirituality which the disciples of Jesus, deeply as they entered into His spirit and caught the life of His mind, have failed to bring forth in their records of His sayings and life. I shall redeem infancy and childhood, and, if a Saviour of Adults was given in the person of Jesus, let me, without impiety or arrogance, regard myself as the Children's Saviour. Divine are both missions. Both seek out and endeavor to redeem the Infinite in man, which, by reason of the clogs of sense and custom, is in perpetual danger of being lost. The chief obstacle in the way of human regeneration is the want of a due appreciation of human nature, and particularly of the nature of children.

Home and its influence upon children meant much to Mr. Alcott, and in all his writing the nearest approach to a protest against the poverty he was called upon to endure was when, for a time, he was obliged to give up that home. Deep is the pathos that lies between the lines of this entry in his journal:

I deem it very important to the well being of my children to insure them a home. At least their means of improvement are limited, their pleasures are abridged, the domestic relations, so vital to virtue-to all that lives in the heart and imagination, are robbed of their essential glory, and the effect is felt throughout the character in after life. I feel that my duty as a father cannot be fully carried out when I am thus restricted. Whether we can yet improve this condition remains to be determined.

The home was reestablished-and such a home! An influence felt throughout the world, the inspiration of every book Louisa Alcott wrote.

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.