Old Books, Rare Friends

by Madeline B. Stern

  The feminist gallery was joined—climaxed—by the enigmatic figure of Jean Muir in A. M. Barnard’s masterpiece, “Behind a Mask: or, A Woman’s Power.” Originally issued in The Flag of Our Union, which Leona had discovered, this four-part serial of 1866 came to me in photocopy from the American Antiquarian Society. I devoured it voraciously as the pages followed one another. Pauline Valary was more femme fatale than feminist; Jean Muir reversed the proportion. One of A. M. Barnard’s most fascinating heroines, she is actress and witch, enchantress and feminist. Motivated, like Pauline, by thwarted love, she sets out to ruin the Coventry family and succeeds in captivating every one of its male members, including the head of the House of Coventry.

  Why had the future author of Little Women created such characters and woven such stories? There were many reasons. Economic need was one. Bronson Alcott had no gift for moneymaking, and the cost of coal, the price of shoes, increased along with the family debts. “Pauline’s Passion” had yielded its author—“a lady of Massachusetts”—$100, and “Behind a Mask” brought $80 (more than the publisher’s original offer) to the Alcott sinking fund.

  But A. M. Barnard had another, perhaps even stronger motivation to spin thrillers in which feminism was so often an ingredient. In a way, “Behind a Mask” is a roman à clef in which the past not only of Jean Muir but of Louisa May Alcott sits for its portrait. Like Jean Muir, Alcott had gone out to service, experiencing at age nineteen what can only be called her Humiliation at Dedham. She had consented to work for the Dedham lawyer the Honorable James Richardson and his sister, but when she retreated from his maudlin advances she had been assigned all the household work, from digging paths through the snow to fetching water from the well, from splitting the kindling and sifting the ashes to blacking the master’s muddy boots. After seven weeks of drudgery she left, receiving for her labors the sum of four dollars. It required little detection to perceive that the Humiliation in Dedham had been converted into feminist anger in a sensation story.

  A few years later, frustrated in all her attempts to find work, Louisa looked at the waters of the Mill Dam and was momentarily tempted to find the solution of her problems in their depths. Surely such a temptation, like her service in Dedham, was part of the psychological equipment of a writer who needed to let her hair down.

  Many details that would appear in the large corpus of sensation narratives eventually traced to her pen found their source in the author’s life. From a passion for acting to hashish experimentation and opium addiction, from mind control to madness, the themes are traceable not only to Alcott’s readings and imaginings but often to her observations and experiences.

  To “Pauline’s Passion” and “Behind a Mask,” I added A. M. Barnard’s Gothic romance “The Abbot’s Ghost: or, Maurice Treherne’s Temptation,” a four-part serial from The Flag of Our Union of 1867, and The Mysterious Key, and What It Opened, which had been published as a “Ten Cent Novelette” by Elliott, Thomes & Talbot. Once I gathered my gaudy foursome together, I offered the collection to the firm of William Morrow. Joni Evans, the charming, vibrant senior editor, was, at the end of January 1974, “tremendously excited”; a “contract letter” was “in the works”; by the end of May a marketing meeting promised further excitement over a volume now definitely entitled Behind a Mask.

  Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott was published on my birthday, July 1, 1975. And the hoopla began. The next morning I was interviewed on the “Today” show by Barbara Walters, who, I must confess, was really more interested in why Louisa Alcott had never married than in the complexities of her double literary life. The excitement continued, now that the titillating disclosure had been made: the author who touted the wholesome delights of apples and ginger cookies in her family sagas also expressed remarkable familiarity with murder and mayhem, drug addiction and the sexual power struggle in the thrillers of Behind a Mask. Reviewers were astonished with the array of “wild melodrama and mad passion” in the Miss Alcott, the most astute remarking, “A most fascinating find. Never again will you have quite the same image of this particular ’little woman.’ ”

  As eyes were opened, eyebrows were raised. Behind a Mask was reprinted: by September a fourth printing had been scheduled; foreign rights were sold to W. H. Allen of London; a Bantam paperback vastly increased the readership. A second volume of anonymous and pseudonymous shockers by the “Children’s Friend” was contemplated.

  The last paragraph of my introduction to Behind a Mask had stated:

  The four narratives selected for Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott are, it is hoped, an earnest, a foretaste of others that will follow. For Louisa Alcott was indeed a natural—an almost limitless—“source of stories.” Here her “gorgeous fancies” and her flamboyant characters do “cavort at their own sweet will.” And here, in an extraordinary union, the excitements of escape are coupled with the excitements of self-discovery. She writes in a vortex behind her mask and she proves, if proof is needed, that “the writers of sensation novels are wiser in their generation than the children of sweetness and light.”

  Behind a Mask was a foretaste of Plots and Counterplots: More Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott, published exactly one year later. The title narrative—“V.V.: or, Plots and Counterplots,” “By A Well Known Author”—had originally appeared in The Flag of Our Union in 1865 and reappeared as a Ten Cent Novelette. V.V.—Virginie Varens—is a far cry from Jo March. A malevolent, devious Spanish dancer, she is probably Alcott’s most evil heroine, perpetrating sins that range from peccadillo to crime. An exciting femme fatale, V.V. had “the nerves of a man” and “the quick wit of a woman,” not to mention the malignancy of Satan and the conniving skills of Machiavelli. Even in the act of appalling, she enchants.

  To “V.V.” I added another A. M. Barnard serial plucked from the pages of The Flag of Our Union, “A Marble Woman: or, The Mysterious Model,” a narrative presenting Alcott’s variation on the Pygmalion-Galatea theme. Here the heroine is molded into marble by a sculptor whose clay is flesh and blood. Here too the author deftly interweaves other delectable themes: the child-bride; a hint of incest; a brief bout with opium addiction. Louisa Alcott had surely been ministered laudanum during the illness that followed her service as Civil War nurse, and as a result A. M. Barnard found in tincture of opium a useful narrative device. The final story of Plots and Counterplots, “Perilous Play,” originally published in Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, is concerned entirely with drug experimentation. A short, dramatic shocker, “Perilous Play” is devoted exclusively to an experiment with hashish, “that Indian stuff which brings one fantastic visions.” It ends with the exclamation “Heaven bless hashish, if its dreams end like this!”

  With two other sensation stories, “The Skeleton in the Closet” and “A Whisper in the Dark,” Plots and Counterplots made a popular sequel to Behind a Mask. The page turners that appealed to the general public were at the same time spurring scholars on their revisionist course. Reinterpreting the “Children’s Friend” in the light of her shockers, they highlighted the darker aspects of Alcott’s life and character, applying the new criticism not only to her oeuvre but to her persona. The sexual politics in her newly uncovered sensation fiction was traced, her “midnight fantasies” examined, her “gender relations” explored. Louisa May Alcott was recognized as a far more adventurous writer than had been believed, a many-faceted professional as adept at the sensational as at the sentimental. From behind her mask, a new Alcott image was emerging.

  The critics were soon joined by the dramatists. Katharine Houghton, actress-playwright, created and performed a delightful monologue entitled To Heaven in a Swing, a one-woman show about the life of Louisa May Alcott. Necessities, Rita Kohn’s one-woman script on Alcott, was an award-winner. Two dramatists in California collaborated on a play based upon “V.V.: or, Plots and Counterplots,” and off Broadway in New York the story “Behind a Mask” was charmingly transposed for the thea
ter by Karen L. Lewis. A musical adaptation of that story is being prepared by Polly Pen for the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey.

  The unmasked Alcott seemed to attract attention from a wide range of readers and viewers, and many curious reactions found their way to my desk. One correspondent who worked in a sawmill informed me that he was writing a book containing postcards to Louisa May Alcott and was looking for a “woman editor” whose “instincts” were compatible with his. Another correspondent sent me a lengthy opus written after she had revealed in a series of hypnotic sessions that she was Louisa May Alcott.

  The producers of “Bookshelf” on BBC Radio interviewed me for a program entitled “A Double Life,” which they characterized as “a splendid sidelong way of viewing Alcott.” Leona and I were invited to lecture on “Louisa May Alcott: What Was Behind Her Mask?” The library of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, enlisted us to build a collection of writings by and about Louisa May Alcott that has continued amassing for many years. A. Dean Larsen, Associate University Librarian and a dear friend, wrote to me in appreciation: “When you meet Louisa May Alcott in the next life she is going to embrace you and say, ‘Madeleine, you, more than any other person ever to live, have furthered my literary reputation.’ ”

  It was only natural that, by the 1980s, scholars should have begun the task of collecting Louisa May Alcott’s Letters and revising and completing the nineteenth-century edition of her Journals. For those two indispensable undertakings, Professor Joel Myerson of the University of South Carolina and his then research assistant, Daniel Shealy, were largely responsible. I was delighted to join with them in both major projects. The new edition of Alcott’s Journals included “Notes and Memoranda,” kept by the writer in a ledger bound in half-leather. In it she entered a brief summary of her year’s activities and—most important—a list of stories she had written, the titles usually abbreviated, and the sums they had earned. In those lists some surprising titles appeared, titles of stories I had never heard of, much less read. For example, in the early 1860s “A Pair of Eyes” earned the author $40; in 1864 she received $50 for “The Fate of the Forrests”; in 1865, when she earned $50 for “V.V.” and $75 for “A Marble Woman,” she also earned $50 each for “A Double Tragedy” and for “Ariel.”

  The titles of those unread narratives seemed appropriate for the blood-and-thunder genre, and I had a very good idea of where they had appeared. In re-editing Alcott’s Journals, the twentieth-century editors had included all the telltale names and statements that the nineteenth-century editor, Ednah Dow Cheney, had seen fit to delete. Louisa Alcott, it appeared, had been far more prolific than her biographers had dreamed. The Concord Scheherezade had hidden an Arabian Nights Entertainment behind her mask. Many of her tales had been written, as she noted in her Journals during the 1860s, “for Leslie”—the L. I had long ago identified. Here he was again, with his fleet of magazines and newspapers. I had only to plow through them for titles I now knew were by Louisa May Alcott. The hunt was on once more.

  No one who has not experienced the urgencies of search-and-find can share the palpitations and bated breath that accompany the turning of crumbling nineteenth-century folio newspaper sheets for hidden nuggets. Frank Leslie’s major publication, his Illustrated Newspaper, lay before me in bound volumes of the 1860s. I knew they must contain some of the unsigned stories I was seeking. In these pages my tireless author awaited her huntress. I found her first in a two-part narrative published in October 1863, anonymously, of course. I quickly scanned my find. “A Pair of Eyes; or, Modern Magic” was modern magic indeed—a remarkable narrative focused upon mind control through mesmerism, extraordinary preoccupations for the author of Flower Fables. In November 1863 Alcott recorded in her journal: “Recieved [sic] $39 from Leslie for ‘A Pair of Eyes,’ not enough, but I’m glad to get even that … Paid debts with it as usual.” How right she was. Not enough for such an intriguing narrative, even in 1863.

  I tracked down “The Fate of the Forrests” in three issues of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper for February 1865. Here, my anonymous, multifaceted writer had left the lure of mesmeric influences for the shocking theme of Hindu Thuggism. Even in this foray into the exotic, the power struggle between the sexes runs like a scarlet thread. The author of Little Women found the sexual conflict an enormously productive literary theme.

  In March 1865 Alcott wrote in her Journal: “Leslie asked me to be a regular contributor to his new paper ‘The Chimney Corner,’ & I agreed if he’d pay before hand, he said he would & bespoke two tales at once $50 each. Longer ones as often as I could & whatever else I liked to send. So here’s another source of income & Alcott brains seem in demand.”

  Frank Leslie’s Chimney Corner was planned, started, and edited by that genuine femme fatale Miriam Squier, who would shortly become Mrs. Frank Leslie. On the first page of its first issue was emblazoned an anonymous narrative entitled “A Double Tragedy: An Actor’s Story.” Leafing the pages, I found in the weekly for July 8 and 15 the two-part tale “Ariel: A Legend of the Lighthouse.” Both stories owe much to the theatrical passion of their stagestruck author. “A Double Tragedy” is not only a story of guilt and murder, but quintessentially a story of the stage. “Ariel,” set on an enchanted island, borrows heavily from Shakespeare’s Tempest, almost translating it for a nineteenth-century readership. The surname Alcott gives her heroine Ariel is, incidentally, March.

  Those four stories discovered or rediscovered in Leslie news sheets would have been sufficient for another collection of Alcott thrillers. But I had a delectable plum to add to them. In December 1866 the writer noted in her Journal: “Wrote … a wild Russian story ‘Taming a Tartar.’ ” Listing the year’s earnings, she cited “Taming a Tartar” at $100. An Alcott narrative with such a title had to be both melodramatic and feminist. And indeed it was. It was spread—again anonymously—over four installments of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in 1867, and it was the most explicit version of the power struggle between the sexes that Alcott had ever produced. The contest between the slender, pale-faced English teacher Sybil Varna and the “swarthy, black-eyed, scarlet-lipped” Tartar Prince Alexis is an exciting and intense battle of wills. Its final dialogue dramatically designates the victor:

  ALEXIS: I might boast that I also had tamed a fiery spirit, but I am humble, and content myself with the knowledge that the proudest woman ever born has promised to love, honor, and—

  SYBIL: Not obey you.

  The quintet of “Newly Discovered Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott” was gathered together under the title A Double Life, and the collection was published by Little, Brown in 1988.

  Three years later another collection of Alcott shockers, traced and assembled by colleagues Daniel Shealy and Joel Myerson, was published by Greenwood Press as Freaks of Genius. And in 1993 still another anthology of Alcott’s “Stories of Intrigue and Suspense” appeared under the title From Jo March’s Attic, over the imprint of Northeastern University Press. That collection was dedicated to Victor A. Berch, “Literary Detective.” I had sent to that persistent researcher a list of some of the still untraced titles from Alcott’s account book and, doubtless after the usual palpitations, he uncovered them in yet another Leslie publication, Frank Leslie’s Lady’s Magazine edited by none other than Miriam Leslie. Where Alcott listed “Dr Donn” [sic] $22, Mr. Berch found “Doctor Dorn’s Revenge”; where Alcott cited “Countess Irma,” Mr. Berch pounced upon “Countess Varazoff,” whose first name was Irma; Alcott’s “Mademoiselle” showed up as “My Mysterious Mademoiselle,” and “Betrayed” materialized as “Betrayed by a Buckle.”

  Between 1975 and 1993, five collections of Alcott thrillers were resuscitated from the fragile weeklies of the mid-nineteenth century. The page turners disclosed the author’s strange familiarity with sexual power struggles, narcotics addiction, murder, revenge, and feminist triumph over the male lords of creation. The prolific double literary life that had been a well-kept secret in t
he nineteenth century was revealed to the public. Or was it? In two decades much can be forgotten.

  There was still one long sensational story that Louisa May Alcott had written but had never published. She had called it “A Modern Mephistopheles, or The Long Fatal Love Chase” and had written it in 1866, shortly after her return from abroad, where she had served as companion to a young invalid. It had been suggested by A. M. Barnard’s publisher, James R. Elliott, of Elliott, Thomes and Talbot, who had written:

  I would like to have you write me a story of from 200 to 250 pages your Ms., in 24 chapters, & the close of each 2nd chapter so absorbingly interesting that the reader will be impatient for the next. The twelve parts (24 chapters) may vary 5 or 6 pages as to length, but not more than that. I want it to run through 12 numbers of our Magazine, and I think you can write a story that you, myself and our readers will like. For such a story I shall be willing to give you an extra $25, over the half dollar per Ms. page. Will you write it, so that I can have it (or one half of it) by October 1st?

  Since family debts had mounted during the breadwinner’s stay in Europe, she was quick to comply with Elliott’s request. But James R. Elliott, for reasons Alcott cites in her diary, rejected the manuscript. As Alcott put it, “Mother sick … Got a girl & devoted myself to mother, writing after she was abed. In this way finished the long tale ‘A Modern Mephistopheles.’ But Elliott would not have it, saying it was too long & too sensational! So I put it away & fell to work on other things.”