The Annotated Little Women

by Louisa May Alcott

  Another and a better gift than intellect was shown her in a most unexpected manner. Miss Norton had the entrée into literary society, which Jo would have had no chance of seeing but for her. The solitary woman felt an interest in the ambitious girl, and kindly conferred many favors of this sort both on Jo and the Professor. She took them with her, one night, to a select symposium, held in honor of several celebrities.

  Jo went prepared to bow down and adore the mighty ones whom she had worshipped with youthful enthusiasm afar off. But her reverence for genius received a severe shock that night, and it took her some time to recover from the discovery that the great creatures were only men and women, after all.7 Imagine her dismay, on stealing a glance of timid admiration at the poet whose lines suggested an ethereal being fed on “spirit, fire, and dew,”8 to behold him devouring his supper with an ardor which flushed his intellectual countenance. Turning as from a fallen idol, she made other discoveries which rapidly dispelled her romantic illusions. The great novelist vibrated between two decanters9 with the regularity of a pendulum; the famous divine flirted openly with one of the Madame de Staëls of the age, who looked daggers at another Corinne,10 who was amiably satirizing her, after out-manœuvring her in efforts to absorb the profound philosopher, who imbibed tea Johnsonianly11 and appeared to slumber,—the loquacity of the lady rendering speech impossible. The scientific celebrities, forgetting their mollusks and Glacial Periods,12 gossiped about art, while devoting themselves to oysters and ices with characteristic energy; the young musician, who was charming the city like a second Orpheus,13 talked horses; and the specimen of the British nobility present happened to be the most ordinary man of the party.

  Madame de Staël, cultural patroness par excellence, was painted in the character of Corinne by Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun in 1808. (Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva, Switzerland / Bridgeman Images)

  Before the evening was half over, Jo felt so completely désillusionnée, that she sat down in a corner, to recover herself. Mr. Bhaer soon joined her, looking rather out of his element, and presently several of the philosophers, each mounted on his hobby,14 came ambling up to hold an intellectual tournament in the recess. The conversation was miles beyond Jo’s comprehension, but she enjoyed it, though Kant and Hegel15 were unknown gods, the Subjective and Objective unintelligible terms; and the only thing “evolved from her inner consciousness,” was a bad headache after it was all over. It dawned upon her gradually, that the world was being picked to pieces, and put together on new, and, according to the talkers, on infinitely better principles than before; that religion was in a fair way to be reasoned into nothingness and intellect was to be the only God. Jo knew nothing about philosophy or metaphysics of any sort, but a curious excitement, half pleasurable, half painful, came over her, as she listened with a sense of being turned adrift into time and space, like a young balloon out on a holiday.

  She looked round to see how the Professor liked it and found him looking at her with the grimmest expression she had ever seen him wear. He shook his head, and beckoned her to come away, but she was fascinated, just then, by the freedom of Speculative Philosophy, and kept her seat, trying to find out what the wise gentlemen intended to rely upon after they annihilated all the old beliefs.

  Now Mr. Bhaer was a diffident man, and slow to offer his own opinions, not because they were unsettled, but too sincere and earnest to be lightly spoken. As he glanced from Jo to several other young people attracted by the brilliancy of the philosophic pyrotechnics, he knit his brows, and longed to speak, fearing that some inflammable young soul would be led astray by the rockets, to find, when the display was over, that they had only an empty stick, or a scorched hand.

  He bore it as long as he could; but when he was appealed to for an opinion, he blazed up with honest indignation, and defended religion with all the eloquence of truth—an eloquence which made his broken English musical, and his plain face beautiful. He had a hard fight, for the wise men argued well; but he didn’t know when he was beaten, and stood to his colors like a man. Somehow, as he talked, the world got right again to Jo; the old beliefs that had lasted so long, seemed better than the new. God was not a blind force, and immortality was not a pretty fable, but a blessed fact. She felt as if she had solid ground under her feet again; and when Mr. Bhaer paused, out-talked, but not one whit convinced, Jo wanted to clap her hands and thank him.16

  She did neither; but she remembered this scene, and gave the Professor her heartiest respect, for she knew it cost him an effort to speak out then and there, because his conscience would not let him be silent. She began to see that character is a better possession than money, rank, intellect, or beauty; and to feel that if greatness is what a wise man has defined it to be,—“truth, reverence, and good-will,”—then her friend Friedrich Bhaer was not only good, but great.17

  This belief strengthened daily. She valued his esteem, she coveted his respect, she wanted to be worthy of his friendship; and, just when the wish was sincerest, she came near losing everything. It all grew out of a cocked-hat; for one evening the Professor came in to give Jo her lesson, with a paper soldier-cap on his head, which Tina had put there, and he had forgotten to take off.

  “It’s evident he doesn’t prink at his glass before coming down,” thought Jo, with a smile, as he said “Goot efening,” and sat soberly down, quite unconscious of the ludicrous contrast between his subject and his head-gear, for he was going to read her the “Death of Wallenstein.”18

  She said nothing at first, for she liked to hear him laugh out his big, hearty laugh, when anything funny happened, so she left him to discover it for himself, and presently forgot all about it; for to hear a German read Schiller is rather an absorbing occupation. After the reading came the lesson, which was a lively one, for Jo was in a gay mood that night, and the cocked-hat kept her eyes dancing with merriment. The Professor didn’t know what to make of her, and stopped, at last, to ask with an air of mild surprise that was irresistible,—

  “Mees Marsch, for what do you laugh in your master’s face? Haf you no respect for me, that you go on so bad?”

  “How can I be respectful, sir, when you forget to take your hat off ?” said Jo.

  Lifting his hand to his head, the absent-minded Professor gravely felt and removed the little cocked-hat, looked at it a minute, and then threw back his head, and laughed like a merry bass-viol.

  “Ah! I see him now; it is that imp Tina who makes me a fool with my cap. Well, it is nothing; but see you, if this lesson goes not well, you too shall wear him.”

  But the lesson did not go at all, for a few minutes, because Mr. Bhaer caught sight of a picture on the hat; and, unfolding it, said with an air of great disgust,—

  “I wish these papers did not come in the house; they are not for children to see, nor young people to read. It is not well; and I haf no patience with those who make this harm.”

  Jo glanced at the sheet, and saw a pleasing illustration composed of a lunatic, a corpse, a villain, and a viper. She did not like it; but the impulse that made her turn it over was not one of displeasure, but fear, because, for a minute, she fancied the paper was the “Volcano.” It was not, however, and her panic subsided as she remembered that, even if it had been, and one of her own tales in it, there would have been no name to betray her. She had betrayed herself, however, by a look and a blush; for, though an absent man, the Professor saw a good deal more than people fancied. He knew that Jo wrote, and had met her down among the newspaper offices more than once; but as she never spoke of it, he asked no questions, in spite of a strong desire to see her work. Now it occurred to him that she was doing what she was ashamed to own, and it troubled him. He did not say to himself, “It is none of my business; I’ve no right to say anything,” as many people would have done; he only remembered that she was young and poor, a girl far away from mother’s love and father’s care; and he was moved to help her with an impulse as quick and natural as that which would prompt him to put out his hand to save
a baby from a puddle. All this flashed through his mind in a minute, but not a trace of it appeared in his face; and by the time the paper was turned, and Jo’s needle threaded, he was ready to say quite naturally, but very gravely,—

  In the 2005 musical, Jo (Sutton Foster) brings to life one of her blood-and-thunder tales—to the consternation of Professor Bhaer (John Hickok). (© Paul Kolnik)

  “Yes, you are right to put it from you. I do not like to think that good young girls should see such things. They are made pleasant to some, but I would more rather give my boys gunpowder to play with than this bad trash.”

  “All may not be bad—only silly, you know; and if there is a demand for it, I don’t see any harm in supplying it. Many very respectable people make an honest living out of what are called sensation stories,” said Jo, scratching gathers so energetically that a row of little slits followed her pin.

  Professor Bhaer (Paul Lukas) berates Jo (Katharine Hepburn) for debasing her talent in the 1933 film. (Photofest)

  “There is a demand for whiskey, but I think you and I do not care to sell it. If the respectable people knew what harm they did, they would not feel that the living was honest. They haf no right to put poison in the sugar-plum, and let the small ones eat it. No; they should think a little, and sweep mud in the street before they do this thing!”

  Mr. Bhaer spoke warmly, and walked to the fire, crumpling the paper in his hands. Jo sat still, looking as if the fire had come to her; for her cheeks burned long after the cocked-hat had turned to smoke, and gone harmlessly up the chimney.

  “I should like much to send all the rest after him,” muttered the Professor, coming back with a relieved air.

  Jo thought what a blaze her pile of papers, upstairs, would make, and her hard-earned money lay rather heavily on her conscience at that minute. Then she thought consolingly to herself, “Mine are not like that; they are only silly, never bad; so I won’t be worried;” and, taking up her book, she said, with a studious face,—

  “Shall we go on, sir? I’ll be very good and proper now.”

  “I shall hope so,” was all he said, but he meant more than she imagined; and the grave, kind look he gave her, made her feel as if the words “Weekly Volcano” were printed in large type, on her forehead.

  As soon as she went to her room, she got out her papers, and carefully re-read every one of her stories. Being a little short-sighted, Mr. Bhaer sometimes used eye-glasses, and Jo had tried them once, smiling to see how they magnified the fine print of her book; now she seemed to have got on the Professor’s mental or moral spectacles also, for the faults of these poor stories glared at her dreadfully, and filled her with dismay.

  “They are trash, and will soon be worse than trash if I go on; for each is more sensational than the last. I’ve gone blindly on, hurting myself and other people, for the sake of money;—I know it’s so—for I can’t read this stuff in sober earnest without being horribly ashamed of it; and what should I do if they were seen at home, or Mr. Bhaer got hold of them?”

  Jo turned hot at the bare idea, and stuffed the whole bundle into her stove, nearly setting the chimney afire with the blaze.

  “Yes, that’s the best place for such inflammable nonsense; I’d better burn the house down, I suppose, than let other people blow themselves up with my gunpowder,” she thought, as she watched the “Demon of the Jura”19 whisk away, a little black cinder with fiery eyes.

  But when nothing remained of all her three months’ work, except a heap of ashes, and the money in her lap, Jo looked sober, as she sat on the floor, wondering what she ought to do about her wages.

  “I think I haven’t done much harm yet, and may keep this to pay for my time,” she said, after a long meditation, adding, impatiently, “I almost wish I hadn’t any conscience, it’s so inconvenient. If I didn’t care about doing right, and didn’t feel uncomfortable when doing wrong, I should get on capitally. I can’t help wishing, sometimes, that father and mother hadn’t been so dreadfully particular about such things.”

  Ah, Jo, instead of wishing that, thank God that “father and mother were particular,” and pity from your heart those who have no such guardians to hedge them round with principles which may seem like prison walls to impatient youth, but which will prove sure foundations to build character upon in womanhood.

  Jo wrote no more sensational stories, deciding that the money did not pay for her share of the sensation; but, going to the other extreme, as is the way with people of her stamp, she took a course of Mrs. Sherwood, Miss Edgeworth, and Hannah More;20 and then produced a tale which might have been more properly called an essay or a sermon, so intensely moral was it. She had her doubts about it from the beginning; for her lively fancy and girlish romance felt as ill at ease in the new style as she would have done masquerading in the stiff and cumbrous costume of the last century. She sent this didactic gem to several markets, but it found no purchaser; and she was inclined to agree with Mr. Dashwood, that morals didn’t sell.

  Then she tried a child’s story, which she could easily have disposed of if she had not been mercenary enough to demand filthy lucre for it. The only person who offered enough to make it worth her while to try juvenile literature, was a worthy gentleman who felt it his mission to convert all the world to his particular belief. But much as she liked to write for children, Jo could not consent to depict all her naughty boys as being eaten by bears, or tossed by mad bulls, because they did not go to a particular Sabbath-school, nor all the good infants who did go, of course, as rewarded by every kind of bliss, from gilded gingerbread to escorts of angels, when they departed this life, with psalms or sermons on their lisping tongues. So nothing came of these trials; and Jo corked up her inkstand, and said, in a fit of very wholesome humility,—

  “I don’t know anything; I’ll wait till I do before I try again, and, meantime, ‘sweep mud in the street,’ if I can’t do better—that’s honest, any way;” which decision proved that her second tumble down the bean-stalk had done her some good.

  While these internal revolutions were going on, her external life had been as busy and uneventful as usual; and if she sometimes looked serious, or a little sad, no one observed it but Professor Bhaer. He did it so quietly, that Jo never knew he was watching to see if she would accept and profit by his reproof; but she stood the test, and he was satisfied; for, though no words passed between them, he knew that she had given up writing. Not only did he guess it by the fact that the second finger of her right hand was no longer inky, but she spent her evenings down stairs, now, was met no more among newspaper offices, and studied with a dogged patience, which assured him that she was bent on occupying her mind with something useful, if not pleasant.

  He helped her in many ways, proving himself a true friend, and Jo was happy; for while her pen lay idle, she was learning other lessons beside German, and laying a foundation for the sensation story of her own life.

  It was a pleasant winter and a long one, for she did not leave Mrs. Kirke till June. Every one seemed sorry when the time came; the children were inconsolable, and Mr. Bhaer’s hair stuck straight up all over his head—for he always rumpled it wildly when disturbed in mind.

  “Going home! Ah, you are happy that you haf a home to go in,” he said, when she told him, and sat silently pulling his beard, in the corner, while she held a little levee on that last evening.

  She was going early, so she bade them all good-by over night; and when his turn came, she said, warmly,—

  “Now, sir, you won’t forget to come and see us, if you ever travel our way, will you? I’ll never forgive you, if you do, for I want them all to know my friend.”

  “Do you? Shall I come?” he asked, looking down at her with an eager expression, which she did not see.

  “Yes, come next month; Laurie graduates then, and you’d enjoy Commencement as something new.”

  “That is your best friend, of whom you speak?” he said, in an altered tone.

  “Yes, my boy Teddy; I’m very proud
of him, and should like you to see him.”

  Jo looked up, then, quite unconscious of anything but her own pleasure, in the prospect of showing them to one another. Something in Mr. Bhaer’s face suddenly recalled the fact that she might find Laurie more than a best friend, and simply because she particularly wished not to look as if anything was the matter, she involuntarily began to blush; and the more she tried not to, the redder she grew. If it had not been for Tina on her knee, she didn’t know what would have become of her. Fortunately, the child was moved to hug her; so she managed to hide her face an instant, hoping the Professor did not see it. But he did, and his own changed again from that momentary anxiety to its usual expression, as he said, cordially,—

  “I fear I shall not make the time for that, but I wish the friend much success, and you all happiness; Gott bless you!” and with that, he shook hands warmly, shouldered Tina, and went away.

  But after the boys were abed, he sat long before his fire, with the tired look on his face, and the “heimweh,” or homesickness lying heavy at his heart. Once when he remembered Jo, as she sat with the little child in her lap, and that new softness in her face, he leaned his head on his hands a minute, and then roamed about the room, as if in search of something that he could not find.

  “It is not for me; I must not hope it now,” he said to himself, with a sigh that was almost a groan; then, as if reproaching himself for the longing that he could not repress, he went and kissed the two towzled heads upon the pillow, took down his seldom-used meerschaum, and opened his Plato.