“I don’t know. But I dream of hiring a cook and servant for Mother.”
“We could become famous together!”
“I’d just like to earn enough to pay back Mr. Fields.”
“And it’s not wrong to remember ourselves. Should we tour France first, then Italy? Do you think that’s greedy?”
“Men call it ambition. I’ve been writing every day since I was fifteen. I suppose I’m ready for some acclaim.”
May squeezed her pencil. Perhaps as much as meeting gentlemen, she wanted more time like this, drawing while her sister wrote beside her. Did Louisa want that, too? Or did she hear May’s breath deepen as Julian pulled up the boat, then walked closer? Was she afraid May might marry first? She asked, “What made you change your mind about my joining you?”
Louisa responded, “And there can’t be a lot of questions. Sisters should have some secrets.”
3
CHANDELİERS
Boston’s brick sidewalks were crowded with ladies wearing skirts puffed out by crinolines. Many wore hats with wider brims than those worn in Concord, and ribbons seemed chosen to swish, not just hold on in the wind. Shorter steps and slower gaits suggested some ladies were aware they’d be seen, which was reason enough to step outside. May kept her small-town habit of scanning faces she expected to recognize, but she had little time for strolling. At the kindergarten, she led songs about ducks and helped children conduct experiments with prisms, mold clay nests, weave strips of colored paper, and count on an abacus. Many of the children were Irish, with green eyes, pale foreheads, rosy cheeks, red or black hair, and lilting voices. They made May laugh and could be coaxed out of mischief with the promise of sitting on her lap.
After putting away wooden blocks and wiping low tables, she often set off to handsome townhouses where she’d arranged to teach piano to girls of about sixteen. Most had finished their formal educations but were either deemed too young to be courting or thwarted because so many men had joined the Union Army. The girls dutifully practiced scales, but were more charmed by the way May admired paintings they’d passed thousands of times but had never really seen. Charlotte, one of her most devoted students, urged her to teach art as well as music. May knew most parents would frown on paints in their parlors, so she looked for lodgings where students might come to her.
“I found a place not far from the Old Corner Bookshop and the Music Hall,” May told Louisa one evening as she painted flowers on lampshades to sell at charity fairs. “The room has a sofa that changes to a bed. A lovely doorman stands by potted palms in the entryway.”
“May, pay attention to your purse. You just spent a week’s salary on silk.”
“My muslins are fine to wear among the sticky children at Chapel Street, but I can’t arrive in Beacon Hill and be sent to back doors. Charlotte tells me all her friends will want to take art lessons. We won’t have to fret about money.”
Louisa bent over her paper. “I can’t think about potted palms or other luxuries until I pay back Mr. Fields.”
“I can’t believe he’s in a hurry. Julian says he’s quite jolly. He not only edits his father’s novels, but also brings him cigars and whiskey and keeps track of his accounts so he doesn’t have to bother.”
“I will repay that loan, and I don’t want to move.”
May had enough experience hearing her older sisters tell her no to recognize the varieties of breath within the word. She thought there was hope, but not now, so she changed the subject. “Are you writing more patriotic poems?”
“No. Remember that story about a girl going out to service that Mr. Fields turned down? Instead of putting it away, I’m adding episodes to turn it into a novel I’m calling Work.”
“Will it chronicle all the dreadful jobs you took?”
“And show how a girl learns from making sacrifices.”
“Good for you, writing more instead of less. But you might want this book to have a happy ending.”
“I intend my heroine to join a union of women workers, after surviving horrors some will say I shouldn’t mention. I didn’t invent human nature. I merely record it, but people blame me.”
May thought that living with Louisa made her more of a mystery instead of less of one. She wondered if she told Anna things she never told her. She looked for signs when they visited Anna in her small home. Lace doilies covered chairs and tables. The handles of the teacups in the cupboard faced the same direction. Spoons and forks nested in their proper slots within drawers. May felt alarmed when Anna burst into tears after finding ants in the sugar bin. Could a woman spend too much time in one home, especially one where windows rattled when trains sped by on the nearby tracks? She urged Anna to join them for a night of theater or opera.
“Don’t think I’m not busy,” Anna said. “I knit and bake with some ladies from church. We bring baskets to the sick and those in need, as Mother always did.”
“Except she used to invite the sick and needy right into our house. Baskets sound better,” May said. Still, she thought that making things for strangers must be lonely. “Come look at pictures in the Athenæum with me. Aunt Bond lent me her pass.”
Anna shook her head and turned the conversation back to her worry about time passing with no signs of a baby on the way.
A few weeks later, May convinced her to join her and Louisa at a fair to raise funds for Union hospitals. The sandalwood fans and letter openers that May had decorated were for sale along with wax flowers under glass globes, jars of jam covered with calico swatches, and woven potholders. Three panels May had painted of morning glories had already sold.
Making their way through the crowded hall, May studied busts of John Brown and other eminent abolitionists, which were displayed under bunting. She admired the colors and patterns of Log Cabin, Joseph’s Coat, Sixteen Blossoms, Broken Star, and Oak Leaf quilts, while Anna peered at stitches, as if to measure signs of diligence or haste.
When they returned to the table where May’s painted fans and lampshades had been displayed, Anna grabbed her wrist. “All your work has sold! I’m so proud of you!”
“No, here’s a paperweight.” Louisa pushed forward a smooth stone May had painted, which had been half-hidden. “I’d recognize your lilies anywhere. But it’s too bad you can’t put your name on them.”
“Painters sign their names in the corners of canvas. Decorative paperweights aren’t the same kind of art,” May said.
“The charity the sales benefit is what’s important,” Anna said.
“The money goes to hospitals for our brave boys, but you don’t see men giving away their work, at least without acknowledgement. When I publish a book, you can be sure I’ll put my name on it. No pseudonym, no initials. I won’t masquerade.” Louisa glanced at a table holding a collection of stories inscribed by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Uncle Tom’s Cabin signed by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The books were offered as prizes for a raffle, along with a white ox and piano lessons.
May turned as she was greeted by Charlotte. She introduced her to a friend named Alice Bartlett, who said, “We were looking for your work.”
“All her panels and fans have sold,” Louisa said.
“I told you we should have come earlier,” Charlotte said. “Alice, we beg her to give art lessons and reveal her secrets.”
“I taught in Concord, but there are so many fine artists here,” May said.
“And all are curmudgeonly. I was promised the Grand Tour to cap my education, but the war means we’re stuck at home for now. A class would be some consolation.” Alice smiled as two gentlemen approached. “May, you must meet my brother and his chum.”
May slightly dropped her knees while greeting a tall young man with curly blond hair. She batted words as lightly and deliberately as she’d swing a croquet mallet, paying attention to the rhythm as she would doing the Virginia reel, leaning just close enough to suggest both hesitation and promise. But she didn’t mind when Ellen Emerson interrupted to say hello. Ellen told them that her s
ister Edith’s beau had enlisted, and their brother Edward had left Harvard, to their father’s distress.
“Will he join the army?” May wondered if there was a discreet way to ask about news of Julian.
“He wants to. Our mother says she’ll allow it only if emancipation is proclaimed.”
“If all mothers were like yours, the war would end sooner. Bells ring here at two o’clock to close shops for recruitment, but freeing the slaves would do more for the Union than the draft. Men would sign up in droves.” Louisa grabbed May’s hand as she fixed her eyes on a thin, stern-faced woman who stepped behind a table. “That’s Dorothea Dix.”
“Who?” May asked.
“She’s behind these fundraisers to set up hospitals. I heard she’s looking for more ladies to sign on as nurses.”
“Women do such work?” May asked.
“Now that so many men are soldiers, there aren’t enough left to care for the wounded.”
“Surely you’re not considering doing that!”
“They’re looking for women who are either married or at least plain and thirty-five.”
“You’re beautiful and thirty.”
“If the war doesn’t end soon, they might take younger women.” Louisa’s mouth tightened as she walked toward the woman with her hair simply pulled back, standing behind a table with a stack of papers.
May thought Louisa was getting rather too old to waste time on impossible people and causes, but she supposed there was no harm in talking. She looked at portraits of military heroes while calculating how much she might charge for lessons and if she could make enough to afford a sky parlor for rent near the Public Garden. The last time she’d mentioned moving, Louisa’s protests had seemed to weaken. Teaching art would give her more chances to paint, something she would emphasize to the young ladies, implying that her fees were almost inconsequential.
AS SOON AS MAY ANNOUNCED SHE’D BE GIVING ART lessons, Charlotte, Alice, and two of their friends signed up. May asked Father to help her build some easels, which she squeezed into the sky parlor after pushing back the bed and then hiding it with a screen she painted with a landscape of Roman ruins. She showed the girls how to shape their hands into small frames to look through and compose. They each closed one eye and squinted to flatten a vase of wildflowers that May had arranged. The goldenrod, Queen Anne’s Lace, and asters had looked lovelier by the road, even tangled on the table, but one couldn’t paint such a jumble.
Late one afternoon, May bid her students good-bye, put two potatoes in the stove, and pushed the easels behind the screen. Louisa returned from a meeting with bright cheeks. She tossed her cloak over the back of a chair, put up her feet, took a letter from her carpetbag, scanned it, then slipped it back into a worn envelope. May wondered if she was stirred by more than political passion.
“Two more girls enrolled in my classes. We haven’t enough chairs, but I told them that standing while working keeps the mind clear.” She pulled the potatoes from the coals, dropped them on a plate she handed Louisa, then glanced at a bowl of russet apples. “Please don’t eat the still life. I should keep it here for a month, but the girls are in a hurry to bring home something pretty. They don’t understand that art isn’t a race.” She took her Eugénie blue dress from the wardrobe and finished stitching lace over the fraying cuffs.
“Aren’t you eating?” Louisa asked.
“Alice invited me to dinner. She wants me to get to know her brother and tells me they have some masterpieces from Italy. Her grandfather made a fortune importing marble and silk.”
“And probably immigrants, who traveled in worse conditions than his wares. But I suppose you’re lucky to be asked. I’m glad you’re not pining over Julian.”
“You should be thinking about meeting bachelors, too. Or have you found someone?”
“I’m staying home to work.”
“Attending dinner parties is work, too. Writers can slip manuscripts into envelopes and duck away, but artists must go into society. We depend on wealthy people with walls to adorn.”
“I suppose Alice’s brother is handsome as well as rich. How old is he?”
“Since when are you so preoccupied with numbers?”
“You’re right. Why should I care? Mr. Fields marries a girl seventeen years younger, and few raise an eyebrow. Why shouldn’t women also marry who they please?”
May hooked on a corset, dropped a crinoline over her head, and wiggled her hips until the hoops fell into place. She put on her dress, shook her curls so they spread down her back, pulled back her shoulders to stand to her full height, and breathed deeply. She turned to Louisa. “How do I look?”
“If I told you, you’d get vain.”
“My favorite sin.” May kissed the top of her head and put on her woolen shawl, hoping the traces left by nibbling moths couldn’t be seen in the dark. “I’ll bring you back descriptions of jewels and jam tarts. Even if your hero is more taken with squirrels and acorns than finery, there’s no reason the heroine can’t be well dressed. No one wants to read about girls wearing hand-me-downs who eat crackers and potatoes.”
She hurried down the stairs to the lobby, where she asked for a carriage. Alice’s home wasn’t far, but May’s morocco kid boots had delicate heels that weren’t designed for walking, and a wide skirt in a narrow street made being spattered with mud too likely. Besides, there was no telling who might arrive at the Bartletts’ as she did and admire the way she angled her toes as she stepped from the carriage. She supposed such thoughts were vain, but she’d never understood why a bit of conceit should be placed with stealing, murder, or even coveting. Had she missed something by seldom going to church, something that seemed to have gotten lost in all their moving? She knew she was ignorant of much doctrine but was certain the Creator reveled in beauty. Why shouldn’t people?
The sky was turning dark as she settled into the coach and looked out the window. A boy lifted a rod to light a streetlamp. Vendors cried, “Oysters! Hot on the shell!”
“Chestnuts, don’t burn your fingers!”
“Fresh flowers for your sweetheart!”
They drove past Faneuil Hall, which had been turned into an enlistment center. Soldiers who mustered in the Boston Common during the day now sang and drank around pitched tents. Past elm and chestnut trees, May saw the frog pond, where Louisa had taught her to skate. She wished that pretty memory of skidding over ice were her first one. She scarcely remembered living in a dilapidated farmhouse filled with philosophers, only faintly recalled being terribly hungry and cold when leaving Fruitlands. The Alcott family had been offered temporary lodgings here and there, before May left with Mother when she took a job helping with water cures. After that, relatives arranged a job for Mother in Boston, finding homes for beaten wives or sick children and households where their Irish immigrant neighbors could work as washerwomen and cooks. Louisa and Anna found positions as servants, while Beth looked after the basement apartment that smelled of wet wool stockings hung by the stove. Even at eight years old, May helped out by walking down the pebbled sidewalks in the Common, waving papers advertising Father’s lectures on transcendence.
The bells on the horses’ bridles jingled as the carriage pulled up to the Bartletts’ town house. May walked with the footman to the grand entryway, where another man escorted her upstairs. She left her shawl among fur stoles and cashmere cloaks. One maid brushed the hem of her dress, while another smoothed her hair. Then a man offered his arm to guide her back downstairs. May met each servant as she would a partner in a dance. If she let herself be guided, she hoped no one would guess that she hadn’t been raised with these rituals of wealth.
In the drawing room, the rustle of silk and the tap of fashionably heeled shoes sounded lovelier than cheap fabric or worn soles. Solid silver laid on mahogany rang more musically than tin on pine. Alice, who wore a striped taffeta gown, greeted her. “I’m sorry my brother won’t join us tonight. I’m afraid he isn’t feeling well.”
“That’s
a shame.” May’s disappointment was diverted as she overhead a gentleman in a fashionable frock coat referred to as being in the publishing business. She was used to more ragtag literary sorts. She thought that if this evening didn’t turn out to be entertaining, she might make it useful for Louisa. She asked Alice to introduce her.
A few minutes later, Mr. Niles offered his elbow on their way to the dining room, where he pulled out a chair upholstered in claret-colored velvet. A servant unfolded a linen napkin and placed it on her lap. Guests nodded at a butler holding a silver soup tureen, then waited to be served. May surveyed the goblets and crystal glasses and a bowl holding a pyramid of sugared pears and grapes. Like the other ladies, she shook her head when offered wine, though she wouldn’t have minded a glass.
Mr. Niles, whose eyes were as dark as his waxed mustache, asked her a few questions that called for short answers, then told her about a séance he’d attended. “The piano moved. A mahogany table spun around while the chandelier rattled. I am a rational man, but can you give me a rational explanation for that?”
As he went on to describe an experience with a mesmerist, May leaned to the left while a servant took her majolica plate and gave her another one with a slice of beef pie. Her knife felt pleasantly hefty. She’d been raised to think that all people were equal and money didn’t matter much, but wouldn’t it be easier to give bread to the poor if her mother hadn’t kept an anxious eye on the levels of flour barrels? It would be easier to be kind if she could afford all colors of oil paint and not have to scrimp on cobalt blue and crimson.
Around her, guests discussed whether ice water was unhealthy, the accident on Tremont Street, and the reckless way young men drove their horses. Mention of cranberries or lumber, hints of the shipping business that must have made the fortunes of several men there, were hushed. References to Shenandoah Valley and Stonewall Jackson prompted Mrs. Bartlett to steer conversations from battlefields and generals back to more appropriate subjects. Ladies here disapproved of politics and religion as topics for the table, while in Concord people talked about little else.
Little Woman in Blue Page 3