“Then it’s settled.” May couldn’t imagine Louisa resisting the chance to please Father, who’d been trying for years to get his musings into print.
“I could write about the vain younger sister who always tried to get her way.”
“The artist who is as determined as her sister to succeed, and who quotes Michelangelo: ‘Genius is infinite patience.’”
“Didn’t Mother say that?”
“One or the other. And write about sweet, motherly Anna, and the tomboy who was bound to be a famous author. Write about Beth.”
“I’d like people to know her.” Louisa smiled, then shook her head. “It would be the dullest thing I ever wrote.”
10
THE MİSSİNG PORTRAİT
After Louisa decided to leave her editorial job and work on the book, May helped her pack and move back to Concord. May also helped her friend Edith crate wedding presents and books for her move to an elegant home. But only when Mrs. Hawthorne asked her to help sort through things to be sent to Europe, stored, or given away did May worry that people might be starting to think of her as a kindly spinster. She was closer to thirty than to twenty-five, a dangerous age for an unmarried woman. She’d recently seen Mrs. Fields and been assured that her Concord drawings would be compiled into a book certain to be wanted by every literary person in Massachusetts. She was proud, but if she had to choose between artistic glory and a happy family all her own, as she’d been told so many times she must, she wouldn’t have picked quite the life she had now.
As she helped empty and fill trunks, Mrs. Hawthorne talked about her eagerness to see Raphael’s Madonna and Child and hear Wagner at the opera house in Dresden. She told May that the engineering school there offered free tuition, and Julian would learn to design buildings, bridges, and roads. May supposed he’d look for a countess or baroness or whatever they had in Germany. Or an heiress, a pretty expatriate. May told herself she didn’t care.
After sealing some boxes, Mrs. Hawthorne gave her the Swiss music box. May would have preferred her old tin of paints from Italy, with its dried, cracking cremisi and azzurro colors, which she suspected had been thrown away. The furniture and rugs were being left for the renters, along with the red sled and the green rocking horse. May asked if she could have the old russet boots from the trunk that had once been in the garret.
The next day, she gave these to Louisa, saying, “Maybe they’ll inspire you. Remind you of the princesses and pirates in your old plays.”
“Mr. Niles says Roberts Brothers wants a book about ordinary girls,” Louisa said.
She began spending most of the day at the half-moon shaped desk, looking out at the road or turning her head to the view of larch trees growing between their yard and the rambling house next door, which she was using for her book’s setting.
When everyone sat in the parlor one evening, Mother asked, “When will we hear your story about the four girls?”
“I can read some tonight,” Louisa said. “They’re not children, but little women.”
“Little? They must be closer to six feet than five, if they’re like us,” May said.
“I mean they haven’t yet reached the age when they find out their dreams will never come true,” Louisa replied.
“Dreams do change, but can one ever stop hoping? Look at you, gambling on a percentage of what this novel will make. And what if I’d given up? We both have books coming out.” May smiled.
“May must illustrate yours, Louisa.” Mother picked up a small red hat she was knitting.
“I have my Concord scenes to draw and students to tend to. Drawing people isn’t my best talent,” May said.
“I cherish that crayon portrait you made of me.”
“I wish you’d put that away, Mother. I drew that when I was a girl.”
Mother told Louisa, “She’s devoted to teaching, like her father. That matters more than art. The girls adore her.”
May’s cheeks burned, hearing herself praised for what had never been her ambition. She said, “Perhaps I might show Mr. Niles some sketches. If someone’s going to illustrate these girls, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be me.”
Louisa nodded, then began reading from her novel featuring a family that stayed in one spacious if humble house instead of moving about once a year, the way the Alcotts had. The oldest sister, Meg, was kind, brave, and bent on finding a good man, just like Anna had been. The next oldest, Jo, was an ambitious writer. The third was as sweet as Beth had been on her best days. The vain youngest sister busied herself with what Louisa called mud pies or pots of paints. May remembered coveting pickled limes, and she did primp, but was that so terrible? Louisa liked a decent gown as much as she did.
“Do you really think that’s me?” May asked.
“There’s a line between truth and fiction,” Louisa said.
“Shouldn’t that line be a little thicker? You’re Jo instead of Lu. You switched the letters of my name so I’m Amy instead of May. And you changed months for last names, using March instead of May.”
She was annoyed enough that when Louisa read aloud on following nights, she let her sister’s voice fade in and out, concentrating on the picture taking shape under her hands. She was pleased with the composition of the girls around the mother, which would be used as a frontispiece, but everyone’s arms looked too long. She started a new sketch, with the sisters standing farther apart, but now the heads looked out of proportion. She found it hardest to sketch the youngest sister’s face, and she solved that by having her burrow it on the mother’s lap. She enshrouded Beth’s body in a jacket, hid the oldest sister’s body behind a chair, and drew the writer gazing off at nothing.
One evening, her hand tightened on her pen as Louisa read an episode in which the youngest sister shoved a manuscript into the fireplace. May cried, “I would never burn your work! I was the one who encouraged you to write this novel!”
“I told you, it’s a story.”
“Even if you didn’t use the scrambled version of my name, don’t you think people will recognize the niminy-piminy chit with her wretched attempts to burn images on wood with a hot poker?”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
The next night, Louisa read about the writer, still furious about her burned manuscript, skating away from her sister on thin ice. The ice shattered. Amy fell into the river and almost drowned but was rescued by the boy next door. May’s hands turned as cold. “Is this supposed to be an apology?”
“I write about what I see and invent things, too. People do that every day.”
“I know what fiction is. I expect I could have been a nuisance back when we were growing up, though all I wanted was to be like you. To go off and make my fortune, with hardly a look back.”
“I was always looking back. But if you really want the truth, I did think you were spoiled. Intent on impressing everyone, with pretty clothes and manners.”
“I didn’t want to impress you. I wanted you to know me.”
“We’re sisters. Of course I know you.”
May told herself it was foolish to worry, when this book seemed unlikely to be any more successful than a painting of girls washing clothes in tin tubs. But she stayed away on the following evenings when Louisa read aloud. She knew enough to draw Jo with her skirt billowing as she skated, hiding her hands in a muff that matched her hat. She illustrated the oldest sister standing before a long mirror for a chapter called “Vanity Fair,” and she drew Beth running into the arms of her father when he came home from the war.
Louisa looked them over and asked, “Where’s the portrait of you?”
“You mean the affected goose? Readers see enough of her in the frontispiece.”
Just before her birthday, Louisa brought her stack of papers and May’s pen-and-ink drawings to her publisher. They were quickly approved, but Louisa had to wait two months for the cloth-covered books. May liked seeing “illustrated by May Alcott” on the cover, though naturally the lettering was in smaller and plai
ner type than the author’s name. She found some fault with the engraver’s work, but the book sold so well that a few months later, Louisa was asked to write a second section.
“It’s not enough that the oldest one got engaged. Mr. Niles tells me readers want all the girls to marry, as if there aren’t other perfectly good ways to end a story,” Louisa said over breakfast one morning. “I understand a writer should please the public, but why not teach something, too? There’s nothing wrong with life as a single woman.”
May interrupted. “I suppose they’ll want more illustrations?”
“There won’t be time. I promised to write this section quickly.”
It seemed peculiar that a book twice the original length should suffice with only four illustrations, but perhaps it was just as well, for May was busy that spring. A few weeks after the full edition of Little Women was published, May came home one day to find Louisa and Mother exclaiming as they looked through a stack of letters.
“Mr. Niles forwarded these from readers,” Louisa said. “I’m stunned by how many say they want to be Jo. I thought they’d adore Beth most or sweet Meg. Of course, some prefer glamorous, artistic Amy.”
“He clipped reviews claiming our girl to be a genius,” Mother said.
“That’s not their exact wording,” Louisa said.
“Don’t be so modest. We know how proud you are,” May said.
“It’s all vanity and bad for the soul.” Louisa spoke lightly and nodded at Mother. “It’s the better lot to raise a family than to write about one.”
May turned her face. Everyone knew she had done neither.
A few nights later, May brought Louisa’s book to her chamber. She stayed up late, skipping the chapters she’d heard Louisa read aloud and skimming others, looking for the parts about Amy. She finished the book and slammed it shut. She’d thought being portrayed as a girl with a muddled vocabulary who cared too much about what the neighbors thought was embarrassing, but this second section, in which the youngest sister married the dashing boy next door, was worse. Did Louisa think she wouldn’t care that she’d engaged her paper girl to a fellow who’d really left May? She’d set the proposal in Europe, where she’d never been. Worst of all, this girl gave up making art, saying, “I want to be great, or nothing.”
May strode into Louisa’s bedroom, yanked the pillow out from under her head, then threw it against the wall. “How dare you write about a boy who wastes his talents and his family’s money, then marries the youngest sister! How dare you have a girl who’s even a little like me marry a man as jolly and lazy as one I wish I’d never met.”
“May, be quiet. You’ll wake up Mother.” Louisa pushed her hair off her face and sat up.
“Why shouldn’t she wake up? And it will be my fault. You’ve shown that everything is. I knew you had little use for art, but I didn’t know you thought so little of me, too, that I’d put aside work I love because it isn’t getting enough attention. Even ‘a commonplace dauber’ has the right to look for beauty.”
“You stopped lessons with Dr. Rimmer.”
“You know nothing about that!” And it was too late to tell her, though it made a schism, like splitting ice, between them. “I don’t claim to be a genius, but I don’t see why not being one should stop me from making art. Imagine if I’d written about a woman who’d never write great literature.”
“Then I’d see myself as I was.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” May took a breath. What had she done to make her sister lash out at her like this? Or if she hadn’t meant to hurt her, was it worse that she’d given such little thought to how she would read it? This portrait of a woman like her who’d gone to Europe seemed to ruin her real chances, as if someone in a fairy tale had wasted wishes. No, she hadn’t been tricked. Did the book make her face the truth that she’d see few rivers but the one in her town? She’d never row across a lake with a view of the Alps; she’d never see the particular texture and angles left by Michelangelo’s paintbrush.
SETTLED BY A SILVER TEAPOT AND LOOKING PAST THE green drapes to the view of the Charles River, May listened to Mrs. Fields express delight with her drawings. She said, “My husband wants a label for each house or site. Perhaps with some quotes from local poets and philosophers. And now that your sister is becoming well known, we hope she will write the preface.”
“Louisa knows nothing about art!” May sat back in her chair.
“And I’m afraid you know little about the marketplace. A famous name sells books. Just a few lines from her could make a difference.”
May supposed she couldn’t argue, though she was in no mood to beg Louisa for any sort of favor, even just a paragraph she might dash off. But maybe it was for the best. Louisa would have to look at what she’d accomplished. And while she might never understand what pictures meant to May, wouldn’t she be bound to respect something soon to be enclosed between covers? May couldn’t forget the portrait in Louisa’s book, but she also couldn’t help feeling pleased at the thought of a little praise from her sister, even if it was on paper instead of face-to-face.
Louisa agreed to write a paragraph, which she promised to drop off at Mr. Fields’s office when she was in the city on errands. A week later, May meant to see the preface and the photographs of her sketches, but when she left her card with the maid, she was told that Mrs. Fields was away for the week. May knew she might go to Mr. Fields’s office, but it seemed so impersonal, or masculine, with its smell of cigars and papers piled so high that she thought it wasn’t a wonder that Louisa’s fairy tales had gotten lost.
She decided to wait to see the sample book and walked to Alice’s home. She hadn’t visited her since her father’s funeral. Sitting in a parlor, May thought that the Copley portraits in gilt frames and the silver dish of calling cards couldn’t keep out grief. Alice told her about being thankful for being with her father at the end. May hesitated, knowing it might be ill mannered to ask, but she wanted to know. “Did you see anything surprising?”
“He was at peace.”
“Nothing rising afterward? Some kind of mist? I’ve heard that can happen.”
“I was praying. I had my eyes closed. Anyway, plans are already underway for me to move to New York to live with my aunt and uncle. They were appointed guardians.”
“I’ll miss you!”
“And I’m sorry I can’t return to your classes.” Alice paused. “I still want to go to Europe.”
“You mustn’t consider such things now.”
“My relatives think of nothing but my future. And theirs, too, with my family’s money under their charge. Some cousins have moved to Rome where there’s a neighborhood of Americans, all from good families. My aunts would make introductions once I’m out of mourning.”
“I’m glad you have something to look forward to,” May said.
She tried to push down her own selfish disappointment that her hopes for travel were dashed. During the following days, she reminded herself that she was lucky to have a book going to press. And drawing the rough stem of a geranium or the shadows on a stone gave her regular reminders of a day’s ordinary graces. But these were hard to remember on evenings when Louisa complained about the mail she received from adoring girls, some with requests for pictures of her. Louisa said that these were a bother to fulfill, for she’d found that if she sent one, all the other girls in her school requested them.
“Some write back for more, I suppose to sell them,” she said. “I don’t like people to think I put on airs and don’t remember what it’s like to be poor, but it’s not just pictures people want. Someone just wrote to ask that I buy him a house. I’m just finally managing to pay off the loans on ours.”
May understood that such requests must be vexing, but even if fame didn’t bring an end to loneliness, surely it at least nudged one further from it. She became busy planning a party to celebrate her book publication, buying a bolt of sapphire blue silk and a pair of elegant boots with c-shaped heels. When a wide, flat package a
ddressed to her arrived one afternoon, May screamed. She wanted to remember this moment forever. While Mother looked for Louisa, May ran upstairs to brush her hair, run some ecru lace through it, and put on her new boots. Ready now, she tore the brown paper to reveal a book almost as large as a tea tray. The title on the violet cloth was printed in gold. She opened the book to a page with her name and the title written in Gothic lettering woven through a wreath of flowers and grapes she’d drawn.
She turned the pleasantly hefty pages to each of her drawings, then flipped back the pages to read the preface. Her face stiffened as she read Louisa’s words calling the book the work of a student, having no artistic merit, valuable only because it referenced important places in the artist’s birthplace. May let the book fall on her lap. “How could you call me a student? And the book worthwhile only for the places it depicts?”
“What’s wrong with being called a student? You’ve referred to yourself that way, wanting to go to Rome or Paris to learn from professionals,” Louisa said.
“I’ve been working for years! And I’m a teacher, too, with pupils who look up to me.”
“I thought you’d be pleased that I called it a labor of love.”
“Which it is, but more. Don’t you think there can be room in a family for two famous people?”
“I never courted glory. I don’t think of posterity, but write to earn a living. And to make people see what is possible for an Alcott.”
“Girls!” Mother squeezed both of their arms. “This is a happy day.”
May pulled away. As she turned, the delicate heel of her boot cracked.
A FEW WEEKS LATER, SHE FINISHED SEWING A DRESS she’d designed referring to a magazine picture showing Paris fashions. She brought her boot with the collapsed heel to the cobbler, hired a fellow to tune the piano, baked three kinds of pie, and set out the green-and-white china cups and plates. Just before guests arrived, she laid out a few copies of Concord Sketches, ignoring her temptation to slice out the preface.
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