After six weeks of nursing Miss Alcott fell seriously ill with typhoid-pneumonia.
As she refused to leave her duties, a friend sent word of her condition to her father, who came to the hospital and took her back with him to Concord. It was months before she recovered sufficiently even to continue her literary work, and never again was she robust in health. She writes: "I was never ill before I went to the hospital, and I have never been well since."
Her letters written home while she was nursing in Georgetown contained very graphic and accurate descriptions of hospital life. At the suggestion of her mother and sisters, Miss Alcott revised and added to these letters, making a book which she called Hospital Sketches. This book met with instant success, and a part of the success was money.
After that, all was easy. There came requests from magazine editors offering from two to three hundred dollars for serials. Her place in the literary field being now an assured thing, her natural fondness for children led her to writing for them.
The series comprising Little Women, Jo's Boys, and Little Men; together with An Old Fashioned Girl, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Under the Lilacs, Jack and Jill, and many others, are books dear to the hearts of all children. Editions of all these books were published in England, and in several other European countries where translations had been made of them,—all of which brought in large royalties for the author.
What happiness it must have given her to make her family independent, and to be able to travel! Twice she visited Europe, the first time as companion to an invalid woman, and a second time, after she had earned enough to pay her own expenses.
Miss Alcott never married. When about twenty-five years of age, an offer of marriage came to her which most young women would have considered very flattering. But she did not love her suitor, and on her mother's advice, refused him, thus being saved from that worst of conditions—a loveless union.
This first offer was not the last Miss Alcott received and declined. Matrimony, she said, had no charms for her! She loved her family, and her literary work. Above all, she loved her freedom. Her health was not benefited by her second trip to Europe; excessive work had been too great a strain upon her, and her father's failing health demanded her constant care.
In 1877 Mrs. Alcott died, and in the autumn of 1882 Mr. Alcott had a stroke of paralysis. From this he never fully recovered. Louisa was his constant nurse, and it gave her great happiness to be able to gratify his every wish. About this time Orchard House, which had been the family home for twenty-five years, was sold, and the family went to live with Mrs. Pratt, the eldest daughter.
Hoping that an entire change of air and scene might help her father, Miss Alcott rented a fine house in Louisburg Square, Boston, to which she had him removed. Here she showed him every attention, until her own health became so impaired that she was obliged to go to the home of Dr. Lawrence, at Roxbury, for medical care.