CHAPTER V
Letters and Conversations with Children
HAPPINESS reigned in the Alcott home, and poverty seldom brought with it a shadow. The girls had toys and a variety of them,—rag dolls, kittens, gingerbread men, and barnyard animals (the latter skillfully cut out of cake dough by the mother, who had a genius for inventing surprises). As they grew older, they delighted in private theatricals. Some of their plays, written by Anna and Louisa, have been published under the title of "Comic Tragedies." They are thrillingly melodramatic, thickly sprinkled with villains and heroes, witches and ruffians, lovely ladies in distress, gallant knights to the rescue, evil spirits and good fairies, gnomes and giants. All are direfully tragic and splendidly spectacular. Louisa as a child showed the dramatic quality which later found artistic expression in her stories. On a rainy afternoon the children were never at a loss for entertainment. They "acted" in the attic or played dolls in their own playroom, and such dolls! Old Joanna, of whom Louisa has drawn a lifelike picture in "Little Women," is to-day in existence, battered, scarred, but none the less precious, one foot carefully bandaged, after the army-nurse method.
Poverty was made interesting. At Christmas a tree was hung with apples, nuts, and popped corn, and small trifles made by the children were fastened to the branches. Father and mother made much of the spirit of the Christ birthday, which was celebrated in simple, wholesome fashion, in vivid contrast to the modern Christmas festival.
The Alcott letters and journals show tremendous intellectual activity on the part of the small atoms of humanity who came to grace the Alcott home. Anna and her father held moral and intellectual discussions when Anna was four. Louisa was writing a daily journal before she could more than print. As soon as a child could read, family reproofs were administered by notes from father and mother to the erring one, not only pointing out the fault, but how to correct it.
The father encouraged his daughters to study themselves and to write down their thoughts. Their journals, in consequence, reflect the characteristics of each one and are storehouses of information. Louisa, poor little soul, in her happy, hoydenish childhood, found time one day in a fit of mentality to set down in black and white her chief faults. One of her most serious, according to the self-imposed confession, was "love of cats," a sin which easily beset her all her days, for she inherited her father's love of animals and of children.
Widely varied in character and temperament were the four Alcott girls. Anna, the first, reflected the beauty, the happiness, and the romance of the Alcotts' first year of married life. Louisa, born some eighteen months later, when father and mother had grown even closer together through the new bond formed by the love of their little daughter, embodied a deeper, stronger, surer character. She was decisive, with a determination and surety of self and brilliancy of mind that reflected the best in both parents. Elizabeth, the third child, was, in some respects, the most beautiful character of all. About her, from the hour of her conception, seemed to hover a spiritual, protecting love. Seemingly from earliest infancy she stood on the borderland of the spiritual world, in flesh all too fragile to retain the spirit which remembered and longed, notwithstanding the love with which she was surrounded, to return to the mystical beauty from which she had come. A child of dreams and fancies, loving all that was harmonious, she entered this life at twilight, she left it at the dawn, a coming and going typical of this dream child, who was lent for a little time to make the world more glad.
The birth of Amy is also symbolical, the one sunny-haired, sunny-hearted girl of the family, who came with the rising of the sun. She seemed made for love, sunshine, and happiness, and had them all, but she was brave to face hardships and equally ready to accept comfort and luxury. A queen, the father called her the morning of her birth, and so they brought her up, the Little Snow Queen.
The wise, fostering love of the father, the helpful, understanding watchfulness of the mother, are reflected in their letters to their children. Time was not considered wasted that was devoted to these letters of gentle admonition and kindly counsel. There was no discussion of faults or mistakes in the Alcott household; reproofs remained little secrets between father and daughter, or mother and daughter, and the effect of this wise and constant watchfulness grows more apparent as the children advance from childhood to girlhood and on to womanhood. They were taught to know themselves. They were taught, too, the relation of the Christ child with their own childhood, beautifully expressed in some of the letters from Bronson Alcott to his eldest daughter.
It was the father's habit to write each child on her birthday anniversary and at Christmas. Anna was six years old when he gave her this beautiful description of the coming of the Christ: