Amy's artistic efforts and her failures in "Little Women" are taken from May's actual experiences in Concord. Turning the career of the youngest of the Alcott girls into a romance earlier in "Little Women" than it actually occurred in life, doubtless prevented Louisa Alcott from chronicling the artistic success of her youngest sister, a success to which she largely contributed and in which she took great pride.
May Alcott's pictures are found to-day in art museums and in leading private collections in this country and abroad. Her copies of Turner are remarkable. In the Kensington Gallery in London students are given them to study in preference to the originals. Several fine examples are in American museums, and a few are owned by members of the Alcott family.
When the Alcotts moved into Orchard House, the girls painted and papered the interior themselves. May filled the nooks and corners with panels, on which she painted birds and flowers. Over the fireplaces she inscribed mottoes in Old English characters.
The study in Orchard House was the real center of the household. For the chimney piece Ellery Channing wrote an epigram, which May Alcott painted upon it, and which has been used in the stage reproduction of "Little Women":
"The Hills are reared, the Valleys scooped in vain,
If Learning's Altars vanish from the Plain."
In Orchard House to-day, walls, doors, and window casings are etched with May Alcott's drawings, many preserved under glass, including a miniature portrait of a little girl, naïvely and modestly inscribed "The Artist."
High thoughts and cheerful minds triumphed over poverty in those Concord days. Shortly after the family's return from Fruitlands, Louisa wrote for Ellen Emerson the fairy stories, "Flower Fables." She was at the time only sixteen. This was her earliest published work, and it was many years before she achieved literary fame, although, as did Jo in "Little Women," she materially helped in the support of the family by writing lurid tales.
Literature rather than commerce freed the Alcotts from the burden of debt. Louisa's fame was the result, neither of accident, nor of a single achievement, but had for its background the whole generous past of her family. Her "Hospital Sketches" were her letters home, when she was serving as hospital nurse during the Civil War. "Little Women" is a chronicle of her family. Louisa certainly made good use of the vicissitudes of the Alcotts. She always saw the funny side and was not afraid to make book material of the home experiences, elevating or humiliating. Her books number between twenty-five and thirty. Nearly every one takes its basic idea from some real experience. The books written by the Alcott family, including some eight or ten published by Mr. Alcott, Louisa's output, and one or two written by May, fill two shelves of an alcove devoted to Concord authors in the Alcott town library.
Anna's little sons, familiarly known in the Alcott household as Freddie and Johnnie, or Jack, gave to Bronson Alcott in his later days fresh opportunity for his favorite study—childhood. To both boys came frequent messages and gifts from Grandpa, Grandma, and Aunt Louisa.
Louisa Alcott sent to Freddie this poem on his third birthday: