Concord, MA -- Our Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House tour guide, Beth, captured my and my wife's attention from the second we entered the 19th century author's home. Her passion for the subject was palpable and she made it clear from the onset that Won-ok and I weren't going to just tour a farmhouse that was the setting for a famous novel; we were going to genuinely get to know the writer who lived there.
I confess I knew next to nothing about Alcott before today except that she was friends with my dear friend Henry David Thoreau -- the person we took this vacation to see. Won-ok knew as little as I did until we made a serendipitous visit (that turned out to be the first of many) to the Concord Free Public Library. The place is packed with material by and about its literary rock stars. Won-ok perused the engaging children's section and spotted a number of Alcott books including Little Women.
"I grabbed that book and started reading that and her bio," she told me a few hours later, as we compared notes about who had more fun reading that night. "I was touched by her writing and her life story. I could already tell that she was a feminist and a very decent human being. Then I decided to read a book of her short story collections. The Brownie And The Princess was so sweet. It made me feel like a little kid again."
Won-ok's eyes lit up again on our Orchard House tour when Beth pointed to a shelf full of Alcott books that had been translated into other languages. Turns out that she was much more familiar with the Korean title of Little Women.
Her new bond with Alcott grew stronger with each room we visited. Beth told us about Alcott's life-long commitment to serving other people. Among her many other humanitarian efforts, she was a strident abolitionist whose family housed a fugitive slave on the Underground Railroad for a week. Alcott's unselfishness came despite the fact that she herself endured poverty throughout her young life -- which forced her to work a variety of hard jobs from an early age. She also had to move 22 times in 30 years. She stepped away from her burgeoning writing career to head to the Washington D.C. area to serve as a nurse during the Civil War. She spent six weeks there before being struck with typhoid and forced home.
"She was in pain for the rest of her life," Beth told us as we stood by Alcott's bedroom desk. "She even taught herself to write with both hands. She would write for hours and hours each day and then collapse."
I glanced at my own perfectly healthy hands and realized that I clearly have no excuse for not doing more with my own writing.
Beth told us the story of how Little Women came into existence. I was the only one in the room who didn't know that the book was a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood but we were all mesmerized by the unlikely success of it. Beth shared that Alcott had so little confidence in the idea of her book that she wrote Part 1 just to show her editor that he wouldn't be interested and that no one else would care. Her editor quickly told her that she was right. Alcott's 14-year-old niece got a look at it, though, and she absolutely loved it -- prompting Alcott to change her tune.
"Part One was instantly popular and it sold out right away," Beth said. "It became so popular so fast that people started knocking on the front door here. The success of her book amazed her. When Louisa came home with a check from her publisher, she couldn't believe it."
I felt a little bit indignant on behalf of Thoreau, whose works didn't exactly fly off the shelves in his lifetime. Beth grinned at me and my "Thoreau Sauntering Society" T-shirt from the nearby The Thoreau Society gift shop at Walden Pond and tried to give me a historical nugget to make me feel a little better.
"America was coming out of the Civil War," she said, gently, as if she were easing her way into telling a child that Santa Claus isn't real. "Her book wasn't this treatise on transcendentalist philosophy; it was a simple book about girls getting angry with each other."
That made sense to me. Even I can only absorb so much transcendentalism at a time. I was also happy enough just to be spending time in yet another place Thoreau frequented. Beth told us that he spent a lot of time in the Alcott home and regaled me with stories about him playing the flute there. She also introduced us to the poem, Thoreau's Flute, that Alcott published in The Atlantic after his death. She wrote it from that very bedroom in which we stood.
The literary part of my brain wasn't the only one spinning. One of the many great things about a tour of a home like the Orchard House is that it opens up all kinds of new avenues for learning, like the Orchard House's monthly "Welcome To Our Home" Living History Tour with a costumed guide. Play 19th century games and sing parlor songs? We'll come back for that! This town is even hosting a Little Women Week" from from Dec. 15-22, 2019 dedicated to the book and the upcoming release of the Little Women Columbia Pictures movie starring Meryl Streep, Saoirse Ronan and Emma Watson. The line-up features a wide array of activities and events for all ages. Won-ok would love to make it back for the Luncheon Tea with Louisa May Alcott at Colonial Inn. Orchard House Executive Director Jan Turnquist will portray the author. (OK, I should be honest here: I wish I could attend this, too.)
I make my living as an estate liquidator and antiques and collectibles dealer so I totally geeked out on seeing a house full of period furniture in context. I was able to picture Alcott and her family living with their beautiful, then-modern furniture -- which we now call American Empire style antiques, among others. I also loved studying the more modest furniture like Alcott's blue-striped dresser made by the humble touch of a craftsman who clearly wanted to make pieces that were pleasing enough to the eye but affordable.
Beth broke me out of my antiques daze when she made a point about the lack of equality women faced in that era.
"Louisa made more money than Twain but couldn't vote," she said.
Silence hung in the air.
Beth said that Alcott invested her earnings wisely in railroads and real estate and spent her money and her life taking care of three generations of her family -- continuing to write and to fight for justice and equality on multiple fronts.
"Caring for people was in Louisa's DNA," Beth said.
Giving high-energy tours was clearly in Beth's. We told her that we were outright historical tour snobs and that hers was one of the best we had ever taken. She made Louisa May Alcott absolutely come alive for us and she instantly inspired us to want to get to know the big-hearted author even better.
We gave Beth a hug goodbye and exited the Orchard House with adrenaline of learning pumping through our veins -- Won-ok with an armful of Alcott books from the gift shop and me with the sound of Alcott's poetry and Thoreau's flute playing in my head.
Christopher Lancette is a former journalist with a life-long love of all things Boston and Concord. He and Won-ok Kim own Orion's Attic, an estate liquidation, antiques and collectibles company in Silver Spring, Maryland. The two plan to return to New England as fast and as often as possible.
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