The Little Women Letters
Touchstone
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Gabrielle Donnelly
Originally published in Great Britain in 2010 by Penguin Books Ltd
Published by arrangement with Penguin Books Ltd
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Touchstone hardcover edition June 2011
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Designed by Renata Di Biase
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Donnelly, Gabrielle.
The Little women letters / Gabrielle Donnelly.—1st Touchstone hardcover ed.
p. cm.
1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PR6054.O53L57 2011
823’.914—dc22
2011010094
ISBN 978-1-4516-1718-4
ISBN 978-1-4516-1720-7 (ebook)
For Lydia Newhouse, who had the idea,
and for Harriet Barber, who helped make it happen
Content
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Acknowledgments
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In dating Jo March’s letters and the events in the March family, I have taken as a starting point the only specific date mentioned in Little Women—that of Amy’s drawing up and signing of her will, stated to be November 20, 1861. However, this means that the opening of the book took place in December 1860, with Father off ministering to the men in the army “where the fighting was,” almost four months before the American Civil War had actually started. In respect and affection for Louisa May Alcott, I have chosen to follow her chronology rather than that of strict historical accuracy.
1
Plumfield, october 1888.
Dearest Amy,
My daughter has arrived in this world, and bless the infant, she is the reddest and the squallingest baby you ever did see! We both had a hard time of her birthing, but she came through like a trump, and when they laid her upon my breast she looked up at me with her little sharp gray eyes, and nodded with a decided air, as if to say, “There now! I don’t think we’ll be doing that again, Mamma, and I for one rejoice to know it.”
Fritz and the boys are already in thrall for when she’s not roaring she’s a merry soul and keeps us all entertained most mightily. Meg broods over her like a lace-capped mother hen, ignoring the squawks but greeting each crow and coo as if they were the songs of Herr Wagner and the oratory of President Lincoln himself. Daisy and Josie pay obeisance at her throne, and, all in all, she looks set to be petted and spoilt almost as much as a certain little yellow-haired girl I once knew back in Concord. But upon consideration, if she grows into one tenth of the woman that same little girl grew into at last, then I shan’t have cause for complaint—about that or about anything else. If only Marmee and my Beth were still here with us, I believe I shouldn’t have a wish left in the world.
I must say, dear, that it is perfectly capital to have a daughter! Of course I love my tall boys and am proud as Punch of them, but it had always been a secret little disappointment to me not to have had a girl, too, as you have your Bess, and as Meg—happy woman!—has Josie and Daisy. And now, just when I had thought that part of my life was done, comes the most precious little gift that I had ever dared to dream of. I shall raise my girl to be good, and industrious, and useful to the community, and also to run and play and be jolly, and to build up a strong body as well as a lively mind. I shall teach her to have all the good and womanly impulses, but I shall teach her, too, that girls are as valuable as boys, and every bit as clever, given the education. I long to see the times she will grow up into—for times are changing for girls, blessedly. Perhaps when she is old enough she shall even be allowed to vote in the Elections, as the women in England are hoping to—and when that joyous day arrives shan’t I just toss my old woman’s bonnet into the air, ruffles and ribbons and all, just see if I don’t, and scandalize the town, the way I used to when I was a girl!
Dear Amy, I want to say a word to you about how we shall name her. I know you’ve been concerned that if the baby were a girl I should want to name her for Beth, and to tell you the truth, if we hadn’t your Bess already in the family, I should want that, for you know that Beth is in my heart always. But your Princess Goldilocks is the bearer of the name now, and such a dear and precious name as it is, it must have the one proprietor only. So my girl shall be plain Josephine like her mother—it pleases Fritz, Josie says she don’t mind, and we’ll call her Cissie, so there shan’t be two names too much the same—and, dear, you don’t mind very much, do you, if I give her Elizabeth as a second name? I should like to feel that Beth is watching over her, too, from heaven, as she watches over us all and always will.
Thank you for your letter, and I can’t tell you how much I relished the parcel collected from your travels—little Cissie Bhaer shall have quite the Parisian air to her when I take her into town! I’m glad to hear that Teddy is behaving himself among the fine lords and ladies of Europe, and that Bess continues to improve at her mud pies (now don’t frown, dear, for it don’t become you, and you know I never will learn to refer respectfully to your sculptures, however artistic they may be). Come safely home from Rome, dearie, and come as quickly as you can, for I long with all my heart to present to all three of you this completely captivating, newest and littlest—although very far from the quietest, as her ma’s poor head can attest—of little women.
Ever your topsy-turvy sister,
Jo.
Nearly a century and a quarter later, and more than three thousand miles away, Fee Atwater sat in the kitchen of a tall, narrow house in Islington on a rainy Sunday in early spring and ate brunch with two of her daughters while awaiting the arrival of her third. Fee was American-born and raised, and although she had lived in London, and most happily so, for the majority of her adult life, there still remained parts of America that would be with her until the day she died. One of these was the habit of Sunday brunch, for Fee and her family a cheerfully haphazard occasion centering around the table of the friendly, untidy kitchen, abundant with well-thumbed cookery books, photographs in frames, and random bunches of flowers stuck into jam jars and milk bottles, during which family members and friends would come and go, helping themselves as they passed to bagels and cream cheese, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, and lately—since Fee had recently succumbed to the charms of Ottolenghi on Upper Street—a variety of ready-made salads and side dishes to round out the feast. These last caused her husband, when he was at home, to examine the prices on the containers and complain that she was driving them all into bankruptcy, in response to which Fee would point out that she made sufficient money of her own as a family therapist to indulge her family in treats once a week, and that, by the way, she did not notice him exactly turning in horror from those same extravagant side dishes when they were offered to him.
Fee and David Atwater were a happy couple. David Atwater owned a small publishing company specializing in travel books, which took him away from England often, and sometimes for several weeks at a time. Fee was independent by nature, the product of a long line of strong-minded Yankee women from Massachusetts, and both agreed that the space his travels put between them did their marriage good. Whatever the cause, their marriage was a strong one. They respected each other and made each other laugh, fought sometimes but always made up, and after nearly thirty years of marriage, still reached, almost unconsciously, for each other’s hand when they walked down the street.
“I wonder what Matthew and I’ll be like,” said Fee’s eldest daughter, Emma, now, dreamily, to her mother—she had recently announced her engagement, to no one’s surprise and everyone’s pleasure, to Matthew, her boyfriend of three years, “when we’ve been married as long as you and Dad have. It seems funny now to think that even three years ago we didn’t know each other—I wonder what we’ll be like when we’ve been together for another twenty-five years.”
“I should think he’ll be a wreck,” remarked her younger sister Lulu, who at twenty-four had still not yet grown out of the habit of insulting her siblings. “He’s a brave, brave man, and I told him so only last week.”
“Well, that must be the reason he’s called the wedding off,” said Emma. “Thanks for the explanation, Lu, I’d been wondering. Mom, do you know how many calories there are in this aubergine salad? It looks sort of suspiciously delicious to me.”
“Only one way to find out,” said Lulu. She reached across her sister to grab the container, helped herself to a portion, and immediately puffed out her cheeks into a fat ball. “Ooh, I’ve gained half a stone! I’m enormous!”
Fee poured coffee into her mug and looked across the table at her daughters, wondering, not for the first time, how she had managed to give birth to two creatures, each so comprehensively different from the other. Emma was her model daughter, so perfectly behaved that Fee and David had sometimes worried that she was due for an eruption of repressed misconduct. But the eruption never happened—pleasing people came naturally to Emma, it seemed. She had slept through the night as a baby, had sailed through adolescence with neither spots nor tantrums, had graduated from London University with a good degree in social policy, and now worked in the administration department of a private organization that investigated satisfaction in medical patients.
Three years ago, she had met, through friends, a pleasant-faced young computer consultant called Matthew Hudson; a year later she had moved into his meticulously tidy flat on a narrow street just behind the Angel Tube station, and they planned to marry early in the following year; she had confided to Fee that three years after that, when he would be thirty-two and she thirty, they would start trying for children. Emma had brown shiny hair that no one ever saw unkempt, big blue-gray eyes, and an old-fashioned pink and white complexion. She wore well-cut trousers for work, and for leisure, jeans in the winter or flowery skirts in the summer, which she topped with shirts from Zara or Whistles. She kept her nails short but impeccably manicured and was careful never to gain weight. She would, her mother thought almost wistfully, make the most beautiful bride imaginable.
If Emma was peaches and cream, then Lulu, her mother often thought, was some sort of peppery curry, full of spices and unexpected flavors. A sturdy, untidy girl, with watchful brown eyes and a mane of wild chestnut hair that overwhelmed her features and which she refused to have cut, she stalked through the world where her sister glided, glowered where her sister smiled, and from the beginning, it seemed, had made it a point to challenge convention and confound expectations. At school she had been several times the topic of worried consultations between her parents and her teachers until, suddenly tiring of mischief making, she had surprised everyone by proving to be unusually clever, had gained a first-class degree in biochemistry from St. Andrew’s, and promptly afterwards declared that she had not the faintest intention of embarking upon a scientific career.
Now, eighteen months later, she still had not decided what it was she really did want to do with her life, and so was working through a series of temporary jobs, each one, it seemed, more unsuitable than the last, while living with her best friend, Charlie, to whom she paid rent mostly by cooking their meals and doing odd jobs around the home. Alfreda Alessandra Maria Fitzcharles—known to her friends as Charlie—and Lulu had shared a flat at university. Charlie was darkly beautiful, rather rich, and, in the eyes of the Atwaters, a little exotic, the daughter of an Irish hotelier who traveled extensively and an Italian model who had died in a plane crash when Charlie was small. The family owned a flat in Belsize Park, to which Charlie had generously invited Lulu to stay until such time as she was earning enough money for a place of her own.
Fee did not on principle approve of any of her daughters’ getting something for nothing, but consoled herself with the reflection that Lulu, a good handyman and an excellent cook, made a point of making herself useful around the flat, and it was obvious to her, besides, that Charlie enjoyed Lulu’s company. Fee worried a little about Charlie, who had little family of her own and sometimes seemed lonely to her. Charlie was here at brunch now, smiling quietly at Lulu’s clowning while liberally spreading a bagel with cream cheese which she then topped with strawberry jam—Charlie had never needed to worry about a calorie in her life.
“That is so unfair,” said Emma enviously, watching the progress of the bagel from Charlie’s plate to Charlie’s mouth. “If I ate even a quarter of that, I would be the size of a baby elephant.”
“Sorry,” said Charlie. “I’ve inherited my mother’s metabolism, it seems. It’s very irritating, I know.”
“Don’t apologize to her,” said Lulu. “She’d eat your arm to get to it if she really wanted it, wouldn’t she, Toby?” She reached down to scratch the marmalade-colored cat that sprawled on the chair next to her, blinking benignly at the proceedings. “When’s Dad coming home, Mom? Speaking of elephants.”
“Thursday, around midday,” said Fee, “depending on Air Peru. I hope he arrives quietly this time. Last autumn we converted Sophie’s old bedroom into my office, Charlie, and he still sometimes forgets that when he comes home in the daytime. Two weeks ago, I was seeing a woman who was telling me the most terribly sad story about her divorce; she was crying, I was listening and handing her tissues, and right at the very saddest point, the front door crashed shut and we heard a bellow from the hall: ‘Fee-Fee, my little bundle of naughtiness! Big Sugar Candy Daddy’s home!’ which he always thinks is hilarious. I nearly killed him.”
“You should put a note on the front door for when he arrives,” said Emma.
“That’s an idea, Emma, I might do that.” Fee smiled at her sensible eldest. “Lulu, honey, did you get my message about Professor Hamilton?”