Alcott, Louisa May - SSC 20 Read Free

Chimney
Corner, sure of a feast of good things . [ 15]
                 Part
of that feast had been requisitioned from the Leslie prizewinner Louisa May
Alcott, who wrote in her journal: “Leslie asked me to be a regular contributor
to his new paper ‘The Chimney Corner,’ & I agreed if he’d pay before hand,
he said he would & bespoke two tales at once $50 each. Longer ones as often
as I could, & whatever else I liked to send. So
here’s another source of income & Alcott brains seem in demand, whereat I
sing ‘Hallyluyer,’ & fill up my inkstand.” [16] And so “A Double
Tragedy” was given a place of honor on page 1 of the first issue of America ’s “Great Family Paper,” while “Ariel. A
Legend of the Lighthouse,” the author’s “second” Chimney Corner tale,
followed in July.
     
                 All
five stories in this collection reveal Louisa May Alcott as a writer sensitive
to the cultural and social currents of her time. She employs as themes art and
the theater — two lifelong passions — as well as the contemporary interest in
what might now be termed the occult. Always present, too, are examples of the
struggle between the sexes, reflecting the rise of feminism.
                 Alcott’s
preoccupation with the art theme is thoroughly understandable. Her sister May
was an eager art student, who illustrated her sister’s effusions, studied at
the School of Design in Boston, served as drawing teacher in Syracuse, and took
anatomical drawing lessons under the distinguished Dr. William Rimmer. [17] Eventually she would go abroad to study art, and after her tragie death her box
of paintings would be sent home to Concord . Now, in the early 1860s, the two young
women shared their excitement over literature and art just as they shared
lodgings in Boston . Between May’s enthusiastic reports and her
own exposure to art exhibitions, Louisa May Alcott was enabled to inject the art
motif into at least two of these tales, “A Pair of Eyes” and “Ariel.”
     
    [15.] Frank Leslie's Chimney Corner i :i ( 3 June 1865 ); Stern, Purple Passage,
pp. 45-46.
    [16.] Louisa May Alcott, unpublished
journals (by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University ), March 1865, printed with
deletions in Ednah Dow Cheney, -Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters,
andJournals { Boston : Roberts Brothers, 1889),
'p. 165.
    [17.] It is interesting to note that Rimmer
was drawn to Shakespearean subjects. His paintings include scenes from The
'Lempest, Macbeth, and Romeo andJuliet. See Jeffrey Weidman et al., William
Rimmer: A Yankee Michelangelo (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England,
1985).
     
                 In
the former, published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in October
1863 , [ 18] the black-bearded
artist Max Erdmann (who, curiously, bears a close resemblance to Erank Leslie)
finds a model for his portrait of Lady Macbeth in Agatha Eure, whom he later
marries. Agatha, however, jealous of Max’s better-loved mistress Art, practices
mesmeric pow ers upon him and so subdues him in one of
Alcott’s more remarkable versions of the pow er struggle between man and woman.
                 In
“Ariel,” Philip Southesk, a poet-artist, sketches the nymph Ariel, making “the
likeness perfect with a happy stroke or two, ” [ 19] a tribute to economy in brushwork. In “A Pair of Eves,” Max Erdmann creates a
far more arresting painting. Erdmann is the artist incarnate, going far beyond
Erank Leslie or May Alcott in his devotion to a muse that was to him “wife,
child, friend, food and fire.” And the portrait of Lady Macbeth for which a
mesmerist acts as model sets the w'eird and sinister tone of this tale. Alcott
describes the portrait in detail: “the dimly lighted chamber, the listening
attendants, the ghostly figure with wan face framed in hair, that streamed
shadowy and long against white draperies, and whiter arms, w'hose gesture told
that the