Alcott, Louisa May - SSC 20 Read Free Page A

parted lips were uttering that mournful cry — ‘Here’s the smell of
blood still! / All the perfumes of Arabia wdll
not / Sweeten this little hand — ’”
     
    [18.] "A Pair of Eyes; or, Modern
Magic," Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (24 and 31 October 1863 ), 69-71, 85 -87.
    [19.]
All quotations are from the stories that follow, unless otherwise indicated.
     
                 Was
the portrait a copy, or a Louisa Alcott original? The great eighteenth-century
Sw iss artist John Henry Fuseli produced a pen and gray wash of Lady Macbeth
sleepwalking that has much in common with Max Erdmann’s portrait, including the
listening attendants, the gesture of Lady Maebeth’s arms, her long streaming
hair. But Fuseli’s work was in the British Museum , which Louisa had not yet visited, and
unless she had seen a reproduction of it somewhere, she probably had transposed
her own vision of the sleepwalking queen into a net of words . [ 20]
                 The
vision was of course an outcome of Louisa Alcott’s lifelong fascination with
the theater; the theme of theatricality in general, and of Shakespeare in particular, run markedly through nearly all these tales.
                 The
plays the young Louisa had co-authored and coproduced with her sister Anna for
performance in the barn before the Concord neighbors were published after her
death as Comic Tragedies . [ 21] She
dramatized one of her early stories, “The Rival Prima Donnas,” and wrote a
farce, “Nat Bachelor’s Pleasure Trip” that actually saw a single performance at
the Howard Athenaeum in i860. In addition, Louisa Alcott’s addiction to the
footlights was reflected in her amateur acting in Walpole , New Hampshire , in Concord , and in Boston , and though her major role was that of the
Dickensian Mrs. Jarlev of the waxworks, she elocuted her way through a variety
of popular parlor comedies.
                 She
was, in short, stagestruck. In 1855, on her twenty-third birthday, she wrote to
her father from Boston : “I go to the theatre once or twice a week.” [22] Three years
later she mentioned in her journal: “Saw Charlotte Cushman, and had a
stagestruck fit. . . . Worked off mv stage fever in writing a story, and felt
better.” And when that renowned American actress descended upon Concord , Louisa was lost in admiration . [ 23]
     
    [20.] For the Fuseli suggestion I am
grateful to Charles Colbert of Newton , Massachusetts . See also Caroline Keay,
Henry Fuseli (New York: St. Martins Press, 1974), p. 29, No. 24: Lady Macbeth
sleepwalking. Alcott's interest in art persisted. See, for example, Louisa May
Alcott, Diana & Persis, ed. Sarah Elbert (New York: Arno Press, 1978). In
that "art novel," Persis, modeled upon May Alcott, is the young woman
painter, while the character of Diana is based upon the sculptor Harriet
Hosmer.
    [21.] Comic Tragedies Written by fo " and "Aleg' and Acted by the "Little
Women" (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1893).
    [22.] Louisa Mav Alcott to Amos Bronson
Alcott, 28 November [1855], The Selected Letters of
Louisa May Alcott, eds. Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy (Boston: Little, Brown,
1987).
    [23.] Cheney, pp. 99 and 113. As late as
1886, in her last domestic novel, Jo’s Boys, Alcott created in the actress Miss
Cameron "a near-translation" of Charlotte Cushman. See Joseph Leach,
Bright Particular Star: The Life & Times of Charlotte Cushman (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale Universitv Press, 1970), p. 283.
     
                 Charlotte
Cushman was of course a famous Lady Macbeth, and Louisa Alcott was becoming a
connoisseur of Macbeth performers. Of Edwin Forrest she commented: “Tho Forrest
does not act Shakespere well the beauty of the play shines thro the badly represented
parts, & imagining what I should like to see, I can make up a better
Macbeth . . . than Forrest with his gaspings & shoutings can give me. ' [24] Alcott confined her own greenroom roles to those in comedies and farces.