A Reader’s Road Trip to Orchard House

houghton_fhm_ms_am_2242_-_louisa_may_alcott — (Photo credit: Unknown. Printed in a collection published privately, 1915. Source: Frederick Hill Meserve’s Historical Portraits [MS Am 2242], Houghton Library, Harvard University, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the U.S.)

A recent trip I took to Boston to visit with family and friends included a side trip to nearby Concord, Massachusetts. Concord is a charming rural town known widely for its role in the Revolutionary War.[*] It also possesses the quirky distinction of being the birthplace of the Concord grape. Specifically to my reading interests, though, several famous authors made their homes in Concord, among them Louisa May Alcott. Long before I learned of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, or Nathaniel Hawthorne (all Concord residents), I read Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women and loved it. She was one of the first authors whose works I sought out and binge read everything I could then find: the remaining novels about the March women (Little Men and Jo’s Boys), followed by Eight Cousins and its sequel Rose in Bloom. Discovering her connection to Concord guaranteed my visit there.

A Place to (Finally) Call Home

Orchard House wasn’t Alcott’s childhood home—or even the family’s first home in Concord—but it is, as I noted in a different post, the one she employed as the setting for Little Women and the place where she lived the longest. Unlike the genteelly poor Marches, the Alcotts suffered dire poverty. Although many of her father Bronson Alcott’s ideas to reform children’s education are common now, they were revolutionary then and soon left him unemployed, as did favoring his principles and dreams above self-interest. Abigail May Alcott, her mother and an early social worker, managed their household with very little—inspiring Louisa to become the family breadwinner. The publication of Little Women, the book Louisa wrote reluctantly at her publisher’s suggestion, would achieve this goal.

Orchard House in Concord, MA — Orchard House served as the setting for Little Women but Alcotts only lived here as an adult. (Photograph by Rita E. Gould.)

Touring Orchard House, however, was at once familiar[†] and filled with contrasts. Stepping into the parlor felt like walking into the opening pages of Little Women, where the teenaged March girls prepare for a modest Christmas during the Civil War. Yet Lizzie Alcott (model for Beth March) never lived at Orchard House, and older sister Anna (Meg March) wed soon after the house was purchased; she would not truly reside there until after she became a widow and moved in with her two sons. Louisa’s youngest sister, May (Amy March), however, literally left her mark on Orchard House. May’s parents permitted her to draw directly on the walls of her bedroom and throughout the house.[‡] In Louisa’s room, her writing desk is exactly as described in the novel. Unlike her fictional counterpart, though, she served as a nurse in the Civil War until illness forced her to return home with her health irreparably damaged. Also unlike Jo, she preferred literary spinsterhood to matrimonial dependence.

Social Circles and Movements

Replica of Thoreau's cottage and statue of Thoreau near Walden Pond. — Someone thought Thoreau’s statue at Walden Pond needed a snack and fittingly chose an apple. (Photo by Rita E. Gould.)

In addition to Louisa’s own personal history and writing career, a visit to Orchard House illuminates the interconnected literary and social circle of the Transcendentalists. Emerson was both friend and financial supporter of the family. Thoreau, who tutored the Alcott children during a previous stint in Concord, remained an admired friend who helped Bronson make Orchard House habitable. Hawthorne, neither a Transcendentalist or friendly with the Alcott family (unlike his son, Julian), lived next door at The Wayside, a former Alcott homestead. Of interest, Hawthorne and Abigail May Alcott shared something in common besides real estate: both were descended from different judges who preside over the Salem witch trials.[§] Samuel Sewall, the Alcott ancestor whose portrait is displayed at Orchard House, was the repenting judge whose other mitigating claim to fame was being an early proponent for abolishing slavery, a stance his Alcott descendants shared. Abigail and Bronson, also firm abolitionists, hosted at least one fugitive slave during their time at The Wayside. The Alcotts were deeply involved with the significant social movements of their time, something which the guide was careful to note was part of the value in preserving this home.[**]

Pondering

After leaving Orchard House, I headed to Walden Pond. One could imagine a young Louisa and other students traipsing after Thoreau there, listening as he pointed to the small and often missed marvels of nature. Thinking on that younger Louisa, you could easily argue that Little Women seems to be a happy reimagination of her deeply impoverished youth, with hunger replaced with longing for “nice things” and constant uprooting for permanency. Yet, Alcott’s novel continues to inspire because of its inclusion of an ambitious, unconventional young women and its unpatronizing view of women’s lives. Having caught a glimpse of “the real Jo”, it seems like a fitting legacy.

NOTES:

[*] Minute Man National Park preserves several sites associated with the Battle of Concord.

[†] Orchard House contains around 80% of the Alcott’s original furnishings, undoubtedly aiding the sense of familiarity.

[‡] May left home in 1870 to study art in Paris and embarked on what appeared to be a very successful artistic career cut short by her early death.

[§] Nathaniel Hawthorne likely added the “w” in his surname to distance himself from the association with his infamous ancestor, William Hathorne.

[**] The credit for preserving Orchard House and The Wayside belongs to another woman writer, as it happens. Harriett Lothrop, better known by her pen name Margaret Sidney to fans of The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, saw the value of saving these old homes. And as it happens, I read her novel, too, as a child.