Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

[239]

To Mrs. S. B. Shaw.

I have been gadding unusually for me. I went to the meeting of the Free Religious Association, where I was sorely tempted to speak, because the only woman who did speak was so flippant and conceited that I was ashamed of her. In the same excursion, I spent a day and night at Concord, with the Alcotts. Mrs. Alcott was a friend of my youth, and the sister of my dear friend, S. J. May. We had a charming time, talking over the dear old eventful times. I like L. and her artist-sister, M., very much. Some people complain that they are brusque; but it is merely because they are very straightforward and sincere. They have a Christian hatred of lionizing; and the Leo Hunters are a very numerous and impertinent family. Moreover, they don't like conventional fetters any better than I do. There have been many attempts to saddle and bridle me, and teach me to keep step in respectable processions; but they have never got the lasso over my neck yet, and i “old boss” as I am now, if I see the lasso in the air, I snort and gallop off, determined to be a free horse to the last, and put up with the consequent lack of grooming and stabling.

The house of the Alcotts took my fancy greatly. When they bought the place the house was so very old that it was thrown into the bargain, with the supposition that it was fit for nothing but fire-wood. But Mr. Alcott has an architectural taste more intelligible than his Orphic Sayings. He let every old rafter and beam stay in its place, changed old ovens and ash-holes into Saxon-arched alcoves, and added [240] a wash-woman's old shanty to the rear. The result is a house full of queer nooks and corners, and all manner of juttings in and out. It seems as if the spirit of some old architect had brought it from the Middle Ages and dropped it down in Concord; preserving much better resemblance to the place whence it was brought than does the Virgin Mary's house, which the angel carried from Bethlehem to Loretto. The capable Alcott daughters painted and papered the interior themselves. And gradually the artist-daughter filled up all the nooks and corners with panels on which she had painted birds or flowers; and over the open fire-places she painted mottoes in ancient English characters. Owls blink at you and faces peep from the most unexpected places. The whole leaves a general impression of harmony, of a medieval sort, though different parts of the house seem to have stopped in a dance that became confused because some of the party did not keep time. The walls are covered with choice engravings, and paintings by the artist-daughter. She really is an artist.