Of all the weird stuff on the Internet, there’s someone called the “poop girl.” She went on a first date to a man’s house, had bowel troubles in his bathroom, and well…..let’s just say everything you’re imagining right now is true. Then she spread her story on social media and later complained to US Weekly how embarrassing it was. Hmmm. Wasn’t she the one who posted her “private moment?”
Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, had fame for a good reason. The book earned enough to finally get her out desperate poverty. But even in 1868, being a “celebrity writer” was a burden.
Fans from all over would come to her house looking for the spunky Jo March, only to be confronted with the older and impatient Alcott. Reporters sat on her property and took notes, while artists sketched her as she picked pears in the garden.
She wrote in her journal in 1872, “People must learn that authors have some rights; I can’t entertain a dozen a day, and write the tales they demand also.”
Deception became her self-defence. Fans knocking eagerly at her door forced her to grab an apron and a cap, snatch up a feather duster, and then, holding the door open a crack, Alcott would pose as her maid. She would shake the feather duster in the visitor’s face, announce that Miss Alcott was not home, and slam the door.
Maybe fame isn’t the glittering treasure people think it is. Maybe having friends knock at my door, instead a stream of strangers, is a small but welcome gift.
Thanks to Harriet Reisen’s Louisa May Alcott: the Woman behind Little Women