The Peculiar Lives of Boys & Girls At Plumfield

Prologue

March 1912

Many gathered at the funeral of Josephine March. If you'd seen the numbers, you might have thought she'd been some kind of politician, maybe a preacher, and so she could be. So she was, in her own ways.

Did you know that she hated being a celebrity? We heard her complain about it nearly every time she received a basket full of fan mail. Not in a bragging way. You know the kind. They'll complain loud enough for you to hear how much better off than you they are. Not Aunt Jo. If she'd been able to attend her own funeral, and God knew she dreamed about stuff like that, she would have hated everything about it. As I did.

The questions were ceaseless. Most of them about Aunt Jo and her works, primarily Little Women. Most of the letters were about "Jo", her most renown character, and whether she would ever marry in a sequel. Aunt Jo had gotten tired of responding with angry, spidery No's! and made it part of her daily routine to throw such letters out. Sometimes we helped her screen them for any inquiries to "Jo's" marital status. Some of these were particularly invasive, inquiring as to what Aunt Jo and Uncle Laurie's "marital life" was like, since the real Jo married the real Laurie while the book ended before book Jo and Laurie could reach that part of their story.

Did she write about us? This is a popular question. By the time some of us were off to college, The Children of Quincy Bay had gained quite a reputation, and some of the people that had inquired about Jo and the sisters she based her characters on, turned their attention to their offspring. Jo had initially been protective of us, wanting to keep Plumfield away from the public eye. It would be some years before the chapters eventually added up to a fat novel and got published as such. I was in my early twenties by that time; and on a ship sailing the Atlantic for Plymouth. Before that, the book had been monthly updated newspaper articles. A favorite among the locals.

We thought it would be fun, at least, when we were younger. What child wouldn't think it fun to be famous? (Daisy. She was always cracked.) More than that, we were excited to be one of Aunt Jo's characters. She still insisted on giving us different, but homonymous names so we didn't suffer like she had. She'd put us in precarious situations and we always looked forward to see what she thought of us and what we'd gotten up to this time. I remember it being fun, and she always consulted us before anything got published, dear woman.

What she never allowed were visitors. She left Plumfield out of all her dealings with the public and got most of her letters from Laurie's house in Bedford, or the old March house where Meg lived. Laurie and Jo often went there to conduct more serious business. Laurie more than Jo. Half the time Jo taught in Plumfield alongside Bhaer but left most of the tutoring up to him. It was difficult work, but with the help of the older children and the guest teachers of Aunt Jo's eccentric friends, he managed.

We children loved Plumfield. To us, the towering house became a castle where we ruled. Aside from the servants, chiefest of all Nursey and Asia, and Bhaer, we were our own kings and queens. Our own little society. Plumfield was more than a school. It was make-believe. Not only did we learn things most local schools never admitted to the curriculum, but we lived away from the scrutiny of our parents (at least those who had parents did), and existed in our own strange culture, away from the wiles of society and its foreign rules.

As long as we could, anyway. 

I firmly believe it is why our lives turned out this way. In some ways, common, but really, the more you look into it, quite extraordinary. Jo's father always believed that a different kind of education produced a different kind of people. All of us turned out unconventional in some way. Or most of us did.

It doesn't matter how far apart we are, or how long we've been apart. We are like magic with each other. Several people have told me so. We speak in code, they say. Like we're from a faraway island. Sometimes they call us Brahmin bumpkins, which is a funny metaphor.

We all owe it to Aunt Jo, of course. And her sisters. If not for their kindness, for the specialness of the March family, we'd never have had such stories to tell. She may have wrote us as characters in her book, but she also gave us the freedom to tell our own tales. Steer our own lives, in spite of everyone else. 

I can tell them to you. Like Jo. I can try.