Unseen Influences: the sacrifice of the sons?

When I was very young, I was an avid reader of the works of such prolific novelists as Sir Henry Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Rafael Sabatini. I knew at the time that both Rider Haggard and Kipling had a son who died young; it wasn’t until many years later that I learned about similar tragedies in the lives of Conan Doyle and Sabatini. 

Rider Haggard’s only son died of measles around the age of ten. 

Rudyard Kipling’s only son was killed in the first World War at the age of 18. Rudyard Kipling had lobbied for his son’s conscription after the boy was declared unfit for military service. Sadly, Kipling’s elder daughter had earlier died of pneumonia at the age of seven.

Conan Doyle’s first-born son died at the age of 25 in the flu epidemic in 1918. 

Rafael Sabatini’s son and only child died in a car accident at the age of 17 or so. Mrs Sabatini was in the car too but survived: she was thrown from the car, which reminds me of the fatal car accident involving Monaco's Princess Grace and Princess Stephanie. Rafael Sabatini’s young stepson died in a plane accident after joining the RAF. Something went wrong when he flew over the family home to demonstrate his new skills, and his plane crashed in flames nearby.

Aryan supremacy: blond hair and blue eyes versus black hair and brown eyes

The idea that people from the Nordic race are superior to those from other races was of enormous importance to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. They propagated that the best kinds of human beings were Northwestern Europeans, white-skinned people with blue eyes and blond hair; this meant that races such as the Negroid, Slavic and Mediterranean and people with black hair and brown eyes were considered to be inferior. 

Similar ideas affected people whose lives are of interest to me. 

When I first read a biography of Louisa May Alcott, I learned that her father was what we would now call an Aryan supremacist. Bronson Alcott was tall, and he had blond hair and blue eyes. He said that such people were superior to dark-haired people with black hair and brown eyes. Louisa resembled her mother, who could have passed for Spanish or Italian.

Bronson Alcott thought that his colouring indicated associations with the light and good, angelic forces; this implied that Louisa and her mother were not only inferior, but also dark, evil and demonic. When Louisa brought home a young man with fair colouring, Bronson said, “Sir, you are a child of light”. Why was this issue so important to him? What effect did his views have on Louisa and her mother?

Is it just a coincidence that Louisa was born in Germantown, Philadelphia? This reminds me of the connection between the Mitford family, Unity Valkyrie and her Aryan supremacist grandfather Bertie Mitford in particular, and Swastika, Ontario.