Alice in Bed (31 page)

“Oh, I'll write something on the ferry or at my hotel in Boulogne. I can generally count on salt air and sea breezes to revive my brain.”

“Oh, William, you are going to
Boulogne
! Please do go to all our old places. I
so
loved the medieval ramparts with the English stone cannonballs stuck in them. Oh, remember the dread episode of the bonnet?”

Even Henry's memory fails on this. “What bonnet?”

“It was Mademoiselle Cusin's Christmas present from us—remember? For some reason I was the one delegated to give the instructions for making it. It was the first important mission I'd ever been entrusted with and I was very anxious to succeed. The shop was on the rue Victor Hugo. You took me there, William.”

“I did?”

“Yes, and then you
deserted
me!”

He obviously hasn't the faintest idea what I am talking about, whereas for me the event was so disturbing it is permanently etched on my brain.

I describe my ordeal, how the milliners kept bringing out different materials while speaking rapidly and incomprehensibly in French. They stood behind the counter, impatient, as I stood mute and paralyzed. In my panic, I fixed my eyes on a piece of pink material laid out next to a strip of blue on the tall counter I had to stand on tiptoes to see, and mumbled,
Oui, comme ça
.

“On Christmas day Mademoiselle unwrapped the present, which I saw immediately was atrocious. The pink made you think of a bad sunburn, the blue was dead and lifeless, the design hideous. She made a display of joy but wore it only once, on a visit to the
campagne,
where we met only peasants. The bonnet was a stain on my character, a great failure. I foresaw that my whole life would probably be an unmitigated mistake. Why did you
leave
me, William?”

“I recall vaguely going to an art store with the intention of buying watercolors and buying, instead, some naughty
cartes de visite
. Egyptian Dancing Girls, they were called. It was amazing what you could get in France, even in those days. I didn't think I'd be needed, being completely ignorant of millinery matters.”

“I was
seven
, William!”

He is quiet, taking this in. For an instant he looks as if he might weep. Finally, he says, “I was and am a dull clod, Alice. It grieves me that I abandoned you. I hope you can forgive me.”

“Well, I'm not sure you would have managed a better-looking bonnet.”

“Certainly not. I cannot be trusted to pick out a button.”

He mentions that his English friends from the Society for Psychical Research will be coming to the Congress and presenting papers. The Sidgwicks will be trying to drum up support for their international Census of Hallucinations.

“Oh, yes, they told me about their Census. The Sidgwicks have been charming to me, William, and still come all the way to Leamington to call on me. They are the last remnant of my London
salon,
faithful to the end, while the others have melted away. Nora Sidgwick is the most delightful embodiment of the modern bluestocking, don't you think? How
is
Mrs. Piper, by the way? Bob seems to be spending all his time with her. That can't be good for him.”

“Poor Bob,” says Henry.

“Oh
don't
let's talk about Bob,” William says. “He just stayed a week at our house and exhausted poor Alice by pouring out his miseries until the wee hours. He threw our household into turmoil as usual, and the children kept asking, ‘When is he
going?
'”

“It is so sad about Aunt Kate, isn't it?”

“Yes. Lilla Walsh said she was incapable of conversation toward the end. She'd try to say something and then lapse into resignation, saying, ‘I can't talk it.'”

We carefully avoid the minefield of our aunt's will. That has been disposed of in letters and shall nevermore be spoken of—by me, anyway. “Poor Aunt Kate, who so loved stating her opinions,” I say. “I suppose we shall all end like that.”

As the light drains from the sky, the three of us sit in wistful silence, recalling the years when we lived like a small tribe isolated on an island, with our own peculiar language and customs—the good and bad of it known only to us and to Bob now.

“Life is so odd, isn't it?” I tell William I can still picture everything in Cambridge, as clearly as if I were standing there—Harvard Square, the horse-cars, the mansions on “Tory Row,” Mr. Eliot and his port-wine birthmark. “Who is Charlemagne expurgating now?”

“I'm not sure. He hosts Dante evenings these days. The smart set goes. Howells says his spoken Italian is actually quite poor.”

“Oh, Charles is far too self-conscious to have a gift for languages. And how is Grace? You know about her wedding gift to Mabel Quincy, I assume?”

“What is that?”

“I am
shocked
you don't know, William, since it was Alice who wrote me of it. It was Grace's own inept and graceless translation of Montaigne. Before wrapping the book to give to Mabel, she
glued
the naughty pages together. Even strained through Grace's polysyllabic fog, the passages were apparently unsuitable for a bride-to-be, although Grace herself did not shy from contemplating them, depraved spinster that she is.”

William laughs lustily at this, and then the talk turns to William's new house, currently under construction on the former Shady Hill
property. “They've put in three new streets—mine is Irving Street. I am hoping to move in when I return.” He fumbles in his satchel and finds the blueprints. Spreading them out on my lap, he explains all the rooms and their features.

After that, we move on to Cambridge friends. “Winnie Howells”—daughter of the novelist—“is sicker than ever,” William says. “Nerves, apparently. Weir Mitchell, the rest-cure man, has her now, so I suppose she will gain.”

“Oh, William! That dreadful man.”

As the little clock on the mantel chimes the hour, I draw my shawl around me. “You don't know what it means to have a few laughs, William. I never go out, you know. I have no idea of life at large. I see mostly women, when I see anyone, and British women—well, the minds of even the most intelligent are simply cul-de-sacs, more or less long. The dead wall you always come to in time.”

Several minutes of deep silence pass.

“Nurse thinks I am a godless savage because I have no outward ritual, little realizing that I am wholly devoted to the Unknowable Mystery Behind Phenomena!” William smiles at this, knowing what I mean. “Anyhow, William, I hope you are coming back here afterwards on your way to Liverpool?”

“I shall return, bearing tales of the Exposition. But first I am making a side trip to Geneva to gaze upon our old house. Remember it, Alice?”

“Yes. I loved the garden. Remember our Russian landlady, who was a terrible invalid, and sat reading under a lime tree, in her mushroom hat, always so happy?”

O
NGOING LETTER FROM
W
ILLIAM
J
AMES TO
M
RS
W
ILLIAM
J
AMES
H
OTEL
R
ASTADT
, P
ARIS
. A
UGUST
3
RD
, 1889.

After I had paced the street for 3/4 of an hour and begun to give up all hope, suddenly Harry's portly form appeared on the balcony cheering me on. I rushed up—A. was on her bed, in a fainting, panting condition, white as a sheet, with outstretched arms into which I threw myself. She kept gasping out, “You understand, don't you, it's all my body, it's all physical, I can't help it.”

Alice in person is elegant and graceful, and talked and laughed in a charming way, making me feel ashamed of my dull and ponderous way with her these last years. The tone of invective and sarcasm that sounded shrill in her letters is uttered in a soft, laughing way, and gives an entirely different impression. I'm afraid I am a dull clod, unfit to deal with airy creations like Alice. But I think she has forgiven me.

As I kissed her good-bye, she gazed at me with moist eyes and, clasping both my hands in hers, said, “It is sad, William, to think of you, with your love of kith and kin, left alone in Cambridge with the family melted like snow from about you. Our dead—les morts qui sont toujours vivants.” I live in the bosom of a large family and Alice has only Henry, but to her, “family” means the original family circle. A helpless invalid, she feels sorry for me. (I must admit I suffered a twinge of jealousy seeing H and A's intimacy, their private jokes and references.)

On our way out H & I ran into A's landlady, Miss Clarke, a friendly garrulous woman of early middle age with massive red arms. She told me, “Miss James is a perfect angel and means so much to us. I don't know how we'd get along without her.” This statement was clarified when Harry explained that A. is obsessed with the poor families of the neighborhood, knows every detail of their wretched lives, and keeps them afloat with gifts of money and clothes.

As for Harry, he'd warned me in a letter, “I am as broad as I am long, as fat as a butter tub & as red as a British materfamilias.” When he met me at the station, I almost didn't recognize him. He seemed a thorough Englishman, having covered himself with strange, heavy, alien manners and customs, like a marine crustacean with barnacles. After a few hours in his company, however, he became once more the same dear good innocent Harry of his youth. I am sorry to say that he is saving not a cent, so my vision of him paralyzed in our spare room, is stronger than ever. He seems quite helpless in that regard.

W
ILLIAM
J
AMES

P
ARIS
, A
UGUST
6
TH
, 1889

T
O
M
RS
. W
ILLIAM
J
AMES

My darling—Haven't managed to mail this yet, as new things keep happening. Tonight I found three quills poking out of the mattress cording! My sleep has gone to pieces—Took two chloral hydrate last night, and got two hours of what might technically be called sleep but was not refreshing in the least. Also: heat, drain smells, cries of inebriates and putains on the street. I long for you (and home) more desperately than I thought possible and begin to wonder if I shall go to Switzerland after all.

Today the Congress was dominated by Pierre Janet. He has the most unruly eyebrows ever seen on a Frenchman and told stories of his hysterics that would make Zola blush. If only Sister Alice could see him, but great French doctors don't make house calls in England (or even possibly in France) and how could Alice cross the Channel if seasickness almost killed her two and a half years ago? She and H are as ignorant of science as the beasts of the field. I must tread carefully.

Tell our Harry I almost mistook the man from the telegraph office for one of his lead soldiers. Tell Bill to stay away from Mrs. Waring's roses, and give Peggy a hug and kiss from her devoted Papa—