Alice in Bed (34 page)

PART FOUR
PART FOUR

ONE
ONE

1890

T
ODAY IS ONE OF THOSE RARE DAYS WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS
: A large packing crate arrives. Four brawny lads carry it upstairs and break apart the wooden slats, and there it is: the desk with the leather top I was given for Christmas 1877 for my “professoress” duties. I'd asked William and Alice to send it when they dismantled my Manchester house, but I'd forgotten and now it appears in my rooms like a dream object.

If only I could have saved the musty air exhaled by its drawers; once opened, of course, the past was immediately contaminated. How strange to come across your own flotsam and jetsam, your own “remains”! A rusty key to my old steamer trunk, a key to a jewelry box I no longer possess, an envelope, labeled
Alice 1849
, containing a lock of fine baby hair. (I must make sure Mrs. Piper doesn't get her paws on
that
after I “pass over.”) In other drawers: bottles of ink, pen-wipers, engraved calling cards of Boston ladies, clippings from
Godey's
(saved as a joke for Sara), a skein of violet yarn, a hatpin, a few outdated American postage stamps, a half-written letter to one of my students from the Society to Encourage Studies at Home (I suppose it is too late to mail it now), cabinet photographs of various friends. And in the two lowest drawers on the right: a cache of family letters.

I can't decide whether Alice and William put them in there on purpose or if they just happened to be there. A quick glance at the envelopes reveals that mingled with Mother's and Father's letters are
masses of letters to and from everyone in the family: a nearly random collection of Jamesiana.

I wait several days before tackling them; I am not sure why. Finally, one day after breakfast, I ask Nurse to bring me one of the bundles.

“Which one, Miss?”

“Oh, whatever is on top. Surprise me.” This turns out to be a bundle of Mother's letters bound with a blue satin ribbon. Tears spring to my eyes at the sight of her dear handwriting, particularly my name written in her hand. To think that her living hand touched this paper, addressed the envelope, poured out these thoughts through her pen. I feel for some minutes as if a current of electricity had passed through me.

“Are you all right, Miss?”

“
Perfectly
well, Nurse.” How unpleasant to have someone watch you as if you were a chimpanzee in the zoo. There are times when I wish Nurse would disappear for a little while. But she does her best, poor girl. It can't be easy catering to my eccentricities.

The first letter I unfold is from Mother to Father.

I saw how Alice's spirits sunk last evening in hearing of the recital of all your troubles—and she sighed a deep sigh, and said oh how I wish Father was here. My heart melts with tenderness toward you my precious one.

The letter is undated and contains no clue to where Father was. Next I come to a pile of Mother's letters to me while I was in the clutches of the Brothers Taylor in New York.

I hear such fine accounts of your blooming appearance that I shall expect to hear from the doctor that the great work of restoration is almost completed.

My blooming appearance! My great restoration! What an optimist she was.

In a letter to William, Father is depicted as being
comforted by Alice's lovely and loving companionship, which he enjoys more than ever
because it is not marred by his old anxiety about her.
This was written in 1873 or '74, when I was holding my own nervously, or was believed to be.

It is clear from these letters that our mother was the glue that held our family together; every page is perfumed with her love. Here she is writing to Harry while he was abroad in 1868.

What are you living on dear Harry? It seems to me you are living as the lilies and fed like the sparrows. But I know too that you toil and spin, and must conclude that you receive in some mysterious way the fruits of your labour.

To William in Dresden in 1867:
Beware dear Willy of the fascinations of Fraulein Clara Schmidt or any other such. You know your extreme susceptibility, or rather I know it, so I say beware.
I skim through many loving letters to Wilky and Bob and their wives, reporting on the Boston weather and news and anxious for details about their babies.

Here is something. In December 1872, not long after my return from my Grand Tour of Europe, Mother writes to Harry (in Paris):

Alice has found after six weeks' experience at home that the delicious breakfast of chocolate & roll in the morning does not agree with her as it did abroad. There is doubtless a stimulus in it which she could bear there but cannot bear here. She has given it up and is all right again.

Yes, for a brief period my “French breakfast” could summon an aftertaste of Paris. When it stopped “agreeing” with me, it meant that Europe had entirely faded away. I was not exactly “all right again.”

Not long afterwards, when weekly letters began arriving from Harry in Paris, reporting luminous conversations with George Sand, Turgenev, Zola, and Flaubert, my writing hand began to revolt. Given a pencil, it would scribble hateful, spiteful things, things I wasn't aware of thinking. Although I did my utmost to conceal this part of myself, as if it were a claw-hand, my family sensed that I was not as well as might be wished. In a letter to Harry, Mother laments,

Poor child. Why is it that she has gone back so? Can there be anything in this climate to account for it? She has been trying to write to you for some time past, but always finds her strength too little for the good long letter and I dissuade her from it. Do not dwell much on what I have told you, in your letters, only recognize it as a reason for her not writing.

In 1878, the year of William's marriage, when Father was talking me out of suicide daily, Mother was calmly telling my brothers that
Alice is not so strong as we might wish
or that
Alice has had a little setback
. No mention of my being on the brink of insanity.

Oh dear, here is Nurse
again
, come to see if I have fainted and require revival. She subscribes to the common prejudice that thinking too much, especially about oneself, is an unhealthy activity. “It's all right, Nurse,” I tell her. “These letters are nectar and ambrosia to me.”

“If you say so, Miss.”

Having noticed the tear tracks on my cheeks, she loiters nearby, looking for something to straighten so she can monitor my condition. This is
very
wearisome. “Please, Nurse, don't distress yourself. I am fine, really.” I am thinking,
Don't you have some praying to do? Intercessionary prayers for my benighted soul or something?
Finally she leaves, and I pick up another stack of Mother's letters, which turn out to be commingled with many of Aunt Kate's. (They were as similar in penmanship as they were in physiognomy.)

Here is Aunt Kate writing to Harry in 1873:

Your mother writes that you learned to love Paris before you left it and I am so glad that you stayed long enough to do so. I wish so much that Alice could have had a good long quiet draught of it.

How interesting. While Mother sought answers to my poor health in the vagaries of climate, Aunt Kate understood perfectly where the trouble lay. Perhaps I underestimated her.

As church bells in Leamington toll the hour, my mind is back in Cambridge in the days of our youth. Sitting stiffly in the formal parlor at Quincy Street meeting Wilky's new bride. The letters bring it all
back: how appalled we were by Carrie, a shallow girl flaunting expensive jewelry, and hoped Wilky wouldn't notice our lack of enthusiasm. (He didn't.) After Carrie, Bob's Mary was a breath of fresh air. Mother appreciated her sound practical nature and I adopted her as my little pet and we went around with our arms entwined like a pair of devoted sisters. Having no intellectual side, however, Mary wore thin soon enough, and it was a relief to see her go—to see them both go, I should say, for a euphoric Bob was nearly as exhausting as Bob in a morose state.

I see myself sucking in my breath while Mother pulled on my stays as I don a new costume for Father's lecture on “The Woman Thou Gavest Me.” Noting the perplexity on the Bostonian faces, it hits me how bewildering Father's philosophy is to others. Then I see Aunt Kate going off to Dr. Munro for manipulations and coming back smiling mysteriously. Time winds backwards and I am in Newport driving my pony phaeton along the Ocean Drive, looking out on a dark blue ocean frosted with whitecaps. Later I am swatting at flies while Wilky lies delirious in our parlor, the wounds in his ankle and his side refusing to heal. The smell was unforgettable.

After four days' absorption in the letters—it has been like a long trance, to be honest—I feel the chills of a grippe coming on. Perhaps it is the Russian influenza, which, according to the
Telegraph
, is sweeping through Britain, killing scores of people. Having longed for years for some more palpable disease, I begin to pin my hopes on this Slavic 'flu.

“For all we know,” I tell Nurse, “the microbes might be cruising through my bloodstream even now.” But why bother to discuss this with Nurse, who rejects the Germ Theory and insists that diseases are brought about by drafts and vapors? What a sweet caretaker she is, though. It calms and comforts me to watch her arrange my bedroom for the night, setting out the medicine bottles, filling the pitcher on the washstand, smoothing my covers, bringing me an extra blanket. The blanket feels heavy, almost suffocating, but when I cast it off, my teeth chatter as icy waves sweep through me.

I believe these are symptoms of the Russian influenza.

TWO
TWO

T
HE NEXT DAY, THE CHILLS ARE GONE, LEAVING ONLY A HEAVINESS
in my head and a sense that something inside me is trying to claw its way out, like a raccoon trapped in a gardening shed. My hopes for the Russian 'flu are dwindling. Nurse folds me into my violet dressing gown and helps me to sit up, then brings me tea and a soft-boiled egg on a tray. I can eat only half the egg, and she casts a disapproving glance at my plate as she clears it.

“I don't seem to have much appetite, Nurse, but at least I have recovered from the Russian microbes.”

“I am glad to hear it, but if I may say so, Miss, I believe what's making you ill are those old family letters of yours.”

“They bring back my childhood and youth, Nurse. My parents come back to life in them, and Aunt Kate and my brother Wilky, almost as if I had them in the room with me. It is such an exquisite sensation, you've no idea.” She looks dubious, but I am the boss. Rather impatiently, she fetches the next bundle, and I fancy I hear the door shut a bit emphatically on her way out.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Father. In the next bunch of letters, he pops into view, delectably describing meetings of the Saturday Club in the 1860s. Mr. Hawthorne's
divine rusticity,
Charles Norton's
spectral smiles
, the latest pedantry of Bronson Alcott, father of the authoress Louisa May.

My heart broke for Hawthorne as that attenuated Charles Norton kept putting forth his long antennae toward him, stroking his face, and
trying whether his eyes were shut; it was heavenly to see him persist in ignoring Charles Norton, eating his dinner & doing absolutely nothing but that.

What fun Father had rolling out his thundering superlatives! Of Mr. Emerson he writes,
He has no sympathy with nature but is a sort of police-spy upon it, chasing it into its hiding-places, and noting its subtlest features, for the purpose of reporting them to the public
. But there had been a time, not long before, when Mr. Emerson had been a god to him. Almost everyone Father put on a pedestal disappointed him in the end.

Speaking of gods, I have just come across a letter in which Father writes that William is the only one of his children with any intellectual gifts. I can't wait to inform William of this confirmation of his genius. Of me Father writes,
Poor dear child! Her brothers are her pride and joy!
True enough, I suppose.

In the next letter I come to, he writes to Mother:

I have often told you when I come thundering down into the dovecote scattering your and the children's innocent projects of pleasure that I have no doubt they will all get along much better without me than with me: and I have made the same admission to the juveniles.

If I was aware of Father's telling us children that we'd be better off without him, I've forgotten it. I do remember him swooping down upon us at our games, covering us with kisses, tears coursing down his cheeks. I wondered why we made him cry. Father looked, at midlife, like a rosy little grocer and was celebrated for his eloquence, wit, and optimism. I never read his books or articles until I was fifteen. After hearing
The Secret of Swedenborg
mocked by my classmates in the school cloakroom, I tried to read a few paragraphs of it and found it too dense to follow, so I picked up
Substance and Shadow
instead and ran smack into this sentence:
The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life, is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and every obscene bird of night chatters.
That was when I knew. That
unsubdued forest with its obscene bird of night was in the James blood; in mine, in Father's, in Bob's and William's too.

Suddenly an absurd picture pops into my mind: my father holding a rake, wielding a hammer. This is like a magic lantern show projecting an impossible world, for Father had no practical side and was never at any time observed with a tool in his hands. But his
presence
—how to convey that? I am young again, sitting near him, feeling the irresistible pull of his personality. I try to comprehend how Mother, feet planted firmly on the ground, should have fallen into the orbit of this man who spoke in the tongue of angels. For me my father's inner being was a mesmerizing pressure in which one was helplessly caught up, like a riptide. There seemed to be an overwhelming need in him, forever unsatisfied. At the same time it seemed as if he, not Mother, had given me life.

“It is time to take your bromide, Miss, if you are to sleep.”

My body practically jumps off the bed at the sound of her voice. “Oh Nurse, I had quite forgotten your existence! I have been traveling back so far!”

“Let me fetch you another candle.”

“Oh, don't bother, Nurse. I am just thinking now.”

“I don't know how you think so much, Miss, and never run out of things to think about. Have you memorized any poems or great speeches? My father says that is a good thing to do, just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“I suppose going to prison, or falling ill. I memorized a few bits of ‘The Angel in the House.'”

I refrain from giving my opinion of her poetical tastes. “Somehow I don't see you in prison, Nurse.”

Nurse worships her father and quotes him on numerous subjects. Daughters are fated to absorb their fathers' theologies, I suppose. While she packs up my letters, I close my eyes and fall softly through the space inside my head, dates and years running backwards until, just on the border between sleep and waking, I am back at the age when all stories are true.

We are living in Paris, in the grand
hotel particulier
full of gilt and ormolu, and an elderly lady calls on us one evening. For more than
thirty years I haven't thought of her, but here she is now, risen from the dead, swathed in black taffeta, her upper arms jiggling like jelly as she cuts her meat at supper. I am riveted by that as well as by her old-fashioned lace cap, the small grey curls pasted like commas on her forehead, and the way the flesh clumps around her elbows in fat little dumplings.
Who is she?
I ask Aunt Kate.

“Why, Alice, she is the lady your papa met in England years ago, before you were born. He went to a spa, very broken down, and she told him about Sweden Borg. He said she saved his life.” Indeed, at dinner, the lady and Father are chatting amiably about angels, the New Jerusalem, the Spirits of Mercury, and Dr. Garth Wilkinson, the man for whom Wilky was named, who is also from Sweden Borg. But if this old lady is from Sweden Borg, why does she speak English?

At bedtime, after Mademoiselle Guyot brushes and braids my hair for the night, I press my knees to the cold flagstones and say my little French prayers, and then Mademoiselle snuffs out my candle and is swallowed up by the dark. After a few minutes I remember my doll, Alphonse, left downstairs. I call to Mademoiselle but she is out of earshot. I don't want to go into the darkness, which turns the landing and hallway into the deep dark woods of fairy tales, where ogres and witches and wolves with their eyes shining gold lie in wait for lost children. I have learned from fairy tales to be wary of many things. Wicked kings, spindles that prick, jealous stepmothers, obtuse fathers, surly trolls, bad bargains.

But it is my custom to have Alphonse sleeping by my side, with his head on his own tiny pillow. I don't want to leave him to the mercy of Robbie, who has beheaded or dismembered several of my darlings, resulting in days of weeping and elaborate funerals. I do not understand why he is a kind father to our children when we play house one day and a rampaging madman toward them the next, but there are so many things about boys I don't understand. I get out of bed, shivering, and creep down the wide staircase on tiptoe, the stone floors ice-cold under my bare feet. (I could not find my carpet slippers.)

A small oil lamp burns smokily on a massive low-boy in the hall, its feeble light reflected in a mirror. Above it is a large panoramic
painting that frightens me, so I look away. I find Alphonse face-down on the floor next to a majolica urn. As I pick him up and cradle him in my arms, I hear voices. The door to the parlor is ajar. I creep closer and hear the Sweden Borg lady say that the children have lovely manners, and I smile because I like to hear myself praised. I wait to hear more and there comes a prickly feeling in my nose, like the beginning of a sneeze. As I am pinching my nostrils, I hear Father say, “At one time, I said to God in my inmost heart,
Take these dear children away before they know the soil of sin.
I could not bear the thought of these babes forfeiting their innocence and becoming odious to my human heart.”

My eyes tear up in the struggle not to sneeze. What is
odious
? What is
forfeiting
? I wait in trepidation, my heart racing like a trapped hummingbird. Since Mademoiselle informed me that you die if your heart stops beating, I have been compulsively checking mine dozens of times a day. It is beating right now, but it could stop at any moment. Dread paralyzes me.

“What dreadful mystery of sin haunted me night and day,” Father is saying. “During that time I was on my knees from morning till night. I prayed and God gave me no relief. I fell ill, and would have stayed ill if not for Sweden Borg.”

The urge to sneeze has passed, but I must not be seen. I don't want Father to pray for me to return to God. I want a chance to live; I am only seven years old! I fasten my eyes on a worn hanging tapestry depicting a horde of fauns (or something) carrying off a troupe of near-naked women. Where are the fauns taking them, and what will they do to them? And what are fauns anyway, with their horrid faces? (I will ask William, who is the one who told me they were fauns.)

Clutching Alphonse to my chest, I mount the staircase, dwarfed by the high ceilings and vast stony spaces. The ordinary world vanishes. The Giant is nearby; I hear his teeth crunching on someone's bones. There is no escape; everything here belongs to him. A cold dread burrows into my stomach, becoming a sick ache, a nausea. In the Giant's House I am small and powerless, like an ant you step on without even noticing. My heart could stop like a watch at any time; the sight of the Giant would probably do it. I picture myself falling
backwards, my hands clutching at my chest, bouncing end over end all the way down the marble stairs. Groping the walls with my hands, I finally reach the top of the stairs and then fumble along the dark, cavernous hall to my bedroom. I tuck Alphonse under the covers, and kneel beside the bed, press my hands together and pray that this cold stone floor that stings my knees will touch God's heart. I pray fervently to
le bon dieu,
in the words Mademoiselle taught me, to cancel out Father's “inmost” prayers about me.

The next morning I wake to songbirds singing sweetly in the watery early-morning light. I hear Aurore's hearty
Bonjour
when she comes to collect the chamber pot and leave off a basin of hot water for washing. And then Mademoiselle comes in and plaits my hair and says I may wear the dotted Swiss muslin today.

“And how were your dreams, dear—pleasant, I hope?”

Because I suffer from frequent nightmares, I am often asked about my dreams. It is believed that when they are bad it is because of something I ate. Last night's dream comes back to me through layers of mist—the old Sweden Borg lady with her dumpling arms, Alphonse missing, half-naked ladies carried off by fauns, Father asking God to take his children back.

“I had a little nightmare but I have forgotten it now.”

A month later, Mademoiselle, whom I adore over all other mortals at this time, will mysteriously leave our employ. Father has cast out another governess.

H
ENRY
J
AMES
S
R
.

K
AY
S
T
., N
EWPORT

J
UNE
30
TH
1861

T
O
(
NAME BLURRED
)

Kitty evidently fancies her fiancé, Dr. William Prince, to be the greatest hero that ever lived. She seems to keep up her ardent sympathy for his conjugal bereavement in the old days and is proud to be the ministering handmaid to such stupendous sorrow. I don't think I could conceive of such conscience if I hadn't seen it.