Alice in Bed (42 page)

When the father takes it off at night there is a stump. A dead fish, white and purple. The mother rubs it with oil. The father lies on his back and sighs, “Never was a man so blessed as I am with my Mary.”

House in St. John's Wood 1855. Overlooking a green where elegant ladies and gentlemen practice archery. Like characters out of Robin Hood.

In Paris I see my reflection in the gleaming floors. Robbie says he can see my drawers, and I say, no, you can't, and he says, yes, yes, I can. Grown-ups tower above us like redwoods.

Such good boys, I have such good boys.

Boulogne. On the beach Robbie and I holding our breath as long as. Spinning like tops to make ourselves dizzy. All fall down! Our footprints in the wet sand filling with water and pieces of sky.

Who will help me cross the river Lethe? What is the ferryman's name? Katherine will know.

Madame parle français comme une vache espagnole.

Don't you ever have fun, Cousin Alice?

Dream one night of Clover Hooper. Well, call it a dream. Wearing a white lace dress, sitting on the lip of a baroque fountain, feeding pigeons from her hands. I sit down next to her.

She looks up, startled. “Alice James! I
thought
maybe you'd gone and done it, too. It's not a sin, you know.”

“I know that.”

“You may still.”

“If it gets worse I shall ask K for the lethal dose. Morphine. Dr. Baldwin kindly told us. But you—why did you drink potassium cyanide? I thought you had the perfect life!”

“Not at all. We could not have children and there seemed no point in going on. I am very occupied with the children here.” I look down at the pigeons and see that they have changed into street urchins with smudged faces. “But the clergy, Alice! Scurrying around with their horrid rat faces.” She shudders. “No, Alice, the real story is this. Henry,
mi caro sposo
, fell in love with Mrs. Cameron. Do you know her? Her husband is a Senator. The love was all in his mind but Henry's sensual organ
is
his mind. The rest of him hardly matters.”

“Do you mean to say—?”

“Yes, Alice. He wrote a depressing novel called
Esther
in which a woman bearing a striking resemblance to
moi
falls into a hopeless melancholy after her father dies. Henry wrote it
before
Papa died. A queer case of precognition, no? I can take a hint, you know!”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, and then he wrote a second novel, also anonymous. Most people thought
I
wrote it. But that's not it, either. What
was
it? Oh, yes, my mad dead Aunt Susie kept invading my dreams. Said I would have to kill myself eventually, so why put it off? Her voice in my head all the time, all the time. Do you know what that's like? To blot it out, I had to drink a poisonous chemical used in photography. Did you know I took up photography? Anyway, I died and two years later Ellen had to throw herself in front of a train. Then Ned. The whole family—a chain reaction!”

“But Ned is still alive. In Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

“Wait. In a few years' time he'll throw himself out of a window.”

They take turns at my bedside, K and H. Is it Sunday? Oh yes, the bells. Nurse at her religious debaucheries all day.

K reading aloud from Miss Woolson's story “Dorothy” in
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
. Stops to hypnotize me every twenty minutes.

Where did my hysteria go?

My feebleness extreme. Can no longer sit up, so many things behind me now. From the supine position I dictate something for my diary. Strange dream this afternoon, woke up choking. Lizzy Boott and Annie Dixwell standing up in a boat in a stream, passing through a cloud into golden sunlight. Look back toward shore, beckoning to me. Both dead.

“The welcoming committee,” Katherine says.

Katherine reading aloud again, hypnotizing me every twenty minutes.

Father dying.
Oh, this disgusting world!
Did he not see his only daughter? Was I not there by his side?

Nothing ever happened really. Once I was a small person in a big world. Now the world abides in me. Stars explode. Kingdoms rise and
fall, turn to dust, seven layers of Troy, library of Alexandria in flames. Periclean Athens, Napoleon I and the other Napoleon, the one we saw in Paris. Try to tell Katherine and Henry but words become garbled passing through my lips. Time for talk over, I suppose.

I have always been the same: lively and sad, I have loved God my father and liberty.
Madame de Staël, as quoted by Mademoiselle Danse. Feeding a goat a scrap of paper through the palings of a wooden fence. Bob Temple goes to prison for his crimes. Governesses depart in tears. God does not haggle. Henry James has kept the secret.

Please, Alice, do take some liquid.

This year my happiest ever. Enfolded in the love of friend and brothers.

La Revue des Deux Mondes.
Says it will rain?

H writes W about my progress toward deterioration.

Nights long. Dreadful coughing. Breathing agony. Bones on fire.

I shee it! I shee it!

What, Alice? (Henry)

Typewrii .. fee—fee woman.

Horrible wracking cough. Nurse wipes my mouth tenderly and props me up against a firm pillow so I can breathe. Clots of bloody tissue on my nightdress, Katherine changes me into a clean one. I attempt speech.

Try to rest, dear. Save your strength.

For
what
? (Attempt to laugh; produce a witchy cackle.)

Bi-shycle, bi-shycle.

What's that about a bicycle, Alice? (Henry)

Fee women. Becush closhe. Rub a bit of my nightdress between my thumb and index finger. Henry works it out. “Women who ride bicycles must wear functional clothing?”

Yesh! Yesh!

So women will be set free by the typewriter and the bicycle? (Katherine.)

Yesh. You will shee! Coming. Coming soon.

How nice to have friends and brothers who know me so well they can decode my gibberish.

Pain lifting now. If you squint you can see it. Like space, like the silence between words. A wave of emptiness washes over my mind. My hard core melting, melting. The emptier I get the fuller I am.

To William. A telegram, whispered into Henry's ear.
Tenderest love to all farewell am going soon Alice.
How did people say good-bye before the telegraph?

Who has been dreaming the dream of Alice James?

Alice I can't hear you, you're whispering.

Sun through the mist. Pat of butter melting, melting. Carried off the ship like a plank. Alice James takes her bow, exits stage left. Look!

Please, Alice, try to take some—

Lock eyes with K, squeeze her hand, I think she receives. The pain that consumed me is gone. Please don't ask me, oh please don't, to stay another day.

H
ENRY
J
AMES

11 A
RGYLL
R
D
., K
ENSINGTON
W.

J
ANUARY
12, 1893

T
O
W
ILLIAM
J
AMES

Her lungs, her heart, her breast are all in great distress, constant fever, a distressing choking retching cough. . . . She could not sleep. She is perfectly clear and humorous and would be talking if doing so didn't bring on spasms of coughing.

March 6th, 1893—All through Saturday the 5th and even in the night, Alice was making sentences.

—Written by Katherine Peabody Loring at the end of Alice James's diary.

C
ABLE FROM
H
ENRY
J
AMES TO
W
ILLIAM
J
AMES

M
ARCH
6. 1893

ALICE JUST PASSED AWAY PAINLESS

K
ATHERINE
P
EABODY
L
ORING

11 A
RGYLL
R
D
., K
ENSINGTON
W.

M
ARCH
8, 1893

T
O
F
RANCES
R
OLLINS
(F
ANNY
) M
ORSE

I cannot give you any idea of the beauty of that last night, those last hours, when Alice knew that she was free at last, though she was too weak to say much.

Ed essa da martiro

E da essilio venne a questa pace

(“From martyrdom and exile to this peace”)

—inscription on Alice James's funeral urn, from Dante

TEN
TEN

1894

T
HE SOUP COURSE IS STILL IN PROGRESS, AND ALREADY TWO
quarrels have erupted among the Jameses of 95 Irving Street. Billy is warming to his favorite sport of tormenting Peggy, calling her a “harridan” and a “frump,” words Peggy is too proud to admit she doesn't know. She takes refuge in being dictatorial toward Aleck, the last-born in a family as quarrelsome as the Balkans. Will they have to have another child so that Aleck will have someone to lord it over? No, William thinks, no more! They can scarcely manage the four they have.

The doorbell rings.

“Who could that be, this time of night?” Alice's mother, Eliza, wonders.

“Go answer it, Harry,” Alice tells her eldest. “I hope it's not one of your melancholiacs, William—but don't they come by in the morning?” Then she catches the look on his face. “
Oh, no,
William! Please tell me you didn't schedule your office hours during our dinner hour!”

“It was the only time I was sure of being here. I didn't think anyone would come.”

Alice rests her forehead on the heel of her hand.

Two voices, one male, one female, echo in the vestibule, and Harry can be heard taking their coats and hats with a bonhomie worthy of a valet at a gentlemen's club. When the students come round the corner to find the James family sitting at dinner, they freeze like deer in a forest. The young woman actually takes a step backwards.

“Miss Stein! Mr. Solomons! Marvelous to see you! Do join us. I hope you haven't eaten.” He moves some chairs around and places Miss Stein on his right and Mr. Solomons on his left. Mrs. James smiles from the other side of the table, a little wearily, before ringing for the servants and telling them in excellent French to bring out two more plates.

The students have come to consult Professor James about their research paper, “Normal Motor Automatisms.” Dr. Münsterberg told them last week that it was good enough to publish, but as his English is not fluent, he suggested they have Professor James look it over as well.

It summarizes a series of laboratory experiments in automatic writing, designed to find the exact point at which a personality splits and “releases” a secondary personality. The experimental design is Professor James's, but he has abandoned laboratory work since Dr. Hugo Münsterberg of Berlin came to Harvard. Although Miss Stein is only an undergraduate, Professor James granted her special permission to take Dr. Münsterberg's graduate seminar, where she'd be the first to admit she has no business being. She admires Dr. Münsterberg but she
idolizes
Professor James.

Leon Solomons, the most brilliant of the current crop of graduate students in psychology, takes the paper out of his case and proceeds to discuss fine points of experimental design with Professor James. Miss Stein, uninterested in methodology, looks across the table at the little girl and finds her staring back.

“
Lots
of students come to our dinners,” the girl says. “We know practically everyone at Harvard. We know Professor Royce and Professor Cummings and Professor Palmer and Professor Child. Do you know about our aunt who died? Her name was Aunt Alice and I never met her. But we put her ashes in a vase!”

“It's an
urn
,” says Harry in a tone of amused contempt.

“Peggy, please focus on eating,” says the elderly lady, evidently her grandmother, “and let the grown-ups talk.”

In her laboratory notes, Miss Stein noted at first that she had “no subconscious reaction.” But after performing the experiments for a while, she found that when someone read a story to her at the same time that she wrote down the words dictated by another person, something
odd would happen and her hand would begin to write
unconsciously
and go on writing for a long time, in a sort of trance.

When there is a break in the conversation, Mrs. James asks both students where they are from and whether they are enjoying Cambridge. They chat about their respective boarding houses, and about Leon's plans to go to Europe next summer.

“I break down every two or three years and have to ruin myself by going to Europe,” Professor James tells them. “Last year, on my sabbatical, the whole family came, and an entire Swiss village was condemned to witness the quarrels and tantrums of the James family on our balcony. Later, in cold damp stony Florence, the children were sick with catarrhs all winter in a freezing house. My brain shut down completely and by the time we came back I'd lost all memory for psychology.”

The students are unable to think of an appropriate response to this.

“When you have been over there for a long period, and you come back here, you see all too starkly the American over-strained seriousness, our narrow horizons, our jerky angular unsmiling ways and manners. You become partially dissociated. But maybe that is just me.” He smiles graciously.

Miss Stein mentions that she lived in Vienna briefly as a small child and saw the emperor Franz Josef stroll through the Volksgarten while a band played patriotic songs.

“Ah, that would explain why your mind is so—capacious, Miss Stein. Early influences! Which reminds me”—addressing both students—“Have you ever heard of this man Sigmund Freud? Viennese. I have just been reading the most extraordinary article in the
Neurologisches Centralblatt
. The title is
Über den Psychischen Mechanismus Hysterischer Phänomene.
Do you know German?”

Mr. Solomons does; Miss Stein does not. “Well, it begins rather strangely.
A chance observation
—oh, hang it, I've forgotten exactly.” He abruptly pushes back his chair and strides out of the room. Peggy has not taken her eyes off the young woman across from her, and tells her now, “You needn't worry about boring us. We are used to intellectual conversations. Except Aleck.” With her elbow, she indicates the small boy next to her. “He used to be called Francis Tweedy, but now he's Aleck.”

“Was not!” says the boy.

“You were, too! You just don't remember.”

From the head of the table, Alice scans the faces, mentally making a place for her dead boy. In her mind there are always five children, not four. Herman would be ten now, filling in the gap between Billy and Peggy.

To get Peggy to close her mouth, she says, “Peggy, dear, do eat your asparagus.”

All the Jameses have beautiful voices, Miss Stein notices. She feels as if she were dining with the gods on Mt. Olympus.

“It's too . . . stringy,” Peggy says. “I wish I
did
meet Aunt Alice. Now I'll have to wait until I die, and that will be a long, long time.” She heaves a dramatic, world-weary sigh.

“You don't
know
that, Peggy,” smirks Billy, across the table. “You could be dead as a doornail tomorrow, and we'd have to talk to you through Mrs. Piper.” He rolls his eyes up in his head, fluttering his eyelids, and drones in a low voice.
I am Peeeeeggggy Jaaaaames. Reeeecently deceeeeeased
.

Harry, normally more mature, laughs.

“Billy, stop teasing your sister,” their grandmother says.

But after sticking out her tongue, Peggy ignores him, apparently riveted by the sight of Miss Stein.

“How old are you?” Miss Stein asks.

“As old as . . . the pangs of old age.” Peggy heaves another dramatic sigh.

“She's seven,” says Billy. “Seven
months
!” He laughs maniacally, and Peggy pushes out her lower lip in a pout.

Professor James returns with a journal offprint in his hands, and scans it. “Ah, here it is. I'll translate into English.
A chance observation has led us, over a number of years, to investigate a great variety of forms and symptoms of hysteria . . .
What the deuce do they mean by a ‘chance observation'? They never
explain
, you see. Later they refer to a ‘complicated case of hysteria' dating from 1881 but give no details. Why do you suppose it took them so long to publish? Thirteen years! It's very odd.”

It is typical of Professor James to solicit students' opinions, as if they were equals. Neither Mr. Solomons nor Miss Stein can shed any light on the Viennese case.

“Toward the end of the article they write,
Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences.
A lovely phrase,
nicht wahr
? But I don't care for this word they use—
das Unbewusste
. That's the unconscious, Miss Stein. I don't believe it is
un
conscious. I prefer the word subliminal. Janet speaks of the
subconscious
, and Dr. Morton Prince of Boston has begun to talk of
co-conscious
selves. Eventually we shall have to agree on terminology!”

“I was very surprised to hear Professor Münsterberg say the other day that he does not believe in the existence of the subconscious mind,” Mr. Solomons volunteers.

Professor James looks deeply shocked. “How extraordinary.”

At this point the smallest boy's milk splashes onto the tablecloth and his sister's plate. “Bad boy!” Peggy says, taking his small hand and slapping it. The little boy wails, and his grandmother gathers him onto her lap. Peggy is sent to her room and flounces out of the room like an enraged
prima donna.

After the dessert dishes are cleared, and the rest of the family disperses noisily, Professor James goes over the students' article point by point, asking a few technical questions, and says, “I agree with Dr. Münsterberg. This paper is certainly publishable. I would be glad to send it around to a few editors I know.”

Two hours later, sitting before the looking glass of her vanity, rubbing cold cream into her skin, Alice says, “William, was it really necessary for your students to be
minutely
informed about the James family's temper tantrums in Switzerland?”

“Oh, it's all right. They are graduate students. Mr. Solomons is, anyway.”

Alice rolls her eyes at the non sequitur. “The young man has a lovely, shy smile, doesn't he? And the stout girl has such a compelling and direct gaze. Such as the goddess Athena might have had.” Then, setting down her hairbrush, she gives her husband a sharp glance. “So, how long are you planning to put it off, William?”

“What, darling?”

“Reading your sister's diary. At least do it for Henry's sake. So you can talk to him about it sensibly and calm him down.”

“Poor Henry! All those years sitting by Alice's bedside feeding her gossip, never dreaming she was taking notes.”

For the past two weeks, stricken letters have been arriving every other day.

I am almost sick with terror. A woman in Venice said to me ‘I hear your sister's letters have just been published & are so delightful,' which almost made me jump out of my skin.

Henry wondered, and William does too, whether Alice herself had wanted the diary printed or if it was a “pious inspiration” of Katherine Loring's.

“But didn't Miss Loring just make the four copies for the family and herself?” Alice says. “I don't see the problem.”

“Darling, think how famous Henry is, and I suppose I am a bit as well. Things leak out. So far, I've been able to persuade Katherine not to send a copy to Bob while he is floridly insane!”

Various nightmare scenarios have been spooling through Henry's mind and his, he explains. Scenario #1: Crazy Bob gets hold of his copy and allows it to fall into the wrong hands. Scenario #2: The “two Marys”—Bob's wife and daughter—pass it around Concord and alert “the fearful American newspaper lying in wait for every whisper” (Henry's words). Scenario #3: Katherine Loring herself shows it to some reporter or suffragist sob-sister, either here or in England; or Scenario #4: Katherine allows the diary to be published in its entirety as a book.

“Oh, I can't imagine Alice would have wanted that.”

“Well, we don't really
know
, do we?”

Much of the distress could have been averted, he says, if Katherine had only substituted blanks or initials for names. William sympathizes with the distress of his emotionally private brother and worries, too, about what Alice may have written about
him
. He still hasn't read the diary and is not sure why he keeps putting it off.

Henry has read it and believes it to be a work of genius. Although he ascribes the vehemence of Alice's opinions of the British to her extreme seclusion, he has found

an immense eloquence in her passionate ‘radicalism'—her most distinguishing feature almost—which, in her was absolutely direct and original (like everything that was in her). It would have made her, had she lived in the world, a feminine ‘political force.' She felt the Home Rule question as only an Irishwoman (not anglicized) could. It was a tremendous emotion with her. What a pity she wasn't born there—or had her health for it.

For now, they are keeping the diary secret. William has said nothing to Bob, and Alice has kept it secret even from her mother and sisters. “You can't just lock it up forever,” she says now. “
I
want to read it. If it is half as good as Alice's letters, it ought to be very good indeed.”

“Ah! And this from the person who once referred to Sister Alice as an ‘unnatural woman'!”

“I said no such thing, William.”

“You did, darling. The winter Father was dying and I was in London. You wrote me that you went over to Mt. Vernon Street one evening and found Alice and Katherine dining
à deux
, and the whole atmosphere gave you the strangest feeling. You wrote: ‘Katherine is faithful to Alice and that means that she too is a very lonely woman. And I am finally sure of this: she is not made as other women—our ways of feeling are not hers so we have no right to decide.'

“Your habit of quoting verbatim from my old letters is
very
irritating, William. It would be so much better if you remembered where you put the letters I gave you to mail yesterday.”