Alice I Have Been: A Novel

by Melanie Benjamin

  For the first time, I understood that childhood would end. In my eagerness to grow and learn, I hadn’t, until this very moment, realized that the result would be the termination of my world as I knew it—sleeping under the same snug roof, three narrow beds all in a row, with my sisters; riding with Papa on the paths in the Meadow in the early mornings, the only time we ever had him to ourselves; endless days adrift on a river, journeys to places wonderful in their safe familiarity—

  My eyes felt wet and hot, and my heart ached with loss. While I was surrounded by those who loved me—and yes, I even included Ina in that—already, I felt their absence.

  “Wake up, Alice—we’re listing to starboard!” Mr. Duckworth called out.

  I shook my head and tightened my grip on the tiller rope, pulling until we straightened out.

  “What were you thinking about, Alice?” Mr. Dodgson asked gently. “You looked like you were dreaming.”

  “Oh, just—I was just thinking how very tragic it is that childhood must come to an end.”

  Mr. Duckworth must have swallowed a bug, for he coughed, almost dropping his oars. Ina clasped her hand over her mouth and giggled. Edith kicked her plump little legs against the side of the boat and asked, “How much farther?”

  Mr. Dodgson, of them all, looked as if he understood. For he nodded, his eyes blue and soft; his gaze was serious and sad, as serious and sad as my own.

  “Oh, Alice, you’re far too young to think about things like that!” Ina removed her gloves so she could dabble her hand in the water, just like an illustration in a novel.

  “Dear little Alice, don’t worry so—your sister is right. You’ll have plenty of time to worry about all that later.” Mr. Duckworth resumed his rowing.

  “Would you like to stay forever young, Alice?” Mr. Dodgson asked. “Would you like not to grow up?”

  “Oh, well—yes and no.” I wasn’t sure how I could prevent that from happening. “I don’t want to have to keep having lessons with Pricks, and be made to memorize silly poems and lessons, and always being told by Ina that I’m too young.” I turned to glare at my sister as she practiced her dreamy-eyed, thoughtful expression on Mr. Dodgson. (Who, I was very glad to see, was not paying any attention at all.) “But I don’t want to wear a corset, and long skirts, and not be able to leave the house unescorted, and pretend I’m not hungry when I really am, and most of all I don’t want to get too big to be taken out by you,” I continued, surprised by my passion—I felt my eyes tear up again as I spoke faster and faster, louder and louder. Finally I had to hide my face in my hands, forgetting about the tiller so that the boat swerved sharply toward the bank again.

  “Alice, Alice—don’t cry!” Mr. Dodgson sounded so alarmed. I felt his hand upon my shoulder, patting it helplessly; the hamper was between us, and we were all so tightly wedged in the boat, it was impossible for him to get closer to me than that.

  “I won’t.” I sniffed, and Edith passed me her pocket handkerchief so I could blow my nose.

  We drifted for a long minute or so. Ina pursed her lips very disapprovingly, while I dabbed at my eyes and felt my face finally cool down so that I wasn’t ashamed to show it again. Another boat passed us, two young men and two young ladies—accompanied by a stern-faced chaperone looking as if she longed to be anywhere but—laughing and singing a minstrel song. Even after they rounded the bend ahead, we could still hear a strong tenor voice singing All the world is sad and dreary, everywhere I roam.

  “Who would like a story?” Mr. Duckworth finally asked, briskly taking charge of things—picking up his oars, nudging Mr. Dodgson with his boot, nodding at me to steer us back toward the middle of the river.

  “I would! I would!” Edith clapped her hands. Ina—after leaning over and hissing, “Ladies do not talk about corsets, Alice!”—also sat up straight, an expectant smile on her face.

  “Alice?” Mr. Dodgson asked, his voice low and kind.

  I nodded, afraid to look up; when I did, I was rewarded with a look of pure love. I don’t know how I recognized it. Was it the same look he had given me that day in the garden, when he told me he had dreamed of me? Perhaps, but that had been such a long time ago.

  I knew only that, under his gaze, I felt—beautiful. Beautiful, and free to say whatever I wanted, think whatever I wanted, for I could make no mistakes. Not in those blue eyes.

  “Yes, please, do tell us a story,” said I.

  And so he did.

  “There once was a little girl named Alice,” he began.

  “Oh!” I couldn’t help myself. Mr. Dodgson had told us hundreds of stories, stories with people in them we recognized, even if they had nonsensical—different—names. But never before had he named a character after one of us. I smiled up at him, waiting; Ina looked down upon her lap, glaring.

  “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank,” he continued, without giving that sister a name, to my everlasting delight.

  So he continued his story, of a little girl named Alice, a white rabbit—who reminded us all of Papa, right down to the pocket watch; even Ina laughed at that!—a tumble down a rabbit hole, a crazy adventure with such curious creatures—“Curiouser and curiouser!” I shouted, as the story wound itself around in circles and curlicues and love knots.

  It took the entire afternoon to row to Godstow, but none of us was in a hurry, mesmerized, as we were, by Mr. Dodgson. His thin voice, just soft enough so that we had to lean in to hear him, which only made the story more exciting, rose and fell as the tale spun itself; even Mr. Duckworth was hanging on every word.

  “Dodgson, are you making this up?” he interrupted once.

  Edith cried out, “Shhh! Do go on!”

  Mr. Dodgson turned and nodded. “I’m afraid I am,” he said, although I wasn’t sure Mr. Duckworth believed him.

  Astoundingly, he made the story last the entire day. Just when he would seem to trail off, running out of words, one of us would cry out for more and he would be off again. He kept talking, taking breaks only when necessary, such as when we landed at Godstow and he helped us out of the boat, tied it up, and followed us girls (hamper in tow) as we raced about, stretching our legs from the long journey. We searched for the perfect haystack—there were always huge sheltering haystacks just far enough back from the river so that the ground was dry and the bugs weren’t horrid—spread a blanket, and consumed the tea and cakes from the hamper. Mr. Dodgson drank gallons of tea—he must have been parched from all his talking—but then he picked up the story exactly where he had left off, right around the caterpillar.

  So we spent that golden afternoon (we did break once, so that Edith and I could climb over the ruins of the nunnery; the tumbled stones, dark corners, and musty smell always gave me a thrill, even though I never once spied a ghost). Then we packed everything up and rowed downstream, back home; the light was fading by the time we crossed Tom Quad, exhausted, starving (the cakes long gone), still hanging on Mr. Dodgson’s every word. He finally came to the end, where Alice’s sister woke her from her dream.

  When he stopped talking, then—we were in the middle of the Quad, by the quiet fountain full of lily pads—no one said a word. We couldn’t; my mind, at least, was still filled with the images of the story. Also, with a melancholy. A story—like my childhood—was so fleeting. I thought of the hundreds of stories Mr. Dodgson had told us over the years; I couldn’t remember a single detail from any of them. Yet once they, too, had filled my mind with pictures, notions—with dreams.

  I didn’t want this story to disappear; I didn’t want the day to end. I didn’t want to grow up.

  “Write it down,” I said finally, as we were gathering ourselves to say good-bye and go inside the Deanery, with its cheerful, welcoming lantern over the front door. “Please, could you—write it down?”

  “What, my Alice?” Mr. Dodgson looked confused. He also looked very, very tired. His fine, curly brown hair was more mussed than I’d ever seen it, and his lips were chapped from
the sun. When he was this tired, his eyes looked even more lopsided than usual; the left one drooped more.

  “The story—my story. It is mine, isn’t it?”

  “If you want it to be.”

  “Oh, I do! I do!” Just like that, I reached out and took it, so bold, so sure that it was meant for me, as sure as I had been when he told me that only I could be his gypsy girl. And no matter how much older Ina was, she could never, ever be so confident, so certain with him; I knew she hated this about herself.

  “Then it’s yours,” Mr. Dodgson said. “So you’ll never have to grow up, in a way.”

  “But that’s what I mean!” I could scarcely believe he understood so well what was in my heart; it was only later that I realized all he had to do was look in my eyes, to see. “If you write it down, I won’t grow up—ever! Of course, not truly, but in the story. I’ll always be a little girl, at least there, if you write it down. Could you?”

  “I don’t know—I’ll try, Alice. But I’m not sure I can remember it all.”

  “Oh yes, you can! I know you can—and if you can’t, I’ll help!”

  “Alice,” Ina interrupted, taking Edith’s hand. “We must go. It’s late. You and Edith ought to be in bed, although naturally I’ll be up for hours—simply hours!”

  “Indeed,” Mr. Duckworth said, knocking on the front door. “It’s been lovely, ladies. A most enjoyable day. I do hope to see you again soon.”

  One of the Mary Anns opened the door as both Mr. Duckworth and Mr. Dodgson raised their straw boaters—somewhat limp after the long day in the sun—in farewell.

  “Don’t forget!” I twisted around to catch one last glimpse of Mr. Dodgson.

  “I won’t,” he said, cocking his head and looking at me with a puzzled expression, before turning to leave with Mr. Duckworth. It was an odd request, I knew; one I’d never made before. I wasn’t sure if he completely understood my urgency.

  The door closed behind me before I could say anything else; I felt a rising bubble of panic burble up in my chest, but I tried to swallow it. I would see Mr. Dodgson again soon, I knew. I’d remind him then.

  “He won’t write that silly story down,” Ina grumbled as we went up the stairs—Mary Ann gave us each a candle, as it was dark already. “What a rude request. He has much better things to do with his time.”

  “You’re simply cross because he didn’t tell a story about you,” I retorted, sure of that, at least.

  “What do you mean? I was the sister reading the book!”

  “Perhaps.” I also thought she was someone else: the dreadful queen at the end, who wanted to behead everyone, although I didn’t dare tell her that. “Still, he named the girl after me, not you. He’ll write it down, I’m sure of it.”

  “And if he doesn’t? What? What will happen then?” Ina turned to confront me; her face loomed large and mysterious, the candle flickering and throwing off ominous shadows. “You’ll have to grow up all the same. And then you’ll be too old for him, too.” Her mouth quivered while her eyes grew bright—with tears, I realized; wounded tears, spilling onto her hand as she clutched the pewter candleholder.

  “No, I won’t. I’ll never be too old for him,” I said, even though I knew it would hurt her. I tried to put my arm around my sister anyway. For even if I didn’t completely comprehend what she was saying—how could any of us be too old for Mr. Dodgson, when he was always going to be so very much older than us?—still, I didn’t want to see her weep. Ina never wept. I couldn’t recall the last time I had seen her with tears rolling down her cheeks, smudged and dusty and pink from the sun.

  “Yes, you will. You’ll see—you will.” Ina shook my arm off and stomped up the stairs. Edith had gone on up ahead, too tired to listen to us any longer.

  I shook my head. Ina couldn’t possibly understand that it was different with me. I was his gypsy girl—his Alice, brave enough to stand up to queens and kings and an assortment of odd, talkative creatures.

  I did hope he remembered to write it all down. For I feared it was the kind of story one could easily forget, otherwise. Already, I was having trouble remembering exactly what the tale of the mouse had been about.

  Chapter 5

  • • •

  HE DID NOT WRITE IT ALL DOWN.

  Not the first time I asked, at any rate. Nor the second. I asked every time I saw him—and as our boat trip had taken place just prior to us leaving for Wales and our new house that Papa had built right on the rocky shore, I had to content myself with asking him in the letters I wrote, every week, during the holiday. Then the term started, and life became an endless round of lessons and manners, and Mamma got fat again. (I did wish, this time, it would be a boy.)

  Finally, Mr. Dodgson told me that he had started to write it down. He said that he had been thinking about it all the time, fortunately, so he hadn’t forgotten any of the particulars. He said that writing it down was quite different; he had published a few poems and short, silly stories before, under a different name—Lewis Carroll—but nothing like this. Even though it was supposed to be just for me, not for anyone else, he thought it would take some time. When you write things down, he explained, they sometimes take you places you hadn’t planned.

  His meaning wasn’t clear to me, but as long as he was writing it down, I didn’t bother trying to puzzle it all out. I assumed I would understand what he was talking about once I read it again; once I saw my name on a page, as a little girl having adventures in a fantastic place underground. I knew I would keep the story with me, always. I thought perhaps I might put it in my mahogany box decorated with bits of sea glass, where I kept all my favorite things—the pearl bracelet Grandmother gave me when I was born; the perfectly black, round pebble I discovered in the Meadow one day; the pink silk thread I found wound through a bird’s nest that had fallen from a tree in the garden; the teaspoon the Queen had used when she and Prince Albert came to the Deanery to visit the Prince of Wales. (To be perfectly truthful, I wasn’t certain it was the actual teaspoon, but I found it on the tray that had been used to clear away the tea things after she left, so it might be.)

  They take you places you hadn’t planned.

  If it was true in stories, it was also true in life, and it was exactly how I felt that winter; unmoored, discontent, waiting for something to happen, without knowing exactly what it might possibly be. Everyone—everything—seemed to be waiting, too distracted to act properly; fires never behaved in their grates, servants walked out the door during meals, letters were posted but never received.

  My family was not exempt from the general restlessness. Ina was now fourteen, established in her own boudoir with her own maid. She was tall for her age and extremely pale; when Harry came home for the Christmas holiday he acted very uneasy around her, as if he had no idea how to treat this strange creature who once had been his little sister. Harry generally had little use for us anyway—we couldn’t play cricket and weren’t interested in his stories about the “fine chaps” at school—but that year the divide appeared sharper. He stayed more with Papa, because Pricks had no idea what to do with him; she acted frightened of him, now that he was taller than she.

  On the surface I felt as much like myself as ever, to my great relief. For I studied myself every morning in the looking glass, anxious to see signs that I was turning into a lady, and happy to find none there. My hair was, finally, just a little bit longer, and fluffier on the ends, but still I wore the same straight black fringe across my forehead, framing my dark blue eyes. My chin remained as pointed as ever, and while I was slenderer, I was not very tall. I did not fill out my frocks like Ina did, and I was very happy about that, for it meant I was spared having to wear a corset, at least for a while longer. (Although Ina never complained about hers, for she felt the tight lacing made her face even more pale, as was the fashion.)

  Yet sometimes, lying at night in the nursery, listening to Edith’s steady breathing, Rhoda’s soft snores, Phoebe’s gentle murmurings, I did envy Ina her own roo
m. I longed for some privacy so that I might continue to study myself, not just my physical appearance but how I reacted to certain ideas, unfamiliar longings—and I did wonder, then, if that was what it meant to be growing up.

  Edith, at nearly nine, was almost as tall as I was. She was becoming the acknowledged beauty with her thick russet hair and fair complexion. But unlike Ina, she didn’t seem to care about how she looked; she wore her prettiness with ease; it fell upon her with the grace of a butterfly perched on her shoulder. She was as easygoing as ever.

  Mr. Dodgson never did appear to change. I was conscious of that, more than before; conscious of his age, too. I would do silly sums about it, such as: If I was five the first time we met, that meant he must have been twenty-five. But now I was ten, almost eleven, and he was just thirty-one. For some reason, the difference between thirty-one and eleven seemed much less than the difference between twenty-five and five; I wondered why that was.

  Physically, though, he was as ever—perhaps he walked a bit more stiffly, but that was it. As I made special note of his age, I also made special note of his appearance, constantly measuring it against other men of my acquaintance, as if they were all in some sort of competition. Mr. Dodgson’s hair, for example, stayed long and curling and softly brown; comparing him to Mr. Duckworth, whose hair had started to be a bit thin on top, I couldn’t help but think that Mr. Dodgson most resembled a hero of a romance novel.

  Mr. Dodgson was also as thin as ever, but no more so; slender was actually the word I found myself using to compare him to Mr. Ruskin, who seemed to grow stouter each time I saw him. Mr. Dodgson, I could imagine upon a white horse—an idealistic Don Quixote on Rocinante, his slender torso leaning forward as he rode bravely toward ferocious giants. Mr. Ruskin, on the other hand, I could only see as Sancho Panza, his stubby legs dangling as he sat astride a flea-bitten mule.