The Sister

by Lynne Alexander

  Henry appears not to react one way or the other.

  ‘‘But about Miss Loring herself,’’ he carries on: ‘‘I have been considering the possibility of a way out.’’

  ‘‘A way out …?’’ echoes Henry.

  Baldwin is pleased. He has engaged his friend’s attention, diverting it from the source of anxiety. Best not to mention the sister at this stage.

  ‘‘A way out of doing all the things she might have done had she – Miss Loring – Katharine, that is – been entirely free.’’

  ‘‘I see,’’ says Henry.

  Baldwin groans. He is not sparing Henry any pain. What he sees – what they both understand is that if Katharine had not attached herself to Alice, she would have accomplished a great deal more. And yet he’s now daring to suggest that that in fact may have been one of her motives. A way out, that is, an easing of her own burdens; so that she and Alice, in the end, there is a kind of parity, they become co-equals in the ‘game’ of invalid and carer.

  Henry is thinking quite the opposite, of all those who have said to him, What would she do without Katharine? No, there has not been ‘an equality’. ‘‘She has no doubt enjoyed the ‘role’ of saviour,’’ says Henry, not without venom.

  ‘‘Do you really think so?’’ asks Baldwin.

  ‘‘Do you not?’’ Henry queries, feeling miserably exposed.

  ‘‘If you mean she has proved indispensable, it cannot be denied; but not as a motive – to save – no I do not.’’

  ‘‘Then what is left?’’ asks Henry, who has to blink hard to rid himself of a vision of a monstrous Katharine looming up before him barring his way, stopping him from saying goodbye to Alice. Suddenly he is struck with another possibility. ‘‘Perhaps she has devoted herself to ‘saving’ Alice from me?’’ The smile is a painful one. Baldwin, who is a musical man, thinks of an analogy in sound, the scraping of a violin bow, and winces in sympathy. In the end there is only one thing to do: to ease Henry’s mind, and his own.

  ‘‘Of course your sister is extraordinary.’’

  Henry agrees, daring to add: ‘‘An extraordinary failure.’’

  Baldwin is both shocked and impressed. ‘‘Of course she naturally attracts … in her situation …’’.

  ‘‘Yes, we have all … had to attend to her.’’

  Baldwin smiles to himself. He believes that Katharine has done more than ‘attend’. She has entered Alice’s pain with unconditional love and sympathy and – unlike William with his ‘tragic’ view of her and Henry’s too-close identification – adopted Alice’s own stoical attitude. Which has, it might be said, saved them both.

  ‘‘But surely,’’ he ventures, ‘‘one must allow for an extreme devotion?’’

  Henry cannot deny it.

  A knock is heard from Stage left. Good timing. Here comes Smith with a nightcap. Pause while he pours their brandies. Baldwin, sniffing his tumbler, congratulates Henry on his choice. Henry accepts the compliment. They both know it can’t be put off forever. At last Henry takes courage and questions Baldwin about me. He has seen enough to know there is no hope; rather, the only true hope is that I may fizzle out sooner rather than later. I hear him tell Baldwin that although I am a receptacle of recurrent, renewable, inexhaustible forms of disease, my lucidity and moral command of the situation & etc, allowing for Baldwin’s belladonna and William’s morphine, are unimpaired.

  But how is Henry to formulate his question? An idea comes to him for a tale about an invalid. He is not concerned with the squalid details of her illness but in the consequences of it, and its eventual outcome. Now, let us see what happens if … He is the tale’s designer, its arranger; he is a scientist making an experiment: Will she be happy? Will she suffer? Has she made use of others (the unpardonable sin)? Will she be redeemed in the end? I see that he will gradually turn my death from a hard fact into a soft idea; which is not to say he will forget me. Finally, Henry is able to pose his question to Baldwin:

  ‘‘Can she die?’’

  Baldwin gives a rueful smile. He does not want to pain his friend any more than is necessary; at the same time he must be truthful. At last he gives his consoling reply:

  ‘‘They sometimes do.’’

  The scene ends with Miss Ward ordering Louisa the housemaid to shut all the windows and doors as the corpse will turn black if exposed to the air.

  Notes

  As this is a work of fiction I have taken certain liberties with the facts (such as we know them) and shape of Alice’s life, such as:

  Henry didn’t actually attend William’s wedding.

  I have simplified the Jameses’ house moves in and around the Boston area; also Alice’s moves back and forth in and around London and between London and Leamington.

  Katharine Loring’s comings and goings are radically pruned and simplified, as is her own life/work story.

  I have simplified the ‘servant question’ by reducing Alice’s help to one nurse-servant called Wardy. She actually had several different nurses along the way.

  Alice would not have witnessed her father’s famous ‘vastation’. According to Edel this occurred in 1844 in London four years before Alice’s birth.

  Alice refers here to the repealing of the Contagious Diseases Act in 1885 though it didn’t occur until ‘86.

  Henry, William and Alice discuss the Cleveland Street scandal in 1891 when it actually ‘broke’ in 1889.

  Henry’s many trips abroad, including his times spent with Constance Woolson at Bellosguardo, have been telescoped and simplified. The Gautreau scandal he refers to actually took place in ‘86 but here it occurs later.

  The contents of Alice’s Will are all correct except for the last $150 – she did not leave it to Miss Ward but divided it between her Cambridge US dressmaker and gardener.

  There was no Arthur Bowles in Alice’s life though she was hypnotized at the end.

  The publication dates of Henry’s novels are approximately correct; as are the ‘Black’ Monday demonstrations, also the deaths of childhood friends Clover & Ellen Adams.

  For those who know the life well, there will no doubt be many more ‘errors’. I stand behind Emily Dickinson for protection (‘Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.’)

  I have used certain expressions and turns of phrase taken from Alice’s letters and others’ of the James family, but all conversations are invented.

  The question of Alice’s health, or lack of it, is an intriguing one from a 21st century perspective. It would be all too easy to assign her a diagnosis of ME, irritable bowel syndrome, hypochondria and/or mental illness of one sort or another. However, the symptoms of endometriosis as variously described on the Internet suggest she might well have suffered from, among others, this hugely painful condition – not clinically recognized during her lifetime. (It was ‘discovered’ with the use of laparoscopy.)

  According to Strouse, Alice’s cancer diagnosis should have been that the breast cancer had probably metastasized to the liver, and not vice versa. In modern practice therefore she might well have been advised to undergo surgery, though it’s still unlikely that she would have agreed to make the journey back to the States.

  Acknowledgements

  My warmest thanks to readers Alison Easton and Elizabeth Burns for their time and invaluable feedback; and to the writing group for their patient and supportive listening to Alice as she went through her many drafts.

  A special thanks to Richard Barnes for his meticulous and thoughtful editing.

  My appreciation also goes to:

  Alan Greenwell for his IT wizardry

  Amanda Bingley for her book on opium and also computer support

  Willem Hackmann for details about the Holtz Electrical Machine

  Shanti Cole for hypnotherapy materials

  Adrian Cunningham for his book about The Vale of Heath

  Jo Alberti for advice about Josephine Butler

  A special thanks to Eric, who provided the feline inspiration for Cridge.
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  Bibliographical Sources

  I have drawn heavily on Alice James: A Biography, by Jean Strouse (Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1980); Alice James: her life in letters, edited by Linda Anderson (Thoemmes Press, Bristol, 1996); The Diary of Alice James, edited by Leon Edel (Penguin American Library, 1982); and Henry James: A Life, by Leon Edel (Flamingo, 1996).

  Colm Toibin’s masterly novel The Master inspired this one – with no pretension to comparison.