Alice in Bed

by Judith Hooper

  I began saying I’d be better off dead.

  “Darling girl, the ennui and disgust of life which lead so many suffering souls every year to suicide—these are an avowal that we are nothing and all vanity, that we are absolutely without help in ourselves.”

  I heard the words but they could not reach me. My thoughts came at me thick and deep and swirling like snow in a heavy fog. Through the long nights, Father stroked my fevered brow and urged me to hold fast to my “inner being” and “give no thought to the illusory phenomenal form.” Then why must I have clothes made for the phenomenal form? And how to simply “give no thought” to something that was devouring your very soul? I’d have to find my own way out of the maze.

  “Perhaps I don’t have an inner being, Father. Or I did and it got lost.” Tears were coursing down my cheeks.

  “Of course you have, darling.”

  He said, “Your long sickness, and Harry’s, and Willy’s, have been an immense discipline for me, in gradually teaching me to universalize my sympathies.”

  “What do you mean, Father?”

  “When some terrible thing strikes one of my children, the thought comes to me that if it happened to a stranger’s child I would be unmoved. And so I ask God to let me feel as much for any other creature as I do for my own children.”

  “I see.” I absorbed Father’s nightly sermons the way a baby takes in the words of a lullaby. Sometimes he’d laugh and say he’d “never been guilty of a stroke of business” and that his main objective in life was “to do justice to my children.” Then he was back to the two trees in the garden, a metaphor I’d never really grasped. But his loving voice was a dike that held back the dark raging sea. He told me of his childhood in Albany, describing his parents and brothers and sisters—not neglecting sister Janet, whose insanity took the form of intense religiosity and was at first mistaken for saintliness.

  “Like Kitty Prince?”

  “Kitty is a queer one, isn’t she?” he chuckled.

  I did not want to become another Aunt Janet or Cousin Kitty; I’d sooner cut off my legs!

  Perhaps to escape the madhouse, William suddenly voiced an inclination to marry quickly and quietly, and he and Miss Gibbens were wed on July 10, 1878 at Alice’s grandmother’s house, across from Boston Common. A friend of the family, Rufus Ellis, read the vows. Present were the bride’s mother and her two sisters, Margaret and Mary, and Mother and Father, but none of William’s siblings. The others had good excuses; my absence was an admission of the gravity of my illness. Afterwards the new Mr. and Mrs. William James took the train to New York City; the next day they caught a train as far as Saratoga Springs, and from there a local to the Adirondacks and the Shanty.

  I saw it all in my mind’s eye. The dining car with its starched white tablecloths and swinging lamps, the smell of pine needles, creosote, and sun-warmed dust at the Shanty, the crystalline pool in which the newlyweds would bathe together naked, under a vault of stars. That Katherine and I, too, had “honeymooned” under the same stars and fallen in love among the same cedars and hemlocks and white pines was unmentionable, like a mad relative in Somerville. I knew my family well enough to intuit the vague things that were being said about me when anyone inquired—that I was indisposed, a bit under the weather, getting my strength back, and all of that. I myself did not think I would make it.

  Twelve years later, in Leamington, England, I would write of this period: This was the time when I went down to the dark sea, its dark waters closed over me, and I knew neither hope nor peace. Every night I went under, drowning. I was shown many things during the night that evaporated in the morning. The black sadness washed over me again and again. Some nights I would throw myself sobbing into the arms of whichever parent was at my bedside. What will become of me? When you are gone—what will become of me? I had seen my stroke-broken father, my mother without her teeth; they were old and would not last forever.

  You will always have your brothers, dear.

  “Will I? Harry, in London, cherishes his privacy. Bob and Wilky I hardly know anymore and they live in Wisconsin. William will be cohabiting with a pack of Gibbenses—they surely won’t want a deranged in-law in the spare room. Particularly after I spoiled their wedding.”

  You were ill, darling; I am sure William understands.

  I was not at all certain of that.

  “I shouldn’t have done it, should I? Spoiled William’s wedding! I should have stuffed myself into that ghastly canary-yellow frock and made an appearance. An apparition, I should say. Oh, I am beyond forgiving!” Weeping copiously and unable to stop, I was aware that this was not my finest hour.

  It will be all right, dear. Don’t worry about the future. You will be well provided for. You will be able to buy your own house one day! Perhaps at the Shore?

  That was not the point. It was not a house I needed but a home.

  In the morning a slice of bright white daylight entered through the space where the curtains didn’t meet and moved across the floor toward me like a knife. Through the open window I overheard Father talking to Aunt Kate on the verandah. “Alice,” I heard him say, “is most days on the verge of insanity and suicide.” (Toward suicide Father held an ancient Greek attitude; he did not consider it a sin but urged me solemnly not to take my life in a “distressing manner.”) I became fixated on the idea that my parents no longer loved me; that I had become a mad stranger who lived in their house. Mother’s mask of resignation and the weariness in Father’s eyes accused me silently.

  It was my worst breakdown. The only person who seemed to understand was four thousand miles away. Harry wrote me, “It is inconsiderate of William to have chosen such a moment for making merry.”

  By late autumn, there was no escaping the conjugal bliss of Mr. and Mrs. William James. They were living right around the corner now, in rented rooms on Harvard Street, which meant that “Mrs. Alice” called on Mother and Father every day, spinning her bright webs around them. In addition to possessing melting brown eyes (“listening eyes,” William called them, and she would have to do a lot of listening, married to William), she was charming, intelligent, and well-read, and, on top of all these marvels, enceinte with the next James grandchild.

  It was obvious that the new Alice could not be driven away by snubbing. She was William’s for life, and he hers. Nothing could undo that. There was nothing for it but to eat the entire indigestible meal of William’s marriage. No one would ever know how hard it was, the parts of myself I had to conquer and subdue.

  I started by forcing myself to be polite to my new sister-in-law. Gritting my teeth, I’d smile and lend her books and ask her if she had felt the baby move and whether she thought it was a boy or a girl. I started knitting things for the baby and told everyone how excited I was to become an aunt again. My letters to friends were full of praise for my sister-in-law. She is a truly lovely being, so sweet and gentle & with so much intelligence besides.

  By the time the baby—Henry James III—entered the world on May 18, 1879, I had more or less come to terms with the marriage. When baby Harry was three weeks old, Alice asked if I wished to hold him. I didn’t: He was at the small and floppy stage, and babies were apt to take a dim view of me in any case. He would almost certainly wail upon finding himself in my non-nurturing arms, and I would be mortified. But how could I refuse? When he was placed in my arms, he didn’t cry, to my relief, just gazed at me solemnly as if we knew each other already, as if we’d known each other for a thousand years. Then his tiny features seized up and he sneezed. It was probably his first sneeze and sounded like a baby rabbit sneezing and the astonishment on his tiny face stole my heart. Here was a baby I could truly love.

  PART THREE

  ONE

  1889

  SO I FINALLY CRACKED UNDER THE WEIGHT OF DUTY AND NICE manners. (At least that is one story I tell myself.) Perhaps I had to go a little crazy to quit being a dutiful daughter and sister. Something inside me was ravenous, you see, and becoming a nervous
wreck was the only way forward for a person like me. Not that I chose invalidism, but when it chose me, I suppose I took it up with a certain zeal. Henry might understand. How he makes his characters suffer! How much they are required to renounce! Poor Isabel Archer, stuck forever in loveless matrimony to a pedantic man with a marked resemblance to Francis Boott. Renunciation remains sorrow, though sorrow nobly born. And I should know.

  For more than two years, I have been stranded, Robinson Crusoe-like, on the island of myself, my castaway condition having begun the day Katherine sailed back to America. That was two years ago. Some days I could fling myself against the walls of my rooms like a wasp in a jam jar. It came to me not long after Katherine left that I shall never recover. I shall simply keep living as I have lived for years, getting a little better and a little worse—more worse than better, on the whole.

  My existence is somewhat restricted intellectually, confined as it is to Nurse and Miss Clarke. For one who grew up amidst the hilarity of Father and William, it wasn’t easy, but I did eventually adapt to the Saharan expanses of my solitude. My callers have dwindled to a trickle: Miss Wilcutt, an old maid with a brain tumor, young Miss Leppington who suffers from seizures and a religious conscience, Miss Percy, a cheerful, literal-minded aristocrat who comes by with her pug and expects me to fawn over it. Of course, there is my landlady, Miss Clarke, and the usual pack of Mind Cure ladies.

  Although Henry remains the best of brothers, he has made himself scarce lately, for the Season is upon him. The London Season lasts from April until August, when everyone goes off to the country to shoot at poor defenseless animals. Henry claims to despise the Season, says it is like trying to move around in a too crowded room, but he always goes, and apparently people fight like rabid dogs to be seated near him. I think they hope he will write about them, and it never seems to occur to them that their portraits might not be entirely flattering.

  My period has come round again like a bad joke. Since I am never to have children, it seems a lot of bother for nothing, like having a closet full of clothes all the wrong size. I must say, the fertility of the poor here is an overwhelming force like the Connaught floods, every creature helpless before it. How God must love little children; he rains more of them down every day, on the poor above all.

  Nurse is resolute in her approval of infants whether or not they have food, clothing, or shelter. I see from her sly expression this morning that she has brought back a sizeable conversational nugget from her descent into the streets and shops of Leamington. “Fancy, Miss, on my way to the bakery I ran into the Brooks children near the pump-house, four of them—”

  “Oh, Nurse!” I see the smile she is trying to suppress and have guessed the dénouement.

  “And Becky Brooks says to me, ‘Mama was very bad last night and then the lady came and brought her a baby.’”

  “One more tiny voice to swell the vast human wail, Nurse!”

  Nurse’s face clouds over. “Certainly you can be happy about a new baby, Miss.”

  “You can hardly regard this infant as a lucky stroke, Nurse. Poor pinched-faced Becky Brooks, eight years old, already goes around with the two-year-old stuck to her like—like an excrescence. What is that child’s name?”

  “Eliza.”

  “Why is she not walking yet, Nurse? And only says ‘la la.’ Two years old! I suppose now we’ll be seeing that sad little Charlotte dragging the new baby around like a sack of potatoes. Didn’t you say she was simple?”

  “Yes, but a good girl, Miss.”

  “That’s hardly the point. She is only five and shouldn’t be burdened with a baby.”

  Nurse retreats briefly into one of her sulks. It is very enervating that she insists on thinking charitably and optimistically about everyone and refuses to see how the poor are daily betrayed by God and England. I feel that it is my responsibility to make her face the facts.

  “They do their best, Miss. God will provide.”

  “Tell me, Nurse. If God ever lifted a finger for les misérables, do you think the Bachellers would have to stay in bed until noon because they get less hungry that way?”

  “I am very sorry I ever told you that, Miss, since it bothers you so much.”

  “You know I don’t wish to be spared any detail.”

  “Well, if you are determined to dwell on upsetting things . . .” Sucking in her cheeks, she bustles around straightening cushions that are already straight.

  “Perhaps you are right, Nurse,” I say to mollify her. “Tell me, do you think it is unnatural in a woman not to want children?” I can’t help wringing my hands over these poor worn-out creatures, tied down like Gulliver by countless small mouths and stomachs. I am thinking principally of the mothers.

  “I reckon most want them, Miss.” She has picked up her knitting and settled into the armchair near the window.

  “Would you say it is natural to have fifteen children? Twenty? Mrs. Eberly—the plump lady with gout, remember?—told me of a family in Birmingham with twenty-five children. They are sent out in groups of eight in different directions. I wonder if the parents are hoping one or two will get lost along the way. One of the groups must have nine in it, come to think of it.”

  Nurse sinks deeper into her sullen mood. Is it my imagination or do her knitting needles click more rapidly?

  “Twenty-five infants! Think of it, Nurse. How feeble and diluted the parental instinct must be, trickling down through twenty-five. Imagine being personally responsible for the cutting of eight hundred teeth!”

  “Oh, I believe the teeth come in all on their own, Miss.”

  TWO

  JUST NOW, THE TICKING OF THE CLOCK IS OPPRESSIVE. MY VISITOR is due at four, but at twenty past has not arrived. The waiting makes me jittery and heartsick and I can feel the “snakes” in my stomach start to writhe. Sometimes I wish that no one would visit me, or would arrive without announcing it beforehand; it would save my nerves a great deal of wear and tear.

  All morning Nurse has been unable to suppress her curiosity, owing to all the misinformation she has been fed by her church Guild. “So she is the daughter of Mr. Darwin, Miss?”

  “Daughter-in-law, Nurse. Before her marriage she was Sara Sedgwick, a good friend of mine in America. I have told you about her. In 1877 she married Mr. Darwin’s eldest son and moved to England.”

  “Oh yes. Is the son very like the father?” Translation: Does the whole family have cloven hooves?

  “I never met Mr. Charles Darwin. All I can tell you is that this Mr. Darwin has been rather bald since he was a young man.” Youngish. He was pushing forty when he married Sara.

  Sara arrives at half past four with a dozen roses for me. She always brings flowers, either to save the trouble of finding something more original or because she views me as a hopeless invalid confined to a sickroom, needing a profusion of flowers.

  “Well, Sara, you find me, as always, at my lifelong occupation of ‘improving.’ I’m afraid all the physicians of England have washed their hands of me.”

  She smiles thinly, as if a real laugh would require a vitality beyond her powers, then spends about twenty minutes complaining of the difficulties of getting here. She looks unwell and I watch the familiar deadly “gone” look steal over her face minute by minute. It is like watching an eclipse of the sun, and an enormous lump wells up in my throat and I feel as if I might weep. But I must not. Nanny Ashburner Richards thinks Sara is a hypochondriac, but I think anyone who looks so ill must really be.

  Nurse hovers nearby with a dust cloth, trying to mask her curiosity. The blue dusk deepens and the lamps are lit with a hiss. Sara has been complaining about her servants, how they over-starch the linens and her housekeeper pretends not to understand her English. I attempt to steer the conversation to national differences in hopes of injecting a little life into it. “Henry says the main desire in the British bosom is not to be left last with the host and hostess after an entertainment of any kind, so at a given moment there is a regular stampede.”
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  “Oh, Alice, I don’t think that is the rule at all.”

  “He also says Englishwomen look entirely differently in Paris to what they do in London, not handsome at all, but big and clumsy.”

  “I think Henry is a little inclined to overgeneralize national characteristics. I suppose it sells books, doesn’t it?”

  Searching for something to ignite a real conversation, I try another gambit. “Can you imagine anything so inconceivably dreary as the existence led by royalty? How they must long to see a back.” At this the old Sara unexpectedly comes to life. She bursts out laughing and the light comes back to her eyes. I am reminded of the way she used to laugh in the old days, clutching her sides and pleading, “Please, Alice, promise not to say anything funny for the next five minutes.”

  “Oh Alice!” she says now. “No one ever made me laugh like you. I’ll never forget your dramatic recitation of ‘The Angel in the House.’ That was possibly your finest hour, though there were so many it would be hard to say.”

  “I’d nearly forgotten that.” It comes back to me now: A tableau vivant we did based on the saccharine painting hanging in the Misses Ashburners’ back parlor. Somewhere in most homes in those years there was a painting of “The Angel in the House,” playing the piano or darning socks while her little angels play companionably on the carpet and her lord and master smokes his pipe and reads the newspaper. For the tableau I’d garbed myself as the sainted woman in the painting while Bob played the part of my husband and, departing from the usual rules governing tableaux vivants, I recited a few lines of the cloying poem.