1890
TODAY 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cards of Boston ladies, clippings from Godey’s (saved as a joke for Sara), a skein of violet yarn, a hatpin, a few outdated American postage stamps, a half-written letter to one of my students from the Society to Encourage Studies at Home (I suppose it is too late to mail it now),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.