Alice I Have Been: A Novel

250 Pages·2010·1.31 MB·English

by  Benjamin Melanie

To Nic, for leading me to
the Rabbit Hole
Acknowledgments
• • •
I
have been written without one person’s
T’S NOT OFTEN AN AUTHOR CAN SAY A BOOK TRULY WOULDN’T
influence, but Alice I Have Been would never have come about were it not for
my dear friend and writing partner, Nicole Hayes. Gratitude doesn’t even
come close to expressing how I feel about her, but it will have to do.
My wonderful agent and friend, Laura Langlie, must also be thanked for
her support, dedication, and unwavering belief. To Kate Miciak, the most
enthusiastic, understanding, terrifyingly smart editor ever—thank you for
loving Alice as much as you do.
I also have to thank Nita Taublib, Randall Klein, Loyale Coles, Carolyn
Schwartz, Quinne Rogers, Susan Corcoran, Loren Noveck, and everyone else
at Bantam Dell who has done so much for Alice and me. Also thanks to Peter
Skutches, Tooraj Kavoussi, and Bill Contardi.
Judy Merrill Larsen and Tasha Alexander also deserve a big thank-you for
putting up with my authorly angst.
Karen Schoenewaldt at the Rosenbach Museum and Library and Matthew
Bailey at the National Portrait Gallery in London were very helpful in my
search for images of Alice Liddell. I am also indebted to several books and
websites concerning Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson. The Other Alice by
Christina Björk and Inga-Karin Eriksson (a charming picture book), The Real
Alice by Anne Clark, and The Lives of the Muses by Francine Prose helped
immensely in establishing biographical facts about Alice Liddell and her
family. I found the website “Alice in Oxford” (http://www.aliceinoxford.info)
to be very helpful as well. Also the Lewis Carroll home page
(http://www.lewiscar roll.org/carroll.html), operated by the Lewis Carroll
Society of North America, was useful, as was the site for the UK Lewis
Carroll Society (http://lewiscarrollsociety.org.uk/index.html). The Life of
John Ruskin by W. G. Collingwood was also of help.
Of course, I could not have written this book without rereading Lewis
Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
Finally, I have to acknowledge my family—Pat and Norman Miller, Mark
and Stephanie Miller, Mike and Sherry Miller; thank you all for the support
and good wishes.
And as always, my love to Dennis, Alec, and Ben. Without you, none of
this matters.
, 1932
CUFFNELLS
• • •
But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired.
O
.
NLY I DO GET TIRED
I pause, place the pen down next to the page, and massage my aching hand;
the joints of my fingers, in particular, are stiff and cold and ugly, like knots
on a tree. One does get tired of so many things, of course, when one is eighty,
not the least of which is answering endless letters.
However, I cannot say that, not to my own son. Although I’m not entirely
sure what I am trying to say in this letter to Caryl, so kindly inquiring as to
my health after our hectic journey. He accompanied me to America,
naturally; if I’m being completely truthful, I would have to admit my son was
much more excited about the prospect of escorting Alice in Wonderland
across the ocean than Alice herself was in going.
“But Mamma,” he said in that coy way—entirely ridiculous for a man of
his age, and I told him so. “We—you—owe it to the public. All this interest
in Lewis Carroll, simply because it’s the centennial of his birth, and everyone
wants to meet the real Alice. An honorary doctorate from Columbia
University.” He consulted the telegram in his hand. “Interviews on the radio.
You simply must go. You’ll have a marvelous time.”
“You mean you’ll have a marvelous time.” I knew my son too well, knew
his strengths and his flaws, and unfortunately the latter outnumbered the
former, and they always had. When I thought of his brothers—
No, I will not. That is uncharitable to Caryl and painful to myself.
Surprisingly, when the time came I did have a marvelous time. So much
fuss made over me! Bands playing when the ship docked, banners
everywhere, even confetti; endless photographs of me drinking tea—so
tedious, but the Americans simply could not get enough of that. Alice in
Wonderland at a tea party! Imagine! It was a miracle they didn’t ask Caryl to
dress up as the Mad Hatter.
However, to be feted by scholars—it took me back, in such an unexpected
way, to my childhood, to Oxford. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed the
stimulating atmosphere of academia, the pomp and circumstance, the endless
arguments that no one could win, which was never the point; the point was
purely the love of discourse, the heat of the battle.
Shockingly—and despite what I had been warned—I found everyone in
America to be perfectly charming, with the exception of one unfortunate
youth who offered me a stick of something called “chewing gum” just prior
to the ceremony at Columbia. “What does one do with it?” I inquired, only to
be told, simply, to chew. “Chew? Without swallowing?”
A nod.
“To what end? What possibly could be the point?”
The young man could not answer that, and withdrew his invitation with a
sheepish smile.
Still, what was truly tiresome—what is always truly tiresome—was the
disappointment, brief and politely suppressed, evident in all the faces. The
disappointment of looking for a little girl, a bright little girl in a starched
white pinafore, and finding an old lady instead.
I understand. I myself suffer it each time I consult a looking glass, only to
wonder how the glass can be so cracked and muddled—and then realize, with
a pang of despair, that it is not the glass that is deficient, after all.
It is not merely vanity, although I admit I have more than my fair share of
this conceit. Other elderly dowagers, however, were not immortalized in print
as a little girl, and not merely as a little girl but rather as the embodiment of
Childhood itself. So they are not confronted by people who ask, always so
very eagerly, to see “the real Alice”—and who cannot hide the shock, the
disbelief, that the real Alice has not been able to stop time.
So, yes, I do get tired. Of pretending, of remembering who I am, and who I
am not, and if I sometimes get the two confused—much like the Alice in the
story—I may be excused. For I am eighty.
I am also tired of being asked “Why?”
Why did I sell the manuscript, the original version of Alice’s Adventures
Under Ground, printed by Mr. Dodgson just for me? (Lewis Carroll I did not
know; they are merely words on a page—written by Lewis Carroll. They
have nothing to do with the man I remember.)
Why would the muse part with the evidence of the artist’s devotion? Even
Americans, with their eagerness to put a price on everything, could not
understand.
I look out the windows—the heavy leaded-glass windows, not as sparkling
as I would wish; I’ll have to speak to Mary Ann about that—of my sitting
room, which overlooks the lush, heavily forested grounds of Cuffnells. Today
the clouds are low, so the tempting glitter of the Solent is hidden from view. I
can see the lawn where the boys played, Alan and Rex (and yes, Caryl); the
pitch where they played cricket; the paths where they first learned to ride and
where they strode home with their first stag, accompanied by their father, so
very proud—and I know I made the only decision possible. This place, this is
my sons’ childhood, their heritage, and it’s all I have left.
The other, the simply bound manuscript posted to me one cold November
morning, long after the golden afternoon of its creation—that was my
childhood. Only it had never truly belonged to me; Mr. Dodgson, of all
people, understood that.
The clock on the mantel chimes twice; how long have I been sitting here
staring out the window? The ink on the nib of my pen has dried. I find myself
doing such idle, silly things so often these days, these days when my thoughts
scatter like billiard balls into their respective pockets, these days when I am
so very tired, unaccountably weary; I even find myself dozing off at the
oddest moments, such as teatime, or late mornings when I should be going
over accounts.
Simply contemplating my eternal weariness provokes a yawn, and I look
longingly at the chaise in the corner, with its faded red afghan thrown over
the arm. I manage to stifle the yawn and tell myself sternly that it is only two
o’clock, and there is much to do.
I fold the letter to Caryl neatly in thirds; I’ll finish it later. I open my desk
drawer and remove a stack of letters bound with a worn black silk ribbon,
letters that I have begun and not finished, for various reasons. I have learned,
through the years, it is the letter not sent that is often the most valuable.
There, right on top, is the letter I began almost two years ago:
Dear Ina,
I received your kind letter of Tuesday last—
And that is all I have managed to write. Ina’s kind letter of Tuesday last
also is within this bundle; I remove it, adjust my spectacles (really, the
indignities of age are most trying), and peruse it once more.
I suppose you don’t remember when Mr. Dodgson ceased coming to the Deanery? How old were you? I said his manner became too affectionate toward you as you grew older and that
Mother spoke to him about it, and that offended him so that he ceased coming to see us again, as one had to give some reason for all intercourse ceasing—
This is the letter that I long to answer, not the one from Caryl kindly
inquiring as to my health. No, this letter, this ghost missive from my sister,
dear Ina, dead now two years, almost. Yet the muddled memories she stirred
up—the memories she always managed to stir up, or manufacture, as if she
were a conjurer or a witch instead of a perfect Victorian lady—will not die
with her.
Will they die with Alice? I often wonder. Before I am gone from this earth,
before my bones lie in the churchyard, so far away from where those other
bones lie, I do hope that others’ memories will finally fall away and I will be
able to remember, with a clarity of my very own, what happened that
afternoon. That seemingly lovely summer afternoon, when between the two
of us, we set out to destroy Wonderland—my Wonderland, his Wonderland
—forever.
So yes, I do get tired; tired of pretending to be Alice in Wonderland still,
always. Although it has been no easier being Alice Pleasance Hargreaves.
Truly, I wonder; I have always wondered—
Which is the real Alice, and which the pretend?
Oh dear! I’m sounding like one of Mr. Dodgson’s nonsense poems now.
He was so very clever at that sort of thing; much cleverer than I, who never
had the patience, not then, not now.
I remove my spectacles; massage the bridge of my nose where they pinch.
My head is throbbing, threatening, and I do not like being in this state. The
journey was exhausting, if I’m being entirely truthful. I am tired of being
Alice, period; yet my memories will not let me rest, not as long as I’m
reading through old letters, which is the surest sign yet that I have become a
doddering old fool.
The chaise looks so inviting; it’s such a cold afternoon.
Perhaps I will lie down, after all.