Alice I Have Been: A Novel

by Melanie Benjamin

  “I was playing in dirt,” said I, frustrated by my need to state the obvious.

  “Playing in dirt? On your knees? In a white frock? Who would do such a thing—white stains so!”

  “Then why do we wear it, when you know we’re going out to the garden to play? Why don’t we wear brown frocks, or green, or perhaps even—”

  “Brown? Who ever heard of wearing brown in May? You’ll wear white, as your mother wishes. Brown. What can I do with such a child?” Whereupon Pricks would throw up her hands to the heavens, as if God alone could tell her what to do with me.

  I suspected He couldn’t. I had once overheard Papa say that “God Himself broke the mold when it came to that one,” and I knew, somehow, that he meant me. Even in a house full of children, I was the only one ever referred to in such a singular way.

  I was rather proud of that, to tell the truth.

  Pricks was prickly. That’s why I named her Pricks; it had nothing to do with her last name. Pricks exclaimed a lot; she threw her hands up a lot. She bristled when I asked her the most natural questions, such as why the wart on her face had a hair growing out of it whereas the wart on her hand did not.

  “Alice,” Ina would murmur, patting her long brown curls. Oh, how I longed to have curls! The greatest tragedy of my life, at age seven, was that I had short black hair exactly like a boy. “That’s simply not spoken of.”

  “What is?”

  “Warts. Pricks can’t help it. It’s not very nice of you to talk about it.”

  “Do you think she slept with a frog when she was little?”

  “I—well, perhaps.” I could tell Ina was interested in spite of herself; she relaxed her pose—sitting on the windowsill of the schoolroom, hands folded properly in her lap, head bowed in perfect ladylike composure—and actually swung her feet to and fro. “Still, ladies don’t talk of such things.”

  “You’re not a lady. You’re only ten.”

  “And you’re seven. I’ll always be older than you.” She clapped her hands with delight, while I scowled and longed to pull her hair. How unfair, how tragic, the world was; I would always be younger than her.

  “But you’ll always be older than me,” Edith whispered, sliding her moist little hand in mine. I gave it a squeeze, as thanks.

  “Oh, look, there’s Mr. Dodgson!” Ina jumped up and pressed her face against the windowpane; Edith and I joined her, although Edith had to climb up onto the cushioned window seat in order to see.

  The three of us watched—the windowpane, warm from the sun, smooth against my forehead—as a tall, slim man, dressed all in black from the top of his hat to the toes of his leather boots, wandered into view. He was strolling, hands in pockets, across the generous garden that separated the Deanery from the library. Stopping to examine flowers, hedges, he refused to walk in any sort of straight path, altogether acting like someone hoping to be discovered.

  Just then Papa ran into the picture, gown flapping behind him like giant insect wings. He consulted his watch, dangling precariously on its gold chain, with a shake of his head; a huge book was tucked under his left arm. Papa was always running late. I held my breath as he nearly ran Mr. Dodgson down; fortunately, at the last possible moment he swerved around him, not even noticing when Mr. Dodgson raised his hat and bowed.

  Mr. Dodgson looked up, then, and saw us in the window; Ina gasped and ducked out of sight, mortified to have been caught spying on him. Ina always behaved so oddly in his presence; she basked in his attention, schemed of ways to encourage it, and then, at the very last minute, always pulled back. Yet whenever I pointed this out to her, merely trying to be helpful, she had a tendency to pull my hair or pinch my arm.

  That didn’t prevent me from continuing to comment upon it, however. If she didn’t want my help, that was her misfortune.

  I shook my head at her and then tugged on the creaky sash of the window until it opened enough for me to stick my head out.

  “Hullo, Mr. Dodgson!”

  “Hullo, Miss Alice, Miss Edith.” He bowed in his usual stiff way. I had recently informed him that he walked as if he had a poker stuck down the back of his jacket. He had thought about this, considered it gravely, and agreed that he did, but that he couldn’t help it.

  I thought this was a reasonable response and left it at that.

  “Alice!” Pricks bustled over—no doubt summoned by Ina, who was standing well away from the window, her arms crossed over her chest, glaring at me. “What on earth are you doing? Young ladies do not shout out of windows like monkeys!”

  “Oh, I do wish I was a monkey!” I forgot about Mr. Dodgson for a moment; monkeys were my favorite animals, along with kittens, rabbits, hedgehogs, mice, and lizards. “Wouldn’t that be smashing?”

  “Alice! Wherever did you hear that word? Young ladies do not say ‘smashing.’” Pricks reached over my head to push down the window. However, when she saw Mr. Dodgson smiling up at us, she hesitated. “Oh!”

  “W-w-w-ould the young ladies like to join me for a pleasant st-stroll around the Quad?” He doffed his hat. “Accompanied by you, of course,” he added hastily. I shook my head in sympathy; his stammer was worse than ever. Poor Mr. Dodgson! (Or—Do-Do-Dodgson, as it sounded coming from him.) Still, he never appeared too upset about it, unlike Pricks and her warts; she was always trying some new cream or lotion to be rid of them.

  “Oh, well.” Pricks smiled in that unexpected, scary way of hers; she bent slightly at the waist and twisted her face up almost as if she was going to be ill, but then, at the last minute, a smile appeared, a wide, snapping smile that revealed most of her teeth.

  Patting her hair, smoothing her skirts, she swung around and surveyed the three of us, frowning at my dirty hem. “Alice, go ask Phoebe to change you at once. All three of you will have to change, I suppose—I might as well do the same.”

  “But why? I’ll only get dirty again.” Once more, I did not see why I had to remind her of the obvious.

  “Because your mother will have a—will be quite disappointed, if I allow you out looking like that.”

  I was forced to admit that she had a point. Mamma would certainly make a fuss if she saw me, the Dean’s daughter, outside in anything other than a stiff, freshly laundered white frock, the more frills, the better.

  Pricks turned back to the window and whispered loudly, “We would be happy to accompany you, thank you so much, Mr. Dodgson. We’ll join you directly.”

  “He can’t hear, you know,” I reminded her. “He doesn’t hear out of his right ear. You have to shout.”

  “Oh, but I—oh, go ahead, Alice, but don’t shout. Just—speak loudly.”

  I shook my head. Pricks was so exceedingly proper all the time, except when it came to Mr. Dodgson. Only he could make her behave in such a manner that I could almost, if I scrunched my eyes and tried very hard, imagine that she had once been a real little girl, like me.

  “We would be happy to accommodate you,” I said loudly, slowly, my voice as deep as Papa’s when he gave a sermon. “We shall join you directly.” Then I bowed.

  Mr. Dodgson looked up at me, opened his mouth, and laughed. He was still laughing as he sat down on a bench to wait, after first taking care to pull his trousers up at the knees; men did this, I knew, to keep their trousers from creasing. I wasn’t altogether sure why I knew that; it was one of the many bits of useful information I was just now aware that I possessed. When I was six, I had known nothing. Now that I was seven, however, I couldn’t help but be impressed by how very wise I was growing.

  “Come, girls!” Pricks clapped her wide brown hands. “Change quickly!” She bustled us out of the schoolroom, looking back at the blackboard with a sigh. “We really should get back to geography—it’s such a lovely afternoon, though. We’ll study botany instead. That will be a pleasant change.” And she smiled, violently, suddenly, to herself.

  I wondered again at the ability of adults to turn every single pleasurable experience into a lesson. Did they do this only for o
ur benefit? Or when they were alone, at the dining table or gathered for one of Mamma’s musical entertainments, did they, even then, stop to say, “This tea is very delicious. Are you aware that it comes from India, the subcontinent, which has been a part of the Crown since the rebellion of 1857?”

  I believed I was on the cusp of discovering the answer, for I was starting to be included in some of the entertainments held here at the Deanery. Only a month ago, Mamma had allowed Ina, Edith, and me to perform “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” for her guests. Mr. Ruskin, in particular, had pronounced himself impressed; he reached out to pat my hair as I walked past him, after we had curtsied good night.

  Although he patted my hair, he had actually gasped at Edith’s—“Look at those titian curls!” he exclaimed. I remembered to ask him what “titian” meant, during our last drawing lesson; he sucked in his breath and informed me my education was appalling but never did answer me. Not even after I pointed out that he had just missed an excellent opportunity to improve it.

  “Alice, do hurry!” Ina grabbed my arm and pulled me down the wide gallery, lined on one side with the oil paintings of the English landscape that Papa so admired, on the other with an ornately carved banister crowned with ferocious lions at either end, as finials. “We mustn’t leave Mr. Dodgson waiting!”

  “Why ever not? He doesn’t have anything else to do.” I fervently believed that; while I knew, vaguely, that he taught mathematics at the college, I understood that this was not his chief occupation. No, he was ours more than the students’. He was our playmate, our guide on many excursions, our galley slave (he often took us rowing on the Isis, where we loved to pretend that we were Nelson and his men, while Mr. Dodgson did his best to maneuver us about as if we were at the battle of Trafalgar).

  It was only recently so. My brother, Harry, along with Ina, had been his favored companions since the day he first made our acquaintance by seeking permission to photograph the Deanery from the garden; Mamma was fond of saying Mr. Dodgson showed up one day with his infernal camera and never really left. Edith and I were only summoned occasionally from the nursery, most often to be photographed. Harry went away to school this year, however, and Mr. Dodgson appeared, finally, to notice Edith and me, and to ask for us, along with Ina, when he called.

  Ina did not appreciate this development, I knew. There was nothing she could do about it, and she never let Mr. Dodgson notice her resentment; she was, I had to admit, absolutely brilliant at presenting a sweet, simple face to the world, no matter her true feelings. Just as a lady should, Pricks never wearied of reminding me.

  “You silly little girl. Of course Mr. Dodgson has other things to do. Loads and loads of things. He’s a very important man.” Pulling me into the nursery, Ina started unbuttoning the back of my dress, while Phoebe, our nurse, flew about, opening up cupboards until she found three identical white frocks, flounced with pink satin ribbons, the buttons covered in the same pink satin.

  “I don’t think so,” I replied, remembering how Mamma had referred to Mr. Dodgson as “that nuisance of a mathematics tutor, a more obtuse man I have never met.” Even though Papa corrected her—“Now, my dear, he is a don”—he had done it mildly. Papa was capable of standing up to Mamma, I knew, when he felt strongly about something. But evidently he did not feel strongly about Mr. Dodgson.

  “Oh, Alice, why did you have to go and muddy your frock?” Ina was now stepping out of her own; her petticoats swayed to and fro as she crossed her arms over her chemise and glared at me. The way her eyebrows angled, high and disapproving, and the way her small mouth pursed, as if she was sucking on a lemon, made her almost always look cross, to be perfectly honest. “Those blue stripes on the bodice suit me so well! I despise the pink.”

  “I’m sorry.” I genuinely was; I disliked getting dressed more than once a day. It was too much of an ordeal, what with all the buttoning and fastening and layer upon layer of stiff, scratchy underclothing. Chemise, pantalets, not one, not two, but three petticoats, stockings that I never could coax into staying smooth and high; my garters always came undone.

  It would only get worse, I thought gloomily. One day I would have to wear a corset.

  “C’mere, lamb,” Phoebe said to Edith, who was kneeling in front of her dollhouse, a headless rag doll in her hand. “Let’s get you into your fine feathers.”

  “It’s so much fuss, simply to go outside.” I raised my arms; Mary Ann, one of the maids, dropped the beribboned dress over my head.

  “Are we ready?”

  I turned toward the door; Pricks was standing there, in her new blue silk dress with yellow piping down the bodice that did not go well with her brown complexion, not at all. Still, she looked quite pleased with herself; she had even managed to add a pouf of false hair to the back of her head, so that it stuck out from behind her straw hat like the fuzzy tail of a bumblebee.

  “Yes, Pricks,” I said as Mary Ann buttoned up my last glove. Phoebe handed me a pink parasol. “Although what if Mr. Dodgson wants to take us to the Meadow? Perhaps to allow us to roll down a hill? I’ll only stain my dress again, in that case.”

  “Mr. Dodgson won’t do any such thing. He’s a gentleman,” Pricks said with a sniff.

  Again, I wondered just what part of him Pricks and Ina could see that I could not. It was almost as if we knew two different people, both with the name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. That was his full name; he had told it to me, after I confided that mine was Alice Pleasance Liddell, which I found rather a long name to write. However, he pointed out that his was longer by one letter, and that cheered me immensely.

  I suspected, in a deep, serious part of me no one else knew I possessed, at least so far, which was somewhat worrisome, that Mr. Dodgson was the kind of person who would allow me to roll down a hill. I felt he was the only person on earth, actually, who would; he was my one chance to do this, to do other things that I desired, even things I did not yet know but somehow, I felt he did.

  I felt it most when he looked at me as he stood behind his camera, holding the cap to the lens, counting slowly, his eyes never moving from mine as he exposed the plate. There was something about his eyes—the color of the periwinkle that grew at the base of the trees in the Meadow, such a deep blue—that made me feel as if he could see my dearest wishes, my darkest thoughts, before they made themselves known to me. And that simply by seeing them, he was also giving me permission to follow them. Perhaps he was even showing me the way. For I wasn’t very comfortable with the dark thoughts—muddled, nameless thoughts—that sometimes came to me when I relaxed my watchfulness.

  I was always on guard, you see. One had to be vigilant; for what, I did not know.

  “Alice, come!”

  Pricks, Ina, and Edith—predictably clutching her parasol too high, in the middle of the handle; she was such a baby!—were already at the end of the gallery, descending the staircase; I ran after them and immediately felt my right stocking start to sag down my shin.

  “Miss Prickett!”

  The three of them froze; I took advantage of this moment to sneak into my rightful place, between Ina and Edith.

  “Yes, madam?” Pricks turned, her eyes cast down. She curtsied as my mother walked slowly from the library down the front hall, confronting our little group at the bottom of the stairs.

  “May I ask where you are taking my daughters?” Mamma smiled as she said this, but the smile did not make it up to her eyes; they were wide, wary—not inclined to believe what they saw, I knew from experience. Such as the time I broke the china shepherdess that always perched, much too nervously, near the edge of the library mantel. Even though I had the foresight to pick up a shard of china—the faded pink china bow of the shepherdess’s apron—and plant it in Ina’s shoe that night, hoping to incriminate her instead, I did not fool Mamma.

  Perhaps there would be an advantage to having such a sharp mother someday; that’s what she said, after she punished me by making me take my meals alone in the schoolroom for a week. Stil
l, even for a child so prone to daydreaming, I could not imagine the circumstances under which this could ever be true.

  “We’re going out for an expedition, madam. A little botany expedition. It’s such a lovely day.” Pricks raised her gaze to meet my mother’s; she was always a trifle nervous around her but, unlike the rest of the household, had so far avoided being reduced to trembling tears. There was some hint of steel in her character, I had to admit, although she was careful to act completely obedient, always, to Mamma.

  Mamma dabbed her upper lip with her handkerchief; it was warm for late May, and despite being tightly bound, a few strands of her black hair had escaped, lying damp and flat against her high forehead. She was fatter than usual because soon another baby would join us. I wasn’t precisely sure what her being fat had to do with a baby, but that was how it was explained to me, and when I asked what the one had to do with the other, she would not say. She told me only that young ladies weren’t supposed to ask such questions.

  Still, I couldn’t help but suspect that one very important piece of information was being withheld; I vowed, someday, to discover just what it was. Perhaps Mr. Dodgson would tell me.

  “I don’t suppose Mr. Dodgson has anything to do with this?”

  I jumped; had Mamma read my mind? But no. She was talking to Pricks.

  “Mr. Dodgson suggested it, yes,” Pricks said without apology.

  “The girls already took their exercise this morning, did they not?” Now Mamma singled me out with her black-eyed gaze; I felt her look me over, head to toe, searching for stains and tears as evidence.

  Pricks could have lied, given how neat I looked now, but she didn’t. “Yes,” was all she answered, choosing to leave the rest up to Mamma.

  Suddenly Mamma looked so tired; she closed her eyes, pressed her handkerchief against her forehead. I felt sorry for her. Babies must be very trying to get ready for.