CUFFNELLS, 1932.
But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired.
Only I do get tired.
So tired that I recline on my chaise longue near the fire, pulling up the old red afghan—Mamma’s afghan, one of the few things I’ve kept of hers—over my weary, aching bones. The letters are still scattered across my desk, and words pound my brain, insisting I take notice of them. Ina’s unanswered questions—I suppose you don’t remember when Mr. Dodgson ceased coming to the Deanery? How old were you?
Words, pictures, questions, and finally—dreams; it always begins with a dream, doesn’t it? Alice’s dream by the river, her head in her sister’s lap, dreaming of a rabbit, a white rabbit; my dream, also. My dreams. One of them—I remember one dream when I was small; a dream after a long walk on a summer day. A dream on a train, my head against Mr. Dodgson’s shoulder, as I dreamed of babies on flower stems; Papa walking along, crying; a man in a tall black hat, gray gloves, a stiff way about him. “May they be happy,” he whispered to me, and I smiled. Nighttime, fireworks, a couple in a darkened doorway, she arched her arm, gracefully, about his neck, bringing him closer and closer to her upturned lips.
“Alice,” the man in the hat said tenderly—only it was Leo. “Alice, be happy. Be happy with me.”
“Of course,” I said with a contented sigh. “Of course. I’ll always be happy with you, my love.”
But no—the man in the hat was not Leo, he was not Regi. He was Mr. Dodgson. I opened my eyes, my girl’s eyes, clear and sharp, no need for spectacles, and saw only him. His soft brown hair curling at the ends, his kind blue eyes, one higher than the other.
He had acted boldly—wasn’t that what Ina had said? But no. No, he was not bold; he was shy, he was kind, he loved a seven-year-old girl. I was an eleven-year-old girl, however, and I was not shy.
I was bold. I saw what I wanted and I took it; I did not know, yet, that love was not mine to claim whenever I wanted. I did not know, so I reached for it; my arm arching gracefully about his neck, pulling his face toward me, his lips so soft, seeking an answer, asking a question—
No.
My lips sought, asked; not his. He was merely trying to wake me up, gently rocking me, kissing the top of my head. It was I who reached up, met him—and kissed him, kissed him ardently, my lips parting his, asking him to be happy—may we be happy. And in that moment, I will always believe—the two of us were.
But then he pushed me away, shocked; but not soon enough, for I had felt his stirring, his surprise but his pleasure; I tasted it in his lips, lips that moved beneath mine—
Until he did, finally, push me away.
I was hurt; I was confused; I sat up, rubbed my still-sleepy eyes, and looked across at my sister. Ina was watching us; she had always been watching us with those eyes, those gray, unblinking camera eyes. Her face red, eyes bright with anger, she gasped, she rose—looking out the window, she saw Pricks standing at the platform, for the train had just pulled into the station.
Ina was sobbing now, even as Mr. Dodgson was holding on to her arm, trying to explain. “Ina, wait—you’re upset!” Shaking her head, pulling free, she kicked against the door until the conductor reached up to open it.
I was still seated, strangely calm, watching but not understanding. Ina ran to Pricks; I saw her tug at Pricks’s arm, point back at the train—back at me, and at Mr. Dodgson standing by my side, his gloves suddenly splotched with perspiration. I looked up at him and tried to pat his arm, to comfort him, for I sensed he was agitated. For the first time in my life, he pulled away, rejecting me—as if he was ashamed.
Pricks strode over to the train carriage; she reached up to Edith, who was standing in the doorway, and helped her down. I slid off the seat, walked to the top of the step—there was steam coming from the engine, just two carriages up—and I looked at Pricks. I met her gaze levelly; she reached her hand back and slapped me across the face, hard. Tears sprang to my eyes, but they did not prevent me from seeing the horrible grin that split her ugly brown face in two.
Without a word, she grabbed my hand, pulled me roughly off the train—I tumbled down the last step, twisting my ankle—and tugged me away, off toward the waiting carriage. Only before I would follow, I turned back; Mr. Dodgson was standing on the platform, alone. His hat was in his hands, his face was pale, his soft, sensuous mouth was open, but for once he had no words; no story, to help me make sense of it all. He simply stood, a tall, slim, suddenly lesser man.
He looked as if he had just been robbed of something precious.
I did not see him again for a very long time. Pricks and Ina filled Mamma’s head with words that were true, yet not; I heard them whisper, scheme, like two harpies or witches. When I found them, she was wearing hardly any clothes. When I saw them at the fireworks, he had her head upon his breast. She said she knew all about where babies come from. They kissed, Mamma. I saw it with my own eyes. He kissed her, like Papa kisses you. I saw it, too, madam—I saw it in his eyes.
Then Mamma ordered me to show her the letters he had sent:
Do you remember how it felt, to roll about on the grass?
With a cry, a horrible, anguished—furious—cry, Mamma tore through the nursery, tore through my things—my beautiful little box where I stored all my treasures, my drawers, my cupboards and trunks—looking for something; looking for more. She took the letters, and she threw them in the nursery hearth, stirring them up, ripping them with the poker, all the while crying and saying things I could not understand. “You wicked, wicked girl! That horrible man! You’re ruined, that’s what! Ruined! No one will ever have you now!”
I ran after her, pulling at her arm; this felt like a violation more than anything else. “You can’t read my letters! You have no right!” Hot, angry tears rushed to my eyes as I watched the papers burn.
With only one look—one deadly, disgusted look—Mamma forbade me to cry.
She did not forbid me to speak, however; but I did not. Through it all, I spoke not a word. I sat, and I listened to them ruin Mr. Dodgson for me—for us—forever. They called him horrible names; they begged Papa to dismiss him from the college. It would only be much later, when I was a parent myself, that I would wonder why Papa never appeared to consider this.
I said nothing in Mr. Dodgson’s defense. Although I knew his innocence, I was more interested in protecting my own. I hid behind my age—for they were willing to give me that, at least; telling me, telling one another, that fortunately, I was young, too young. He had nothing to hide behind, however; after all, he was an adult. And I suspected that outside of Wonderland, adults were supposed to behave differently. Adults were supposed to know better.
So, with my silence, I banished him from Wonderland; years later, he would do the same to me.
And this—instead of happiness—would be only what the two of us deserved, after all.
THE SHADOWS ARE LONG and deep; the fire has died down to a contented glow, the embers winking lazily at me as I open my eyes. I stir, my body stiff from lying so still upon the chaise. I must have been here for an hour, at the very least.
Sitting up, clutching the afghan about my shoulders like a shawl, I blink my watery old eyes, but I am no longer tired. I am energized, all of a sudden; my thoughts no longer muddled, no dark cloud of confusion, suspicion, hovering over my mind.
Clearly, I see; finally, my memories are my own.
My words to young Peter come back to me—I suppose, at some point, we have to decide which memories to hold on to, and which ones to let go.
I walk to my desk. Ina’s letter is still there, still unanswered. Sitting down, putting my spectacles back on, I unbind the black ribbon around the other letters and open them up with trembling fingers, forcing myself to read them one last time:
Dearest Heart,
I am wretched with worry over you. I must maintain a detached, dignified air, outwardly expressing mild concern, for natural
ly, as the daughter of the Dean, I would be properly anxious to hear word of your welfare.
My letters to Leo, the ones I wrote during his illness but never sent. I had intended to show them to him one day, but one day never came.
There are other letters, too: Letters to Alan, and to Rex, written after they had died. Letters of a grieving mother to her fallen sons. Letters I never shared with Regi, although I realize now—too late—he might have found comfort in them.
Ina’s letter, as well. The letter I began to her but never finished. The letter I could not have written until today.
I will not write it, after all; it is not my place to do so.
I take these letters and walk resolutely toward the fire; pulling up a low wicker stool, I sit down and clasp the packet to my heart. It is love, after all, that is within them; it is love, after all, that is within me. I started out too boldly; I wanted love too much, and I believed that was my mistake, causing all that came after: losing Leo, Edith, marrying a man I did not know I loved until it was far too late, having three sons as a result, two of whom had to lose their lives on a battlefield. Everyone I loved died, while I lived on. Is that a tragedy?
Or is it a fantasy? A wondrous tale for children?
For there is still the story of a little girl.
The other stories—memories—are mine to do with as I choose, for the world, after all, only wants to know the other. And that is how it should be; she—I—should live on as a happy, plucky little girl, for whom no conundrum is too difficult to solve with common sense and patience.
I raise the packet of letters to my lips, kiss them—for if I cannot, at eighty, indulge my emotions, when can I?—and slowly let them fall into the slumbering embers. I do not poke them or tear them. I simply watch as their edges brown, then curl, then burn.
Yet they are not gone; they are within me, all of them—Leo, Edith, Alan, Rex, Regi. I will take them all with me when I am gone, which will not be long from now; I can feel it in my tired heart, a heart that has been torn up and pieced back together too many times. The threads are fraying, as fragile as the black silk ribbon in my hand; they will soon give way.
I did not choose this, Peter had said.
I did, I had replied. And so I did; so, now, I do.
For eighty years I have been, at various times, a gypsy girl, a muse, a lover, a mother, a wife. But for one man, and for the world, I will always be a seven-year-old girl named Alice. That is the only letter that need remain; it is the memory I decide, in this moment, to hold on to, as I watch the rest disappear into cinders and ash and, finally, smoke; smoke that flies up the chimney, out into the cold air, floating down across the peaceful grounds of my home, of Cuffnells.
Alice I am, Alice I will be.
Alice I have been.
A Note from the Author
• • •
SEVERAL YEARS AGO, WHILE WANDERING THE HALLS OF the Art Institute of Chicago, I stumbled upon an interesting exhibition: Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll. I knew Lewis Carroll only by his classic story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I suppose I had always pictured him as some benign, fatherly figure—if I pictured him at all.
Imagine my surprise, then, to discover that the photography of Lewis Carroll (or the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, his real name) consisted primarily of images of—young girls. Rather provocatively posed young girls.
Even for the Victorians, this collection of images seemed a little unsettling. And even among these fascinating images, one photograph in particular stood out. It was a picture of a child clad in scanty rags, showing just enough skin to make me uncomfortable. But it was the eyes that haunted me; dark, glittering, they were wise, worldly, almost defiant. They were the eyes of a woman.
The caption said she was actually seven-year-old Alice Liddell, the privileged daughter of Dean Liddell of Christ Church, Oxford, where Dodgson taught mathematics; she was also the little girl who inspired the classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
I wondered what happened to her, after she grew up. I wondered what happened between the two of them to result in such a startling photograph. I thought it might make an interesting story. Then I went home and promptly forgot about it.
Four years later, my friend Nic was visiting me from Australia, and I took her to the Art Institute. As we sat having coffee, I told her about that earlier exhibit, remembering how I’d thought it might make a good story.
“Write it,” she said.
“But I’m working on something else.”
“No. This is what you should write. Write it.”
“Well, maybe.”
The next morning at breakfast, Nic was a little wild-eyed; she had stayed up all night researching Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell, and proceeded to tell me the tale:
In 1862, Charles Dodgson told ten-year-old Alice and her two sisters the story of a little girl who fell down a rabbit hole. Unusually—for he had told the three little girls many stories—Alice begged him to write this one down.
Dodgson told the girls these stories because he had rather an odd, intense friendship with them; he lived next door to the Deanery, their home as the family of the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. In 1863, after years of this friendship, something happened that resulted in a terminal break in their relations; at the time Alice was eleven and he thirty-one. Soon after this, her mother burned all correspondence between the two. After his death, his relatives apparently cut out the pages of his diary that would have covered this period. Neither Alice nor her family ever talked publicly about Dodgson again, except late in her life after she was forced to sell her original handwritten copy of Alice in order to save her beloved home. It was only then that she seemed able to embrace her role in the creation of this timeless classic.
My friend was correct. This was the story I had to write.
I’m no historian, no scholar of Lewis Carroll; there are plenty of those, and this is not his story. I’m a novelist, and this is Alice’s story. As I dug for further details, I discovered that Alice Liddell’s childhood had been somewhat documented (with the exception of all that missing correspondence), and even fictionalized. There had been a novel, in 2001, by Katie Roiphe called Still She Haunts Me, about the years leading up to the break between Dodgson and Alice; also a 1985 film, Dreamchild, that dealt, somewhat fantastically, with the same period of time. Also two slim biographies, one a children’s book, the other long out of print. But no one told the story entirely from Alice’s point of view, and her later years were always glossed over or omitted entirely.
Yet these were the years that most intrigued me; as I continued my research, I found out she may have had a broken romance with Prince Leopold of England but ended up marrying another man (while wearing a diamond brooch from the Prince on her wedding dress); as a mother, she suffered heartbreak during World War I; widowed, she almost descended into anonymous, genteel poverty; finally, she enjoyed triumph and fame just before she died.
Dodgson, meanwhile, went on to publish the Alice books—and, of course, photograph many little girls—but it was as if he was always searching for a replacement for his original “child friend.” He was heartbreakingly unable to reconcile the adult Alice with the child he had loved when they met, once more, near the end of his life.
This was the story, then, that I had to write: Alice’s adventures after she left Wonderland. And it appeared to me that it all came down to what happened between man and child one seemingly lovely summer afternoon, before this mysterious break.
It must always be remembered that this is a work of fiction, not biography. I did not alter known facts about Alice’s life, with the exception of the last photograph, when she was a young woman, taken by Dodgson; in reality, this occurred when Alice was eighteen, prior to Prince Leopold’s time at Oxford. Still, I strove to capture what I felt must have been the emotional impact of that moment, whether it occurred when she was eighteen or twenty-three. I sometimes leaned on the side of documented goss
ip and speculation—for example, there are some who believe Prince Leopold was actually interested in Alice’s sister Edith. I couldn’t ignore the fact, however, that Alice really did wear the brooch he gave her on her wedding dress. And that the Prince named his first daughter Alice, while she named her second son Leopold.
Alice did, indeed, marry a man named Reginald Hargreaves, and lived the rest of her life on a country estate called Cuffnells, which, sadly, has since been torn down. Near the end of her life she did travel to Columbia University in New York, where she received an honorary doctorate and met another figure from children’s literature, Peter Llewelyn-Davies, who was immortalized as Peter Pan, but who later in life committed suicide.
The greatest liberty I have taken is in depicting Alice Liddell’s relationship with John Ruskin, the eminent art and social critic of the Victorian age. While Ruskin’s circumstances are historically accurate—his scandalous marriage, his tragic relationship with a young girl, Rose La Touche—I deliberately made him a more important figure in Alice’s life than he probably was. Again, there is some fact on which to base this. It’s obvious he and Alice knew each other socially during his years as the Slade Professor of Art at Oxford. He gave her and her sisters art lessons. And he himself described more than one occasion when he was bewitched by the young Alice in his autobiography, Praeterita.
Ah, but what about that break? What really happened that summer afternoon to lead to such a permanent fracture between Dodgson and Alice?
This was my greatest gift, as a novelist. Because no one—not Alice, not Dodgson, not her mother, not her sisters—ever publicly spoke of it, except for a tantalizingly vague reference in a letter to Alice from her sister Ina, near the end of their lives. There were rumors, of course, for Oxford was a great place for gossip. But that is one major event in her life—perhaps the most important event—that remains, even today, pure speculation.
Alice I Have Been: A Novel Page 30
