In Alice’s day there were no X-rays and few blood tests; the endocrine system, like the brain, was terra incognita; microorganisms were not known to cause infectious diseases. Antibiotics lay in the distant future. Diseases were believed to result primarily from aspects of climate—bad airs and such—and could be remedied by a spell in a better climate and/or a spa with beneficial waters. Before drug and food safety laws, doctors dispensed medicines that were useless at best and often harmful, containing arsenic, mercury, or other toxins. (Small wonder that Alice’s medicines always made her worse.) Add to that the damage done by tight corsets and by common toxic household products, such as paint or wallpaper containing arsenic.
In short, there is no way to arrive at a definitive diagnosis for Alice, who suffered from blinding headaches, “rheumatic” pains in all her joints, perpetual cold, as well as inability to walk. If she suffered from hypothyroidism, to take but one example, no one would have been the wiser, and her extreme fatigue and other symptoms would have been ascribed to weak nerves. That said . . .
THE SNAKES IN HER BELLY
Let’s take a closer look at what was for Alice herself her most troubling symptom, a churning sensation in her stomach area (“like snakes coiling and uncoiling”). It afflicted her just as she was falling asleep and was associated with overwhelming anxiety and/or panic.
The worst kind of melancholy is that which takes the form of panic fear, William James observed in “The Sick Soul” chapter of The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), and then went on to quote a first-hand account by an unnamed Frenchman, which he claimed to have translated.
I went one evening into a dressing room in the twilight to procure some article there; when suddenly there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. Simultaneously, there arose in my mind the image of an epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic, who used to sit all day on one of the . . . shelves against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his chin, and the coarse grey undershirt . . . drawn over them inclosing his entire figure. He sat there a kind of sculptured Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human. . . . That shape am I, I felt, potentially. Nothing that I possess can defend me against such a fate, if the hour for it should strike for me as it struck for him. . . . I became a mass of quivering fear. . . I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that I never knew before . . . this experience has made me sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since.
. . . I remember wondering how other people could live. . . . My mother in particular, a very cheerful person, seemed to me a perfect paradox in her unconsciousness of danger. . . . I have always thought that this experience of melancholia of mine had a religious bearing.
After William’s death, his eldest son, Henry James III, told a biographer that his father had written the passage; there had been no Frenchman. (For James connoisseurs, the word potentially is a clue; William used the term—not then in wide circulation—so frequently that Clover Adams joked about it in letters.) And the mother of the “Frenchman” clearly bears a marked resemblance to Mary James, as her children viewed her.
For William, as for his father, the religious sense was awakened by a searing experience of panic-fear, and the “Frenchman” passage in The Varieties carries a footnote: “For another case of fear equally sudden, see Henry James: Society, the Redeemed Form of Man, Boston 1879, pp. 43 ff.”
This, of course, was on account of Henry James Senior’s Vastation, which occurred in 1844. Sitting one evening at the family dinner table after the meal, gazing at the fire, he experienced
a perfectly insane and abject terror, without ostensible cause, and only to be accounted for, to my perplexed imagination, by some damned shape squatting invisible to me within the precincts of the room, and raying out from his fetid personality influences fatal to life.
With this footnote, William implicitly (and privately) acknowledged the kinship between his father’s horror of some damned shape and his own of the green-skinned epileptic boy. Alice’s “snakes,” coiling and uncoiling in her stomach since childhood, were equally horrifying for her and arose most likely from the same familial weakness. She who lost consciousness daily and suffered severe pain with little complaint was utterly undone by this white-knuckled, pure-adrenaline fear centered in her gut. Only at the very end of her life was her panic dispelled by Dr. Tuckey’s “moonbeam radiance” and his hypnotism.
Toward the end of his life, Henry James Jr., too, was completely derailed by a panic so desperate it prompted him to submit to a crude form of psychoanalysis at the hands of family friend James Jackson Putnam, M.D., who had become a Freudian. (Who wouldn’t like to be a fly on that wall?)
Whatever their other illnesses, many of the Jameses clearly suffered from panic disorder, the anguish of which can be inferred from the fact that ten percent of its victims commit suicide. If left untreated, panic disorder almost inevitably leads to agoraphobia. Even if she had not lost the use of her legs, Alice might have become a shut-in.
But that is not all that lurked in the James “blood.”
Henry James Senior had several peculiar and/or mad relatives, including his niece, Kitty James (Prince), who ended her life in the Somerville asylum (the precursor to McLean Hospital). In her own letters and those of her relatives, Kitty appears to be a textbook case of severe bipolar disorder. So was Alice’s fourth brother, Robertson (Bob) James, who was in and out of sanitariums and whose terrible mood swings and alcoholic rages alienated his extended family and wrecked his marriage. Henry James Senior may well have been bipolar as well (which might explain why he took so many mysterious trips and why Aunt Kate saw fit to burn the family letters after his death) but the evidence we have is inconclusive. He was undeniably an unusually emotional and tempestuous man.
Then there is William James, whose life is minutely documented. His diaries and letters and the letters of those close to him paint a picture of recurring cycles of mania (sleeplessness, flights of ideas, et cetera) alternating with intractable melancholia, which nearly drove him to suicide several times. His struggles made him exquisitely sympathetic to the suffering of others, and, throughout his life, he went out of his way, professionally and personally, to befriend troubled souls and seek a cure for mental illness.
Was Alice bipolar? Possibly, but her diary and letters, while highly original and definitely Jamesian, do not necessarily (in my admittedly unprofessional opinion) strike a manic note. The fact is, we just don’t know. Our task of diagnosing people beyond the grave is complicated by the fact that late nineteenth-century psychiatry did not recognize our diagnostic categories. Melancholia, mania, and what was called “cyclical mania” were described in Alice’s lifetime, but schizophrenia was unknown. Schizophrenics were herded into the catch-all category of Hysteria, which embraced everything from florid hallucinations, hysterical blindness and paralysis, dissociative and fugue states, to vague female discontents. At various times Alice’s doctors diagnosed her with hysteria, neurasthenia (an equally vague term meaning “weakness of the nerves”), “suppressed gout” (a disease unknown to modern medicine), “nervous hyperaesthesia” (presumably, extreme sensitivity or nervousness) and, implicitly, with not being a proper female.
The late nineteenth century was very keen on nerves. In the most advanced medical centers, patients with “nervous” complaints—i.e., just about everybody—were hooked up to batteries and soothed with gentle currents. Dr. James Jackson Putnam, William James’s good friend and former lab partner, held the prestigious post of Electrician at Massachusetts General Hospital, and often treated William and kept him supplied with batteries, which William carried to Europe when he traveled, electrifying himself diligently. Alice appears to have been less than enthusiastic. Like everything else, electricity s
eemed to make her worse.
Whatever ailed her, Alice James herself did not consider her life tragic or wasted, as she explained to William in a letter not long before her death:
Notwithstanding the poverty of my outside experience, I have always had a significance for myself—every chance to stumble along my straight and narrow little path, and to worship at the feet of my Deity, and what more can a human soul hope for?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING
LIBRARIES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS:
The Amherst College Archives & Special Collections for access to the letters of Katherine (Kitty) James (Prince) in the Julius Hawley Seelye Papers, 1824–1898
The Houghton Library at Harvard University for access to:
•The letters of Henry James Sr. and Mary Walsh James to various correspondents; letters from other James family members, 1858–1906; letters of Alice James; letters of Henry James; the William James 1842–1910 papers
•The E.L. Godkin Papers, BMS AM 1083, containing letters of Ellen Sturgis Hooper Gurney
The Massachusetts Historical Society, The Adams-Thoron Papers; letters from Marion (Clover) Hooper to various correspondents
ABOUT OR BY ALICE JAMES
Edel, Leon. The Diary of Alice James. Dodd, Mead & Co, 1964.
Moore, Rayburn S. The Letters of Alice James to Anne Ashburner,1873-78, The Joy of Engagement Part 1 & 2. www.researchgate.net/publication/249913735. Originals in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Strouse, Jean. Alice James: A Biography. Harvard University Press, 1980.
Yeazell, Ruth Bernard (edited). The Death and Letters of Alice James. Exact Change Books, 1981.
ABOUT OR BY HENRY JAMES
Edel, Leon. Henry James. (5 volumes). Harper & Row, 1953–72.
Horne, Philip (ed.). Henry James: A Life in Letters. Penguin, 1999.
James, HenryThe American The Bostonians Roderick Hudson A Small Boy and Others Notes of a Son and Brother The Portrait of a Lady Transatlantic Sketches
Matthiessen, F.O., and Kenneth B. Murdock (eds.), The Notebooks of Henry James. Oxford University Press, 1961.
ABOUT OR BY WILLIAM JAMES
Blum, Debra. Ghost Hunters: William James and the Hunt for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. Penguin, 2006.
James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Dover Publications (1890 by Henry Holt). The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902.
Richardson, Robert D. William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Skrupskelis, Ignas K. and Elizabeth M. Berkeley (eds.). William James: The Correspondence. (10 vols.) University Press of Virginia, 1995.
Taylor, Eugene. William James on Exceptional Mental States: The 1896 Lowell Lectures. University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.
Wilson, Gay Allen. William James. Viking, 1967.
ABOUT THE JAMES FAMILY
Fisher, Paul. House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family. Henry Holt and Company, 2008.
Lewis, R.W.B. The Jameses: A Family Narrative. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1991.
Skrupskelis, Ignas K., and Elizabeth M. Berkeley (eds.). William and Henry James Selected Letters. University Press of Virginia, 1997.
Matthiessen, F.O.. The James Family: A Group Biography. Vintage Books, 1950.
ON LATE 19TH CENTURY PSYCHIATRY
Breuer, Joseph, and Sigmund Freud. Studies on Hysteria. Translated and edited by James Strachey with the collaboration of Anna Freud. Basic Books (reprinted from Volume II of the standard edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Hogarth Press, 1955).
Ellenberger, Henri F. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. Basic Books, 1970
Janet, Pierre. The Mental State of Hystericals: A Study of Mental Stigmata and Mental Accidents. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901.
Jones, Ernest, MD. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 1: The Formative Years and the Great Discoveries, 1856–1900. Basic Books, 1953.
Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff (translated & edited). The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985.
ON BOSTON AND BOSTONIANS
Chapman, John Jay. Memories and Milestones. Moffat Yard and Company, 1915
De Wolfe, M.A. Memories of a Hostess: A Chronicle of Eminent Friendships (drawn chiefly from the diaries of Mrs. James T. Fields). The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922
Friedrich, Otto. Clover: The Tragic Love Story of Clover and Henry Adams and Their Brilliant Life in America’s Gilded Age. Simon & Schuster, 1979.
Gregg, Edith E.W. The Letters of Ellen Tucker Emerson. Kent State University Press, 1982.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table: Every Man His Own Boswell. Akadine Press, 2001.
Homans, Abigail Adams. Education by Uncles. Houghton Mifflin, 1966.
Smith, Richard Norton. The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation. Harvard University Press, 1986.
Thoron, Ward (ed.). The Letters of Mrs. Henry Adams. 1865–1883. Little Brown & Company, 1936.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A FEW KEY PEOPLE EARLY ON SAW THE VALUE OF A NOVEL ABOUT a nineteenth-century invalid who spends a very long time in bed thinking. My wonderful agent, Michael Carlisle, believed in Alice and showed me what to throw away and where to start (my original chapter 20). Masie Cochrane, a wizard at structure and pacing, provided valuable advice and helped lead me out of confusion.
Pat Strachan was the first person to read the fictional Alice and utter encouraging words, which meant a great deal.
Thanks to Jack Shoemaker, Counterpoint’s editorial director, for his perspicacity, wisdom, and humor, and to Jane Vandenburgh, whose gifted editing touches helped make Alice a better read.
I am indebted to Mary Bisbee-Beek for being exactly on the right wave-length with this book; to Matthew Hoover, whose organized thoughtfulness made the succession of galleys practically painless; and to Irene Barnard, who saved me from my worst mistakes (and in French, too!); and to Sharon Wu and Claire Shalinsky for their excellent work, and everyone at Counterpoint who worked on this book.
Pam Petro, Praseela Feltenstein, and my son, Jake Teresi, were brave enough to read and appraise the manuscript in a larval stage. I am also grateful to a number of special people whose insightful readings of intermediate drafts kept me going: Bayard Cobb, Rachel Hooper, Thad Carhart, Marion Abbott, Gomila Garber, Cam Mann, David Gillham. Much of Alice first surfaced in writing groups led by the multi-talented Nerissa Nields; thanks also to my fellow groupies, too numerous to list here. Dorothy Firman, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Gail Kenny, Christina Platt, and Ellen Story helped by reading Alice carefully (in our book group), and hatching diabolical schemes to make it a bestseller.
And, finally, special thanks are owed to my nonfictional husband, Dick Teresi, for living with Alice these long years without complaint—or almost without complaint.
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