Alice in Jamesland: The Story of Alice Howe Gibbens James

10. To Bad Nauheim

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MWbZ[hi[[, Alice caught her breath from the last month’s frantic preparations and reconciliations. Below in her large outside stateroom she found a moment to write to her sons before the ship sailed. “Now Peggy wants me to go up and see the steamer leave her wharf. I am thankful that no dear face will be on the wharf. I have said goodbye too many times.” She warned her two older boys, who were now in Tacoma, Washington, preparing for forestry camp, not to get lost in the Northwest woods. The consequences could be severe, as she well knew. She mused on what she had left behind: “the dear old empty house!”1 But her goal was solidly fixed: to help her husband recover well enough to prepare and deliver the Gifford Lectures. Her stamina would be crucial in saving him. Alice resembled her paternal grandfather, ambitious Boston businessman Daniel Lewis Gibbens Sr., and her maternal grandfather, successful lawyer and senator Christopher Webb, as much as anyone in her family. Like them, she was resolute and steadfast. And she knew herself: while she was not innately jovial, she seldom succumbed to her occasional depression . The next months would be full of both pleasure and heartache. Anyone who has watched a loved one suffer can imagine the difficulties she ',,

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FWd, Sir James Barrie. Alice believed the time William would spend with Peggy during her school holidays would help form their daughter’s ethical character. During the voyage William, who was supposed to be relaxing for the first time in his life, worried that he had not left enough money behind for Eliza Gibbens to pay their bills.4 He did not know how long it would be before he could teach again, nor was he certain he could deliver the Gifford Lectures. The series paid well and would supplement lost income if only he were well enough to give them. The trio landed at Hamburg, no one ill from the crossing. Dressed in a blue tartan cape as she strolled about the city, young Peggy attracted the glance of the Germans, who admired her sweetness. She recalled Henry James’s fictional heroine Daisy Miller, who had become a nineteenth-century household word for the archetypal innocent American girl. Whenever possible Alice economized on travel, partly from habit and now partly to stretch their budget, so from Hamburg the Jameses took third-class passage to Bad Nauheim.5 William and Alice planned to spend four or five weeks there, boarding Peggy in Switzerland with the Cérésole family. Alice realized that this arrangement, however, would not do for an entire school year. Madame and her husband were old and tired.6 Alice and William je
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',would collect Peggy at Vevey at summer’s end, and then all three would proceed to Rye, England, where they would meet Henry. All four children placed, William and Alice could adjust to Bad Nauheim, their new home. The town was located in central Germany in the Taunus Mountains, and its salt springs were used to treat heart and nerve diseases. The...