Read Online When Audrey Met Alice by Rebecca Behrens - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rebecca Behrens
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I refused to smile but did stop furrowing my eyebrows. “Good. I mean, thanks.” I felt a teensy bit less pissed at her. “Sorry if I embarrassed you.”
“Apology accepted,” my mother said, uncrossing her arms. “Now it’s time for bed.” My parents came over to give me very perfunctory kisses good night and then left the room. I stretched across my bed and stared up at the veiny ceiling, smiling. At the next State Dinner, maybe I’d have my own pair of heels. Perhaps tonight hasn’t been such a disaster after all.
• • •
January 30, 1902
Diary—
Interest in me hasn’t waned since my debut. People in this country have gone absolutely crazy for their “Princess Alice!” I’ve received hundreds of requests for my autograph—enough that White House staff now needs to open my mail for me. Photographers and reporters pursue me whenever I leave the house, and on many occasions small crowds have formed when I am out in public. There still isn’t much automobile or carriage traffic when I cruise on my bicycle to Dupont, but there are people who point and exclaim. One morning I awoke to my stepmother all atwitter—some camera fiends were planted at the front door, hoping to get my picture. They weren’t even reporters but “fans.”
It gets even more peculiar. The most popular songs right now were composed with me as the subject: “The Alice Roosevelt March” and “The American Girl.” Probably my favorite homage to moi is the fabric color taking America by storm: “Alice blue,” the precise blue-gray color of my eyes—supposedly. No dressmaker has verified it against my peepers. One of the maids told me stores are selling out of it; the papers reported it’s the most popular shade for dresses right now. (How lucky for the ladies of America that my eyes aren’t a muddy brown.) My photograph decorates tinted postcards and fancy French chocolate cards. It’s wild. As one of my Sloper friends remarked, perhaps with a smidgen of jealousy, the world has become my oyster. If I had anything to be vain about, I suppose I would be getting very vain. Luckily for the world at large, my gargantuan forehead (among other attributes) prevents me from that sin.
My parents do not think it is so “wild.” My stepmother’s constant refrain: “Beware of publicity!” “Do not talk to reporters!” She says nice girls do not get their pictures in the paper, much less on chocolate cards, except for when they are born, married, and buried. I say poppycock to that. Actually, I asked Edith whether she’d like to find me a husband then, or otherwise put some arsenic in my tea because I’ve already been born. My father had the audacity to accuse me of courting publicity. Of all the people to say such a thing—my father, who has to be the bride at every wedding, the baby at every christening, and the corpse at every funeral. He never met a form of public attention that he didn’t love. Why, at the inauguration, I remember him chiding me for waving gleefully to some friends in the audience while he spoke. I said, “Why shouldn’t I?” “But this is my inauguration!” was his exasperated reply. For him, the master of publicity, to criticize me for having a little fun with the attention—it’s hypocrisy, pure and simple.
So I am told I must never, ever, ever, ever speak to reporters and should avoid photographers at all times. Cover my face if I have to. And yet, there is interest in every move my family or I make! How absurd. My siblings share my bemusement—Ted even sent me a letter from school with a postscript reading “Five cents for the signature please.” I nearly died laughing. (I suppose Edith would’ve allowed my name to appear in the paper then.)
But try telling any of this to my parents, with their fuss-box ideas of how young ladies should behave. Things are rather strained between my father and me lately.
I refused to smile but did stop furrowing my eyebrows. “Good. I mean, thanks.” I felt a teensy bit less pissed at her. “Sorry if I embarrassed you.”
“Apology accepted,” my mother said, uncrossing her arms. “Now it’s time for bed.” My parents came over to give me very perfunctory kisses good night and then left the room. I stretched across my bed and stared up at the veiny ceiling, smiling. At the next State Dinner, maybe I’d have my own pair of heels. Perhaps tonight hasn’t been such a disaster after all.
• • •
January 30, 1902
Diary—
Interest in me hasn’t waned since my debut. People in this country have gone absolutely crazy for their “Princess Alice!” I’ve received hundreds of requests for my autograph—enough that White House staff now needs to open my mail for me. Photographers and reporters pursue me whenever I leave the house, and on many occasions small crowds have formed when I am out in public. There still isn’t much automobile or carriage traffic when I cruise on my bicycle to Dupont, but there are people who point and exclaim. One morning I awoke to my stepmother all atwitter—some camera fiends were planted at the front door, hoping to get my picture. They weren’t even reporters but “fans.”
It gets even more peculiar. The most popular songs right now were composed with me as the subject: “The Alice Roosevelt March” and “The American Girl.” Probably my favorite homage to moi is the fabric color taking America by storm: “Alice blue,” the precise blue-gray color of my eyes—supposedly. No dressmaker has verified it against my peepers. One of the maids told me stores are selling out of it; the papers reported it’s the most popular shade for dresses right now. (How lucky for the ladies of America that my eyes aren’t a muddy brown.) My photograph decorates tinted postcards and fancy French chocolate cards. It’s wild. As one of my Sloper friends remarked, perhaps with a smidgen of jealousy, the world has become my oyster. If I had anything to be vain about, I suppose I would be getting very vain. Luckily for the world at large, my gargantuan forehead (among other attributes) prevents me from that sin.
My parents do not think it is so “wild.” My stepmother’s constant refrain: “Beware of publicity!” “Do not talk to reporters!” She says nice girls do not get their pictures in the paper, much less on chocolate cards, except for when they are born, married, and buried. I say poppycock to that. Actually, I asked Edith whether she’d like to find me a husband then, or otherwise put some arsenic in my tea because I’ve already been born. My father had the audacity to accuse me of courting publicity. Of all the people to say such a thing—my father, who has to be the bride at every wedding, the baby at every christening, and the corpse at every funeral. He never met a form of public attention that he didn’t love. Why, at the inauguration, I remember him chiding me for waving gleefully to some friends in the audience while he spoke. I said, “Why shouldn’t I?” “But this is my inauguration!” was his exasperated reply. For him, the master of publicity, to criticize me for having a little fun with the attention—it’s hypocrisy, pure and simple.
So I am told I must never, ever, ever, ever speak to reporters and should avoid photographers at all times. Cover my face if I have to. And yet, there is interest in every move my family or I make! How absurd. My siblings share my bemusement—Ted even sent me a letter from school with a postscript reading “Five cents for the signature please.” I nearly died laughing. (I suppose Edith would’ve allowed my name to appear in the paper then.)
But try telling any of this to my parents, with their fuss-box ideas of how young ladies should behave. Things are rather strained between my father and me lately.
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