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"September 12th [1890]

TWAS NO GO!  I went under on Saturday, August 2nd and administered an electric shock to Harry which brought him...to immure himself, without a murmur, in my squalid indigestions...and by September 2nd had dug me out and transplanted [me] to these comfortable quarters [South Kensington Hotel, London], hoping for a French cook, the only cure for dyspepsia and I feel already much less like a mildewed toad-stool.  There seems a faint hope that I may fizzle out, but the Monster Rebound, which holds me in its remorseless clutch, I am sure will gather itself up for many another spurt.  Dr. Baldwin...has been staying with Harry--I didn't see him but H. and K. both extracted the consoling answer to 'Can she die?' that 'They sometimes do.'  This is most cheering to all parties--the only drawback being that it will probably be in my sleep so that I shall not be one of the audience, dreadful fraud! a creature who has been denied all dramatic episodes might be allowed, I think, to assist at her extinction.  I know I shall slump at the 11th hour, and it would complete it all so to watch the rags and tatters of one's Vanity in its insolent struggle with the Absolute, as the curtain rolls down on this jocose humbuggery called Life!"

--from The Diary of Alice James, page 135

Alice James, in one of those human quirks of character, has refused to take her own life yet she waits, anticipates, and seems to hope for her death at any moment.  I interpret her initial written shout "TWAS NO GO!" as Alice lamenting her continued consciousness.  She seems to think Henry and Katharine wait as anxiously for her death as well, writing that the doctor's verdict that she might die from this episode was "most cheering to all parties"--where any normal person would interpret the same scene as cheerful in that the person might not die, Alice delights in the fact that she might.

At this point in the diary I have sat along with Alice amongst her pillows and shawls for approximately fifteen months, and Alice has referred several times to parasites, sometimes in reference to others and now when referring to herself.  She felt like "a mildewed toad-stool", and earlier in the diary (January 12th 1890,) she acerbically describes herself as living in "black-goggled, greenery-yallery loveliness"--a mottled, nasty picture of "loveliness" (76).  I think at this point in her life she feels like a moldy parasite and she wants to die, but not by her own hand.  Instead, Alice is content to let one of her many afflictions finish her off.