What Alice Knew
Authors: Paula Marantz Cohen
Tags: #Fiction, #Biographical, #Historical, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Historical Fiction, #London (England), #Fantasy, #Mystery Fiction, #Serial murder investigation, #Crime, #Jack, #James; Alice, #James; William, #James; Henry
Copyright © 2010 by Paula Marantz Cohen
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cohen, Paula Marantz
What Alice knew : a most curious tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper / Paula Marantz Cohen.
p. cm.
1. James, Henry, 1843-1916—Fiction. 2. James, Alice, 1848-1892—Fiction. 3. James, William, 1842-1910—Fiction. 4. Jack, the Ripper—Fiction. 5. Serial murder investigation—Fiction. 6. London (England)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.O372W47 2010
813’.6—dc22
2010017242
To Alan,
my first story man
My thanks to the following people who offered background, ideas, or editing help with the manuscript: Simeon Amon, Victoria Amon, Rosetta Marantz Cohen, Maria Esche, Michael Harris-Peyton, Peter Lynch, Neeti Madan, and Jean-Michel Rabaté.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to my husband, Alan Penziner, and to my children, Sam and Kate Penziner, who provided useful comments and unfailing, if sometimes exasperated, support.
I wrote this book in order to bring to life historical characters and events that I have come to know through my reading. But as this is a work of fiction, imaginative material has necessarily been added and factual material altered to accommodate the plot.
London. 1888.
Henry James was drunk.
The room where he was dining looked familiar, but he could not place it. There was an oak sideboard, elaborately carved, and a cupboard containing a collection of fine porcelains. The plate was bone china, the silver heavy and apparently old. There was a landscape (was it Corot?) near the door, a set of prints (Rowlandson?) on the side wall, and a portrait by someone of talent over the mantel. It was a good house, though how good was a matter of whether the portrait was by van Dyck of an esteemed ancestor or by Sargent of a more contemporary personage (he was too bleary-eyed to look), and whether the silver had been passed down or purchased secondhand.
Henry was seated at a large, well-appointed table at which he vaguely recognized some of the guests. Mrs. Drummond was to his left, and Lady Dalrymple to his right (unless it was the other way around); Oscar Wilde was gesticulating at the far end; and across was Edmund Gosse, if it was Gosse, bent over his soup. There were others he was certain he knew, except he could not summon up their names. Not that it mattered. Real places and people were the germs that fertilized his novels, but a certain level of distractedness (helped by a certain quantity of wine) left an opening for the imagination.
“What do
you
think, Mr. James?” asked the woman to his left—Lady Dalrymple or Mrs. Drummond—the face blurred in his vision. He had almost finished his soup, a very nice beef bouillon, and would have liked to answer the lady (whoever she was) if only he knew what she was talking about.
Fortunately they were interrupted by Wilde, engaged in one of his familiar critiques of someone who wasn’t there.
“I can’t say I think much of Stevenson’s work,” Wilde pronounced. “It’s thin. The stage adaptation of
Jekyll and Hyde
owes its success to the actors; the book lacks depth and amplification. If the man weren’t so ill, I would be harsher. And if he were dead, which they say he will be in a year, I would be more generous.”
“Dead? Who’s dead?” shouted an elderly gentleman across the table.
“No one, yet,” said Wilde, “but in time, all of us. Though some sooner than others,” he added, sotto voce, to the handsome young man seated next to him.
Henry pushed away his soup. Secretly he agreed with Wilde about Stevenson. How was it that Louis had gotten his
Jekyll and Hyde
produced for the stage? Henry’s lifelong dream was to have his own work adapted for performance, but when he approached the theater people, they said his novels were not dramatic. This was nonsense; they were extremely dramatic if one read them carefully.
“Stevenson’s tale chilled my blood,” asserted one of the pretty, more impressionable women.
“Then your blood, exquisite though it is, is easily chilled, madam,” chided Wilde. “Lopping a man in half so that the animal is turned loose is an obvious sort of conceit and entirely unrealistic. Much better if the monster doesn’t look like a monster at all, but like an angel, the point being that the worst atrocities are committed not by animals but by men, and often men of apparent refinement.”
A stout American woman in heavy brocade looked up from her soup. “I can always tell a person by his face,” she announced, casting a supercilious glance around the table.
Henry winced. Although he had lived in London for years, he still took the arrogant stupidity of his countrymen personally. The stout American woman was married to an oil man or a lumber man, referred to as though they were made of these substances, which perhaps they were. One never saw the men, only their wives, who were everywhere, elbowing their way into the best houses.
“I pride myself on my ability to read faces,” the American woman continued, raising her chin to reveal a set of emeralds whose vulgar splendor caused Henry to avert his gaze. “I have only to look in a person’s eyes, and I know his character.” She cast a flirtatious glance in the direction of the handsome young man sitting next to Wilde, who raised an eyebrow back.
“I question your infallibility, madam,” countered Wilde. “The best actors are always the best villains. And evil often comes in seductive guises. Think of Duessa in Spenser’s
Faerie Queene
, her monstrous nether parts hidden under beautiful drapery.”
“Nether parts—where?” demanded the elderly gentleman, excitedly.
“I have no idea what you are referring to, Mr. Wilde.” The American woman shrugged. “But I am certain that it would not change my mind.”
Henry drained his glass. There it was: the most dire attribute of the new money was its complacency. It wore its ignorance like a badge of honor.
“What do
you
think, Mr. James?” asked the woman to his left. He wished she would leave him alone, though she was to be commended for valuing his opinion. He took a sip from the glass in front of him that had been refilled. “I don’t believe in the existence of evil
per se
.” He spoke slowly, taking care not to slur his words. “I believe that men, and women”—he nodded politely to the woman—“may be prompted to commit acts of thoughtlessness, even cruelty, in pursuit of some greatly desired object, and that repetition of such acts, given the persistence of certain influences, may create a kind of reflex of mind. The act, in short, grows habitual; the conscience dulls. One might call this the evolution of a depraved personality. But that would be an oversimplification.”
“Everything for you is an oversimplification,” noted Wilde.
“But you’ve written about evil, haven’t you, Henry?” asked Gosse (if it was Gosse).
“Evil, as I conceive it, is in the effects of the action, not inherent in the perpetrator,” Henry recited, surprised to be able to put it so succinctly.
“Your position ignores the more heinous sorts of human cruelty,” countered Wilde. “The Whitechapel murders, for example. Are you going to argue that the perpetrator is not an evil man? That his murders are the result of complex motivation?”
“It’s not the sort of thing that interests me,” said Henry shortly, starting in on the oysters that had made an appearance on his plate.
“You are wrong not to be interested in those poor women,” said the female to his left. “That’s precisely why they continue to be killed. If it was one of us, the perpetrator would have been caught long ago.”
Henry thought that his sister, Alice, would say the same thing, and the thought momentarily humbled him. He bowed his head, finishing the oysters and watching as a portion of sweetbreads au jus
replaced them.
“The police think the Whitechapel murderer is at large, mixing among us,” said the handsome young man seated next to Wilde.
“He’s a lunatic!” declared Du Maurier (was George here? mused Henry; had they come together?) “You’ve read the letters he wrote to the newspaper. No sane man would write with such odd taunts and turns of phrase.”
“On the contrary.” Wilde took this up. “The letters suggest a literary side to the fellow. But then, all of us literary fellows are mad, aren’t we, Henry?”
Why must Wilde ask such questions
? Henry thought with irritation. He waved away the asparagus that was being offered by the boy at his elbow, but allowed a small helping of the potato salad. “I’ll admit that we all have our peccadilloes,” he responded finally, “but some of us are more excessive in that way than others.” He cast a disapproving glance at Wilde’s foppish waistcoat.
“But excess is a matter of context,” protested Wilde. “You are, in certain contexts, as excessive as I am. The number of words you employ, for example. True, you are subtle, but there is lunacy in subtlety. Perhaps our murderer is being subtle too, if we only knew the context in which he is operating.”
“Now you’re being too subtle for me,” said Henry, finishing the potato salad and wishing he had taken more.
“The letters to the papers are certainly curious,” noted Du Maurier, returning to this point. “Whoever heard of a murderer naming himself Jack the Ripper? It’s almost comic, in a morbid sort of way.”
“Yes,” acknowledged Wilde, “the man has a dramatic flair.”
“And some of his locutions,” continued Du Maurier. “The ‘ha ha’ that he puts in the letters, for example, taunting in the most unambiguous terms. It makes one’s skin crawl.”
“It reminds me of Whistler’s laugh, you know,” said the young man next to Wilde, winking at the American woman. “He laughs like that: ‘ha ha.’”
“Quite true; that’s Whistler,” agreed Wilde. “You do it well.” He nodded approvingly at the young man. “Let me try. ‘Ha ha.’ You do it better. Do it again.”
“Ha ha,” repeated the young man.
Everyone laughed.
“Where is that great pretender?” asked Du Maurier. “I mark a distinct absence of preening in the room.”
“He’s on his honeymoon in Paris,” said the young man. “He married his architect’s widow, Beatrice Godwin.”
“Beautiful Beatrice, rich as Croesus,” intoned Wilde.
“Shaw is an ass!” asserted the elderly gentleman suddenly.
“We’re not speaking of Shaw, but of Whistler, Monty,” corrected Wilde.
“Whistler is an ass too,” put in Du Maurier. “Keep him away from me.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” proffered the young man next to Wilde. “After his honeymoon he intends to settle in Paris, where he feels he will be more appreciated. It’s a commendable plan, in my opinion. His art has swayed too far toward the Japanese, and he needs to be recalled to the French influence.”
Henry glanced at the young man for voicing such an informed opinion. He could not place him, but then, his mind was jumbled; a headache had set in. He had a meringue à la crème on his plate along with a chocolate crème and a maraschino jelly. Was he eating too much? Alice maintained that he was and was growing stout. “Corpulent” was the term he preferred. He motioned for the champagne, which he imagined might settle his stomach.
The cheeses had made their appearance, and the sardines. “No sardines, please; they disagree with me.” Why had he said that? It was more than a servant needed to know. He was always doing that—saying too much. He ought to be more reticent, especially with the servants.
Wilde had embarked on another subject. “We must have a dramatic evening next time,” he proposed, and with a nod to the young man beside him: “We can do our music hall turns.”
“But will there be more murders?” asked the American woman, who obviously had no interest in music and preferred the more macabre topic.
“Undoubtedly. If this Ripper fellow is caught and put out of commission, then someone else will have to take them up. Your response is indicative, madam. We have come to view the murders as entertainment. Of course, to keep us interested, they will have to become more gruesome.”
“Oh no!” exclaimed the pretty, impressionable woman.
“Sadly, yes,” said Wilde. “It is in our nature to enjoy atrocity so long as it continues to shock and remains comfortably removed from our own lives. It takes an exceptional sensibility to feel beyond the parameters of self. I know very few so constructed, and I am not one of them.”
Henry acknowledged to himself that he was not either, though his sister, Alice, was. “An apricot,” he instructed the boy who was holding the platter of fruit off to the side. It occurred to him, as the apricot was placed on his plate, how much the servants would enjoy the leftovers. So much food! Would they carry it off to their homes? Where did they live? In the East End, where the murders had happened? And what, he wondered, did this boy’s mother do—washing or sewing or something less reputable? He would not think about it. “A touch of the Madeira,” he instructed the boy.
The ices were being served, and he noted, with a leap of pleasure, that they had pineapple cream, his favorite.
“Will they catch him?” inquired the American woman. “Will he be brought to justice?”
“Justice,” Wilde sneered. “What is justice?”
“The gallows, I should think.”
“Perhaps they will find him if he is a crazed lunatic and bring him to the gallows—but is there justice in that? What would a lunatic care or know about being hanged? And if he’s not a lunatic, then no doubt they won’t catch him. It’s an unsatisfying set of alternatives.”
“You should write about it, Mr. James,” insisted the woman to his left.
“I don’t write about such things,” said Henry. “They are too—”
“Vulgar.” Wilde completed the thought.
Henry did not disagree. His work was a means of keeping the more unseemly aspects of life at bay. Each member of his family had found a way to do this: his older brother through theoretical constructions, his younger brothers through the anesthetic of alcohol and gambling, his sister by taking to her bed. Overall, he preferred his own method: the evasion of art.
He began to eat his ices and tried to make his mind focus on where he was, but he felt dizzy, and the rumblings in his stomach distracted him. He had had too much wine; the sweetbreads (unless it was the oysters) had disagreed with him. He wished he were in his rooms in De Vere Gardens, where Mr. and Mrs. Smith, his invaluable servants (with whom he must learn to be more reticent), would put him to bed. Tomorrow he would work. He had a new project in view—a story about a couple who existed in ghoulish symbiosis, one sapping energy and personality from the other. Marriages, as he had observed them, were brutal arrangements; he was glad he had no truck with them.
But—his mind darted beyond the complacent thought, as it so often did in its drive to complicate—
who
was exempt from brutality? His own imagination was brutal; no knives or hatchets, but brutal nonetheless. He knew it was so, thinking of what he did. In his own way, he knew all about hacking to pieces. Which was why the murders in the East End, horrible though they were, did not shock him. They had their source in the same kind of anger and fear and resentment that coursed through him. He had learned to control such things, to channel them by putting pen to paper. But that excess of words, that devotion to subtlety, wasn’t it, in its own way, mad? Yes, much as he hated to agree with Wilde, he knew that lunacy was a matter of context, and the line separating the novelist and the murderer was not as great as one might think.