What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper

Chapter 30

Jane Cobden is here to see you,” said Sally, as a woman in a serge skirt and tweed cape swept into Alice’s bedroom. Jane Cobden was a regal figure, unusually tall with thick red hair and dark blue eyes that seemed to be focused slightly beyond whomever she was talking to, as though her sense of the world could not be satisfied with the here and now. She had a lean, straight body that would have looked austere, had it not been for an unusually large bosom.

“It must be quite a burden for her to be saddled with those things,” Katherine had once noted, and Alice, considering this, had suggested that the physical attribute might reflect an animal side to their friend that, under certain circumstances, could be let loose to surprising effect.

For the time being, however, Jane Cobden seemed to be devoted unswervingly to social amelioration. Her father, Richard Cobden, had also been a noted reformer, but of the old school of gentlemanly diplomacy, chatting and lingering with his friends to get a bill passed or a charity supported. Jane’s style, by contrast, was more vehement and direct. Her life seemed entirely without the element of leisure or laxness, and her visits had the single and unique aim of raising money and awareness for the cause of social justice. In the face of such relentless energy, Alice always felt particularly useless.

“I was told you wanted to see me,” said Jane in a brusque tone. “I came immediately, though I can’t stay long. I am arranging to get qualified teachers for a school outside of London where none of the children are being taught how to read. The single most important issue with regard to alleviating the condition of the poor is literacy.”

“Let me know if you need me to contribute,” said Alice quickly.

Jane gave a short nod, and Alice knew that in a day or so she would receive a note in Jane’s precise block script requesting some small sum for the cause just discussed.

“Since you are busy, I’ll tell you at once the reason I asked your here,” said Alice, knowing that further chitchat was unnecessary. “I want information about someone, and I can’t tell you why. I hope you will accept those conditions.”

“I trust you have good reason for what you want to know,” said Jane, who had the additional virtue of having no interest in anything that didn’t relate to her causes.

“It’s about your sister’s husband, Walter Sickert.”

Jane’s face seemed to go blank for a moment; then her brow furrowed. “An impossible man,” she said shortly. “Why Ellen married him is beyond me.”

“She must have seen something in him.”

“Of course she saw something. He’s a seductive flirt. All my sisters were in love with him and were surprised when he chose Ellen. Maggie is just as pretty and much closer to his age.”

Alice looked curiously at Jane. It was a passionate diatribe, and Jane usually reserved these for the plight of the poor. “You don’t like him,” she said.

“I disapprove of him,” clarified Jane.

“They say he has talent.”

“I have no idea.” Jane’s face had grown flushed, presumably at the notion that such a man might have redeeming virtues. “All I know is that he makes Ellen miserable.”

“Could you be more specific? How does he make her miserable?”

Jane coughed uneasily. “He disappears. Sometimes for weeks on end. Ellen says he has studios, ‘hovels,’ she calls them, throughout the East End, where he paints his ‘subjects,’ the more squalid the better. Here I am, trying desperately to help the poor, and my brother-in-law wants only to paint them.”

“Does your sister know the location of these studios?”

“No, she knows nothing about his whereabouts when he leaves for one of his ‘artistic sojourns,’ as he calls them. He gives her no warning and no sense of when he will return. Yet she always takes him back. It’s beyond me why she does.”

“Perhaps she loves him.”

“That’s what she says,” said Jane, her face growing redder. “It wouldn’t matter so much if she had work of her own. But she was always a clinging, romantic-minded sort of person. Even when Father was alive, she worked out of devotion to him, not for the causes themselves. She says she cannot think in generalizations the way I do, only in particulars. That would be fine if the particular that she settled on had a bit more to recommend him.”

“But perhaps that’s the appeal,” mused Alice. “She views the particular the way you view the general—as a vehicle for reform.”

“She’ll never reform that man. He has no…moral compass.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Alice softly.

“He’s an artist, and artists don’t think in terms of usefulness or justice. It’s not a commendable vocation, in my opinion, as much as some people worship it.”

“Have you seen his work?”

“I don’t care for pictures,” said Jane curtly. “But as I say, his subjects are the people I try to help, the more squalid and miserable, the better. He does portraits too, for income, though those he paints can’t expect to be flattered. They hire him because they’ve heard he has talent and that he may replace Whistler and fetch high prices in a few years. Art is a commodity in this society, like everything else, and what people pay for it rarely corresponds to what it’s worth.”

Alice wondered if Jane would be joining one of the communities that had begun cropping up, where wealth was shared and the children were cared for in common. It struck her as an unpalatable sort of life, but she could imagine that it might produce healthier human specimens.

“You have been extremely helpful,” said Alice, for whom the excitement of what she had learned had begun to make her head ache. She was relieved to think that Jane was probably as eager to go as she was to have her go. “You must come to dinner when you have more time.”

“I never have more time,” said Jane bluntly, “and I don’t take regular meals.”

The idea of not taking regular meals made Alice’s eyes open wide. She herself relied upon regular meals, even if she didn’t eat them, to structure her day.

“But I will send you a prospectus on the project I mentioned earlier. There’s also a woman’s suffrage bill that might interest you.”

“I could write letters,” agreed Alice. “It’s the least I can do, given that I cannot be a crusader like you.”

“We each serve as we can,” said Jane matter-of-factly. There was no hint of irony in her makeup, a fact which Alice, who had grown up in a household thick with irony, much appreciated. Indeed, Jane’s response to Walter Sickert had been helpful not only in supplying a number of suggestive details regarding his life but also in calling into question his character. Other people might have ulterior motives for their dislike, but with Jane, one didn’t worry about such things. One felt confident that she spoke what she believed, plainly and without subterfuge. If she was not a particularly amusing companion, she was a trustworthy one, and that, Alice knew, was a markedly rare attribute in the human population.