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

Chapter 37

The portrait of Alice took longer to complete than expected. Sickert had originally said he would need her for four sittings—or rather lying downs, given her condition—but at the third, he announced that he would need more time, at least two more days, probably three. This was despite his arriving every day promptly and remaining for more than two hours.

Alice had forbidden her brothers to enter the room again, and Katherine remained out of town nursing her sister until the following Sunday. Occasionally Archie or Sally came in with a tray of biscuits or a decanter of port, and Sickert charmed them both by performing snippets from his music hall numbers. But these interruptions were short-lived, and for most of the time Sickert was present, he and Alice were alone.

The week they passed in each other’s company, Alice secretly understood, constituted a romance. She knew that people would laugh at the idea. She was ten years older than he was, bedridden, and plain. She existed, moreover, in a comfortable relationship with Katherine that resembled a long-standing marriage. But her feeling for Sickert was different, closer to the kind of pulse-quickening feeling that she had read about in books and had believed she would never experience.

At the end of each visit, after he put away his paints and covered the portrait with a sheet, he would come over to her bed, take her hand in a rather formal manner, and kiss it, lingering a bit longer than was necessary. The scene, to a superficial eye, was conventional enough. This was a charming young man, handsome and pleased with himself, used to getting women, no matter the age, to fall in love with him. Yet Alice felt that, appearances notwithstanding, he desired her as she desired him. The idea would be too ludicrous to utter aloud, and yet she knew it to be true.

When the picture was finally done, Sickert covered it and prepared to take it away. “I don’t want you to see it until it is framed,” he explained. “The frame marks the end; it says with finality that this bit of reality has been set aside and can no longer be altered. But I should warn you,” he added, “seeing your portrait for the first time can be a shock.”

“I’m sure I will like it,” said Alice. “I am not vain.”

“It’s not a matter of vanity; it’s seeing yourself as someone else does. I’ve known people who say that it’s like seeing themselves in their coffin. I don’t agree. But it can be strange to see how another sees you.”

“I should like to see how you see me.”

“Then be patient.” He was, he said, off to Cornwall for a few days, where he had agreed to meet with a group of old school friends, fellow artists. When he returned, the portrait would be framed, and he would drop it off so they could look at it together.

He walked over to the bed to say good-bye, but this time he did not take her hand as he generally did, but touched her face as he had that first day. He held his hand against her cheek for a long time until she turned her head and kissed his palm. She looked up, and he lowered his face almost to hers, holding it there for a long time. For a moment, she thought he would kiss her, but she flinched slightly, and he pulled back.

“I look forward to seeing how you see me,” she repeated, her voice wistful.

He did not respond but rose from the bed, took the easel in one hand and the painting in the other, and left without another word.

It was just as well that he had gone, Alice thought. Katherine was due back the next day.