Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed - Softcover

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Monday, August 6, 1888, was a bank holiday in London. The city

was a carnival of wondrous things to do for as little as pennies

if one could spare a few.

The bells of Windsor’s Parish Church and St. George’s Chapel rang

throughout the day. Ships were dressed in flags, and royal salutes boomed

from cannons to celebrate the Duke of Edinburgh’s forty-fourth birthday.

The Crystal Palace offered a dazzling spectrum of special programs:

organ recitals, military band concerts, a “monster display of fireworks,”

a grand fairy ballet, ventriloquists, and “world famous minstrel performances.”

Madame Tussaud’s featured a special wax model of Frederick

II lying in state and, of course, the ever-popular Chamber of Horrors.

Other delicious horrors awaited those who could afford theater tickets

and were in the mood for a morality play or just a good old-fashioned

fright. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was playing to sold-out houses. The famous

American actor Richard Mansfield was brilliant as Jekyll and Hyde

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at Henry Irving’s Lyceum, and the Opera Comique had its version, too,

although poorly reviewed and in the midst of a scandal because the theater

had adapted Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel without permission.

On this bank holiday there were horse and cattle shows; special

“cheap rates” on trains; and the bazaars in Covent Garden overflowing

with Sheffield plates, gold, jewelry, used military uniforms. If one wanted

to pretend to be a soldier on this relaxed but rowdy day, he could do so

with little expense and no questions asked. Or one could impersonate a

copper by renting an authentic Metropolitan Police uniform from Angel’s

Theatrical Costumes in Camden Town, scarcely a two-mile stroll from

where the handsome Walter Richard Sickert lived.

Twenty-eight-year-old Sickert had given up his obscure acting career

for the higher calling of art. He was a painter, an etcher, a student of

James McNeill Whistler, and a disciple of Edgar Degas. Young Sickert

was himself a work of art: slender, with a strong upper body from swimming,

a perfectly angled nose and jaw, thick wavy blond hair, and blue

eyes that were as inscrutable and penetrating as his secret thoughts and

piercing mind. One might almost have called him pretty, except for his

mouth, which could narrow into a hard, cruel line. His precise height is

unknown, but a friend of his described him as a little above average. Photographs

and several items of clothing donated to the Tate Gallery

Archive in the 1980s suggest he was probably five foot eight or nine.

Sickert was fluent in German, English, French, and Italian. He knew

Latin well enough to teach it to friends, and he was well acquainted with

Danish and Greek and possibly knew a smattering of Spanish and Portuguese.

He was said to read the classics in their original languages, but

he didn’t always finish a book once he started it. It wasn’t uncommon to

find dozens of novels strewn about, opened to the last page that had

snagged his interest. Mostly, Sickert was addicted to newspapers,

tabloids, and journals.

Until his death in 1942, his studios and studies looked like a recycling

center for just about every bit of newsprint to roll off the European

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presses. One might ask how any hard-working person could find time to

go through four, five, six, ten newspapers a day, but Sickert had a

method. He didn’t bother with what didn’t interest him, whether it was

politics, economics, world affairs, wars, or people. Nothing mattered to

Sickert unless it somehow affected Sickert.

He usually preferred to read about the latest entertainment to come

to town, to scrutinize art critiques, to turn quickly to any story about

crime, and to search for his own name if there was any reason it might

be in print on a given day. He was fond of letters to the editor, especially

ones he wrote and signed with a pseudonym. Sickert relished knowing

what other people were doing, especially in the privacy of their own notalways-

so-tidy Victorian lives. “Write, write, write!” he would beg his

friends. “Tell me in detail all sorts of things, things that have amused you

and how and when and where, and all sorts of gossip about every one.”

Sickert despised the upper class, but he was a star stalker. He somehow

managed to hobnob with the major celebrities of the day: Henry Irving

and Ellen Terry, Aubrey Beardsley, Henry James, Max Beerbohm,

Oscar Wilde, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Rodin, André Gide, Édouard Dujardin,

Proust, Members of Parliament. But he did not necessarily know

many of them, and no one—famous or otherwise—ever really knew him.

Not even his first wife, Ellen, who would turn forty in less than two

weeks. Sickert may not have given much thought to his wife’s birthday

on this bank holiday, but it was extremely unlikely he had forgotten it.

He was much admired for his amazing memory. Throughout his life

he would amuse dinner guests by performing long passages of musicals

and plays, dressed for the parts, his recitations flawless. Sickert would

not have forgotten that Ellen’s birthday was August 18th and a very easy

occasion to ruin. Maybe he would “forget.” Maybe he would vanish into

one of his secret rented hovels that he called studios. Maybe he would

take Ellen to a romantic café in Soho and leave her alone at the table

while he dashed off to a music hall and then stayed out the rest of the

night. Ellen loved Sickert all her sad life, despite his cold heart, his patho-

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logical lying, his self-centeredness, and his habit of disappearing for

days—even weeks—without warning or explanation.

Walter Sickert was an actor by nature more than by virtue of employment.

He lived on the center stage of his secret, fantasy-driven life

and was just as comfortable moving about unnoticed in the deep shadows

of isolated streets as he was in the midst of throbbing crowds. He

had a great range of voice and was a master of greasepaint and wardrobe.

So gifted at disguise was he that as a boy he often went about unrecognized

by his neighbors and family.

Throughout his long and celebrated life, he was notorious for constantly

changing his appearance with a variety of beards and mustaches,

for his bizarre dress that in some cases constituted costumes, for his hairstyles—

including shaving his head. He was, wrote French artist and

friend Jacques-Emile Blanche, a “Proteus.” Sickert’s “genius for camouflage

in dress, in the fashion of wearing his hair, and in his manner of

speaking rival Fregoli’s,” Blanche recalled. In a portrait Wilson Steer

painted of Sickert in 1890, Sickert sports a phony-looking mustache that

resembles a squirrel’s tail pasted above his mouth.

He also had a penchant for changing his name. His acting career,

paintings, etchings, drawings, and prolific letters to colleagues, friends,

and newspapers reveal many personas: Mr. Nemo (Latin for “Mr. Nobody”),

An Enthusiast, A Whistlerite, Your Art Critic, An Outsider, Walter

Sickert, Sickert, Walter R. Sickert, Richard Sickert, W. R. Sickert,

W.S., R.S., S., Dick, W. St., Rd. Sickert LL.D., R.St. A.R.A., and RDSt

A.R.A.

Sickert did not write his memoirs, keep a diary or calendar, or date

most of his letters or works of art, so it is difficult to know where he was

or what he was doing on or during any given day, week, month, or even

year. I could find no record of his whereabouts or activities on August 6,

1888, but there is no reason to suspect...