by Brandy Purdy
I began buying more and more goods on credit and borrowing money from anyone who would lend it, even one hundred pounds from Mrs. Briggs, and then borrowing more from others to settle those little debts. Then I found myself making excuses, going up to London to visit an old friend or a maiden aunt who was stopping there, and taking pieces of jewelry I rarely wore to pawnshops where no one knew me, things Jim’s sharp eye would never notice missing. But it was only a matter of time before I ran through all those, then I began consorting with professional moneylenders, ruthless men with eyes like sharks, agreeing, in desperation, to exorbitant rates of interest. I was playing for time, just trying to keep our heads above the fast-rising water.
Soon I was writing, pouring out my anguished heart, to Mama:
I am utterly worn out and in such a state of
overstrained nervousness I am hardly fit for
anything. Whenever the doorbell rings I feel ready to
faint for fear it is someone coming to have an
account paid, and when Jim comes home it is with
fear and trembling that I look into his face to see
whether anyone has been to his office about my bills.
My life is a continual state of fear. There is no way of
stemming the current.
Sometimes I wonder: Is life worth living? I would
gladly give up the house tomorrow and move
elsewhere, but Jim says it would ruin him outright.
We must keep up appearances until he has more
capital to fall back on, to meet our liabilities, since a
suspicion aroused would open the floodgates and all
claims upon us would come pouring in all at once
and Jim couldn’t possibly settle even half of it with
what he has now.
Here I have to admit one of my great faults. When it all became too much, even though I knew I was only increasing our woes, I did what I’d been doing for so long—I went shopping. A new handbag with a cameo on the clasp or a pair of yellow satin high heels with diamanté buckles was to me like one of Jim’s arsenical “pick-me-up” tonics was to him. And, after all, Jim said we must act as though nothing had changed, so that meant continuing my sprees at Woollright’s; otherwise, people would talk.
Jim was now, I knew, stopping by the druggist for one of those tonics every morning on his way to his office, then three more times throughout the day, before having the fifth and final one on his way home, and he’d increased the dosage from five to seven drops of the arsenical solution. He’d actually boasted to me about that, as though it were something to be proud of, and that in addition to the white powder in his little silver box and the strychnine tablets he was popping into his mouth like peppermints.
Every time I saw my husband I was afraid it would be the last time. Every time the doorbell rang I was afraid it was either a bill collector or someone come to tell me that Jim had dropped dead on the Cotton Exchange floor after taking one strychnine tablet or pinch of arsenic too many. I’d tried talking to Dr. Hopper about it, and he said he’d make a note that we had had some conversation about it in case my husband should die suddenly. Frankly, I didn’t find that at all comforting and begged him to talk to Jim about it. Afterward, I wished I hadn’t. Jim’s anger was like that serpent slumbering in Cleopatra’s basket of figs. It was a week before I could show my face in public again. By that time, I’d already mastered the art of powdering and rouging over the worst of the bruises. I no longer believed him afterward when he wept, cradled and kissed me, and promised “never again.”
A day finally came when the doorbell did ring and I discovered a debt I never knew about, one that had nothing to do with hats and handbags. In fact, it wasn’t mine at all. It was a debt my husband had hidden from me, a debt dating back to before I was even born.
A blowsy fat woman with hair hennaed redder than a smallpox pustule was standing there, picking with gnawed-to-the-quick fingernails at a striped satin skirt that had clearly not known a laundress’s touch in some time. She stood there, fidgeting and hiccupping, fussing with her feathered hat’s drooping brim, and smelling like a saloon, excusing herself by saying she’d been drinking to get her courage up.
She said her name was Mrs. Sarah Maybrick and she’d come to see her husband—Mr. James Maybrick—to remind him that she and the children, all five of them, had not fallen off the face of the earth, they were still alive, in Whitechapel, where they had always been, and were in dire want of money and wanting to know what had become of the allowance he was accustomed to send. “You must excuse me for comin’ to your door like this,” she said. “I would’ve written ’im a letter, only I can’t write an’ I was too ashamed to ask anyone else to do it for me.”
That was the moment my world fell apart. As darkness engulfed me and I fell I saw it all break apart in myriad flying shards that could never be glued back together again. This time, I knew, when I opened my eyes again my world would not be all right. I’d not only lost my place in the world; I’d had it snatched right out from under my feet like a prankster had pulled a rug out from under me. I’d fallen hard and had all the breath knocked out of me and I lay there gasping and shattered. If that henna-haired slattern was Jim’s rightful wife, then who and what was I? A kept woman, his mistress, his whore?
Unbeknownst to me, when I had been trying on my wedding gown there had already been a Mrs. Maybrick, hidden away in Whitechapel, the worst slum in London, sniveling over a soupbone simmering in a dented pot in a room over a watchmaker’s shop, trying to stretch it enough to feed herself and her children, who then numbered three. They’d come so late in her and Jim’s marriage she said she’d quite given up hope, but once she started she took to it like a rabbit and was popping them out right regular like, and, she patted her belly, she suspected she was expecting a sixth even now. The fourth and fifth, I would later discover, when my senses were restored enough for me to sit down and examine the dates, had been born after Jim married me—a boy two months before Bobo and a girl six months after Gladys.
I came to with my head cradled in the lap of that gaudy, grimy gown with those stubby pink fingers stroking my hair. She was saying that she could tell just by looking at me that I was “a good lady, a nice lady,” and begging me to, out of the goodness of my heart, intercede with my brother on her behalf, as he was apt to be forgetful and neglect them all from time to time, he was such a busy man with his cotton business and all, but that didn’t stop the children from growing or their bellies from grumbling. My brother! Jim had told her he was living in Liverpool with his sister! He didn’t even have a sister! They’d been married some thirty years, since 1858, four years before I was born! Our marriage was a sham! A lie! A sin! Jim was a bigamist and our children, our precious children, a pair of bast—all these years later I still cannot bring myself to write that foul and ugly word!
I don’t know how I got through it—I think I must have said something about feeling quite poorly—but I sent Mrs. Maybrick on her way, to catch the train back to London, promising I would indeed speak to Jim about her. I was still standing there reeling amidst the debris of my shattered marriage and life as I had known it up until the moment Sarah Maybrick knocked upon my door, when Edwin found me.
He crept up behind me and kissed the back of my neck. I didn’t resist him. I didn’t encourage him. But I didn’t discourage him either. Edwin’s hands crept around to cup my breasts through my bottle-green bodice. The next thing I knew we were in the parlor and he was bending me over the back of a Chippendale chair. I heard my skirts rustling, layers of white ruffles and green damask shading my head like a parasol as he pushed them up and pulled my drawers down. He filled me at the moment in my life when I was feeling most empty. But I can’t even pretend to be grateful. The truth is, I didn’t feel a thing. I numbly, dumbly let something happen that never should. I stood there soulless as a dressmaker’s wooden dummy. My first act of adultery was devoid of passion. Edwin took advant
age of the situation—choosing a moment of dumb, numb weakness when I felt like I had lost everything and was still too stunned to react. He was my best friend; he must have known something had to have happened to leave me in this stricken state, so utterly unlike my usual self. My eyes were vacant, I didn’t say one word, and my face must have been drained bloodless as one of Varney’s victims. But did Edwin ask me what was wrong or try to comfort me the way a real friend would? No, he did not. How could he even think that was the right method or moment to start a love affair?
Looking back now, I have to wonder: Did a little part of me—the angry heart of me—decide if I was indeed a whore then I was going to act like one, right there in my keeper’s parlor, and pay him back in kind? If so, I didn’t play the part very well. I didn’t squirm with delight or return Edwin’s kisses. I took no pleasure, feigned or actual, in our intercourse. I just stood there, silently slumped over the chair, with my skirts up over my head. I’d be the Dollar Princess I never really was today if I had a dime for every time I’ve asked myself that question, then shied away from it because I was afraid of the answer. After all, I had always liked Edwin immensely. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, or maybe the opposite is true. You, dear reader, will have to decide, but first take a moment to consider. Put on my shoes, if you will, and imagine that you lost everything you believed in and cherished in a single afternoon. Then, while you were still standing there, dazed and reeling, an amorously inclined man you’d always liked walked in and took you by the hand. What would you do?
In the end, all I know is that if it was revenge, it was not sweet. It cost me something very dear. By succumbing that once, I forever forfeited the pleasure I had formerly found in my brother-in-law’s sweet and silly company. Edwin thought it gave him the right to possess me whenever an opportune moment arose. It ruined our friendship and I dreaded finding myself alone with him because I always knew where it was leading to.
Instead of sitting and chatting or going out like old dear friends the way we used to, after that fateful afternoon Edwin was more likely to chase me around the room, try to pin me down on the sofa, bend me over any convenient table or chair, or back me into a corner where my skirts would quickly come up and my drawers down. He’d paw and kiss me as I wept and implored, “Can’t we be the way we were before?,” though in my heart I already knew the answer.
But Edwin would merely bury his face in my perfumed neck and push my hand down where he wanted it to be and murmur that this way was much better, “the way it was meant to be, the way it would have been if only we’d met each other first . . . but . . . since we didn’t . . . we might as well make the best of things. . . .”
He never once looked at my face, he never saw the way I’d wince and weep, though I doubt it would have made any difference anyway. Maybe that’s why he preferred to take me from behind? It allowed him to feign blindness and pretend I enjoyed it.
I still mourn and miss the friend I lost that afternoon. It was as though the Edwin I knew and liked best had died and left behind a single-minded amorous identical twin to accost and bedevil me. And there was no one I could turn to for help. I couldn’t very well confide in Jim or Mrs. Briggs. With Edwin living right there in the house it was simply impossible to avoid him; to snub and cold-shoulder him in any noticeable fashion would only invite awkward questions. I lost so many things that day—the sanctity of my marriage, all the trust and love I had poured into it and thought I had been given in return, my children’s legitimacy, my self-respect, and my own respectability, the right to say with pride that I had always been a faithful wife. Then, as if that were not enough to lose all in one afternoon, I lost my best friend too. And the worst part is, if I had met him first, instead of Jim, I might have loved Edwin. I had loved him. And, by letting him have me, I had lost him forever.
Bent over the back of that chair, stifled by my tight-laced stays, blood rushing to my skirt-shrouded head, I felt as though I were sinking like a stone, drowning, like salt water was searing my nose, throat, and lungs. I felt that horrid heart-about-to-burst pounding. Then, all of a sudden, it was as though my head broke the surface, and I came up, gasping for air. I shoved Edwin away. Before I could say a word or slap his smiling face, the front door opened and I heard voices, Jim’s amongst them. I froze. Edwin turned his back and nimbly did up his trousers and slicked back his hair. I stumbled over my drawers, down around my ankles, and almost fell. I heard them rip, but I hadn’t time to fuss with hitching up all my many layers of skirts trying to pull them back up, so I snatched them off and stuffed them into the nearest vase and ran to the mirror above the mantel to put right my hair.
With all that had happened, I had quite forgotten that we were expecting guests for cards and dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Samuelson, the Carters, the Radcliffes, Dr. and Mrs. Drysdale, the Hammersmiths, the Dashmores, and, of course, Mrs. Briggs, and the poor man who had the misfortune to call himself her husband. It would be hours before I could talk to Jim in private. Hours in which I would have to smile and pretend and sit there in the parlor playing whist, stark naked under my skirts, aware every moment of the shameful wet heat between my thighs, with Edwin darting secret smiles across the table at me as though we really were lovers and what had passed between us actually meant something more than the end of our friendship.
I did it, but for the life of me I cannot tell you how. If you know the scandal that surrounds my name and are reading this hoping for a guidebook for discreet deceit within a marriage, to learn how a smart, sophisticated woman manages her secret amours, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that was never who I really was or ever wanted to be and I bungled it all so badly. Whatever you do, dear reader, do not pattern yourself after me! The only thing I can offer by way of instruction is my many mistakes, and you’re welcome to take what lessons you can from them.
I smiled and laughed, flirted and chattered like my old frivolous self, but I can’t recollect a single word I said or that was spoken to me. I only know it seems like I spent the entire miserable evening trying not to look at that Blue Willow vase into which I’d thrust my drawers but feeling my eyes drawn inexorably toward it, fearing that the others would notice and someone would rise to admire it, or the flowers within, and discover my guilty secret. I felt like the lovers of the Blue Willow legend, whom the gods had taken pity on and transformed into doves, were laughing at me, mocking my misery with every flap of their happy wings. Love, real love, just isn’t like a fable or a fairy story; the truth intrudes and makes it ugly every time.
Jim, calm and regal as a king in his red velvet dressing gown, with a glass of brandy and a cigar in hand, came in while I was sitting at my dressing table, brushing my hair. I instinctively pulled the gold-crusted bodice of my amethyst velvet dressing gown together over my breasts, the way I would if any man who was not my husband suddenly walked into my room while I was in a state of dishabille. My fingers fumbled over the gold buttons and I stumbled over the voluminous velvet folds pooled around my feet as I stood up and swung round to face him. My dressing gown was cut in a faux medieval style, with slashed-open sleeves hanging down long enough to trail the floor. I was always stumbling over it, but I loved wearing it. Jim said it was “a robe fit for a queen” when I modeled it for him, so he wouldn’t complain when the bill came. I needed all its majesty now to shore me up. I needed a queen’s cast-iron petticoat strength now more than ever before. My bare arms trembled, goose pimples rising, as I stood, braced against my dressing table, staring at Jim as though he were a snake.
He came toward me with a smile and bent to kiss me.
I pulled away. “Your wife came to see me today,” I said.
“My wife is right here,” Jim said, turning me around to face the mirror. He brushed the thick golden curtain of my hair aside, baring my neck, and pressed his lips hungrily to the pulse beating there. His fingers deftly undid my buttons and, in spite of my resolve to be strong, my nipples puckered. He lifted my breast out of my lilac silk nightgown and held
it, cupped tenderly in his palm, caressing the nipple with his thumb, making my knees tremble.
Somehow I found the strength and shoved him away. “Don’t touch me! I don’t know who you are anymore!”
“Bunny!” Jim frowned and reached for me again, but I slapped his hands down.
“I’m talking about your other wife, your first wife!” I said as he stumbled back, staring at me with wide, astonished eyes. “Or have you forgotten all about Sarah Maybrick, the mother of your five other children? Don’t tell me falling in love with me erased thirty years from your mind just like that!” I snapped my fingers in his face. “And two of those babies born after you made your vows to me, and another on the way now by the look of things!”
“Florie!” Jim cried, and came at me again. To my astonishment, he was laughing, there was a smile on his lips, and his arms were open wide. “Do you mean to tell me that Mad Sarah has been here? To this house? I can’t believe it! I didn’t think she had it in her; she’s always been deathly afraid of trains.”
“This very afternoon.” I nodded.
Still laughing, Jim sank down onto the quilted velvet bench of my dressing table and pulled me onto his lap. “Don’t fight,” he admonished, playfully waggling a finger at me, when I resisted. “Sit down and your husband will tell you all about it. . . .”
I was a woman grasping at straws, wanting desperately to believe that there really was some rational explanation, that the shattered fragments of my world could be put back together again. So I sat there stiffly, not nestling into him the way I always used to do, and listened, my arms folded across my chest, giving him a furious, stubborn stare in the mirror.
