The Ripper's Wife

by Brandy Purdy

  The last night of the voyage, our last chance to dine amidst the shining silverware, white linen, and cut-crystal splendor of the first-class dining saloon before we docked in Liverpool, Captain Parsnell stood to make the customary announcement.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “it is my pleasure to inform you that we have made the Atlantic crossing in the usual excellent time upon which the White Star Line prides itself. We have moved at a steady sixteen knots and shall dock in Liverpool in the morning. It has been, I think, as quick a crossing as can be managed by any steamer currently in Her Majesty’s service. Customarily, at this time, I would propose a toast to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, but this evening I wish to first offer another toast. I think perhaps you can guess to what, or should I say, rather, to whom, I refer. . . .”

  He paused to allow some polite chuckles and to give the disapproving dowagers a moment more to glower through their lorgnettes and frown at us. But Jim and I just smiled into each other’s eyes and clasped hands across the table.

  “I raise my glass to the health of two who met aboard this ship only seven days ago. They embarked as strangers, but found romance upon the high seas. This very afternoon they informed me of their intention to wed this summer. A toast, ladies and gentlemen, to the long lives and good health of Miss Florence Chandler and Mr. James Maybrick! A toast to the happy couple—to these two who shall soon become one!”

  Everyone, even those who disapproved most vehemently of our romance, raised their voices and glasses to wish us well. It would have been the epitome of discourtesy to do anything else.

  That night my whole world was rosy and filled with delight. The wine was sweet as nectar and I’m afraid I might have drunk a little too much.

  Long after most of the lights had gone out, Jim and I lingered up on deck, wrapped in black velvet darkness and each other’s arms.

  “I never want this night to end!” I whispered, safe and contented in his embrace. “If I go to bed, I’m afraid when I wake up in the morning it will turn out to have all been just a dream.”

  We watched the golden sun rise over the deep blue sea. When a dolphin broke the surface Jim rubbed his diamond horseshoe and guided my fingers to do the same. Seeing a dolphin meant certain luck. “We’re on a winning streak,” Jim said. “With you at my side I’ll never lose.”

  When he escorted me to my stateroom, lingering for one last long kiss before he let me go, he boldly whispered into my ear, “I dream of the time when I need not leave your side when we say good night, though, in this instance, it is in fact good morning.”

  I was the happiest girl in the world, and I knew Lady Luck was smiling down on me, blessing this venture.

  2

  Jim and I were married on July 27, 1880, at the most elegant church in London, St. James’s in Piccadilly. All the most fashionable people had their weddings there. Members of the Currant Jelly Set, Jim told me, would never even think of being married anywhere else.

  The society columns, to my secret shame, all described me as “an American heiress” and on my wedding day I looked like one, but that did not dispel my fear that someone would come charging up the aisle in the midst of the ceremony, yank my veil off, and denounce me as a fraud. Time and again I wanted to go to Jim, to kneel at his feet and tell him the truth about those two and a half million acres, but the fear of losing him was so great it made my stomach ache. I’d throw down my diamonds on the gaming table but never my heart.

  My gown was from the House of Worth. Nothing less would do, Mama said, and Jim agreed, “It must be Worth, by all means!” in a tone that implied being wed in a gown designed by any other would be the equivalent of being married barefoot in a burlap sack.

  “You shimmer like an angel’s wing!” Mama sighed, wiping a tear from her eye, the first time she saw me in it.

  It was ice-white glacé satin that shimmered just like ice under the sun, embroidered with delicate silvery-white roses and lilies, hundreds of seed pearls and tiny crystals. Embellished lace stretched across my breasts and fell from my shoulders in demure little cape sleeves. The skirt cascaded voluminously over my bustle and flowed out behind me in a raging river of embroidered and beaded satin and lace ruffles, forming a train that four little girls in pink and blue dresses with silk rosebud wreaths on their curly heads would carry.

  This was yet another indulgence my husband-to-be had granted me—blue and pink were my two favorite colors, and I had gone back and forth endlessly trying to decide which color my bridal attendants should wear, provoking the dressmaker at times to hair tearing and tears. Then Jim had come along and dispensed with the dilemma altogether by saying I should divide the attendants in two and have half wear pink and the others wear blue. In the end, I had twelve bridesmaids, half of them gowned in chiffon-draped silks and rose-laden hats in shades ranging from the palest baby’s blush to the most delicious, decadent rich raspberry pink and the other six in hues of blue from delicate aqua to the midnight perfection of the world’s finest sapphires.

  When Mama stepped forward in her dusky-blue lace and satin to drape her very own pearls, a triple strand with a diamond-encrusted gold fleur-de-lis clasp, around my neck there were tears in her eyes even though she was smiling. I had never seen my mother cry, and I fell weeping into her arms. All morning I had felt like my life was only just beginning, but now, like a hammer’s blow from out of the blue, it came crashing down upon me that life as I had always known it was actually ending. My days of roaming the world with Mama were over. I would be saying good-bye to her and Holbrook. Though he would be “just a brief jaunt away” across the Channel in Paris, busy with his medical practice, and whenever the wanderlust did not seize her Mama would be there too, all of a sudden the Channel seemed as gigantic as the Atlantic.

  Mama smiled and dried my tears and chased all my fears away. She made that grossly swollen Channel shrink right back down to size. “A mere pond,” she called it, assuring me that she would always be there whenever I needed her. We had always been not only mother and daughter but dearest friends also, and nothing, not even marriage, could change that, she said, reminding me that I had been with her through three marriages. “We’ve always been together, but now it’s time for you to take center stage, darlin’. It’s time for you to play the wife, an’, in time, someone else will come along to play daughter, an’ you’ll be the mother. But”—she took my face in her hands and gazed deep into my eyes—“no matter what happens, you will always be my daughter.”

  A knock on the door told us it was time. My knees buckled beneath my gown. Suddenly I wanted to sit down on the floor and bawl like a baby. But Mama was there, bearing me up, giving me strength.

  “Just think of it, Florie. You an’ Jim are embarkin’ on a grand adventure!”

  I took a deep breath and stood up straight and Mama walked around me, arranging my veil. Silver and white mingled so closely in its fine mesh I could never decide if it was more silver or white, and little embroidered silver flowers, seed pearls, and crystals encrusted its edges. The mirrors and my mother’s eyes told me that I looked like a princess, and now, I knew, I must behave like one.

  With a nod of approval Mama pressed a bouquet of white lilies and roses framed by scalloped silver-veined lace into my hands, and I walked forward to confidently embrace my destiny.

  “Everythin’ will be all right,” Mama whispered in my ear as she relinquished my arm to Holbrook, to walk me down the aisle, and with all my heart and soul I believed her. Like a sudden summer storm, all my fears had passed.

  The smiling faces of our guests passed by me in a blur. The women’s gowns and feathered hats were like sherbet-colored clouds. Ever afterward whenever someone told me they were at my wedding, I would just nod and smile; I had to take their word for it. Those pink fairy floss clouds my head was wrapped in kept me from even remembering meeting Jim’s brothers, Michael and Edwin, though it was little more than a hasty smile, a “how d’you do?,” and a peck upon the cheek. I couldn’t h
ave described those fellows fifteen minutes later if the police had asked me to. All I saw was the shining bright dream of the future and Jim, standing at the altar, waiting for me in his new suit with a white satin waistcoat embroidered with the same pattern of silver roses and lilies as my gown, and his lucky diamond horseshoe winking at me from his silver silk cravat. I was blind to everything and everyone else.

  When I took my place at his side I smiled and spontaneously reached out and took his hand. “This is the start of a grand adventure!” I whispered.

  “Indeed it is!” Jim agreed with a smile as bright as my own, and squeezed my hand tight.

  As one, we faced forward, toward the future, together, and became man and wife. We never looked back.

  We sped across the Channel. The wind and the tide were with us, like dear old friends wishing us well, hurrying us on to happiness; even the gulls seemed to shout, Godspeed! We made the crossing in four hours and were at the hotel and in our evening clothes just in time to sit down to supper, our first as man and wife.

  I’ll never forget that first meal: rosemary chicken, tender green asparagus, buttery new potatoes rolled in herbs, and a lemon custard cake, a golden marvel of a cake, with custard and lemon jelly between each sumptuous spongy-gold layer, the top drizzled with rich ribbons of the most decadent dark chocolate I had ever tasted. I vowed from the very first bite that every year on our anniversary and whenever we had something special to celebrate this would be our dinner.

  The next eight weeks were heavenly, all kisses and bliss. Every night I fell asleep with my head on my husband’s chest, listening to his heartbeat, soothing and steady, with his arms holding me. Every morning I awakened to a room filled with roses, thinking I had died and gone to Heaven and a perfumed cloud was now my bed. I was in my husband’s arms, and that was heaven to me. The initial pain, the “necessary unpleasantness” Mama had mentioned, was past so quickly it was nothing—Mama had been right; “one faces worse ordeals at the dentist”—and I experienced only pleasure. I recall it all now only in a series of pretty pictures, like an album filled with postcards from days gone by, pictures of a rosy past that may or may not have been real. I don’t know anymore; I just can’t remember it without that soft, romantic, rosy golden glow. Maybe the truth is I don’t want to.

  Though Mama and Holbrook were also in Paris, Jim and I didn’t see them or anyone else we knew. We shunned all society save our own, wanting no one but each other.

  “This,” Jim said, “is our time.”

  “Ours alone,” I agreed.

  Jim took me to Versailles, to view the gilded remains of a vanished world burned and blown away on the hot and violent winds of revolution. I was elated yet, at the same time, so terribly sad when I traversed the Hall of Mirrors, supremely conscious of my shoes echoing upon the marble floor as I followed in the ghostly footsteps of Marie Antoinette.

  To cheer me out of my sudden blue doldrums, Jim pulled me into his arms and began to waltz with me. Seeing my reflection in my sky-blue linen suit and hat, rakishly tilted and crowned with a bevy of weeping blue ostrich plumes, passing in a whirl of swirling skirts and swaying feathers, I forgot—just for a moment—that I was a grown-up married lady and, like a little girl, imagined that I was Marie Antoinette and the belle of the ball all blurred into one.

  Later, I stood outside the Petit Trianon and tried to envision Marie Antoinette in one of her white shepherdess dresses with adoring courtiers surrounding her like a flock of sheep. From the time I was a little girl I had been fascinated by tales of the tragic queen. I had several postcards with her likeness and others evocative of the times in which she had lived pasted in my album. I loved the splendid panniered gowns with their ladders of bows climbing the bodices, billows of lace at the sleeves, like bridal veils for the elbows, and the towering befeathered and bejeweled powdered coiffures. “Dresses decorated like birthday cakes and hair like wedding cakes with sugar roses and swags of candy pearls,” I said to Jim’s amusement as we stood before a wall of gilt-framed portraits. I loved to hear his hearty chuckle, to know that he was laughing with me, not at me.

  I wouldn’t know till afterward, but, as a surprise for me, Jim ordered pretty porcelain plates, figurines, vases, and paintings, charming bric-a-brac, to adorn my bedroom and had it all shipped back to England. He asked an old friend, Mrs. Matilda Briggs, whom he had described as “a marvel of efficiency” and was trusting to oversee the furnishing and decoration of our house, to transform my suite into a little eighteenth-century wonderland for me where I could reign like Marie Antoinette over my own little kingdom.

  In a quaint little antique shop Jim and I found a miniature of a handsome dark-haired man with a haunting, melancholy visage. The shopkeeper said it was Count Axel Fersen, the Queen’s gallant lover, her own dear Swedish Sir Galahad, chivalrous and loyal to the last breath. Jim bought it for me along with a miniature of Marie Antoinette so that these two star-crossed lovers might be reunited to gaze into each other’s eyes from across my crowded whatnot shelf. “You are so good to me!” I cried, and threw my arms around his neck and kissed him right there in front of the shopkeeper.

  In the elegant emporiums, Jim sat proudly, every inch the elegant English gentleman, occupying a gilt chair as though it were a king’s throne. Sometimes there was a glass of wine or a fine cigar in his hand; other times he fiddled idly with his favorite walking stick, the ebony one topped with a substantial golden knob made in the shape of a miniature bust of a rather grim-faced Queen Victoria, his thumb boldly caressing “the old girl’s bosom,” and watched as I paraded past him in the latest Parisian fashions.

  There were gowns for every season and situation. Light and airy sprigged floral and pastel confections trimmed with ruffles, smart suits of soft velvet, raw silk, or crisp linen, afternoon, walking, at home, evening dresses, and riding togs. No plain, boring broadcloth for me, Jim said; I must have violet-blue velvet to match my eyes, with a jabot of lace at my throat and ostrich plumes on my hat. Satins, silks, brocades, damasks, taffetas, chiffons, and velvets in a variety of colors. Jim’s favorite was a gold-lace-festooned ball gown, with a bouquet of red velvet roses on the bustle cascading down onto the train, in his favorite color, arsenic green, against which, he said, my beauty seemed especially strong and vibrant. “The sight of you in that color is like a tonic to me,” he said as I twirled and danced before him.

  He chose a bathing costume of bright coral pink edged in black for me instead of the traditional reserved and respectable white-bordered nautical blue or black. We spent hours selecting marvelous hats, each one as decadent as a dessert, trimmed with feathers, wax fruit, silk flowers, or stuffed birds; high-heeled shoes with almond-point toes; leather boots and boudoir slippers; silk stockings, handbags, gloves, paisley shawls, and parasols; capes, coats, and muffs, sables and ermine; necklaces, brooches, and bracelets; rings for my fingers and bobbing jewels for my ears; ornaments for my hair; lace-trimmed undergarments; silk and lace nightgowns, negligees, and dressing gowns. My favorite was a pale blue peignoir trimmed with wispy, tickling feathers that made me giggle. There was even a gay and daring red and white candy-striped corset with red satin suspenders to hold my stockings up.

  While I laughed and spun before him like a little girl playing dress-up, worry secretly gnawed at the back of my mind. Could we really afford all this? I wanted to ask Jim, but I remembered Mama’s advice about discussing finances, so I bit my tongue. Jim seemed happy; buying me things seemed to give him as much pleasure as it did me, and I didn’t want to spoil it for either of us. If money must be worried about, time enough for that later, I decided. Tomorrow shouldn’t be allowed to spoil today. Right now we’re still dancing; the fiddler can wait to be paid!

  Back at the hotel, with my hair unbound, in a boudoir gown of lavender silk overlaid with sheer white net embroidered with a swarm of shimmering, iridescent pearly-winged butterflies, I sat on Jim’s lap and grew blissfully giddy and dizzy from his countless kisses and the bubbly gol
d champagne from the glass he held to my lips. He fastened a necklace of amethysts framed by golden flowers and opal-winged butterflies around my throat and slid a luscious lavender and creamy mint jade-winged butterfly comb into the “molten gold waves” of my hair and told me how much he loved and adored me before he lowered me onto the polar bear rug before the fire and made love to me until we fell into an exhausted slumber.

  The next day he took me to a photographer’s studio and, holding a pink rose and wearing the cerulean-blue satin and silver lace gown he had bought me and the pearls Mama had given me, I imitated Madame Vigée-Lebrun’s famous portrait of Marie Antoinette. Afterward, an artist would carefully apply colors to tint it. It would always be Jim’s favorite picture of me. He would even take it with him when he traveled without me; it would proudly adorn his desk in a beautiful silver frame until the day he died.

  At the races and gambling tables I stood beside him, breasts heaving, lips parted, with ecstatic excitement, eyes bright and intent upon the horses, cards, ebony-eyed dice, piles of clacking chips as sweet and enticing as candy, or the spinning black and red wheel that could make or break fortunes. Sometimes he won, sometimes he lost, but Jim said that like the diamond horseshoe he felt naked without, I always brought him luck. He had even taken to kissing my hand after I had stroked the horseshoe before he placed his bets.