From RipperLady archives

Can you believe this has taken four parts just to get through the opening chapter? Don't worry, though, I'm not going to tackle any more Cornwell for awhile once we're finished here... unless, of course, there's a wild outcry for more, more, more!

Well, last time I posted (I feel like I'm in a serial!), we learned that Sickert may have been sexually mutilated through surgeries in childhood. We also learned that one of the letter writers to Scotland Yard suggested that the Ripper was a sexually mutilated man. And last time, I also cautioned the reader to remember that, no matter how possible, the notion of Sickert's mutilation is a hypothesis, not a known fact.

Yet, Cornwell takes this hypothesis and uses it to speculate on Sickert's frame of mind right before the marriage of his mentor, James Abbott McNeill Whistler. She writes: "The anticipated connubial bliss of [Whistler] must have been disconcerting to his former errand boy-apprentice." And that "Women were a dangerous reminder of an infuriating and humiliating secret that Sickert carried not only to the grave but beyond it, because cremated bodies reveal no tales of the flesh, even if they are exhumed."

It must have been disconcerting? And women were a dangerous reminder of a humiliating secret? Well, for starters, Cornwell has just assumed the certainty of her hypothesis.... even though, as she herself admits, Sickert's cremation makes it impossible to verify. (In fact, she almost implies--or perhaps does imply--that Sickert intentionally had himself cremated to wipe out the evidence of a physical debility that Cornwell is only speculating about). Secondly, she's presuming to have access into Sickert's mind and to know what he must have been thinking, how he must have been experiencing Whistler's marriage. Yet, she has no direct access to that information because Sickert did not keep journals. Perhaps she is channeling Sickert?

Before she gets to the summation of these charges, let's look at what is currently something of a side issue, but which will figure into Cornwell's summation. She mentions that Sickert tended to read only stuff that affected him. He liked to see his name in the paper; he liked to read his own letters to the editor. And he loved to read about crime. In other words, he was somewhat narcissistic (as many artists are), and he was fascinated by crime stories. In fact, he had such an interest in crime that Sickert later drew sketches of murder scenes. Cornwell uses this evidence to damn him with the appellation "Jack the Ripper." She assumes that this fascination is indicative of an unhinged and violent mind. And later in the book, she will argue that some of these artistic renderings may have been drawn of murders committed by the artist himself.