The Ripper's Wife(2)
Every love has its own peculiar story tied up with disparate, desperate bows of melodrama, madness, romance, tragedy, passion, pain, and farce, sacrifice and gluttony, tenderness and grace, honor and deceit, punishment and pleasure, sanctity and sin, the bland, ho-hum ordinary and penny-dreadful thrills, where vengeance and bliss sometimes sleep side by side in the same bed. Pure or profane, every love exacts a beautiful or bitter price. It always takes some toll, whether it be a pittance or a fortune, like a tax upon the hearts of those who tender, reject, or receive it. Love always leaves a mark: a scar, a smudge, a stain. Even those who long for love but lack it cannot escape unmarked.
It’s been on my mind so much these last few days, tugging at me so urgently, shaking me, whenever I try to rest or sit idle for too long, with a cat on my lap, dreaming over faded photographs and movie magazines, making me feel like I’m waking up with the house on fire when all I want to do is sleep, to go on waltzing with the ghosts in my dreams. Dreaming of what was and what might have been . . .
I’ve been thinking about forgiveness, forgetting, and living with, and living without, monsters masquerading as mild-mannered men and the strange angels the Lord sometimes sends, even to those who seem, at first glance, the most unworthy of them, and all the strange, terrible, and beautiful creatures that lie in between the blackest black and the whitest white, and all the many shades of gray that bridge the gulf in between, tattered yellow newspapers, faded photographs of the dead, those who are gone and lost forever, and flickering images, larger than life and platinum precious, projected, like magic, on a screen.
My name is Florence Elizabeth Chandler Maybrick. My family and friends called me Florie, but, when he loved me he called me Bunny. I was Jack the Ripper’s wife, maybe even the reason, as a clever rhymester once wrote, a man who was society’s pillar became a killer. This is our own peculiar story.
Florence Maybrick
Gaylordsville, Connecticut
October 7, 1941—may this be a lucky day for beginning this endeavor. God give me the strength and courage to see it through!
1
It began with a shipboard romance, the sort of thing you might find in any romantic novel, play, or film. From time immemorial it always seems to have been the rule that when presenting romance to the masses, the hero and heroine must meet in a memorable manner, something amusing, adorable, or antagonistic, that will spawn an entertaining anecdote they can regale their friends and relations with for years to come. But happily ever after really depends upon where you end your story.
Did you ever sit and wonder what happens to the lovers locked in a passionate embrace after the gilt-fringed curtain goes down or the words The End appear upon the silver screen? Does Prince Charming really love and adore his Cinderella forevermore, forsaking all others as long as they both shall live, till death they do part? Or does he, sooner or later, exert his royal and manly prerogative and take a mistress, an ambitious lady-in-waiting, a buxom, bawdy laundress, or a pretty little actress perhaps? Are we really expected to believe that the noble bluebloods of the court accept a former servant girl as their queen? The young and na?ve never think or worry about such things; when you’re only eighteen it’s easy to believe in love lasting “forever” and “happily ever after.”
The setting was picture-postcard perfect—a spick-and-span new steamship, part of the prestigious White Star Line, all fresh paint, varnish, and high-gloss polish, a veritable floating palace, with a buff-colored funnel belching steam high above our heads, regally bearing us across the ocean from New York to Liverpool. The SS Baltic might have steamed right off one of those popular souvenir postcards almost everyone in those days collected. It was all that perfect—gilt-edged perfect! It was the perfect place to fall in love!
Looking back now, in hindsight after six decades, if I were to cast the movie of my life, I might have been pert, blond, and vivacious Carole Lombard, champagne bubbly in a bustle and ringlets with an Alabama belle’s molasses accent, dense and sweet, and he might have been dignified and debonair, sedately suave William Powell, a little staid and stodgy perhaps—some might even have gone so far as to call him “pompous”—but with a ready smile, a wry sense of humor, and a twinkle in his eye. He made my heart flutter and skip like a schoolgirl! With a tall silk hat and a diamond horseshoe sparkling in his silk cravat, dapper in a dark suit straight from Savile Row, patent-leather boots, and immaculate dove-gray gloves and matching spats, he was every inch a gentleman.
I suppose I must sound awfully silly, but every time he looked at me it was like receiving a valentine. Pictures of hearts, Cupids, cooing doves, clasping hands, and bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolates tied up with red and pink satin bows filled my head like a bewildering array of pretty cards on display in a stationer’s shop, and I just didn’t know which one to choose, and in truth I didn’t want to. I wanted them all. I wanted him! He was everything I had ever dreamed of. Or perhaps the sadder and wiser and much older me of today should correct the gauche green girl of yesteryear and say that he represented everything I had ever wanted. In those days, it was all about appearances. In society, style trumped substance every time.
It was March 11, 1880. Like the date inside a wedding ring, it is engraved upon my memory and heart. How could I ever forget? It was the day my life changed forever.
I was eighteen, bubbling over with high castle in the clouds, hopes and champagne dreams—intoxicating, sensuous, thrilling, and sweet. A living doll—I think at almost eighty I’m old enough to say that now without seeming vain—who always saw the world through rose-colored glasses. I was a dainty little thing, with a curvaceous corseted hourglass figure, tiny waist bracketed by generous bosom and hips, dressed in the latest Parisian fashions, with gleaming golden ringlets, violet-blue eyes that provoked my many beaus to say that they would make forget-me-nots droop and weep with envy, sugar-pink rosebud lips just longing to be kissed, the white magnolia blossom skin we women of the South prized so, and ankles and wrists so tiny and trim. I was a delicious little dish!