The Ripper's Wife(21)

So on Dr. Hopper’s advice and with Jim’s blessing I restricted my socializing to weekly at-home dinner and card parties with a few carefully chosen guests and an occasional night out at the theater or opera. The dreaded making and receiving of calls I could easily avoid by claiming, often quite truthfully, that my condition made me woefully unwell.

The rest of the time I sat in the sweet solitude of my beautiful blue bedroom or the parlor with my kitten, reading the latest novels and magazines. I even read some of the delightfully awful penny dreadfuls, like Varney, the Vampire and Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, that Edwin always left lying about like a tomcat marking his progress through the house. And I had my nursery to decorate! At last I had the Mother Goose wallpaper and yellow gingham curtains I had been dreaming about!

I spent many happy hours crocheting dainty baby booties and coats trimmed with silk ribbons in various pastel shades so they would be suitable for either sex. I wanted to make all the clothes my baby would wear, so he, or she, would feel my love in every stitch. I did have some skill with a needle after all, and I loved doing delicate and elegant fancywork like this, but Jim insisted that our son—he was certain our firstborn would be a boy—be completely outfitted with nothing but the finest from the best department stores and Mama deluged us with baby clothes from Paris and little lace-trimmed gowns made by nuns in secluded Swiss convents perched high in the Alps. She even sent us a suite of Black Forest Furniture carved from heavy dark walnut, in which playful bears climbed and hugged the legs of the various pieces.

And throughout every day I was constantly caressing the beautiful imperial-green jade ring encircled by emeralds and diamonds that Jim had given me. As soon as he knew I was expecting he had commissioned it specially from the jeweler. Always a believer in luck, and charms to lure it, Jim had heard or read somewhere that expectant mothers in China wore rings set with a great big jade cabochon mimicking the shape of a pregnant belly, which they stroked continuously for luck. Even before that, he had given me a charm bracelet with two dozen beautiful dangling gold, silver, jeweled, and enameled lucky charms from all around the world. There was even a silver dolphin to remind me of the one we had seen that beautiful dawn aboard the Baltic. Truly, with my big jade ring on my finger, my luck-laden bracelet on my wrist, Jim at my side, and his baby in my belly, I felt like I really must be the luckiest woman in the world.

Every afternoon I liked to go out for a walk, but as my condition became more prominent Mrs. Briggs took it upon herself to take me aside and explain to me, in slow, carefully chosen words better suited to a simpleton, that in England expectant ladies did not show themselves in public.

I resented her interference. I was fully mindful of the proprieties and had already equipped myself with the best set of maternity stays money could buy and I had had several lovely loose silk wrapper-style or Watteau draped dresses made, a smart green and white tartan skirt and jacket for afternoon calls and shopping, and a beautiful black satin empire-waisted evening gown draped from the collar down with black lace to wear on those increasingly rare evenings out. Dearest Mama had also sent me a similar frock of midnight-blue satin veiled with a fine, sheer black netting embellished all over with faceted jet beads and pastel-rainbow-flashing black peacock pearls. And whenever I went out for my afternoon walk I always wore my coat-cloak, which covered me like a tent. It was made of mauve merino trimmed with a bold broad turquoise border along the wide bell sleeves and voluminous hem and had a row of carved turquoise rose buttons down the front. Though Mrs. Briggs deplored it as “too flamboyant,” it always made me smile and feel good to wear it. Jim loved the way my walks and my joy in my coat-cloak put the pink back into my cheeks and every day had a messenger boy from a flower shop deliver a cheery corsage for me to wear upon the lapel.

After the initial sickness had passed, it was, overall, a calm and joyful pregnancy. The only sad moment came when we received word from Paris that my brother, Holbrook, had died suddenly. He had kept his illness secret, even from Mama. He was only twenty-five. Dr. Hopper and Jim concurred it would be unwise for me to travel, so Jim attended the funeral service for both of us. The day of the funeral I sat alone in my bedroom all day with Holbrook’s picture beside me, holding the black-bordered card inscribed Fell Asleep in God beneath an engraving of a slumbering angel. I smiled through my tears remembering all the happy times I had spent with Holbrook. I was very lucky to have had such a kind and gentle, fun-loving brother. We’d been friends as well as siblings. Despite being called the “Alabama Adonis,” Holbrook didn’t have a vain or arrogant bone in his body, and by that time I had known enough handsome men to know just how rare and special he truly was.





My son was born on March 24, 1882. I remember vividly even after all these years the searing, flesh-tearing red pain. My sense of decorum entirely deserted me. I screamed and screamed. I writhed, twisted, contorted, and exposed myself shamefully, willingly assuming the most undignified and embarrassing positions when Dr. Hopper asked me to, anything to end my agony. My body disgraced me in every way imaginable. I thought I was going to die. When Mrs. Briggs came in to warn me that the neighbors would hear me, I threw my chamber pot right at her head. I am both sorry and glad to say I missed her, though the flying splatter quite ruined her dress.

Then it was over. One last push, and he slithered out of me, and I fell back exhausted and immensely relieved to find that after all that I was still alive.