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** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
H. Rider Haggard -- My Choice, If Any
Casebook Message Boards: Ripper Suspects: General Discussion :
H. Rider Haggard -- My Choice, If Any
Author: Sarah R. Jacobs
Sunday, 22 December 2002 - 04:34 pm |        | I have been trying to come up with the sort of juicy, irrefutable kibbles & bits most of us have, but I think it's time I handed this lovely at-least-quarter-Jewish sinner over to the Secular Arm before he sells another billion copies of his admittedly-entertaining, though not-quite-King-Barker-et.-al.-level, "adventure-ganda.
Why do I think Haggard did it?
Well:
-- Unlike certain recent americaines, there are any number of ways to prove that Haggard was in Greater London, at the very least, at that point in time. All the sources on his life indicate that he had just returned to England from an ocean voyage to Iceland, by way of Scotland.
-- He detested intelligent women, and also independent women and women who were older than himself; id est, Women Who Held Power Over Him.
How do I know this? Read any of his novels about "heathen" women: They are almost always vampiric, eternal, suffocating beings, of whom, if they had not come earlier, the three dark daughters of Count Dracula would have been paler, less-seductive younger ingenues, and to whom Oscar Wilde's Salome would have conceded any fight for a man's slavish, broken, unwilling and ill-got affections. His Christian women, since they are all either allegorical, silent, or frilly little things with nothing so much more important than serving and being with the Great White Christian Hero on their minds, are tolerated and allowed to serve the (sometimes-to-often hideous but good-hearted) Great Bwana in the mosquito-and-dung-infested holes he picks out as abodes.
Haggard's own wife was not only informed that she was his second choice, but had to live with Haggard in sub-Victorian-par ambassadorial dwellings in Africa, during the second of the Boer Wars. She endured the additional shame of being reminded, every day, when she greeted her beautiful children, that She Was Not Enough: Haggard named their daughter, Lilias, after his first choice, whose nickname was "Lilly."
-- Haggard, in _Allan Quatermain_ (p. 55, year 1887), in words of French cook, "Alphonse," recounting the story of losing his "Annette":
"'My artistic tastes -- for I am also an artist [as well as a cook and deserter of the Foreign Legion]-- recoiled from the idea of being ripped open."
In the words of Nyleptha, the "Queen of the Night," op. cit. 207: "...Forgive me my folly. Ah, what a Queen I should be if only I had no heart! To be heartless -- that is to conquer all. Passion is like the lightning, it is beautiful, and it links the earth to heaven, but alas it blinds!"
Earlier, in the words of Quatermain, about the Queen of the Night (192): " for, indeed, she looked more like an angel out of heaven than a loving, passionate, mortal woman." Quatermain says this in order to explain how he could have fallen prey to his "baser instincts" and actually trusted a woman to love her before first -- what? He does not say.
This is not my whole case, though:
Rider Haggard was, as mentioned elsewhere on this board, the sort of jingoist and what we today would call White Supremacist, that a man whose father, William Meybohm Haggard, was but two generations removed from the shtetl (i.e., Jewish Ghetto-town of the Czarist and Soviet eras) whose escape to cosmopolitan St. Petersburg was the result of perhaps one or two very lucky changes of money. Otherwise, the genetic material that went to make William Haggard (half-Jewish country squire of Norfolk) might have found repose in the nuclei of one of the pogrom fugitives whose people so improved the lot of the teeming East End that Autumn of Terror.
Haggard escapes looking Jewish with a few judicious (no pun intended) swerves in front of the camera.
********Here is where my best evidence to date comes in, if I can find a way to post it: There is a photo of him, plate 11 in Peter Beresford Ellis's _H. Rider Haggard: A Voice from the Infinite_, that looks almost exactly like the mustachioed version of the sketch of JtR provided by the "Daily Telegraph" on 6 October, 1888. The forehead-to-jaw line (which, like the abovementioned photo, is done, quite unconsciously by the artist, in the then-consistently-taught Classical 3/4 view, so comparison results ought to be rather-to-very reliable), when photocopied to make the heads the same size, lines up perfectly, as do the placing and (for the most part) shape and (on all counts) size of facial features. The slope of the shoulders is identical. The look in the eyes, and the slope of the eyes, of the clean-shaven version of the sketch, is the same as the photo.
... Look, I have a whole lot more, but I don't want to keep going if anyone has proof that Haggard was somewhere else.
P.S. One item that would be great to have is a photo of Haggard *in 1888*, the year when he conceived his Icelandic tribute to the Masculine Energy (see "Vril" on the Casebook) of his Saga Hero, _Eric Brighteyes_.
*** |
Author: Christopher T George
Sunday, 22 December 2002 - 08:09 pm | | Hi, Sarah:
Interesting to hear your theory that Sir Henry Rider Haggard might have been the Ripper. One more famous Victorian under the magnifying glass!
Since Haggard's correspondence was, I believe, substantial (I have seen a volume of letters between Haggard and Rudyard Kipling) and he also kept journals, it should be possible to narrow down his movements, if not to remove him entirely from the mantle of Ripper suspect.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Dan Norder
Friday, 27 December 2002 - 09:39 pm | | Hmm, well, not much to go on so far. The first parts, that he was from London and a sexist male, probably only narrows things down to about 50% of the population of London at the time.
As far as the sketch goes, I'm not familiar with it. I couldn't find it posted here, and I don't know how they decided what Jack must look like to even try to make a sketch from. Was it based upon witness descriptions? If so, whose?
If you have pointers to the article, sketch and photo that'd help tremendously.
(And why is it always the artists who get singled out...?)
Dan
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Author: alex chisholm
Saturday, 28 December 2002 - 06:59 am | | Hi Dan
The 6 Oct. Daily Telegraph sketches are reproduced in Evans & Skinner’s “Ultimate Sourcebook” between pages 340 & 341. They can also be found in “News from Whitechapel” p. 125, where the accompanying report reads:
“The above sketches are presented not, of course, as authentic portraits, but as a likeness which an important witness has identified as that of the man who was seen talking to the murdered woman in Berner-street and its vicinity until within a quarter of an hour of the time when she was killed last Sunday morning. Three men, William Marshall, James Brown, both labourers, and Police-constable Smith, have already stated before the coroner that a man and woman did stand in Fairclough-street, at the corner of Berner-street, for some time - that is, from a quarter to twelve o'clock, as stated by Marshall, to a quarter before one a.m., the hour mentioned by Brown. The policeman appears to have seen the same pair in Berner-street at half-past twelve. The evidence of another witness has yet to be taken, and this man seems to have had a better opportunity of observing the appearance of the stranger than any other individual, for it was at his shop that the grapes which other witnesses saw near the body were bought. This witness, Mathew Packer, has furnished information to the Scotland-yard authorities, and it was considered so important that he was examined in the presence of Sir Charles Warren himself. He has also identified the body of Elizabeth Stride as that of the woman who accompanied the man who came to his shop, not long before midnight on Saturday. In accordance with the general description furnished to the police by Packer and others, a number of sketches were prepared, portraying men of different nationalities, ages, and ranks of life. These were submitted to Packer, who unhesitatingly selected one of these here reproduced - the portrait of the man without the moustache, and wearing the soft felt or American hat. Further, in order to remove all doubt, and, if possible, to obtain a still better visible guidance, Packer was shown a considerable collection of photographs, and from these, after careful inspection, he picked out one which corresponded in all important respects to the sketch. It was noticed that Packer, as also another important witness, presently to be mentioned, at once rejected the faces of men of purely sensuous type, and that they thus threw aside the portraits of several noted American criminals. Both witnesses inclined to the belief that the man's age was not more than thirty, in which estimate they were supported by the police-constable, who guessed him to be twenty-eight. If the impressions of two men, who, it may be supposed, have actually conversed with the alleged murderer, be correct, and their recollection of his features can be relied upon, then, in their opinion, at all events, the above sketches furnish a reasonably accurate representation of his general appearance as described and adopted by them. It is possible that, with the aid of these drawings, many persons who may also have met the man may be able to recognise him more easily than by reading the bare particulars of his height, dress, &c., and it is for this reason that we publish them.”
The following reasonably comparable image of Haggard can be found at
http://www.btinternet.com/~britishempire/empire/biography/haggard.htm
Best Wishes
alex |
Author: alex chisholm
Saturday, 28 December 2002 - 08:48 am | | 6 Oct. 1888 Daily Telegraph sketches from The Ultimate Sourcebook p. 340-341
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Author: Dan Norder
Saturday, 28 December 2002 - 12:36 pm | | Thanks for the info and the pics. I don't really see the resemblence, and I can't really see naming someone (especially another famous creative artist) on a perceived similarity to a sketch that could be just about anyone and may not even be a description of the killer anyway.
Maybe I missed it, but was this supposed to be the grape buyer or the attacker? Which of those was supposed to be Stride's killer? And how do we know Stride's killer was Jack the Ripper?
Dan
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Author: Philip Rayner
Tuesday, 31 December 2002 - 09:14 am | | Hey don't knock this theory, it has more evidence in one thread than in an entire book I recently read.
Case closed Sarah? |
Author: Sarah R. Jacobs
Wednesday, 01 January 2003 - 08:43 pm | | | No. Case far from closed. I hope. But tomorrow (I hope) I'll be able to use my mom's digital camera to show you the "creepy-a** photo that just plain creeps me out because it looks so much like the sketch." |
Author: alex chisholm
Wednesday, 01 January 2003 - 11:45 pm | | It may be of interest that the Pall Mall Gazette, 7 Sept. 1888, confirms Haggard’s presence in London on 6 Sept. On this night he was called to the stage of the Gaiety Theatre at the close of the opening-night’s performance of “She.”
The following week a “World” interview, extracted in the Pall Mall Gazette, 18 Sept. 1888, has Haggard “At Home” in Ditchingham, Norfolk.
Best wishes
alex |
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