Francis Thompson. The Perfect Suspect.

[MrBarnett]

Hi Gary,

Yes. You are right. Thompson could have appeared deserving all through his time in London and been able to stay for at least five nights. Interesting. I will edit my book to take this into account for future readers. Much appreciated. I wonder, if this is what happened if, he could have done this more than once and have stayed on multiple occasions or if they kept some kind of record of dubious prior applicants.

Richard.

He was probably different enough to have stuck in the mind of those who encountered him, so I doubt he could have pulled that stunt too many times.

[MrBarnett]

Thanks Gary. The Tablet does have many articles on Providence Row. It is possible that Thompson may have given the Row the name of the landlord of his Chelsea prostitute, although I wonder if him referencing a Prostitute's landlord would have been the best way to introduce himself to a nun if he wanted entry. Here is the link for what it's worth to the 1926 Darkest London book by Mrs Chesterton which details conditions at the Row. The link is for the relevant chapter.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?...ew=1up;seq=245

The Chesterton link describes an even laxer regime. The women simply had to give their names to be admitted for five days.

As you say, though, that was 1926.

[Abby Normal]

moving over from the other thread..

Thanks Richard for the reply. Can you elaborate a little on where he was living during the autumn of terror? when mary Kelly was murdered he was living on her street?

I though he was basically homeless, living in rags on the street, during the WC murders in the fall of 88??

[miss marple]

I have just picked up from my local second hand book seller, The letters of Francis Thompson edited by Walsh and Francis Thompson and Wilfred Maynell a memoir by Viola Maynell.
Look foward to reading them. Lovely painting of Thompson in the memoir, he looks a sensitive soul. Will try and post it.

Miss Marple

[miss marple]

I tried to up load a picture but I am being told the file is too big. This always happens, its very frustrating.

Miss Marple

[MrBarnett]

I have just picked up from my local second hand book seller, The letters of Francis Thompson edited by Walsh and Francis Thompson and Wilfred Maynell a memoir by Violet Maynell.
Look foward to reading them. Lovely painting of Thompson in the memoir, he looks a sensitive soul. Will try and post it.

Miss Marple

Hi Miss M,

It's funny the effect this subject has on your library. I've now got the 3 volumes of Thompson's works, and the Meynell and Walsh biographies. (I've also got two books about Pickfords!)

Thompson is certainly an interesting character.

Let us know if you find anything interesting in the letters in particular.

Gary

[miss marple]

Just glancing through,most of the letters are post 1890. There is one in Feb 87 to Wilfred Maynell and just one in april 88 also to Maynell they are about articles he is sending to Maynell. They are fairly short letters. In the second one he refers to the Passion of Mary, one of his verses that is appearing in an issue of 'Merrie England' He says in the postscript' that a flood-tide of misfortune rolled over me leaving me no leisure to occupy myself with what i regard an attempt that has hopelessly failed. Hence my subsequent silence'
He had not recieved a reply from Maynell to the first letter.

Miss Marple

[Richard Patterson]

moving over from the other thread..

Thanks Richard for the reply. Can you elaborate a little on where he was living during the autumn of terror? when mary Kelly was murdered he was living on her street?

I though he was basically homeless, living in rags on the street, during the WC murders in the fall of 88??

Happy to reply Abby,

I believe that when Kelly was murdered he was living in Providence Row, but this would have been only a short time. Three weeks at the most. He also used the newly opened Salvation Army shelter in Limehouse. By the end of August 1888, he had been offered accommodation by his recently acquainted editor but Thompson refused to leave the streets. He claimed that he did not want to give up his hope that he would find his prostitute who had left him. Thompson's postal address was the Charring Cross post office however it appears that by the 2nd half of 1888, he no longer claimed his mail.

Thompson certainly was not in rags by August 1888, because his editor had already been paid a small sum of money for some essays. His editor had also who also bought Thompson a new suit, allowed him to wash at his house and gave him meals. By November, with Thompson, who could not keep a new suit for very long would have appeared disheveled, but not homeless.

Richard.

[Richard Patterson]

Just glancing through,most of the letters are post 1890. There is one in Feb 87 to Wilfred Maynell and just one in april 88 also to Maynell they are about articles he is sending to Maynell. They are fairly short letters. In the second one he refers to the Passion of Mary, one of his verses that is appearing in an issue of 'Merrie England' He says in the postscript' that a flood-tide of misfortune rolled over me leaving me no leisure to occupy myself with what i regard an attempt that has hopelessly failed. Hence my subsequent silence'
He had not recieved a reply from Maynell to the first letter.

Miss Marple

An interesting poem, 'The Passion of Mary' I can see why it may have caught the eye of a Catholic editor. This poem, along with his ‘Witch Babies’ murder poem, was sent, in February of 1887, to his future editor Wilfrid Meynell. In the poem, Thompson described the mother of Christ, bleeding to death from the five wounds. A flood tide of misfortune imaged as a flood tide of blood. Here's a bit of it.

‘Thou hung'st in loving agony,…
'The red rose of this Passion-tide
 Doth take a deeper hue from thee,
In the five wounds of Jesus dyed,
And in thy bleeding thoughts, Mary...
O thou who dwellest in the day!
 Behold, I pace amidst the gloom,
 Darkness is ever round my way
 with little space for sunbeam-room!’

Richard.

[Ausgirl]

An interesting poem, 'The Passion of Mary' I can see why it may have caught the eye of a Catholic editor. This poem, along with his ‘Witch Babies’ murder poem, was sent, in February of 1887, to his future editor Wilfrid Meynell. In the poem, Thompson described the mother of Christ, bleeding to death from the five wounds. A flood tide of misfortune imaged as a flood tide of blood. Here's a bit of it.

‘Thou hung'st in loving agony,…
'The red rose of this Passion-tide
 Doth take a deeper hue from thee,
In the five wounds of Jesus dyed,
And in thy bleeding thoughts, Mary...
O thou who dwellest in the day!
 Behold, I pace amidst the gloom,
 Darkness is ever round my way
 with little space for sunbeam-room!’

Richard.

Um.. no?

I think he means she was "dyed" red with the blood of Christ, ie, as she cradled his body after his death. The poem is about her surviving her son's death, the "harder way of Calvary" being the difficulty of having to carry on without him, until she herself passed away and joined him in Heaven.

So kind of the opposite of "bleeding to death from five wounds"..

[Richard Patterson]

Um.. no?

I think he means she was "dyed" red with the blood of Christ, ie, as she cradled his body after his death. The poem is about her surviving her son's death, the "harder way of Calvary" being the difficulty of having to carry on without him, until she herself passed away and joined him in Heaven.

So kind of the opposite of "bleeding to death from five wounds"..

You are right Ausgirl, but then the poem isn't metaphoric, even if the title is.

[Pcdunn]

I'm sorry-- NOT metaphorical?!

You are right Ausgirl, but then the poem isn't metaphoric, even if the title is.

Excuse me, Richard, but have you ever read or studied religious poetry of any era? I think you should know that Catholic poets are some of the most metaphorical / mystical writers around, and even if Thompson said his poems are "a diary" of sorts, he may very well mean in a metaphorical, internal world, sort of a way.

You look at the "Hound of Heaven" and tell me if that really means Thompson was being pursued by a giant angelic dog or not!

[Richard Patterson]

Excuse me, Richard, but have you ever read or studied religious poetry of any era? I think you should know that Catholic poets are some of the most metaphorical / mystical writers around, and even if Thompson said his poems are "a diary" of sorts, he may very well mean in a metaphorical, internal world, sort of a way.

You look at the "Hound of Heaven" and tell me if that really means Thompson was being pursued by a giant angelic dog or not!

Should we have a discussion on what I know about poetry? You may want to read up on what academics write about Thompson and that his verse are more biographical than almost any other Victorian poet. When Thompson, who was a student priest, says that his poems were confessions of real things, I make no assumptions 'of sorts' and 'may very well'. Of course I guess you will say this mystical poet was writing in solely in metaphor when he wrote to his editor the following about his poems.

'I am painfully conscious that they display me, in every respect, at my morally weakest...often verse written as I write it is nothing less than a confessional, a confessional far more intimate than the sacerdotal [religious] one. That touches only your sins....if I wrote further in poetry, I should write down my own fame.

’ {Letters p29}

Of course it not just I who says Thompson's poems were autobiographical. You may wish to read a master thesis from the Catholic Loyola University Chicago, that holds that Thompson's poems are so autobiographical that it almost impossible to understand his poetry, so full are they of references to his personal life, without studying the life of the poet.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ce5...fe525062ef.pdf

[jerryd]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the work you have done on Francis Thompson. It's peaked my interest in him.

It seems to me that Thompson spent his time, at least by the information written by Meynell and others, in the West-end. He used the Charing Cross Post Office as a mailbox and another one in Essex Street closer to the embankment.

From, The Life of Francis Thompson

His bed was made according to his fortune. If he had no money, it was the Embankment; if he had a shilling, he could choose his lodging ; if he had fourpence, he was obliged to tramp to Blackfriars.

I also found another write up by John Craig in, Catholic World, Volume 115 [page 662], which mentions the prostitute he met and how she took care of him after he was run over by a cab. She nursed him to health, then left him. https://books.google.com/books?id=rg...201888&f=false

I do see a parallel with Thompson and Forbes Winslow's suspect in his Forty Years of Recollections. Winslow's suspect was a lodger and visited St. Paul's Cathedral every morning at 8 a.m. This sounds like something Thompson would have done considering he was thinking about becoming clergy at one point and St. Pauls was fairly close to Drury Lane where he was known to buy his opium. Also of interest is the letter Winslow supposedly received. The P.S.R. Lunigi letter. The writer requested a reply to the Charing Cross Post Office and gave an address of 22, Hammersmith Road, Chelsea. Winslow said the address did not exist. That sounded very familiar to Thompson's request to Meynell to reply to Charing Cross Post Office for the manuscripts he sent in.

Didn't Thompson meet his prostitute friend in Chelsea?

Also from, The Life of Francis Thompson,

In a common lodging-house he met and had talk with the man who was supposed by the group about the fire to be a murderer uncaught. And when it was not in a common lodging-house, it was at a Shelter or Refuge that he would lie in one of the oblong boxes without lids, containing a mattress and a leathern apron or coverlet, that are the fashion, he says, in all Refuges.

I'm sure this is referring to the man you referenced earlier in the thread whom Francis nicknamed by initials, D.I. The leather apron comment was interesting too.

[Richard Patterson]

Hi Jerryd

Thanks for the compliment on my work done. You provide a lot of food for thought. Yes Thompson's prostitute did live in Cheslea. I have also pondered the parallels between the Winslow suspect. The connection first occurred to me when I read The English writer Robert Thurston Hopkins book, “Life and Death at the Old Bailey,” and the chapter within it, “Shadowing The Shadow Of A Murderer,” which begins with the idea that Ripper was motivated by religious fanaticism. This is of interest considering Thompson, was an obsessive religionist. Hopkins wrote of Forbes Winslow's account of the man seen outside St. Pauls Cathedral. Winslow was convinced that the man was a ‘religious homicidal monomaniac.’ Hopkins said that the police did not take Winslow seriously and press reports on it scared the suspect into hiding. I have wondered if this was Thompson. The Winslow suspect, like Thompson, was a medical student. He also, like Thompson had blue eyes, but the only thing that prevented my from looking further into this is simply that Thompson was a Catholic but St. Pauls is an Anglican church. I think too that Winslow student was named as someone else. It might be just a coincidence but there are some strange parallels like you say.

Richard.