James Kenneth Stephen (25 February 1859 – 3 February 1892) was an English poet, and tutor to
Prince Albert Victor, eldest son of
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.
Early life
James Kenneth Stephen was the second son of
Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, barrister-at-law, and his wife Mary Richenda Cunningham. Known as 'Jem' among his family and close friends, he was first cousin to
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
(née Stephen), and shared with his cousin symptoms of
bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...
that would afflict him increasingly in later life.
As a youth attending
Eton College
Eton College () is a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1440 by Henry VI under the name ''Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore'',Nevill, p. 3 ff. intended as a sister institution to King's College, ...
as a
King's Scholar
A King's Scholar is a foundation scholar (elected on the basis of good academic performance and usually qualifying for reduced fees) of one of certain public schools. These include Eton College; The King's School, Canterbury; The King's School ...
, Stephen's prodigious size and physical strength helped him prove himself an outstanding player of the
Eton Wall Game
The Eton wall game is a game that originated at and is still played at Eton College. It is played on a strip of ground 5 metres wide and 110 metres long ("The Furrow") next to a slightly curved brick wall ("The Wall") erected in 1717. It is one ...
, representing the Collegers (King's Scholars) on
St. Andrew's Day from 1874 to 1877 and leading the team to victory as Keeper of the College Wall in his final two years. He has been commemorated in a toast raised by College Wall on the eve of St Andrew's Day every year for over a century: "''In Piam Memoriam J.K.S.''"
Stephen developed a reputation as an intellectual, and it was said that he spoke in a pedantic, but highly articulate and entertaining manner. At
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...
, again as a King's Scholar, he continued a flourishing academic career: he was a member of the
Apostles intellectual society, and President of the
Cambridge Union Society
The Cambridge Union Society, also known as the Cambridge Union, is a debating and free speech society in Cambridge, England, and the largest society in the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1815, it is the oldest continuously running debati ...
in the Michaelmas term of 1880, and was made a Fellow of King's College in 1885.
Relationship with Prince Albert Victor
In 1883, Stephen was chosen as the tutor and companion of
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale (Albert Victor Christian Edward; 8 January 1864 – 14 January 1892) was the eldest child of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra) and grandson of the ...
(nicknamed Eddy), the son of the Prince of Wales, and was expected to help raise the prince's poor academic standing before he attended
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...
. Stephen was initially optimistic about tutoring the prince, but by the time the party were to move to Cambridge he had concluded, "I do not think he can possibly derive much benefit from attending lectures at Cambridge ... He hardly knows the meaning of the words ''to read''".
Some biographers have suggested Stephen had romantic feelings for Albert Victor, but the nature of his relationship with Albert Victor is open to question. In 1972, writer
Michael Harrison claimed that a sexual relationship began between tutor and pupil, ending when Prince Eddy was gazetted to the 10th Hussars on 17 June 1885, and resulted in a scandal of which, apparently, little evidence remains.
Accident
Stephen suffered a serious head injury in an accident on 29 December 1886 whilst staying with
Felix Cobbold
Felix Thornley Cobbold (8 September 1841 Ipswich – 6 December 1909) was a British banker, barrister and Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party politician. He was a member of the Ipswich Cobbold family, Cobbold brewing family but not a brewer himsel ...
, at
Felixstowe Lodge, Felixstowe. He suffered a blow to his head and although his physical injuries soon healed, he nevertheless showed signs of psychological injury, exhibiting erratic emotional and mental behaviour.The injury may have exacerbated the
bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...
from which he suffered, a condition also found in his cousin,
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
. Separate descriptions of the accident exist. Virginia Woolf's biographer,
Quentin Bell
Quentin Claudian Stephen Bell (19 August 1910 – 16 December 1996) was an English art historian and author.
Early life
Bell was born in London, the son of Clive Bell and Vanessa Bell (née Stephen), and the nephew of Virginia Woolf (née Ste ...
, says that the family tradition was that Stephen was struck in the head by some object from a moving train. Others claim that Stephen was injured when a horse he was riding shied and backed him into the moving vane of a windmill.
While Stephen originally appeared to have made a complete recovery, it was later discovered that his brain had been permanently damaged and his behaviour became increasingly erratic. Bell relates incidents of Stephen plunging the blade from a sword stick into bread; becoming deluded that he was a painter of great genius; rushing about dangerously in a
hansom cab
The hansom cab is a kind of horse-drawn carriage designed and patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, an architect from York. The vehicle was developed and tested by Hansom in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England. Originally called the Hansom safety ca ...
; and "'on another occasion he appeared at breakfast and announced, as though it were an amusing incident, that the doctors had told him that he would either die or go completely mad.'" Stephen became a patient of physician
Sir William Gull, but his rapid mental and physical decline saw him drift from one project to the next with little focus or interest – outside of completing two volumes of poetry – before he was finally committed to a mental asylum.
Poetry
In 1891, Stephen became a published poet under the initials ''J.K.S.'' with the collections ''Lapsus Calami'' and ''Quo Musa Tendis'' both released that year.
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
...
called him "that genius" and told how he "dealt with
Haggard and me in some stanzas which I would have given much to have written myself". Those stanzas, in which Stephen deplores the state of contemporary writing, appear in his poem 'To R. K.':
Will there never come a season
Which shall rid us from the curse
Of a prose which knows no reason
And an unmelodious verse:
When the world shall cease to wonder
At the genius of an Ass,
And a boy's eccentric blunder
Shall not bring success to pass:
When mankind shall be delivered
From the clash of magazines,
And the inkstand shall be shivered
Into countless smithereens:
When there stands a muzzled stripling,
Mute, beside a muzzled bore:
When the Rudyards cease from Kipling
And the Haggards Ride no more.
"The Last Ride Together (From Her Point of View)" parodies
Robert Browning's "Last Ride Together";
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...
is parodied in "A Grievance"; and
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication '' Lyrical Ballads'' (1798).
Wordsworth's ' ...
in "A Sonnet":
Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
And, Wordsworth, both are thine.
Stephen also took a satirical and occasionally nostalgic approach to his academic life and colleagues. Stephen wrote a satirical pastiche of
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his '' Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,'' published in 1751.
G ...
's "
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" pillorying Eton for being
Tory
A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. The ...
. Stephen was at Cambridge at the same time as the distinguished antiquarian and writer of ghost stories,
M. R. James
Montague Rhodes James (1 August 1862 – 12 June 1936) was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–1918), and of Eton College (1918–1936). He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambrid ...
, and mentions him at the end of a curious
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
celebration of then-current worthies of 'Coll. Regale' (King's College):
Vivat J.K. Stephanus,
Humilis poeta!
Vivat Monty Jamesius,
Vivant A, B, C, D, E
Et totus Alphabeta!
Stephen's poem "The Old School List" from ''Quo Musa Tendis'' is included in the front pages of
H.E.C. Stapleton's ''Eton School Lists 1853-1892'', and the author refers to him in the preface as "an Etonian of great promise, who died only too early for his numerous friends". During his time at Eton, Stephen was a friend of
Harry Goodhart
Harry Chester Goodhart (17 July 1858 – 21 April 1895) was an English amateur footballer who played as a forward in four FA Cup Finals for Old Etonians, before going on to become Professor of Humanity at the University of Edinburgh.
Early lif ...
(1858–1895), who became an
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
international
footballer
A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...
and later a Professor at the
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...
. Goodhart is referred to as "one of them's wed" in the last verse of "The Old School List":
There were two good fellows I used to know.
--How distant it all appears!
We played together in football weather,
And messed together for years:
Now one of them's wed, and the other's dead
So long that he's hardly missed
Save by us, who messed with him years ago:
But we're all in the old School List.
A poem which gave him a reputation as a
misogynist
Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women. It is a form of sexism that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the societal roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practiced f ...
is "Men and Women," where he describes two people, a man and a woman, whom he does not know but to whom he takes a violent dislike. The first part, subtitled "In the Backs" (
The Backs
The Backs is a picturesque area to the east of Queen's Road in the city of Cambridge, England, where several colleges of the University of Cambridge back on to the River Cam, their grounds covering both banks of the river.
National Trust chairm ...
is a riverside area of Cambridge), concludes
...I do not want to see that girl again:
I did not like her: and I should not mind
If she were done away with, killed, or ploughed.
She did not seem to serve a useful end:
And certainly she was not beautiful.
Breakdown and death
On 24 November 1891, Stephen's landlady found him standing naked at the window of his rooms in 18
Trinity Street, Cambridge
Trinity Street (formerly the High Street) is a street in central Cambridge, England. The street continues north as St John's Street, and south as King's Parade and then Trumpington Street.
The street is named after Trinity College, which is ...
. He had thrown his possessions into the street and was screaming, convinced that he was facing imminent arrest. His brothers Herbert and Harry came from London and accompanied him to
St Andrew's Hospital, a mental asylum in Northampton, where he was committed.
In January 1892, Stephen heard that his erstwhile pupil, the 28-year-old Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, had died of
pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...
at Sandringham, after contracting
influenza. On hearing the news, Stephen refused to eat, and he died 20 days later, aged 32. The cause of death, according to the
death certificate
A death certificate is either a legal document issued by a medical practitioner which states when a person died, or a document issued by a government civil registration office, that declares the date, location and cause of a person's death, as ...
, was mania.
Legacy
Stephen's outstanding record in the
Eton Wall Game
The Eton wall game is a game that originated at and is still played at Eton College. It is played on a strip of ground 5 metres wide and 110 metres long ("The Furrow") next to a slightly curved brick wall ("The Wall") erected in 1717. It is one ...
has become part of school legend: unverified accounts suggest that in his final year, he held up the whole of the opposing team single handed for five minutes until the rest of College Wall made it to the furrow. Ever after, the King's Scholars of Eton College have honoured his memory with a toast at the Christmas Sock Supper and other festive occasions – ''in piam memoriam J.K.S.'' – "to the pious memory of James Kenneth Stephen".
Stephen was recalled less honorably in a play by former Eton housemaster and Old Etonian, Angus Graham-Campbell, entitled ''Sympathy for the Devil''. It premiered at the Eton Drama Festival in 1993 and was based on the notion that Stephen could have been
Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in the autumn of 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer w ...
.
Renewed interest in the 1888 Whitechapel murders had exploded in 1970 when British physician
Thomas E. A. Stowell, allegedly working from the papers of
Sir William Gull, made the veiled suggestion that Stephen's former pupil Prince Albert Victor, named only as "S", was the culprit. In 1972, writer
Michael Harrison, working from this sensational theory, had come to the conclusion that "S" was not the prince, but actually Stephen who was committing the murders "out of a twisted desire for revenge" because of the dissolution of an alleged homosexual relationship between the two. Harrison contends that the breakup of the relationship with Eddy, combined with his mental decline, provoked Stephen to act out his own poem "Air: Kaphoozelum", in which the protagonist kills 10 harlots.
Forensic psychiatrist
Forensic psychiatry is a subspeciality of psychiatry and is related to criminology. It encompasses the interface between law and psychiatry. According to the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, it is defined as "a subspecialty of psychiat ...
David Abrahamsen identified Stephen as matching his
psychological profile
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, ...
of Jack The Ripper, claiming that Prince Eddy was an accomplice in his crimes and that the two enjoyed a mutually dependent relationship, with Stephen as the dominant partner.
This and similar theories have been dismissed on a number of counts, with some citing that Stephen would have been unable to commit any murders in London and return to Cambridge in time for lectures the following morning. Harrison had also connected Stephen's handwriting with the Ripper letters "From Hell" and "Dear Boss", and that the internal style of some of Stephen's poems matches some of the anonymous Ripper letters. This connection was rebutted by Thomas J. Mann in an article in the ''Journal of the World Association of Document Examiners'' (June 1975) in which Mann determines that only the Lusk letter is likely to be genuine and that the connection between Stephen's handwriting and that letter was minimal: "The overwhelming evidence is that the two do not match; and if the author of the Lusk letter was indeed Jack the Ripper, then J.K. Stephen was not that man."
[Rumbelow, Donald (2004). ''The Complete Jack the Ripper: Fully Revised and Updated'', pp. 204. Penguin Books. .]
Despite this, Stephen, Eddy and their mutual doctor Gull have been inextricably linked in the public imagination to these unsolved crimes.
Collections
*''Select Poems'' 1926 Augustan Books of Modern Poetry
*''Lapsus Calami'' JKS Cambridge 1891
*''Quo Musa Tendis'' Cambridge 1891
*''Lapsus Calami and other verses'' 1896
References
*Miles A H Stephen. In miles 9(10)
*JKS Acad 19 Aug 1905
*
Benson A C, ''In his leaves of the tree: studies in biography'', 1911
*Evans B I in his English poetry in the later 19th century 1933–1966
*Master of Light Verse – In memory of JKS;
Times Literary Supplement
''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp.
History
The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to '' The Times'' but became a separate publication ...
31 Jan 1941
External links
Biography on "Jack the Ripper" suspects article*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stephen, James Kenneth
1859 births
1892 deaths
English-language poets
British parodists
People educated at Eton College
Stephen-Bell family
Alumni of King's College, Cambridge
People with mental disorders
Jack the Ripper
People with bipolar disorder
Presidents of the Cambridge Union
Suicides by starvation
Younger sons of baronets
1890s suicides