White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) by Iain Sinclair

“Diseases are the dreams of the body. In our diseases we study our future.”

White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987) by Iain Sinclair is the most demanding novel I have ever finished. Its scope, its style, and its speed of execution are both beguiling and confusing. My initial response was that the authorial voice and style were similar to James Joyce's Ulysses, a novel I started and did not finish — along with many other uber novels.

What kept me going with White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings was the encouragement of the text. Every 10 or 20 pages Sinclair would pepper his effusions about the perceptions and sensations of his characters with asides about the literature of the Victorian era and how it pertained to (or foreshadowed) the Whitechapel killings of 1888. Below I have excerpted some of those portions of the novel, interspersed with some notes taken as I groped my way toward an understanding.

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Plot Summary

The book is a non-linear, multi-layered narrative that explores the historical and psychic landscape of London's East End, specifically the Whitechapel district and its association with Jack the Ripper. It intertwines historical figures like Sir William Gull, James Hinton, and Thomas Chatterton with fictional characters like the narrator, Dryfeld, and Nicholas Lane, creating a complex tapestry of time and place.

Characters

Nicholas Lane: An emaciated book dealer with an uncanny knack for finding valuable books.

Dryfeld: A hulking, driven book dealer, obsessed with making deals and money.

The Late Watson: The narrator, a melancholic and self-deprecating figure who accompanies the other book dealers on their journeys.

Joblard: ?

Sir William Gull: A historical figure, the royal physician, implicated in the Jack the Ripper murders.

James Hinton: A 19th-century surgeon and philosopher with unorthodox views on morality and pain.

Thomas Chatterton: A historical figure, a poet who committed suicide, and whose life and work become intertwined with the narrative.

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‘Doyle encodes the coming sacrifices, Stevenson’s Jekyll & Hyde, in that predetermined calvinist language, describes what is almost at hand – the escape of the other, the necessary annihilation of self. The Whitechapel Golem, unsouled. There were so many figures, conjured essences, loose among the traps – unfocused, undirected. I don’t know whether they reported them or created them.’

I fumble for a notebook. Not sure if I’ve lost it. The urge towards saying; knowing that what is said is false, thickens the line of truth. The ill-shaped sentence bruises the past. I need a quote from Francis Crick.

‘“If, for long periods of time, one could prevent the two sections of the brain communicating with each other, one could perhaps convince one brain that it was in the same body as another brain – in other words, one could make two people where there was one before. An area of research that is likely to lead to interesting consequences.”’

‘Hymie Beaker,’ Joblard replied, sliding across the first chaser.

‘Also,’ I couldn’t stop now, ‘on Radio 4, February 19, 1969, he predicted the creation of man/animal hybrids.’

‘Too late. We’ve already got those,’ said Joblard, as his mate Jack hovered over us. ‘The Third Man: part musician, part crocodile.’

Jack presents himself, initially, as an alien life-form. The light from the streetdoor shines through his grey raincape. Beads of sweat trickle down his scalp. His thick glasses are misted over: he is eyeless. His arms are lost within the wings of the cape.

Jack grinned at us: not extinct, obsolete.

But he was so amiable, so lacking in nervous speedy aggression of manner, that I was forced to assume a terrible stubborn fury beneath. Jack made no imposition, needed to assert nothing. More than any human I had met he obeyed Nietzsche’s gnomic instruction: ‘Become what you are.’

Strong-throated, Jack cleared his glass; listened. A vital witness, neutralising the possible escape of the third side, the necessary stranger, always present when two men are talking. Jack sealed the triad. A new benevolence.

I truly believe that if we could have kept him we could have changed fate. The sacrifices would have been annulled. The shriek in the night, by this addition, earthed.

But the fret is on, it’s compulsive. One of those times when it has to be said.

‘Rimbaud, Verlaine. Went over the ground. Verlaine said, “As for London, we have explored it long ago… Whitechapel… Angel, the City… had no mysteries for us.” He said that the City had “the atmosphere of a machine-shop, or the interior of a heart. All the heroes are to be found there.”

‘And this is simply the truth. They are there as guides – the poets born and dying at the old gates of the City.

‘Chaucer, Keats; Milton, born at the sign of The Spread Eagle, his father had another house, The Rose. And they are there in the stone effigies, the Moloch façades. It’s the most darkly encoded enclosure in the western world. Bad magic, preconscious voodoo.

‘Rimbaud and Verlaine were, at that time, the great time for them, the time of their time, into that inhuman sex heat coupling, “total derangement”, that was occult in intention as well as effect; the will of Rimbaud and the compliant sacrifice of Verlaine, reversing and twisting, exchanging, animus and anima, reading each other’s dreams, spine snake dramas, double-helix, pain. The black acts. Like Crowley and Victor Neuberg in their talentless variant. “They were full of eyes within.”’

The evening was rancid now, our glasses slid in pools of sweat across the table. Our arms stuck to the chairs, which creaked as we moved; faked pornographic sighs.

‘I can feel the fucking going on,’ said Joblard, with relish. ‘Does it take two to occult fuck? Or more?’

Jack groaned. I drove on, undiverted.

‘Verlaine saw it, but didn’t do it. He projected a “ferocious novel, as sadistic as possible, written in a very terse style”. But couldn’t carry it off; gone, swallowed, finished, back to the domestic teat, hungry ghost begging for absolution in the skirts of the church, breathing old farts.

‘From these acts only one man emerges. The other is eliminated, engorged. Verlaine was bloodless, sucked dry as paper. He was wholly necessary, an equal partner, but he never emerged from that room. What he had went over.

‘Rimbaud was reading, British Museum, diving into Poe, into magical primers. He claimed that writers are “the mirrors of gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present”.

‘That’s it exactly. “In everything any man wrote… is contained… the allegorical idea of his own future life, as the acorn contains the oak.” Yes!

‘They were pulsing, they were open. They roamed, every day, out along the river, into Whitechapel, Wapping, Ratcliff, Limehouse. Entering wilfully into that fiction.

‘Rimbaud’s occult awareness was so intense, he was burning his own time so recklessly, all or nothing, that he described more fiercely than any other man, then or now, the elements of the Whitechapel millennial sacrifice. And by describing, caused them. They were said. They had to be.’

Jack cast a baleful eye on the notebook, but at that moment he would rather drink than talk. The light was with us, doors open to the street, smoke and feathers.

‘The whole scenario, like a Rosicrucian Manifesto, is there in his Illuminations. I won’t even try to sound it in French. But in aborted English, the elements… a few fragments… shave it down… terrifying…

Settings

London's East End: Specifically, Whitechapel, Spitalfields, Brick Lane, and surrounding areas. The East End is depicted as a labyrinthine, decaying place, haunted by the past and filled with eccentric characters.

The "hour glass stomach": A metaphor for the divided nature of reality, past and present, and the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate events.

‘Comes back late in the afternoon, cup of herbal tea, says, “Oh, by the way, did you know this was the room of the Suicide Club, the actual address?”

‘It was already a strange time for me. I only took the job to get at her piano. Downstairs was a Radio Times theatrical, Beckett man, his wife, nervous in dark glasses. Dusty glamour of obscure fame. Claims she is writing “metaphysical detective stories”. But their main occupation is table-tennis, in the back yard, coats, gloves, mufflers; long ritualised bouts.

‘The radio was on all day: a comet crashed into the hills behind the cottage where John Cowper Powys lived. I’d just come back from there, mad trip, sponsored by a ragtrade lunatic who thought he was some kind of zen master: meaning that he could hire and fire a dozen tremblers a day, and do Groucho Marx imitations on the telephone. He shipped me to the slate quarries in a red Ferrari to turn A Glastonbury Romance into a three-act opera. When I got back – my job was gone and I was done for stealing the car. Shocked into enlightenment!

‘I’d work into the night: the moon gibbous and threatening. She wants me out, got her yoga routine to complete. I’m getting nowhere, a couple of feet a day. The ceiling’s like treacle; no blood in my arms.

‘And walking back to the underground, all these bandaged patients behind tall windows, convalescent, lobotomised, sitting at individual tables waiting for food, being watched by children’s television.

‘I buy a Standard and read of the murder, that morning, in a near-by street, of James Pope Hennessy, the biographer of Queens. He’s been stabbed in the head. Died from inhaling his own blood.

‘When I get home I dig among my Stevensons and discover that 16 Chepstow Place was not the address of the Suicide Club, but the address of a Mr Bartholomew (ha!) Malthus, who inhabits that story, suffering a “Melancholy Accident” and falling to his death “over the upper parapet in Trafalgar Square, fracturing his skull and breaking a leg… Mr Malthus, accompanied by a friend, was engaged in looking for a cab…”

‘In November I saw reviewed in The Sunday Times the book that Pope Hennessy was working on in his study at the time of that definitive interruption: a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson.

‘My wages were gone, forty pounds, the precise amount required for membership of the Suicide Club.’

Themes/Thesis

The cyclical nature of history and the persistence of the past: The book suggests that the past is not separate from the present but continues to shape and influence it. The Whitechapel murders and the figures of Jack the Ripper cast a long shadow over the present-day East End.

The exploration of the dark side of human nature: The book delves into the motivations behind violence, cruelty, and self-destruction, as seen through the lives of both historical and fictional characters.

The power of the imagination and the nature of reality: The book blurs the lines between fiction and reality, suggesting that the stories we tell ourselves and the myths we create can have a profound impact on our understanding of the world.

Style

Non-linear narrative: The book jumps between different time periods, characters, and perspectives, creating a fragmented and dreamlike atmosphere.

Dense and allusive prose: The writing is filled with literary and historical references, requiring the reader to actively engage with the text.

Mixing of fact and fiction: The book blends historical figures and events with fictional characters and narratives, creating a sense of ambiguity and challenging the reader's perception of reality.

‘Bury the beast,’ said the girl from Sag Harbor. Her husband had floated it; friend of the trees. Bury Christ Church, Spitalfields, in earth. Incarcerate its hieratic bulk. Lift up a new mountain. To oversee a New Age. Seal its power. Stop its mouth.

Even the brewery is encased, is sheeted in glass, false reflections; disguised with vines and shrubs. The Eagle is hooded. Sell off the portraits.

Bury the bell!

Hold concerts in the belly of the church. Summon the musicians, tame the doctors. Banish the phantoms, the vagrants. Feed them into submission. Bandage the lunatic. Stack cars above the sweating room. Spray it with concrete.

I am shaking, beside myself. Old breath of poison. Flesh of the albatross. Tremor of cold excitement; estranged from any recognition of time and place.

It is a moment of Manichaean, forward planning: destroy it, utterly. You will never rebuild the city from these words. You would build a monster.

necessity – the split one meets, merges, dissolves: reintegrates? On the future’s sharpest edge. Holmes and Moriarty plunge together into the torrent, but only Holmes returns, diminished. Without the dark double, the contrary, his own power is lost.

Walking again, turning, it’s still the first time, into the Seven Stars.

Who is that sitting in my corner? What’s happened to the wall-paper, the ships, castles, the river? A man is waiting for me. My drink is already on the table. I don’t need this, I need brandy.

The man is scented with patchouli, his hair, a buoyant ash-grey; it’s not Gull, it’s not my father. Who is this? He’s got earphones, he’s connected to a red plastic box. Broad, full-chested. Not one of the workers.

The Brides. The dance of the Pleiades. Not Orion: O’Ryan, the Huntsman. He’s transcribing arcs of pure motion. He’s smoking. The speed of nerve gives him an amphetamine stutter.

It’s Joblard.

And again he has worked a transformation. He has got out of himself, folded back all the inessentials, all the human tentacles, packed them – so that his form is dense. The shell is hard, but more brittle.

Drink runs through the skin of my head, never gets inside me. He calls for more. The glass is taller; I roll it across my brow.

Chapter Summaries

Book One: Manac

Chapter 1: Four book dealers, Nicholas Lane, Dryfeld, Jamie, and the narrator, journey through England in search of used books. They visit the peculiar bookshop of Mossy Noonmann in Steynford.

Chapter 2: The childhood of William Gull is depicted, growing up in a remote coastal community with his devout father, John Gull.

Chapter 3: The narrator describes working in a brewery and encountering the enigmatic figure of Dick Brandon, who tells tales of London's past.

Chapter 4: Dryfeld and the narrator go book-hunting in the early morning markets of London's East End, encountering the eccentric Nicholas Lane.

Chapter 5: The death of John Gull from cholera and his unconventional burial are described.

Chapter 6: Mr. Eves, a collector of Ripper-related memorabilia, shows the book dealers cards with the names of the victims, sparking a discussion about the murders.

Chapter 7: The narrator and Joblard visit Sir William Gull's old surgery at Guy's Hospital, now a museum, and encounter a strange barman who talks about Keats and Chatterton.

Chapter 8: Dryfeld and Nicholas Lane are robbed at Nicholas's flat by masked men, and the valuable "Study in Scarlet" is stolen.

Chapter 9: The narrator visits the Farringdon Road book market and encounters a man telling a story about his uncle's experience in the Belsen concentration camp.

Book Two: Manac Es Cem

Chapter 10: A letter from James Hinton to his sister Sarah, discussing his new job as a cashier and his thoughts on the nature of thought and will.

Chapter 11: The book dealers try to track down J. Leper-Klamm, a collector of "Study in Scarlet" editions, and Nicholas Lane visits his mysterious house.

Chapter 12: Another letter from James Hinton, this time to Caroline Haddon, discussing his relationship with her sister Margaret and his unorthodox views on morality and pain.

Chapter 13: The narrator and Joblard visit the London Hospital Medical College Museum to see the remains of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man.

Chapter 14: James Hinton, now a surgeon, dictates a letter to Caroline, confessing his self-flagellation and unorthodox beliefs.

Chapter 15: The narrator describes Hinton's walks through London with Sir William Gull, contrasting their personalities and views.

Chapter 16: Another letter from James Hinton, discussing his "fluxion method" of thinking and his belief in the coming of a new age.

Chapter 17: The narrator and Joblard visit a gym, and Joblard discusses his desire to erase his past and remake himself.

Chapter 18: Hinton has a breakdown and wanders through Whitechapel, encountering a prostitute and having a vision of the apocalypse.

Chapter 19: Dryfeld attempts suicide but is interrupted by a phone call about a book deal.

Chapter 20: The narrator meets Joblard at a bar, and they discuss the nature of the self and the power of the imagination.

Book Three: JK

Chapter 21: A letter from Douglas Oliver to the narrator, discussing the themes of good and evil, the nature of the self, and the responsibility of the poet.

Chapter 22: The narrator encounters a man telling a story about his uncle's experience at Belsen, then meets the poet Douglas Oliver at a bookshop.

Chapter 23: A letter from James Hinton to Caroline, discussing his "fluxion method" of thinking and his belief in the coming of a new age.

Chapter 24: The narrator visits the morgue with a night porter and then attends a meeting of a radical group.

Chapter 25: Sir William Gull is put on trial by a group of doctors for his unorthodox experiments and beliefs.

Chapter 26: Joblard takes the narrator to a gym and discusses his desire to erase his past and remake himself.

Chapter 27: Sir William Gull dies and is buried in a grand ceremony. His ghost wanders the grounds of Thorpe Hall, where he once conducted a secret training program.

Chapter 28: The narrator drives to Ramsey and visits the church where William Gull is buried. He then walks to Landermere Quay and discovers the remains of a burnt-out barge.

It is Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, written by Stevenson, after a series of hideous nightmares; received and transmitted by those tuned to accept the scalding stream of images that both mask and reveal his appalling message.

Treves was determined to reverse this process. He had found his Caliban, his Hyde, his natural man: needed now to absorb him, to give fire to his own nature, to the hidden being within – swimming back out of the mirror of deformity into the urbane and politic surgeon. To reclaim the aboriginal, the green; the skin of fruits and scales, the mineral cloak. To manifest his true consciousness. To script that journey within the boundaries of expectation.

When she is naked and glistens, rubbed with oil, garlanded, her skin now darker, they bring out the mask, the great Elephant’s Head of Ganesa. So she sways, she lifts her arms, so she rolls the massive helmet of wood. She threatens the moon with her tusk: the tusk that was broken off to take the dictation of the gods. Now it spears Joblard’s side.

‘Bugger your Sufi dancing – I’ll learn the tango!’

We are in an upper room; the moon, the brewery clock, the tower of the church. His face shone. He rubbed down the matted hair of his body, he rubbed himself with oil. He appeared like a bridegroom.

Now the tusked head is on a hook. They are lying upon a couch. The window is the mirror that I block out.

The squatting strangers heat the ganja: leading us into a further nightmare.

Jay

3 January 2025