When I first came across From Hell (by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell) in a bookstore, I took one look at the sketchy, back-of-a-napkin-sketch art, the spindly, difficult-to-read lettering, and the sheer thickness of the book and decided it was one of those weird, high-concept, avant-garde graphic novels that get lauded by critics and ignored by everyone else.
A decade later, I decided to give it another chance. After reading through the book twice, I don’t think my initial assessment was wrong; From Hell is convoluted and mostly inaccessible to anyone who’s not already immersed in the same milieux of occultism and English history as Alan Moore. Fortunately, however, that describes me pretty well.
For me, From Hell is a glimpse into divine madness, an exploration of the tenebrous forces that lurk beneath the surface of history, and an illustration of how a zeitgeist coalesces out of plans, accidents, and human nature. I can acknowledge that it’s not going to be an enjoyable read for the vast majority of people, and for good reason, but I found it enlightening, inspiring, and fascinating.
The premise of From Hell, in a nutshell, is that the “Jack the Ripper” murders were perpetrated by the royal physician, Dr. William Gull, as part of a scheme to shield the royal family from a scandal that resulted from Prince Albert Victor having an affair with the prostitute Annie Crook.
However, Dr. Gull has his own plans. Gull is a Freemason and an initiate into the esoteric teachings of that order. After suffering a stroke, Gull comes to believe that he must enact a series of ritual murders in order to ensure that the “male” aspect of nature (which includes logic and reason) maintains its dominance over the “female” aspects (defined by intuition and madness) in the coming 20th century. These murders include Annie Crook and several of her friends, who are also prostitutes.
The murders are investigated by the London police, particularly Frederick Abberline, but the investigation is consistently thwarted by the interference of the Freemasons and the mass confusion that arises from false letters supposedly written by the murderer (including the eponymous “From Hell” letter). However, Gull’s Freemason brothers are horrified by his unplanned murders and believe he has gone mad. By that point, “Jack the Ripper” has taken on a life of its own, and the truth of the murders is lost in the hysteria and cover-ups.
A running theme throughout the book is the work of Charles Howard Hinton, particularly “What is the Fourth Dimension?”, which asks the reader to imagine time as another plane that can be traveled through. During the events of the plot, Gull re-experiences past moments of his life and glimpses his own future, as if his mind has become unmoored from the present. This culminates in his spiritual ascent, which sees him manifest across time and space in different forms, including the scaly, monstrous figure seen by William Blake’s painting The Ghost of a Flea, a burst of blood in the Aegean Sea, and a naked ‘ghost’ that leaps into the Thames River.
From Hell is a great example of a high-concept work, something that tries to evoke its themes in the way it tells its story. It’s also ambitious in its scope: in addition to being a detailed guide to the occult underpinnings of Freemasonry and London itself, it’s an unflinching depiction of the everyday life of prostitutes and the sordid affairs of common people. There’s a tremendous amount of ugliness, cruelty, and sheer indifference in From Hell, and it emphasizes the horror and human tragedy caused by Gull’s mad quest to “birth” the 20th century.
From Hell was based on Stephen Knight’s 1976 book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, which is an elaborate conspiracy theory in itself, but the graphic novel seems to add more layers of twine and thumbtacks to the Beautiful Mind corkboard, connecting the dots between the architecture of Nicholas Hawksmoor, Egyptian obelisks, the war between the Sun and Moon, the anatomy of the body, Queen Boadicea, the Roman history of London, Tiamat, Gog and Magog, and more. For those able to understand all the references, the effect is illuminating and intuitive—Gull’s tour through London with his driver Netley becomes a journey through history and symbolism, culminating in a reveal that’s made all the more eerie because you’re not sure if it’s fact or fiction.
Ironically, the ultimate horror for Gull himself is glimpsing the 20th century. He appears as an invisible apparition in a 1990s office space, whose occupants (working at computers and handling handheld devices) seem to him to be “morose, barbaric children playing with their unfathomable toys”.
Gull shouts at them, saying:
“Where comes this dullness in your eyes? How has your century numbed you so? Shall man be given marvels only when he is beyond all wonder? Your days were born in blood, and fire, whereof in you I may not see the meanest spark! Your past is pain and iron! Know yourselves! With all your shimmering numbers and your lights, think not to be inured to history. Its black root succours you…See me! Wake up and look upon me! I am come amongst you. I am with you always!”
It’s a stark reminder that the horrors of history remain horrific, even if separated from us by decades or centuries, and how the effects of those horrors may shape what we consider mundane, everyday life.
But it’s also kind of a farcical moment: in the midst of this rant, we get a glimpse of Gull back in the 1880s, stained with blood and holding his knife, standing on a chair and shouting at a wall in the room where the butchered body of his last victim is still lying in bed. He’s speaking to no one, raving to people living a hundred years in the future, none of whom can hear or see him.
Is Gull’s horror at the 20th century a reflection of some genuine vacuousness at the heart of modern life, or should it be interpreted as amusingly quaint that this “learned” man who fancies himself capable of understanding magic and the cosmos would be unable to comprehend the mundanity of office work?
To put it another way: is Gull more human, more vital because he’s a murderer, or is he a hopeless, brutal idiot that can only comprehend his own tiny place in the invisible arc of time?
I don’t know the answer to this question, or even if it’s the right one to ask. Either way, I think these are the kinds of questions that a great piece of fiction (or art) provokes.
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