Virginia Woolf’s Cousin J. K. Stephen: Forgotten But Not Gone

J. K. Stephen (actor and orator) was much admired wherever he went, from Eton to Cambridge to literary London. Today he is known primarily among Etonians and Ripperologists, the former for his legendary turn as Keeper of the College Wall in the Eton Wall Game, the latter for his candidacy as Jack himself. Posterity’s neglect is just: Stephen’s verse is simplistic, often wantonly cruel, and the man was repellent and erratic in emotions and behavior, the more so after an accident in 1886 that eventually led to his death from mania. This article does not aim to restore Stephen to cultural memory. Instead it draws on his life, verse, and impressions on others to make two arguments. Stephen’s disproportionately high repute attests to the late-Victorian esteem of apparent masculine power. Second, Stephen played a minor but yet unrecognized role in the imaginative lives of Julia Duckworth Stephen and her daughter, Virginia Woolf.