Edward Hyde

“ I made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet. For two months, however, I was true to my determination; for two months, I led a life of such severity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last to obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom ”

“ This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. ”

“ I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.
I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my position, made enough allowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the leading characters of Edward Hyde. ”

“ I had but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. I smiled at the notion; it seemed to me at the time to be humorous; and I made my preparations with the most studious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as housekeeper a creature whom I well knew to be silent and unscrupulous. On the other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square ”

“ There were the poets Carew and Cotton, the elder Godolphin, Evelyn, who extols Hyde’s “great and signal merits,” and greatest and noblest of all, Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland.
6. “Life of the Earl of Clarendon,” by himself.
If, as has been said, a man is known by his friends, then it may surely be counted to Edward Hyde for righteousness that he had eyes to discern the shining of that “steadfast star” too early extinguished. ”

“ London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.
25
CLARENDON. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, the third son of Henry Hyde, of Dinton, Esquire, a younger branch of an ancient family long established in Cheshire, was born at Dinton, near Salisbury, February 18, 1609. The most valuable part of his early education he received from his father, who was an excellent scholar: from his residence at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he entered in 1622, and took his bachelor’s degree in 1625, according to his own account he obtained little benefit. ”

“ it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., [4] all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his "friend and benefactor Edward Hyde," but that in case of Dr. Jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months," the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor's household. ”

“ But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live, indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only an hope, but an evidence in noble believers, ’tis all one to lie in St Innocent’s churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.
Hydriotaphia
OTHER PROSE-WRITERS
1. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1609–74) , was born in Wiltshire, educated at Oxford, and studied law. A man of excellent address, he was a successful lawyer, and became a member of the House of Commons. ”

“ When there was need for a man to go to England and plead before the king for Connecticut—of which, for fourteen consecutive years thereafter, he was annually elected governor—who but Winthrop could be selected? He went with all the prayers of the colony for his good fortune; and it was of good omen that he met there, in the council for the colonies appointed by the king, Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon and Lord Chancellor, then in the prime of his career, and two years younger than Winthrop ”

“ Boucicault; to say nothing of Gibson girls, those mysterious folk who only earn a pound a week, and yet ride thoroughbreds and drive motor cars.
The only people who have the right to drive in a carriage down Rotten Row are His Majesty King292 Edward, who, unlike his mother, has never exercised that privilege, and the Duke of St. Albans, as Hereditary Grand Falconer.
An enormously wealthy and well-known financier used to ride every day in Hyde Park. He was never much of a horseman, and as he grew older the little nerve he had possessed gradually went. ”

“ It is a hard task to gauge the inveterate and bitter malignity which pursued the Chancellor to his final exile from England. Whatever were the faults in his public service and administration, it could at least be said of Edward Hyde that “he was in the Court of Charles II. almost the only man who lived chastely, drank moderately, and swore not at all,” [208] and that with his lifelong friends, Ormonde and Southampton, he “projected into this reign” “the high-toned 214virtues of the old Cavalier stock.” ”

“ When Morley was translated to Winchester he took Izaak Walton and his son with him, and the former died there in 1683. Winchester House at Chelsea was bought by Morley, and belonged to the See until Bishop Tomlin’s day. (Dean Plumptre’s “Life of Ken.”)
So Edward Hyde passes out of the arena of his day and country, a conspicuous figure through many stormy years, and his place knows him no more. His rival, Buckingham, remains to hold the stage a little longer, and in some eyes he may be all-sufficient, since Reresby can call him “the finest gentleman of person and wit I think I ever saw” ”

“ It is possible that the younger daughter, then an infant, might have been left in England under the charge of friends there.
20. “Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon,” by himself. 1827.
In the old days when the dwindling Court had sojourned at Oxford, he had seen enough and more than enough of the turmoil of intrigues and jealousy, the incessant petty warfare between the rival factions of Henrietta and her husband, which the latter at any rate had been powerless to control, and naturally Hyde was sickened of it all, and unwilling to venture his “Nan” into a like atmosphere. ”

“ With all his experience of Courts, Hyde never learned the arts of a courtier. He was naively unconscious how little the steadfast honesty of his purpose could render his blunt plainness of diction palatable to a master, the chief feature of whose character was callous selfishness, and whose self-love might for the moment allow him to overlook, but never permitted him to forget, the liberty that presumed to curb his caprices or to criticize his conduct. ”

“ Records and letters preserved by many of the noble families contain numerous references to the gaieties of Hyde Park under the Restoration.
In the Harley Papers at Welbeck Abbey, and the Rutland Manuscripts at Belvoir Castle, letters exist written by Edward Harley to his father, Sir Edward Harley, and from Lady Mary Bertie to her niece, describing in detail the review that was held in “Hide Parke” in honour of the visit of the117 Prince of Orange (afterwards William III.) , then a youth of nineteen. ”

“ Severe as had been the hardships of his exile, tangled as had been the mazes through which he had to steer his course, and baffling as had been his difficulties, we may well doubt if Hyde did not, in the years that now follow, look back with regret on the days when he had to fight against heavy odds with an ever- growing confidence in his ultimate success. ”

“ We must, however, guard ourselves against a misconception which has imposed itself upon many in forming their estimate of Hyde's new position. It would be utterly wrong to fancy that he entered upon these heavy responsibilities with any sense of triumph or elation, and inspired by any pride of power. ”

“ Hyde is the son of a man of family and fortune; he goes to Oxford, fights a duel, and is expelled—prevails upon a marquess to break the matter to the father—falls in love with the marquess's daughter—goes large and loose about town—is every where introduced—and one of every party. ”

“ They said there was.
"Yes!" said she, "and he left the loaf of lasting bread after him. That belongs to me, and if ye don't give it to me quickly I will kill ye all."
She got the loaf, and she was going, and never stopped till she came to the castle of Bwee-Sounee. She pulled the cooalya-coric, pole of combat, and the king came out.
"Have you any son?" said the queen.
"I have," said the king.
"Send him out here till I see him," said she.
The king sent out Art, and she asked him: "Were you at the Well of D'yerree-an-Dowan?" ”

“ The king's son told him that he had seen a wonderful loaf, bottle, and sword.
"You did not touch them?" said the old man; "shun them, for they would bring trouble on you. Come on my back now till I bring you across the river."
When they went to the house of the old man, he put water out of the bottle on himself, and made a young man of himself. Then he said to the king's son:
"My sisters and myself are now free from enchantment, and they are young women again." ”

“ Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plenty, and time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post.
"If he be Mr. Hyde," he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek."
And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine dry night; frost in the air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps, unshaken by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow. ”

“ What good have we now out of our journey to Rome and to France? Never mind yet, you clown, but you'll pay us another time for this. Believe us you'll repent it."
"He'll have no good to get out of the young girl," said the little man that was talking to him in the palace before that, and as he said the word he moved over to her and struck her a slap on the side of the head. "Now," says he, "she'll be without talk any more; now, Guleesh, what good will she be to you when she'll be dumb? It's time for us to go—but you'll remember us, Guleesh na Guss Dhu!" ”

“ Hyde Park, however, is the common heritage of all, the meeting-ground of King and coster. It is the most truly democratic spot in all London. It is surprising what tolerance there is, what good feeling pervades the throng made up of such extraordinary mixtures and contradictions.
A well-dressed woman, who goes into a mean street of slum-land, is made the subject of audible remarks, mostly ribald, too often coarse. Her fashionable costume seems to excite hatred. The would-be finery of the Park no doubt envies the real finery. ”

“ Hyde and Katherine were walking in the garden, lingering in the sweet June twilight by the lilac hedge and the river-bank. All Hyde's business was arranged: he was going into the fight without any anxiety beyond such as was natural to the circumstances. While he was away, his wife and son were to remain with Lysbet. He could desire no better home for them; their lives would be so quiet and orderly that he could almost tell what they would be doing at every hour. ”

“ In the bottle the acids were long ago resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards, was ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly the lawyer melted. There was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest; and he was not always sure that he kept as many as he meant. Guest had often been on business to the doctor’s; he knew Poole; he could scarce have failed to hear of Mr. Hyde’s familiarity about the house ”

“ Hyde was presented with a wooden leg, of which he was quite proud. But the great event of his life was the establishment of his sister, the Widow Rusk, with her children, in a comfortable cottage on the outskirts of Pompilard’s grounds, where the family were well provided for by Clara. Here on the piazza, looking out on the river, the Colonel played with the children, watched the boats, and read the newspapers. Perhaps one of the profoundest of his emotions was experienced the day he saw in one of the pictorial papers a picture of Delancy junior, bearing a flag riddled by bullets. ”

“ The friars noticed that he had only one eye, and that it was in his forehead.
"In the name of God, who are you?" said a man of the friars.
"I am Crinnawn, son of Belore, of the Evil Eye. Let there be no fear on ye, I shall do ye no damage, for ye are courageous, good men. The people who were here are gone to eternal rest, body and soul. I know that ye are poor, and that there are plenty of poor people round about ye. Here are two purses for ye, one of them for yourselves, and the other one to divide upon the poor ”