Jekyll

“ But when I slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off, I would leap almost without transition (for the pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the possession of a fancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. ”

“ Now the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and size: it was large, firm, white and comely. But the hand which I now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London morning, lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, corder, knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart [13] growth of hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.
I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was in the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my breast as sudden and startling as the crash of cymbals ”

“ Things cannot continue as they are. It turns me cold to think of this creature stealing like a thief to Harry's bedside; poor Harry, what a wakening! And the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects the existence of the will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Ay, I must put my shoulder to the wheel—if Jekyll will but let me,' he added, 'if Jekyll will only let me.' For once more he saw before his mind's eye, as clear as a transparency, the strange clauses of the will. ”

“ I think you would, if you knew all; and it would be a weight off my mind if you would promise."
"I can't pretend that I shall ever like him," said the lawyer.
"I don't ask that," pleaded Jekyll, laying his hand upon the other's arm; "I only ask for justice; I only ask you to help him for my sake, when I am no longer here." ”

“ The middle one of the three windows was half-way open; and sitting close beside it, taking the air with an infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner, Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll.
"What! Jekyll!" he cried. "I trust you are better."
"I am very low, Utterson," replied the doctor drearily, "very low. It will not last long, thank God."
"You stay too much indoors," said the lawyer. "You should be out, whipping up the circulation like Mr. Enfield and me. (This is my cousin—Mr. Enfield—Dr. Jekyll.) Come now; get your hat and take a quick turn with us." ”

“ The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was of a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father ”

“ Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss. And thus fortified, as I supposed, on every side, I began to profit by the strange immunities of my position.
Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. ”

“ He became very unpopular in 1736 for his introduction of the “gin act,” taxing the retailing of spirituous liquors, and his house had to be protected from the mob. Pope has an illusion to “Jekyll or some odd Whig, Who never changed his principle or wig” (Epilogue to the Satires) . Jekyll was also responsible for the Mortmain Act of 1736, which was not superseded till 1888. He died without issue in 1738. ”

“ 'I am painfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange—a very strange one. It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.'
'Jekyll,' said Utterson, 'you know me: I am a man to be trusted. ”

“ Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained? I asked myself; and then, with another bound of terror—how was it to be remedied? It was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all my drugs were in the cabinet—a long journey, down two pair of stairs, through the back passage, across the open court and through the anatomical theatre, from where I was then standing horror-struck. It might indeed be possible to cover my face ”

“ I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood...” He paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria—“I understood, a drawer...” ”

“ Jekyll saw in Colman's chambers a squirrel in the usual round cage. "Ah! poor devil," said Jekyll, "he's going the Home Circuit."
DCCCXCIV.—A SOPORIFIC.
A spendthrift being sold up, Foote, who attended every day, bought nothing but a pillow; on which a gentleman asked him, "What particular use he could have for a single pillow?"—"Why," said Foote, "I do not sleep very well at night, and I am sure this must give me many a good nap, when the proprietor of it (though he owed so much) could sleep upon it." ”

“ By his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Lake of ‘Norton Horny’ (? Galby) Place, Leicestershire, who survived him, he had five sons and three daughters.
Availing himself of his access to legal records, Jekyll filled above forty volumes with valuable materials for the histories of Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk (Gough, British Topography, i. 345) . A portion of the Jekyll collection was included in the list of manuscripts belonging to John Ouseley, rector of Springfield, Essex, printed in the ‘Catalogi Librorum Manuscriptorum Angliæ,’ 1697 (ii. 103) . ”

“ Notes ↑ a large fortune .. we learn earlier Jekyll's current estate is worth about 250,000 pounds silver.↑ excellent parts .. abilities and health.↑ curtains of a pavilion .. a large tent with flaps.↑ tabernacle .. the human body. This is an allusion to similar use in 2 Corinthians 5:1-4 and 2 Peter 1:13-14 (KJV) .↑ solution .. dissolving.↑ more wicked At first, Jekyll's transformation is only a physical change. Though his thoughts seem to him more evil, there is no indication that he thinks of Hyde as a separate person at this point.↑ stamping efficacy .. ”

“ Jekyll had more than a father’s interest; Hyde had more than a son’s indifference. ”

“ On his arrival he was met by none other than Doctor Jekyll, who told him that I was in a highly excited condition, which, he intimated, would be aggravated by a personal interview. Now for a man to see his brother in such a plight as mine would be a distressing ordeal, and, though my conservator came within a few hundred feet of my prison cell, it naturally took but a suggestion to dissuade him from coming nearer. Doctor Jekyll did tell him that it had been found necessary to place me in "restraint" and "seclusion" (the professional euphemisms for "strait-jacket," "padded cell," etc.) ”

“ And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. ”

“ They seem to have been a little disturbed in their natural course, for he called Jekyll, and said, ‘Lady Gertrude Sloane’s brother is killed. Take my carriage and tell her so.’ Jekyll expostulated that Lady Gertrude was gone to bed—just ready to be confined, and the surprise might be fatal, if the news was announced [317] in that way at that hour. The Regent persisted, and at last said, ‘Well, go to Lord Carlisle’s; for some of them must know it,’ which Jekyll also resisted.
He is made one of the Masters (in Chancery, I suppose) , and gets between two and three thousand a-year. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.” ”

“ Ah, sir, there's blood foully shed in every step of it! But hark again, a little closer—put your heart in your ears, Mr. Utterson, and tell me, is that the doctor's foot?"
The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing, for all they went so slowly; it was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread of Henry Jekyll. Utterson sighed. "Is there never anything else?" he asked.
Poole nodded. "Once," he said. "Once I heard it weeping!"
"Weeping? how that?" said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden chill of horror.
"Weeping like a woman or a lost soul," said the butler. ”

“ To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner ”

“ 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. ”

“ But Lanyon’s face changed, and he held up a trembling hand. “I wish to see or hear no more of Dr. Jekyll,” he said in a loud, unsteady voice. “I am quite done with that person; and I beg that you will spare me any allusion to one whom I regard as dead.”
“Tut, tut!” said Mr. Utterson; and then after a considerable pause, “Can’t I do anything?” he inquired. “We are three very old friends, Lanyon; we shall not live to make others.”
“Nothing can be done,” returned Lanyon; “ask himself.”
“He will not see me,” said the lawyer. ”

“ My master'—here he looked round him and began to whisper—'is a tall fine build of a man, and this was more of a dwarf.' Utterson attempted to protest. 'O, sir,' cried Poole, 'do you think I do not know my master after twenty years? do you think I do not know where his head comes to in the cabinet door, where I saw him every morning of my life? No, sir, that thing in the mask was never Doctor Jekyll—God knows what it was, but it was never Doctor Jekyll ”

“ Why not—this?"
"But that's sacrilege! Man would be both God and Devil!"
"Think what it would mean! To yield to every evil impulse—yet leave the soul untouched!"
His imagination afire with this new idea, and his whole being mastered by the exploring passion of the scientist, Jekyll spent days and nights in his laboratory.
And now the question—Did the drug have power to restore him to his normal state?
"Poole, there's a friend of mine named—Hyde. I want him to have full liberty and authority about the house—"
"—and I want you to have a long mirror placed in my laboratory." ”

“ This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of his friend the doctor's; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest room in London. But to-night there was a shudder in his blood; the face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare with him) a nausea and distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to read a menace in the flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief, when Poole presently returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out. ”

“ Utterson, biting his finger. “Suppose it were as you suppose, supposing Dr. Jekyll to have been—well, murdered what could induce the murderer to stay? That won’t hold water; it doesn’t commend itself to reason.”
“Well, Mr. Utterson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but I’ll do it yet,” said Poole. “All this last week (you must know) him, or it, whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, has been crying night and day for some sort of medicine and cannot get it to his mind. It was sometimes his way—the master’s, that is—to write his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it on the stair. ”

“ His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing yet avoided. And then by a return on his former subject, he conceived a spark of hope. “This Master Hyde, if he were studied,” thought he, “must have secrets of his own; black secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor Jekyll’s worst would be like sunshine. Things cannot continue as they are. ”