A Century of Hyde
The duality of the human spirit has been one of literature’s greatest themes since the time of the Greek myths. Man is part God, with imagination, creativity and intellect, but also part animal with violence, lust, pettiness and greed.The writer who best summed up this concept in fiction is, without doubt, Robert Louis Stevenson. His short novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1888), has become a part of our very language. To use the expression “Jekyll and Hyde” instantly conveys two polarities wrapped inside the same subject.
Film has also explored this concept, having great success with Jekyll and his alter-ego, with 35 films in a century, beginning as early as 1908. Of those films, two versions have been hailed by critics as worthy of taking their place alongside productions like Whale’s Frankenstein and Browning’s Dracula. These were the 1932’s Fredrick March version and the 1941 remake with Spencer Tracy. Of the others, they vary from entertaining (Hammer’s Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) to exploitative (Universal International’s Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953). Many aren’t worth more than a lazy Sunday afternoon’s attention.
Like every great character, much apocrypha has found its way into the Jekyll and Hyde scenario, largely because of the numerous film adaptations. Like Frankenstein’s monster, Tarzan of the Apes and Count Dracula, most people know very little of the original story from which it all began. Hyde suffers less badly than some, but still annoying hallmarks like his attempting to steal the Crown Jewels and the necessary evil of visual make-up that often looks more like a werewolf than anything, often obscure Stevenson’s work.
Enter Mr. Stevenson
Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is often surprising reading for modern readers. Unlike Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this novel is both modern in tone and short. Stephen King describes it this way, in his book Danse Macabre: “… If Bram Stoker serves us great whacks of horror in Dracula … then Stevenson’s brief and cautionary tale is like the quick, mortal stab on an ice pick.” King makes a good case for Stevenson’s book as the best example of the werewolf myth.
According to literary legend, Stevenson got the idea for Hyde, from a bad dream. His wife had awakened him, seeing he was in distress. He remonstrated her for doing so, because he had been enjoying the tale unfolding in his dream conscience. To finish the story, he wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in three days. Stevenson later burned the manuscript at his wife’s insistence. Some say because it was so horrifying, others because it had lacked quality. Stevenson reportedly destroyed it (so that he might have complete creative freedom form the first draft) and spent another three days re-writing it.
Despite the easiness with which Stevenson’s story can be enjoyed, its ultimate revelatory thrill is not available to anyone who has ever heard of Hyde, for the final explanation is well known. How I envy those first readers who did not know that Hyde and Jekyll were the same person. They got to see Marsh and Spencer fall behind their sofas to emerge transformed. This is not to say that the informed reader can’t find value in the story. Stevenson’s writing relies on more than just the shocker ending. The allegory, the wonderful prose, and the almost detective-like deductions of Utterson can still hold anyone who picks up the book.
The original plot of Jekyll and Hyde is a careful arrangement of incidents, which taken separately seem obscure. Stevenson lays another piece of the puzzle before the reader and conclusions begin to take form. The last part of the plot is two revelations that explain everything. So much is this format like a detective fiction, Ellery Queen included it in the famous “Haycroft-Queen” list of mystery classics.
The Facts According to Utterson
The story of Jekyll and Hyde begins with a small but alarming incident. An ugly, brutal man tramples a child and enrages a crowd. Only when the insolent man pays off the family with a 100 pounds do things cool off. Entering a mysterious door, the attacker, one Edward Hyde, retrieves 10 pounds in coin and a check for the remainder. A check written by the amiable and wealthy Dr. Jekyll.
This account is related by the cousin, Enfield, to Mr. Gabriel John Utterson, Jekyll’s lawyer and good friend. Utterson is alarmed at the tale. Jekyll has written a new will that leaves all his wealth to the horrid creature, Mr. Hyde, in the event of Jekyll’s death or disappearance of three months. Utterson immediately assumes that Jekyll is being blackmailed for some indiscretion of his youth.
Driven by friendship, Utterson tracks Hyde, finding him as hideous as Endfield had described him. Hyde gives Utterson his address in case of Jekyll’s demise. When Utterson confronts the secretive Jekyll about the man, the doctor will not discuss it. The matter seems closed.
Then murder is committed. An eye witness, a maid in an upper window sees Hyde viciously kill an M. P., Danvers Carew, literally beating with his stick until it breaks. When Utterson is called in to identify the remains he gives the police Hyde’s address. The mysterious door is opened and found to be connected with Dr. Jekyll’s laboratory. The broken cane is found, proving Hyde’s guilt and the manhunt is on. But the search proves useless. Hyde disappears, and Jekyll claims to have washed his hands of the man.
Time passes. Jekyll returns to his normal cheerful self for a short time, but then abruptly becomes secretive and moody again. Utterson tries to discuss the matter with a mutual friend, Dr. Lanyon, who has lost his health and sure to die. Lanyon forcefully refuses to even hear Jekyll’s name. Upon his death, a document from Lanyon arrives, but the lawyer can not open it until the death of Dr. Jekyll occurs. Things grow more mysterious.
The climax of the entire affair takes place in Jekyll’s home, when Utterson insists on seeing him. Jekyll hides behind the door to his laboratory. When Utterson recognizes the voice speaking to him is not Jekyll’s but Hyde’s he smashes into the room. Edward Hyde is found on the floor death, clutching a phial. Jekyll can be found nowhere.
Enter Mr. Russell
Many stories have been written between 1888 and the present day which use the Jekyll and Hyde formula. Robert Bloch, early in his career wrote “The Suicide in the Study” for Weird Tales (June 1935). Warner Brothers had fun with the idea in several cartoons with Sylvester and Tweety. Even television’s Star Trek split the beloved Captain Kirk in “The Enemy Within”(October 1966) by Richard Matheson. Films like Michael Crichton’s The Terminal Man, countless evil twin stories in film and fiction, added to the archetype of Jekyll and Hyde. But it wasn’t until Playboy published Ray Russell’s “Sagittarius”(1971) that the Hyde legend returned to fiction under its own name.
“Sagittarius” proposes an intriguing idea in the opening of the tale, “What if Hyde had seeded a child? And if he had, it would still be alive today.” Lord Terry — Earl Terrence Glencannon — an aging gentleman explains to his younger companion, Hunt:
… We must first make a great leap of concession and, for sake of argument, look upon Bobbie Stevenson’s story not as a story but as though it were based in fact … Now the story makes no reference to specific years … but we do know it was published in 1886 … we might say Edward Hyde was ‘born’ in that year — but born a full grown man, a creature capable of reproducing himself. We know, from the story, that Hyde spent his time in pursuit of carnal pleasures … Sure one result of those pleasures might have been a child … Such a child, born ’86 or ’87, would be in his seventies today … And think of this now: Whereas all other human creatures are compounded of both good and evil … the son, then (to work it out arithmetically, if that is possible in a question of human factors) is three-quarters pure evil … Not to put too fine a point on it, Hyde’s son — if he is alive — is the second most evil person who ever lived and — since his father is dead — the most evil person on the face of the earth today!
Russell uses this set up to frame another tale, the story of Sellig, a once famous but now forgotten French actor.
Enter Mr. Estleman
The Sherlock Holmes pastiche craze of the 1970’s produced another try at the original Hyde story in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes (1976) by hard-boiled mystery and western writer, Loren D. Estleman. Estleman’s novel skillfully combines all the details of the Holmesian canon with the plot elements of Stevenson’s book. What starts off a merely a rehash soon begins to explore aspects of the Stevenson story to which the original reader is not privy, such as the seedy entertainments of Mr. Hyde, and characters such as Utterson and Dr. Jekyll observed from another point-of-view. Where Stevenson makes both of these characters the epitome of English Good Manners, Estleman gives them a seedier side which prevents Holmes from solving the case too quickly.
Perhaps the one thing Eslteman has to offer is a Mr. Hyde who is a genius villain, much in the same way Moriarty is portrayed.
Ultimately, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes is a Doyle pastiche, for the enjoyment of Holmes fans, and to a lesser degree a re-working of Stevenson. As a Holmes pastiche, Estleman’s work is well-researched, though a little too “over-done” at times. Set at the time Watson is composing A Study in Scarlet, after the first two Doyle novels, the book makes reference to Tonga. As Sherlockiana the book rates with Nicholas Meyer, Michael Hardwick, Fred Saberhagen or L. B. Greenwood. As a work about Jekyll and Hyde, it holds few surprises but many embellishments worthy of interest.
Coming Attractions
Next I am going to try The Jekyll Legacy (1990) by Robert Bloch and Andre Norton. I have high hopes for it because is more than another retelling of the Hyde story. Bloch and Norton have devised a sequel to the original.
