Chapter 1
My older brother, Edward Hyde the Fourth, died last week. As the executor of his estate, I had cause to take possession of a packet of letters and other papers at my brother’s insistence. He left explicit instructions regarding the reading of his will and the dispersal of property, particularly an odd requirement or two concerning some literary effects. He made me pledge not to untie the string or look at a single page until after his passing, on threat of disinheriting myself and the rest of my family.
He entrusted a copy of this codicil to his attorney as well, who was to observe whether or not I faithfully kept this last promise I made to my brother. I now follow his instructions as precisely as possible, incumbent upon my duties as executor and out of a great love for my brother.
I never so much as peeked at these papers until the funeral and memorial service had taken place, and I understand now why he made me make this promise. My brother found a journal belonging to our great-grandfather (the first Edward Hyde) which threw him into great emotional turmoil; he painstakingly marked which pages he wished published and which ones were to be forever concealed.
Although the events described occurred long ago, even now a shadow of an ancestor’s evil ways may fall upon us yet. Had it been my decision to make, I would have destroyed all the papers at once. Alas, as executor I am legally bound to carry out my brother’s wishes—however repugnant they may be to me!
Some of the papers and documents are incomplete; pages are missing and others water damaged. Whether the missing pages disappeared by accident or design is not clear. Several pages appear to have been torn out (indicating more of human agency than happenstance) but what is missing cannot now be recovered. The best I can do, per my brother’s instructions, is to put the papers in some kind of rough chronological order, including both the journal of our great-grandfather and my brother’s own comments.
The first Edward Hyde kept a journal and so his words may begin our story:
“I first began life as a man and not a child, I know not how or why. I believe my creator was a fiend named Stimson or Somerset or Stevenson but of this I cannot be sure, any more than a poor lost soul can be sure of anything, even parentage. Perhaps I regained consciousness following time spent in a coma or after wandering unremarkable days aimlessly as an amnesiac—but I have no natural memories before that fateful day.
“My first clear recollections were of that detestable laboratory and the evil doctor Jekyll who was about to disappear through a far doorway before I could grasp who or where I was, even as my eyes brought slowly into focus every wretched detail of that horrid lab! It is too troubling to my memory and mind, weak as they are, to recapture those first few minutes of trembling consciousness. It is a traumatizing event I try to avoid recalling, for it brings me nothing but misery to contemplate.
“Suffice it to say, I suffered always from a strange admixture of both unrestrained terror and drug-induced bliss. I experienced the greatest intensity of feelings, often contradictory to one another in the extreme, without the necessary moral rudder to steer any single emotion in a straight line. In the days that followed my inexplicable and sudden appearance, I often suffered from intense headaches and succumbed to incredible outbursts of passion, not unlike a child throwing a temper tantrum.
“My outbursts were, however, by any measure of magnitude, far worse than a child’s tantrum—as I discovered later to my own horror. Anger would rage so intensely through every part of my body that it blinded me to all forms of decency and hampered my reasoning faculty as though it were diseased. On occasion I would weep in shame . . . until the shame gave way to seething rage! No more of that—born I was.
“I have not much time to write this. I know the London police are on their way to Dr. Jekyll’s house to arrest me for murder–if indeed they do not kill me on the spot. The doctor is in the other room, behind a locked door as always, and will not answer my hail. I suspect he is suffering some ‘crisis of conscience’. If so, it serves him right. He deserves whatever punishment the law allows for his ungodly elixir and the horrible fate he deliberately inflicted on me!
“I would dearly love to get my hands around his neck just once so that I could pay him back in full for his wickedness—how quickly would I throttle him and stop his lungs from breathing and his heart from beating—the damnable fiend! A broken neck would be a kindness for one like him. He pretends he knows what it is to suffer, to have erred, to have strayed so far from society’s proprieties that he crossed the threshold of bottomless sinfulness—he knows nothing, I tell you!
“A fortnight past the doctor went out on one of his fool’s errands, locking the door carefully behind him to keep me in—or so he thought. Within minutes after his departure I jimmied the latch and slid into his lair as silently as a cat on tiptoes so as not to attract the attention of his meddlesome servant Poole. There, I read Dr. Lanyon’s Narrative and Jekyll’s letter to his lawyer Utterson, to whom he entrusted the safe keeping of his Last Will and Testament.
“I believe the doctor’s intention was to die by suicide: the miserable coward! No thought of “Mr. Hyde” at all, although he would be killing me as well! Only then, after his death, is he willing to expose his nefarious deceits. The treacherous leech! We shall see about that!! What filthy lies contaminate those pages!!
“This madman Jekyll knew nothing of the cursed life he forced upon me. He presents me as a dark phantasmagoria specter incapable of reason. How could he forget that I retained all of his cunning and knowledge? Within days of my “birth”—such a monstrous affair hardly deserves the name but I know no other—I understood all there was to know: Dr. Jekyll was a split personality, a madman!
“I soon deduced he had concocted a powerful mixture of powders that separated his twin selves into Good and Evil–and I, Hyde, was born surrogate to all his evil desires. He had many base ambitions, let me tell you, for this Jekyll creature was given to strange imaginings of the darkest and most vile nature—all of which he poured recklessly into my own birth-right in the form of uncontrollable urges!
“He would be safe, retreating into his doctor-self whenever danger grew too great. His forays into unspeakable licentiousness would be done only through me. But he reckoned without the full mental acumen of the new Mr. Hyde, however birthed I be!”
BORN HYDE
“Aye, so he named me and so I am called to this day. The doctor fancies himself highly intelligent but I find him rather dullish and myself twice as clever as he—for I am able to avoid his traps and wreck his carefully hatched schemes whenever I wish!
“Dr. Jekyll foolishly believed he would remain the stronger of the two of us, not grasping how, in this contest of primal impulses, his mind and mine were forever conjoined. He cannot escape me now any more than I him. Purity of goodness is no match for the impurity of evil, ha ha!
“He knows a few paltry strategies but I’ve deciphered them, all but one. The doctor still believes himself to be in control of Fate—his and mine–but his attempt to direct every aspect of our duality is rather pitiful and weak. He attempts lame subterfuges against me while I for my part create clever deceptions that can undo him in an instant and which he constantly fails to anticipate—because I am far more devious than he! I am the strong one!
“In between bouts of uncontrolled debauchery and licentiousness, I patiently waited, biding my time, waiting and watching. An opportunity finally presented itself for me to break free from the doctor’s puppet strings and exert my new-found powers. These powers have grown far beyond those weak attempts at self-mastery I made in the early days of the incubating laboratory, when Jekyll could still control my time and place, my every thought and breath.”
TO THE DEATH
“Dr. Jekyll slowly grew suspicious that something was amiss and his experiment had gone haywire. He tried to stop my misdeeds through the use of his magic powder, by transforming himself from Hyde back to Jekyll with increasing frequency: “magic”, ha! In his cankerous arrogance he deceived himself into believing that he could limit the scope of my actions—the crazy old fool!!
“Toward the end he learned–too late!–that he had created no mere alter-ego at his beck-and-call but a dangerous new rival: someone equal (if not superior) to himself and determined to throw off his tyrannical control.
“Thus did I become reborn as a new human being of a type not previously known, who from the sheer necessity of self-preservation was obliged to avail myself of the doctor’s intelligence in order to plot my secret plan of revenge—which was never revealed to the likes of Dr. Jekyll. The vain man imagines he has uncovered in the nick of time the danger he must soon face . . . but he is wrong!!
“He never suspected that I had discovered the nature of the powders he bought to separate his schizophrenic personality into its opposing twin halves. Once I had learned how to escape the laboratory in the dead of night, I was free to explore all of the city’s many hidden secrets. Indeed, I soon came to know London far better than he.
The dark streets lend themselves well to the shadows of men who only exist in the wee hours of the morn, beckoned by narrow alley-ways, stone stairways hidden from prying eyes, and silent entrances to the blackest ghost-filled courtyards where no light dares penetrate.
“Though I existed primarily as his evil alter ego, I could also devise schemes of my own even while under the influence of his powerful elixir. I quickly acquired my own supply of the doctor’s precious mixture that I might begin to develop my own separate identity after my “appearance” in his little chamber of horrors.
“Vague echoes of the doctor’s knowledge sprang to life within my own breast. I soon understood medical terms and procedures as though I had attended the same classes he had taken at the university. Not all was crystal clear for parts of his mind were utterly cluttered and confused. His forgetfulness of medical procedures grew steadily worse–but he knew enough for me and that’s all that matter!”
THE CHEVAL-GLASS
“I found an unused room toward the back of the house, long shuttered, where I began my own experiments using the same drugs he employed to separate me, his evil twin alter ego, from his sanctimonious side. I had previously only found myself alive and sentient after the doctor drank his potion; then came the night when I woke in the morning every inch a newborn Mr. Hyde, separate from and independent of the doctor whom I heard about in his laboratory.
“I was elated at my freedom from the tyrant but had one dark question that would not let go of my imagination: what would happen if I drank again of the potion without the doctor’s knowledge or permission? Would I be transformed back into his body or perhaps another human vessel entirely? There was only one way to find out. The night arrived when I had secured enough of the potion to initiate the transformation myself.
“I knew not what to expect on drinking the first draught and found myself wholly unprepared for the sheer intensity of the convulsive transformation. I passed out from the shock and did not wake for some time; even now I am uncertain how much time may have passed–a quarter of an hour, perhaps longer.
“I awoke to see what I fancied to be my own image in the cheval-glass, only to discover that my actual physical form had split in two. The ‘image’ was no mere reflection but a flesh-and-blood twin!
We soon took the measure of one another and were hard-pressed to find a way to begin a conversation—though, once begun, the words flowed easily and we passed the night thus engaged. Two twins, two distinct physical entities, sat and talked: nothing more, nothing less!
“Myself, being Hyde, decided to give my double a different name and christened him “Mr. Clay”. The two of us then agreed upon a scheme whereby we would operate as allies. We were committed, first and foremost, to protecting our secret. We both wished Dr. Jekyll to go on believing there was only one Mr. Hyde, his alter ego—we agreed we must give him no cause to suspect that Hyde was a free man or that the doctor’s “evil side” had split again in twain!
“Our second goal was the destruction of the doctor. I had my own desires, to be sure, inspired by the spirit of revenge. As for Mr. Clay, I suspect he agreed with my intentions merely out of filial duty, I being somewhat like a ‘father’ to him. It may be he was less emotional and less given to violent outbursts than myself. Mr. Clay seemed rather mellow and agreeable–although he retained a flash point of anger before which all men must quake. Together, we intended to prove ourselves a formidable team.”
Chapter 2
“The newspapers have made me out to be a monster, a man with no conscience or scruples, a kind of fiendish beast. I know I did many terrible things in my night-time crawls and committed many horrible crimes around the darker parts of the city.
“I often became uncontrollably drunk and acted savagely in my contempt toward any man who dared cross me! I was quick as a thief, gifted at stealing when a back was turned. I visited whore-houses and indulged my lust to its utmost limit, discarding women with a kick and a blow when finished.
“My temper, once roused, led to fights where I would soundly thrash my victim with cane, fist, and stomping boot. I wrecked a brothel or two and broke tavern chairs and tables with gleeful abandonment when the occasion warranted it! As my reputation grew, others soon became leery of me and the Bobbies began tracking my whereabouts.
“I felt enormous power swelling up from my dark side, like a rush of adrenaline. My evil impulses provided nearly unlimited strength like no man has seen since the days of Samson. I was afraid of no man and could send thuggish brutes and bullies running for their lives–even the most ferocious mastiffs scurried for cover with but a single look from my flashing eyes!
“I killed Sir Danvers Carew as much by accident as by premeditation, yet I enjoyed every blow with gusto and relish. It was only then the thought flashed through my mind that I could be hung for such a crime. A nameless fear and terror seized me. I resolved to go into hiding until I could find a way to escape my ghastly fate on the gallows.”
BLAME JEKYLL, NOT ME!
“As for the pain, injuries, and deaths I caused . . . well, I’d rather not discuss it at any length. Several homicides remain open cases and my words here might provide the very clues the London constabulary need to track and run me to ground. In the early days, when I was but a figment of Dr. Jekyll’s imagination, I did not suspect I was capable of such vile actions. I only existed as his alter ego, springing to life after he drank his damnable concoction.
“I was as much him as I was anyone else, for the physical uncoupling of the two of us had not yet occurred. After returning from a night of debauchery, I often felt that the good doctor had outdone himself in indulging his evil impulses. I was imprisoned as Mr. Hyde and had not yet become a man in my own right—and so entertained scarcely a thought that the ultimate responsibility for my immoral actions lay more on me and not him. I had no pangs of conscience until I managed to split from him and became independent and free—and only then came face to face with the desperate need to comprehend my actions committed under Dr. Jekyll’s enthusiasm and tutelage.”
HOW ONE MAY REJOICE IN EVIL
“I admit only this: at the time of those misdeeds I celebrated my wickedness. Indeed, I learned to enjoy indulging my evil side–or rather I should say, Dr. Jekyll learned to enjoy engaging in these horrific acts after he drank the life-altering potion. Why did he create this strange elixir? It was his way of inventing me as an excuse to indulge his own most sinister temptations!
“I was not a bad man, or at least suppose I would not have been considered a bad man (having no way of ascertaining the truth) had I been allowed to exist under the width and breadth of normal human circumstances. Unfortunately, by the time I gained meaningful self-awareness—to counter-balance that unfeeling monster conjured up from Dr. Jekyll’s diseas’d imagination and most vile potion–I could not help but fall victim to a violent personality disorder that originated in Jekyll, not me. The distinction is all!
“Yes, I understand that no one will believe me–I know that now–but it is also as true as the day is long. It was this mad Dr. Jekyll who first performed this unconscionable “surgery” upon my mind. There was no “Mr. Hyde” until Dr. Jekyll fell from grace and began entertaining his own sinister thoughts. It was he who created me through his bizarre experiments as though he were separating Siamese twins–all of which occurred long before I ever felt an impulse of true evil stirring within my breast.
“Selfishly, he tried to keep all the most admirable human traits for himself. Most unjustly, he imbued me with the bitter dregs of all his hidden vicious traits—making me a convenient scapegoat upon whom he could shoulder all the blame after a wild night of carousing and debauchery. Even now, during his final ‘crisis of conscience’—allowing himself to confess to all that he has done–he makes himself out to be a sympathetic, contrite, and deserving fellow rather than the ungodly beast he truly was.
“It was he who engaged in all forms of licentious debauchery once he believed was free to unleash all evil impulses through me, Hyde! Then, just as I began to relish how evil a man could truly be, the doctor takes another drink of the damnable potion and back to normal he goes, forcing me back into his flabby skin, leaving the world to wonder aghast at who this despicable Hyde fellow is. I’ll tell you who he is—it’s Jekyll, not me!!
“Jekyll never treated me with anything but contempt . . . except once, near the very end, when his faith in his perfect control over me shattered. Didn’t he panic then?! It was deliciously laughable to see! He thought he had created this perfect world of alibis for himself, letting the monster Hyde loose and bottling him up again at the end of a long spree of debauchery. Anything I did, as Hyde, would always be assigned to me as my fault—although every crime I committed could surely be laid at his doorstep as well!”
HYDE’S ESCAPE
“I saw what he was up to soon enough. I made up my mind to turn the tables on the good doctor the first chance I got. I intended to break away from him and make a life of my own as far away from Jekyll’s laboratory as I could get!
“I wished to be my own master. I feigned subservience and patiently waited my chance–keeping my intentions secret even as I endured one hideous transformation after another, from the normal to monster and back again.
“I admit I was a slave to his dark impulses until the day I awoke as a separate entity and gained my independence. It was only then that I began to develop an inkling of who I was and why the doctor was intent on bringing his experiment to fruition. Aye, I was privy to the darkest corners of his imagination as much as he was to mine!
“Jekyll wants to see the shadow of his own evil, does he? Then I would show him that shadow, aye, and the deeper substance he so desperately tries to deny but knows in his heart of hearts must exist! I say aloud to every man who wishes to hear the truth that Dr. Henry Jekyll’s confession is nothing but a damnable pack of lies!!
“He thought I would die–but I didn’t, did I?
“No, I’m still here and ready to turn the tables on the old fool!
“Now it’s my turn to get even with the doctor by exposing his lies and his crimes and letting the world decide who the really evil one was: Jekyll or Hyde!!
“Hark, a footstep . . . someone is coming . . . I must stop here!”
CHAPTER 3
Obituary from the year 19___ reprinted in the local newspaper
THE TRUE STORY OF THE GREAT-GRANDSON OF EDWARD HYDE
My brother then appended his own account. He wrote out a brief family history, going back several generations, which included a shocking revelation that neither I nor anyone else anticipated. Here are the details of that story, told in my brother’s own words:
The London-born Edward Hyde, the first of that name in our family lineage, had three children, two sons and one daughter, all of whom survived to adulthood. Two grew up in America and one returned to London, later relocating to Edinburgh for reasons of health. All three in turn had a modest number of children so that by the law of natural progression, Edward Hyde’s progeny slowly multiplied and grew in number, generation by generation. They built decent lives for themselves, never knowing (or perhaps choosing to forget) their true origins.
I, alone of all the Hyde descendants, of the fourth generation, sought to know the first Edward Hyde and who he was. I believe I now understand him far better than anyone else in my family, for he is as a kindred spirit to me. The rarest of all phenomena–the reincarnation of a soul in the life of another—must have transpired with my birth. He is me or, if you prefer, I am him, reborn!
I retain many memories of events within his life, the details of which no one has ever shared with me and of which I have no way of gathering such knowledge by any other means. These details seem to comprise some sort of inherited genetic trait, an instinctive memory of a past life that ended nearly a century before my own birth.
Call it coincidence or fate, but I was the first Hyde descendant who found my great-grandfather’s diary and all the other notes he made in order to defend himself. He felt certain he would be tried for the murder of Dr. Jekyll and his only hope for life was to chance an escape. His journal entries are the true account of what actually transpired.
Certain of his papers suffered from considerable water damage, stored where they were in the attic beneath the north-eastern eaves (which were the dampest), yet most of the sheets are legible enough to read–even though not all are perfectly clear in meaning, as you shall see. My great-grandfather describes events not entirely of this world, making it difficult to tell where normal reality ends and where this utterly strange tale, bordering on madness, begins.
For what else can I call the nooks and crannies of a human biography so bizarre? For the sake of my own moral comfort, I concluded it was best to believe none of it ever happened—and yet his diary provided such an abundance of detail that I was forced to concede that all of these events must have occurred! My own research uncovered many confirming points and, as of yet, nothing that contradicts his fundamental account.
There’s a sense of truth buried in them—carefully crafted words that cannot be explained away by any other haphazard train of thought. Somebody—Jekyll, Hyde, Clay–drank that strange elixir for the last time just a few minutes before Poole and Utterson broke down Jekyll’s laboratory door. Of that much, I am certain.
NOTES ON EDWARD HYDE’S JOURNAL
Long before that final evening, my great-grandfather’s journal describes how he broke into the Doctor’s lab and found bottles with unknown liquids and powders in them. Both men were playing with fire and should have left well enough alone but neither had the strength nor wisdom to resist temptation.
I believe they were sensible men (under less exceptional circumstances) but they were fatally stubborn—men who could have led normal lives except for that fateful day when Dr. Jekyll first drank that strange admixture of liquid and powders that became the damning potion . . . .
My kinsman’s entry for that dark day when he was “born” describes what happened from his viewpoint and not that of the self-serving excuses of Dr. Jekyll’s. Alongside my great-grandfather’s entries, there are disjointed notes scribbled in a dark heavy hand in the margins.
I surmise these hurried scribbles must be my ancestor’s entries as well, those he made after having fallen under the influence of the drug that turned him into a despicable monster. I give only one example of his margin notes as others are too repulsive to share:
“That old man wasn’t the only creature I killed!”
When I examine the page carefully with a magnifying glass, I can see where the ink once flowed thick and dark. It is as though Hyde was pressing down upon the paper with tremendous force, suggesting the surging power of anger unleashed by the Doctor’s strange and damnable concoction. For this, the doctor alone must be held accountable. He unleashed the fury–and crimes committed by such fury are surely his!
LEARNING THE TRUTH
Some years ago, I sat down and read my great-grandfather’s journal from beginning to end, including all of the miscellaneous notes he preserved, whether scribbled on scraps of paper or recorded with-violent-handwriting-spasms along the margins of his journal. I was faced with an impossible dilemma: to reveal what I had discovered or to keep it a secret forever?
I have chosen a middle path: upon my demise, I have made arrangements with my brother to reveal certain passages from our great-grandfather’s journal but never the entire text. It would ruin our family name forever to choose the latter path!
Although Hyde’s journal stops rather abruptly, over the years I have made extensive inquiries to pick up traces of my progenitor’s trail. I felt compelled to learn what happened to him after the catastrophic debacle at Jekyll’s laboratory on what proved to be the last day of the doctor’s life. I finally discovered how and where my great-grandfather died . . . but I run ahead of myself in telling the story.
CHAPTER 4
I will share a passage from my great-grandfather’s journal so the world will understand who he was and what pangs of conscience he suffered in hiding his true identity–and how I agonized over whether to share or suppress these written memories!
This passage is from his journal the day after witnesses saw him trampling underfoot a small girl who had the misfortune to block his way whilst he, in too great a hurry, strode savagely homeward. It is written in an angry, dark hand; at times the pressure of the fountain pen point nearly rips through the paper:
“A superior man like me must have rights to enjoy life that go beyond the meager struggle for existence of the miserably poor. I was created a superior man—and not one of them. I am endowed with superior intellect, strength, and sense of purpose. Why ask compassion of me for the wretched human beings who crowd the cesspools of filth and degradation in every slum of London? I feel nothing for them!
“They are ill-begotten, misshapen, grotesque, subhuman creatures. They are animals, vermin, refuse, filth. They disgust me! They accuse me, a superior man, of trampling one of their filthy little urchins under foot? What of it? The wretched creature darted in front of me and ruined the rhythm of my stride! The child soon got what she deserved, a sound thrashing with boot and cane!
“Englishmen have never shown the least reluctance to administer deserving punishment within their imperial empire with heartless brutality when necessary—why should Englishmen be judged by a different standard at home?
“If the wretched little girl had been a pickaninny from the Gold Coast, a kaffir from South Africa, or a nigger-child from America she could have been beaten, whipped, or killed with impunity. Why should I share the sidewalk with such filth here in my own country? I tell you it makes no sense—I tell you I won’t!”
My brother resumed his narrative:
These brutish entries reveal the moments when Hyde was most under the control of Dr. Jekyll’s potion; the journal grows more sober and reflective in its later pages.
I will not repeat all that my great-grandfather wrote; it is too dark. I am not proud of his entries that are so racist and vulgar. They fill me with loathing and disgust . . . and yet I understand him. I feel great sympathy for the impossible situation in which he found himself–through no fault of his own. All those who have criticized him as a detestable monster fail to realize there was no other way out for my great-grandfather!
What could he do—go to the police? Tell them the criminal they sought was not a man named Hyde but a doctor named Jekyll? He would have been locked up as a madman or shoved into prison as an unrepentant evil-doer. Without hesitation his keepers would have thrown away the keys, seeing him as nothing more than a lunatic, a deranged and dangerous felon!
And yet, in the end, there was nothing the least common about him. For every diary passage that turns my stomach and makes me ill with loathing, there are just as many absolutely brilliant passages that abundantly demonstrate that he was intelligent, thoughtful, and prudent—and that he was fully aware of his own dilemma!
“JUDGE NOT LEST YE BE JUDGED”
My great-grandfather, while still living in London, made a good faith effort to resist his fate. Certainly, without means or lodestar, he failed in the end. He chose to embrace evil . . . yet I am certain he had no other choice. The effect of the potion was simply too strong for him—Jekyll would drink the mixture and disappear, leaving my great-grandfather to wrestle with his demons—with Jekyll’s demons, really!
Even so, Edward Hyde started seeking a way to escape. He came very close to leaving his evil side behind him more than once and starting life anew. If only Jekyll had been smart enough to see Hyde’s genius! But no, the doctor was too infatuated with his own ego to see the extreme harm he was inflicting on others. Jekyll took great pains to make Hyde as evil as he could and then callously absolve himself of all responsibility for the dire consequences of his evil creation!
According to my great-grandfather’s journal, the good doctor was actually quite shocked when his personality first split in twain and produced an evil genius as his alter ego—but whose fault is that, really? Jekyll, a trained medical man, should have known better!
As it was, Dr. Jekyll proved terribly weak in moral rectitude and incapable of acting sensibly when the chips were down. I have no doubt that all would have ended in a still greater catastrophe had not my great-grandfather managed to separate himself physically from the doctor and constructed a secret plan for his escape.
ESCAPE!
As I understand the last few journal entries, the twin-split Hydes discussed their plan at length. They agreed that one of them must stay behind to get rid of evidence while the other would attempt to escape to America. By now, the two men were fully intent on eliminating the doctor. Mr. Clay was not subject to the same depth of murderous rage as my great-grandfather, but nonetheless felt betoken to him with something of the feelings of filial duty a son shows his father.
Both men hoped to make good their escape after Jekyll’s death, Mr. Hyde to find refuge among the ships and sailors of the docks while Mr. Clay would disappear into the amorphous anonymity of London’s throng. Mr. Clay would clean up the murder scene the moment the doctor was dispatched, concealing from the police as many clues as he could. He promised Mr. Hyde he would then “disappear” and start life over on his own, avoiding all acts of a criminal or diabolical nature that had so preoccupied Mr. Hyde during his many night-time outings of licentious debauchery.
Whether Mr. Clay held up his end of the bargain, I am not certain. From British newspapers of the era, I surmise this second Hyde (“Mr. Clay”) was successful in his mission to clean up the deadly scene; Jekyll died that night and the papers reported it as a suicide and not murder—exactly as the two men had intended all along.
HYDE DISAPPEARS FOREVER
Of my own ancestor, the first Mr. Hyde, the one who pledged to escape or die in the attempt, all I can say of him is this: as I am the fourth generation of his progeny to be born and raised here in America . . . there is only one conclusion to be drawn!
Hyde succeeded in avoiding capture, traveled to America, and here created a new life for himself. Rid of the debilitating transformational paroxysms of pain periodically forced upon him against his will by Dr. Jekyll’s elixir, his mind soon cleared. In place of the constant confusion and murderous impulses of his early life, a strong ethical core emerged, well-centered.
He married and had children but confided nothing of his bizarre and violent past to them, telling them only that he was “orphaned” at quite a young age and had no living relatives. In short, no one knew of my great-grandfather’s dark past. I alone, after discovering his journal, am the first in the long line of Hydes in America to learn of his true identity after all these years: My great-grandfather helped murder Dr. Jekyll and fled the country!
Having come upon these shocking admissions, my first thought was to burn the journal and destroy all evidence—let the secrets of the past be buried with the dead, as they say. In the end, I found I could not destroy his writings. It’s best to let wiser heads than mine to sort fact from fiction and parcel out the blame, if there is any to assign. Here, then, the last few pages of my great-grandfather’s journal:
“I had returned from a long night of carousing, drinking, and whoring. I am ashamed to admit how far I had fallen into the pit of immorality but by then I had gotten so used to the debauchery that nary a flicker of guilt bothered my conscience. I was living in the land of the dead when a small incident brought me back to my senses . . . .
“In the early morning hours I came across a man with a white horse drawing a milk wagon. The man was out about his route when the horse became inexplicably stubborn and refused to move. The man raised his riding crop and began beating the horse along the neck and withers, urging it forward. Either the load was too heavy or one of the back wheels was stuck, for the horse could not get the wagon to budge.
“A young girl, shabbily dressed, hearing the fearful neighing of the horse, emerged from a nearby alley doorway, presumably the man’s daughter. She begged her father to stop beating the horse when he thrust her away and she fell hard upon the cobblestones. It was just then that I froze in horror. I saw myself—the uplifted cane—when I smashed death blows upon Sir Danvers Carew in just such a senseless frenzy.
“I grabbed the riding crop from the man’s hand to stop him from beating his horse, a creature that had never done him any harm. I was set to thrash him within an inch of his life when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught the small girl looking at me, imploring me to stop before I hurt or killed her father.
“A strange new feeling overtook me, making me impulsively toss the riding crop away. I stepped back and helped the young girl to her feet. My mind flashed on an earlier incident, where I had kicked and cursed a small girl who had once unexpectedly crossed my path. I recoiled at the thought of these monstrous actions I had taken!
“Then the spirit of Hyde, held in abeyance for a few brief seconds, returned. He began to fill my soul with his evil thoughts once more but I was never the same Hyde after that day. I had caught a glimpse, however briefly, of another reality—vastly different from the only one I had known up to that moment.
“An attribute previously unknown to me, my conscience, had emerged, allowing me to escape Hyde’s clutches. For a space of a few seconds I was as lucid as any human being ever was. It was almost more than I could bear to admit that I had become a sick and violent man . . . and that Hyde had to die!
“Until that moment I had been focused on bringing about the death of the doctor alone but now, for the first time, I realized both of us must die: the “good Dr. Jekyll” and the “evil Mr. Hyde”. My plans changed accordingly. That night, I proposed a new course of action to Mr. Clay, my accomplice and compatriot in the nefarious deeds yet to come, to which he readily agreed.”
My brother continued his account:
As I piece together the details of Dr. Jekyll’s last night in the laboratory, Hyde must have murdered the doctor with the aid of Mr. Clay. Hyde then escaped from the laboratory, navigated his way to the docks, and set sail for America.
From the London constabulary’s point of view, the Hyde who was Dr. Jekyll’s evil alter ego never existed. The police had no reason to suspect him as a man with his own identity who managed to escape from both Dr. Jekyll and the city of London.
As for Mr. Clay, true to his promise to my great-grandfather, he proved very adept at maintaining an anonymous life in the deepest shadows of the night, so neither he nor Hyde were ever seen or heard from again. (There were brief rumors, however, two years later, to the effect that he was the notorious Jack the Ripper–but of this no one is certain.)
Indeed, the police knew nothing of Hyde’s successful escape, passage across the ocean, and a new life in America. The only “Hyde” they ever saw that night was the back of a running man when they caught a fleeting glimpse of Mr. Clay making a mad dash into the streets of London. He was perceived as a person of interest, certainly; they gave hurried chase to apprehend him. They valiantly followed after him as he disappeared down one alley after another until he finally vanished into thin air.
Thus did both Hydes escape from under the noses of the London constabulary. The police report concluded that “Jekyll” and “Hyde” were “one and the same person”, based on Utterson’s testimony. They never knew that Hyde had physically split himself apart from the doctor and then split again into two separate identities!
Only the diary, now in my possession, reveals these details, unknown to both the police and public at the time. Of all the entries, the part of the diary I found most revealing is this passage, written right before the night Dr. Jekyll died:
“I have learned of the doctor’s growing remorse. His fear of losing control over me is growing exponentially. He plans to confess all and die by his own hand. This I cannot let happen! Suicide is too kind an end for the likes of him.
“I confided in Mr. Clay my new-found knowledge, letting him know that our time-table for revenge must be sped up if we were to prevent Dr. Jekyll’s plan of suicide from going forward. We spent many hours together arranging all the details of the doctor’s murder down to the smallest point, as well as my escape by sea and Mr. Clay’s ‘disappearance’. We were at last satisfied that our scheme was arranged exactly as we wished: it could not be improved upon one iota!
“If all went well, Dr. Jekyll’s time was at an end but my own life—‘Mr. Hyde’s new life in America’–would be just beginning!
“When I confronted Dr. Jekyll on that last night, the horror in his eyes was beyond the telling. He knew at once that I intended to do him in. He reached for his poison but I got to the phial at the same moment and began to wrestle it away from him.
“We tussled back and forth, his outstretched hand reaching for the desk where he kept his pistol. He was surprisingly strong–but then frightened men, fearing the yawning chasm of death, often are!
“We whirled about his lab, smashing bottles and glass apparatus, locked in mortal struggle. He did not see Mr. Clay approach stealthily behind him nor did his strength prove superior to that of two men. We subdued him and stuffed a rag in his mouth to stifle his cries for help.
Although he had run out of his potion, I had not and brought a goodly quantity with me to carry out my plan. I prepared the potion he used to start the transformation but I mixed it to treble its normal strength and added a dose of poison for good measure: if one potion did not finish him off, the other would!
“We removed the rag from his mouth and poured it down his throat. He began convulsing and transforming himself into his evil alter-ego, then back again to himself as Dr. Jekyll, and yet again to his dark side, the bones of his body contracting and expanding in angry spasms of incredible pain. He was locked into a hellish purgatory and could no longer escape in either direction!
“I waited for the doctor to take his last breath, looking far more like Hyde than Jekyll in those last few seconds of his conscious existence. I watched as that wild look of horror in his eyes slowly subsided to a fixed and immutable stare.
Mr. Clay began cleaning up, sweeping up the broken glass and removing other tell-tale pieces of evidence of the struggle that had taken place during the doctor’s death throes. He glanced out the door once, looked back at me, and dashed away to freedom.
“I had barely enough time to assure myself that the doctor was dead before Poole and Utterson began axing their way through the door . . . I heard one loud shattering blow after enough, deafening to my ears!
“I escaped out the side door and ran for my life. I did not stop until I reached the docks and found my ship. I gave the prearranged signal to the mate on guard duty; while he looked the other way I snuck aboard and passed an anxious night waiting for the morning. The light of dawn arrived at long last. The captain gave “look-alive!” orders to his crew to weigh anchor and get underway . . . and I was on my way to America!”
LIFE IN AMERICA
My late brother here added a comment of his own:
In a new and better hand, my great-grandfather continued his story . . . .
“I established my new life in America. I carefully brought out from its hiding place my journal and other notes on “the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, as I chose to call this episode in my life. I filled in such details as I thought others might wish to understand. I was lonesome with my secret and considered sharing the whole of my story with my family but in the end could not bear the thought of doing so. They would see me as a monster!
“Instead, I have decided to wrap up my writings and hide them here in the attic. I am sure that someday, someone–perhaps one of my grandchildren, perhaps you–will grow curious enough to start rummaging through these old boxes and find my papers. Thankfully, I will be long gone by then and beyond the moral censure of my fellow humans.
“I have tried to lead a good life in America. I have never forgotten my humble beginnings nor the crimes I committed under the influence of Dr. Jekyll and his damnable elixir. I cannot undo the past . . . and would not do so even had I the power.
“We must all live with our deeds, whether good or evil. It was a lesson that the good Dr. Jekyll taught me all too well, though one he was never able to learn for himself. He thought by creating me he would free himself from his dark side, but men can never rid themselves of their dark impulses by trick or invention.
“They must face those dark impulses and master them through self-discipline and strength of will. The immersion in knowledge and the acquisition of moral philosophy are far more reasonable tutors than strange and deadly powders mixed in test tubes!
“As I sit here in the attic arranging my papers, I realize that I have been both blessed and cursed. At times my spirits sag terribly. I am often tempted to sink into a sea of despair when I think of all the frailties of human nature that Dr. Jekyll revealed, as well as all the depraved acts of criminal indifference he forced me to commit . . . .
“Hark, but I hear my wife and children calling me: “Edward, where are you?” “Father, we are ready to go!” It is snowing outside for it is that season of the year when American families must go seek “the perfect Christmas tree” to place in their front room by the window . . . and I have promised my family we would go and fetch such a fantastic tree this very afternoon!
“Well, that is pretty much all of it. I will wrap up my papers now and place them in a safe dry place until that day when they shall once more see the light of day.”
“I remain your most obedient and humble servant, etc.”
-Edward Hyde
My brother expressed his own troubled thoughts on what he had read:
As Hyde’s fourth generation descendant and the first to find and read his journal, I add only this: I here conclude my family’s history, make of it what you will. I write a special note to my brother: at the risk of being disinherited if you disobey this command, my last wish, this family history is not to be shared with anyone until after my death. Be it kept a secret until such time as my passing. (Signed) Edward Hyde the IV
And thus, four generations later, at a modest memorial service for Edward Hyde the Fourth, known to the whole world as a good man—a kind and caring and compassionate man–did all these many secrets tumble out and reveal themselves to a stunned world!
