10. Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case (chapter 10) of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, read by Anna Butterworth

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Henry Jekyl's full statement of the case. I was born in the year eighteen
to a large fortune, endowed besideswith excellent parts, inclined by nature to
industry, fond of the respect ofthe wise and good among my fellow men,
and thus as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honorable

(00:22):
and distinguished future. And indeed theworst of my faults was a certain impatient
gaiety of disposition, such as hasmade the happiness of many, but such
as I found it hard to reconcilewith my imperious desire to carry my head
high and wear a more than commonlygrave countenance before the public. Hence it

(00:43):
came about that I concealed my pleasures, and that when I reached years of
reflection and began to look round meand take stock of my progress and position
in the world, I stood alreadycommitted to a profound duplicity of me many
a man would have even in suchirregularities as I was guilty of. But
from the high views that I hadset before me, I regarded and hid

(01:07):
them with an almost morbid sense ofshame. It was thus rather the exacting
nature of my aspirations than any particulardegradation in my faults that made me what
I was, And with even adeeper trench than in the majority of men,
severed in me those provinces of goodand ill which divide and compound man's

(01:32):
dual nature. In this case,I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately
on the hard law of life,which lies at the root of religion,
and as one of the most plentifulsprings of distress. Though so profound a
double dealer, I was in nosense a hypocrite. Both sides of me

(01:52):
were in dead earnest. I wasno more myself than I laid aside restraint
and plunged in shame, than whenI lay in the eye of day at
the furtherance of knowledge or the reliefof sorrow and suffering. And it chanced
that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and

(02:12):
the transcendental, reacted and shed astrong light on this consciousness of the perennial
war among my members. With everyday and from both sides of my intelligence,
the moral and the intellectual, Ithus drew steadily near to that truth
by whose partial discovery I have beendoomed to such a dreadful shipwreck, that

(02:35):
man is not truly one, buttruly two. I say two, because
the state of my own knowledge doesnot pass beyond that point. Others will
follow, others will outstrip me onthe same lines, and I hazard the
guess that man will be ultimately knownfor a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous,

(02:55):
and independent denizens. I, formy part, art from the nature
of my life, advanced infallibly inone direction, and in one direction only.
It was on the moral side,and in my own person, that
I learned to recognize the thorough andprimitive duality of man. I saw that

(03:16):
of the two natures that contended inthe field of my consciousness, even if
I could rightly be said to beeither, it was only because I was
radically both. And from an earlydate, even before the course of my
scientific discoveries had begun to suggest themost naked possibility of such a miracle,

(03:36):
I had learned to dwell with pleasureas a beloved day dream on the thought
of the separation of these elements.If each, I told myself, could
be housed in separate identities, lifewould be relieved of all that was unbearable.
The unjust might go his way,delivered from the aspirations and remorse of

(03:57):
his more upright twin, and thejust could walk steadfastly and securely on his
upward path, doing the good thingsin which he found his pleasure, and
no longer exposed to disgrace and penitenceby the hands of this extraneous evil.
It was the curse of mankind thatthese incongruous faggots were thus bound together,

(04:20):
that in the agonized womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continually struggling.
How then were they dissociated? Iwas so far in my reflections,
when, as I have said,a side light began to shine upon the
subject from the laboratory table. Ibegan to perceive, more deeply than it

(04:42):
has ever yet been stated, thetrembling immateriality, the mislike transience of this
seemingly so solid body in which wewalk. Attired certain agents I found to
have the power to shake and pluckback that fleshly vestment, even and as
a wind might toss the curtains ofa pavilion. For two good reasons,

(05:04):
I will not enter deeply into thisscientific branch of my confession. First because
I have been made to learn thatthe doom and burthen of our life is
bound forever on man's shoulders, andwhen the attempt is made to cast it
off, it but returns upon uswith more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.

(05:26):
Second because, as my narrative willmake alas too evident, my discoveries were
incomplete enough then that I not onlyrecognize my natural body from the mere error
and effulgence of certain of the powersthat made up my spirit, but manage
to compound a drug by which thesepowers should be dethroned from their supremacy,

(05:48):
and a second's form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me,
because they were the expression and borethe stamp of lower elements in my soul.
I hesitated long before I put thistheory to the test of practice.
I knew well that I risked deathfor any drug that so potently controlled and

(06:11):
shook the very fortress of identity,might, by the least scruple of an
overdose, or at the least inopportunityin the movement of exhibition, utterly block
out that immaterial tabernacle which I lookedto it to change, But the temptation
of a discovery so singular and profoundat last overcame the suggestions of alarm.

(06:33):
I had long since prepared my tincture. I purchased at once from a firm
of wholesale chemists a large quantity ofa particular salt, which I knew from
my experiments to be the last ingredientrequired. And late one accursed night,
I compounded the elements, watched themboil and smoke together in the glass,

(06:55):
and when the abolition had subsided,with a strong glow of courage, drank
off the potion. The most rackingpang succeeded, a grinding in the bones,
deadly nausea, and a horror ofthe spirit that cannot be exceeded at
the hour of birth or death.Then these agonies began swiftly to subside,

(07:16):
and I came to myself as ifout of a great sickness. There was
something strange in my sensations, somethingindescribably new, and from its very novelty,
incredibly sweet. I felt younger,lighter, happier in body. Within,
I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images

(07:40):
running like a mill race in myfancy, a solution of the bonds of
obligation, an unknown but not aninnocent freedom of the soul. I knew
myself at the first breath of thisnew life to be more wicked, tenfold
more wicked, sold a slave tomy original evil. And the thought in

(08:01):
that moment braced and delighted me likewine. I stretched out my hands,
exulting in the freshness of these sensations, and in the act I was suddenly
aware that I had lost in stature. There was no mirror at that date
in my room. That which standsbeside me as I write, was brought
there later on, and for thevery purpose of these transformations. The night,

(08:26):
however, was far gone into themorning. The morning, black as
it was, was nearly ripe forthe conception of the day. The inmates
of my house were locked in themost rigorous hours of slumber, and I
determined, flushed as I was,with hope and triumph, to venture in
my new shape. As far asmy bedroom, I crossed the yard,

(08:48):
wherein the constellations looked down upon me. I could have thought with wonder,
the first creature of that sort,that their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to
them. I stole through the corridorsa stranger in my own house, and
coming to my room, I sawfor the first time the appearance of Edward

(09:09):
Hide. I must here speak bytheory alone, saying not that which I
know, but that which I supposedto be most probable. The evil side
of my nature to which I hadnow transferred the stamping efficacy, was less
robust and less developed than the goodwhich I had just posed again. In

(09:30):
the course of my life, whichhad been, after all nine tenths a
life of effort, virtue, andcontrol, it had been much less exercised
and much less exhausted. And hence, as I think it came about,
that Edward Hide was so much smaller, slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyl.
Even as good shone upon the countenanceof the one evil was written broadly

(09:54):
and plainly on the face of theother evil, besides which I must still
believe to be the lethal side ofman, had left on that body an
imprint of deformity and decay. Andyet when I looked upon that ugly idle
in the glass, I was consciousof no repugnance, rather of a leap

(10:15):
of welcome. This too was myself. It seemed natural and human in my
eyes. It bore a livelier imageof the spirit. It seemed more express
and single than the imperfect and dividedcountenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call
mine, and in so far Iwas doubtless right. I have observed that

(10:37):
when I wore the semblance of EdwardHyde, none could come near to me
at first without a visible misgiving ofthe flesh. This, as I take
it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled
out of good and evil, andEdward Hide, alone in the ranks of
mankind, was pure evil. Ilingered, but a moment at the mirror

(11:03):
the second and conclusive experiment had yetto be attempted. It yet remained to
be seen if I had lost myidentity beyond redemption, and must flee before
daylight from a house that was nolonger mine. And hurrying back to my
cabinet, I once more prepared anddrank the cup, once more, suffered
the pangs of dissolution, and cameto myself once more with the character,

(11:28):
the stature, and the face ofHenry Jekyl. That night I had come
to the fatal cross roads. HadI approached my discovery in a more noble
spirit, had I risked the experimentwhile under the empire of generous or pious
aspirations? All must have been otherwise? And from these agonies of death and

(11:50):
birth I had come forth an angelinstead of a fiend. The drug had
no discriminating action. It was neitherdiabolical nor divine. But it shook the
doors of the prison house of mydisposition, and like the captives of Philippi,
that which stood within ran forth.At that time my virtue slumbered,

(12:13):
my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the
occasion. And the thing that wasprojected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although
I had now two characters, aswell as two appearances, one was wholly
evil, and the other was stillthe old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound

(12:35):
of whose reformation and improvement I hadalready learned to despair. The movement was
thus wholly toward the worse. Evenat that time I had not conquered my
aversions to the dryness of a lifeof study. I would still be merely
disposed at times, and as mypleasures were to say, the least undignified,

(12:56):
and I was not only well knownand high considered, but growing towards
the elderly man. This incoherency ofmy life was daily growing more unwelcome.
It was on this side that mynew power tempted me until I fell in
slavery. I had but to drinkthe cup, to doff at once the
body of the noted professor, andto assume like a thick cloak, that

(13:22):
of Edward Hyde. I smiled atthe notion. It seemed to me at
the time to be humorous, andI made my preparations with the most studious
care. I took and furnished thathouse in Soho to which Hide was tracked
by the police and engaged as ahousekeeper, a creature whom I knew well

(13:43):
to be silent and unscrupulous. Onthe other side, I announced my servants
that a mister Hyde, whom Idescribed, was to have full liberty and
power about my house in the square, and to parry mishaps. I even
called and made myself a familiar objectin my second character. I next drew

(14:03):
up that will to which you somuch objected, so that if anything befell
me in the person of doctor Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward
Hyde without pecuniary loss, and thusfortified, as I supposed, on every
side, I began to profit bythe strange immunities of my position. Men

(14:24):
had before hired bravos to transact theircrimes while their own person and reputation sat
under shelter. I was the firstthat ever did so for his pleasures.
I was the first that could plodin the public eye with a load of
genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these

(14:45):
lendings and spring headlong into the seaof liberty. But for me, in
my impenetrable mantle, the safety wascomplete. Think of it, I did
not even exist. Let me butescape into my laboratory door. Give me
but a second or two to mixand swallow the draft that I had always
standing ready. And whatever he haddone, Edward Hide would pass away like

(15:11):
the stain of breath upon a mirror, and there in his stead, quietly
at home, trimming the midnight lampin his study, A man who could
afford to laugh at suspicion would beHenry Jekyll. The pleasure which I made
haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have said, undignified,

(15:31):
I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of Edward Hyde,
they soon began to turn toward themonstrous. When I would come back
from these excursions, I was oftenplunged into a kind of wonder at my
vicarious depravity. This familiar that Icalled out of my own soul, that
sent forth alone to do his goodpleasure, was a being inherently malign and

(15:56):
villainous. His every act and thoughtcentered on self, drinking pleasure with bestial
avidity, from any degree of tortureto another, relentless, like a man
of stone. Henry Jekyl stood attimes aghast before the acts of Edward Hide.
But the situation was apart from ordinarylaws and insiduously relaxed the grasp of

(16:18):
conscience. It was Hide, afterall, and Hide alone that was guilty.
Jeckyll was no worse. He wokeagain to his good qualities, seemingly
unimpaired. He would even make hastewhere it was possible to undo the evil
done by Hide, And thus hisconscience slumbered into the details of the infamy

(16:41):
at which I thus connived. Foreven now I can scarce grant that I
committed it. I have no designof entering. I mean but to point
out the warnings and the successive stepswith which my chastisement approached. I met
with one accident, which, asit brought on no conscer quince. I
shall no more than mention an actof cruelty to a child aroused against me

(17:06):
the anger of a passer by whomI recognized the other day in the person
of your kinsman. The doctor,and the child's family joined him. There
were moments when I feared for mylife, and at last, in order
to pacify their too just resentment,Edward Hyde had to bring them to the
door and pay them in a checkdrawn in the name of Henry Jekyl.

(17:29):
But this danger was easily eliminated fromthe future by opening an account of another
bank in the name of Edward Hidehimself. And when by sloping my own
hand backward I had supplied my doublewith the signature, I thought I sat
beyond the reach of fate. Sometwo months before the murder of Sir Danvers,
I had been out for one ofmy adventures, had returned at a

(17:52):
late hour, and woke the nextday in bed with somewhat odd sensations.
It was in Vain. I lookedabout me in Vain, I saw the
decent furniture and tall proportions of myroom in the square in Vain, that
I recognized the pattern of the bedcurtains and the design of the mahogany frame.
Something still kept insisting that I wasnot where I was, that I

(18:18):
had not wakened where I seemed tobe, but in the little room in
Soho, where I was accustomed tosleep, in the body of Edward Hyde.
I smiled to myself, and inmy psychological way, began lazily to
inquire into the elements of this illusion. Occasionally, even as I did so,
dropping back into a comfortable morning doze, I was still so engaged when,

(18:41):
in one of my more wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon my hand.
Now, the hand of Henry Jekyl, as you have often remarked,
was professional in shape and size.It was large, firm, white and
comely. But the hand which Inow saw clearly enough in the yellow light
of a mid London morning, lyinghalf shut on the bedclothes, was lean,

(19:06):
quarter nuckley of a dusky pallor,and thickly shaded with a swartz growth
of hair. It was the handof Edward Hide. I must have stared
upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was in the mere
stupidity of wonder, before terror wokeup in my breast, as sudden and
startling as the crash of cymbals,and bounding from my bed, I rushed

(19:30):
to the mirror. At the sightthat met my eyes, my blood was
changed into something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed
Henry Jekyll. I had awakened EdwardHide. How was this to be explained?
I asked myself? And then,with another bound of terror, how
was it to be remedied? Itwas well on in the morning, The

(19:52):
servants were up, all my drugswere in the cabinet, A long journey
down two pairs of stairs, throughthe back passage, across the open court,
and through the anatomical theater, fromwhere I was then standing horror struck.
It might indeed be possible to covermy face, But what of what
use was that? When I wasunable to conceal the alteration of my stature?

(20:15):
And then, with an overpowering sweetnessof relief, it came back upon
my mind, that the servants werealready used to the coming and going of
my second self. I had soondressed as well as I was able in
close of my own size, hadsoon passed through the house where Bradshaw stared
and drew back at seeing mister Hydeat such an hour and in such a

(20:37):
strange array. And ten minutes laterDoctor Jekyll had returned to his own shape
and was sitting down with the darkenedbrow to make a feint of breakfasting.
Small indeed was my appetite this inexplicableincident, this reversal of my previous experience,
seemed like the Babylonian finger on thewall, to be spelling out the

(20:59):
letter of my judgment. And Ibegan to reflect more seriously than ever before
on the issues and possibilities of mydouble existence. That part of me,
which I had the power of projecting, had lately been much exercised and nourished.
It had seemed to me of latethat the body of Edward Hyde had
grown in stature, as though whenI wore that form, I were conscious

(21:25):
of a more generous tide of blood. And I began to spy a danger
that if this were much prolonged,the balance of my nature might be permanently
overthrown, the power of voluntary changebe forfeited, and the character of Edward
Hyde become irrevocably mine. The powerof the drug had not been always equally

(21:45):
displayed. Once, very early inmy career it had totally failed me.
Since then I had been obliged,on more than one occasion to double,
and once with infinite risk of death, to treble the amount, and these
rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the soleshadow on my contentment. Now, however,

(22:06):
and in the light of that morning'saccident, I was led to remark
that whereas in the beginning the difficultyhad been to throw off the body of
Jeckyl, it had of late graduallybut decidedly transferred itself to the other side.
All things therefore seemed to point tothis that I was slowly losing hold
of my original and better self,and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and

(22:33):
worse. Between these two, Inow felt I had to choose. My
two natures had memory in common,but all other faculties were most unequally shared
between them. Jekyl, who wascomposite, now with the most sensitive apprehensions
now with the greedy Gusto projected andshared in the pleasures and adventures of Hide.

(22:56):
But Hyde was indifferent to Jekyl.Or but remember him as the mountain
bandit remembers the cavern in which heconceals himself from pursuit. Jekyl had more
than a father's interest. Hyde hadmore than a son's indifference. To cast
in my lot with Jekyl was todie those appetites which I had long secretly

(23:17):
indulged, and had of late begunto pamper. To cast it in with
Hyde was to die to a thousandinterests 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 thescales for which Jekyl would suffer smartingly in

(23:38):
the fires of abstinence, Hyde wouldbe not even conscious of all that he
had lost. Strange as my circumstanceswere, 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, And it fell out with me as

(24:00):
it falls with so vast a majorityof my fellows that I chose the better
part, and was found wanting inthe strength to keep it. Yes,
I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes,
and bade a resolute farewell to theliberty, the comparative youth, the

(24:22):
light step, leaping impulses and secretpleasures that I had enjoyed in the disguise
of hide. I made this choice, perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for
I neither gave up the house insoho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward
Hyde, which still lay ready inmy cabinet. For two months. However,

(24:45):
I was true to my determination.For two months I led a life
of such severity as I had neverbefore attained to, and enjoyed the compensations
of an approving conscience. But timebegan at last to obliterate the freshness of
my alarm. The praises of consciencebegan to grow into a thing. Of
course, I began to be torturedwith throes and longings as of hide,

(25:10):
struggling after freedom, and at last, in an hour of moral weakness,
I once again compounded and swallowed thetransforming draft. I do not suppose that
when a drunkard reasons with himself uponhis vice, he is once out of
five hundred times affected by the dangersthat he runs through his brutish physical insensibility.

(25:33):
Neither had I, as I hadconsidered my position, made enough allowance
for the complete moral insensibility and insensatereadiness to evil, which were the leading
characters of Edward Hyde. Yet itwas by these that I was punished.
My devil had been long caged,he came out roaring. I was conscious

(25:56):
even when I took the draft ofa more unbridled, more furious propensity to
ill. It must have been this, I suppose, that stirred in my
soul, that tempest of impatience withwhich I listened to the civilities of my
unhappy victim. I declare, atleast before God, no man, morally
saying, could have been guilty ofthat crime upon so pitiful a provocation,

(26:22):
And that I struck in no morereasonable spirit than that in which a sick
child may break a plaything. ButI had voluntarily stripped myself of all those
balancing instincts by which even the worstof us continues to walk with some degree
of steadiness among temptations, and inmy case, to be tempted, however

(26:42):
slightly, was to fall. Instantly, the spirit of hell awoke in me,
and raged with a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body,
tasting delight from every blow. Andit was not till weariness had begun to
succeed that I was suddenly, inthe top fit of my delirium, struck

(27:03):
through the heart by a cold thrillof terror. A mist dispersed, I
saw my life to be forfeit,and fled from the scene of these excesses,
at once glorying and trembling. Mylust of evil gratified and stimulated my
love of life screwed to the topmostpeg. I ran to the house in

(27:26):
soho, and to make assurance,doubly sure, destroyed my papers. Thence
I set out through the lamp litstreets in the same divided ecstasy of mind,
gloating on my crime, lightheadedly devisingothers in the future, and yet
still hastening and still hearkening in mywake for the steps of the avenger.

(27:48):
Hyde had a song upon his lipsas he compounded the draft, and as
he drank it pledged the dead man. The pangs of transformation had not done
tearing him before Henry Jekyl, withstreaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had
fallen upon his knees, and liftedhis clasped hands to God. The veil

(28:08):
of self indulgence was rent from headto foot. I saw my life as
a whole. I followed it upfrom the days of childhood, when I
had walked with my father's hand,and through the self denying toils of my
professional life, to arrive again andagain with the same sense of unreality.

(28:29):
At the damned horrors of the evening. I could have screamed aloud. I
sought, with tears and prayers tosmother down the crowd of hideous images and
sounds with which my memory swarmed againstme. And still between the petitions,
the ugly face of my iniquity staredinto my soul. As the acuteness of

(28:51):
this remorse began to die away,it was succeeded by a sense of joy.
The problem of my conduct was solved. Hide was then fourth impossible,
whether I would or not. Iwas now confined to the better part of
my existence. And oh how Irejoiced to think of it. With what
willing humility I embraced and knew therestrictions of natural life with what sincere renunciation.

(29:17):
I locked the door by which Ihad so often gone, and come
and ground the key under my heel. The next day came the news that
the murder had been overlooked, thatthe guilt of Hide was patent to the
world, and that the victim wasa man high in public estimation. It
was not only a crime, ithad been a tragic folly. I think

(29:40):
I was glad to know it.I think I was glad to have my
better impulses thus buttressed and guarded bythe terrors of the scaffold, Jekyll was
now my city of refuge. Letbut Hide peep out an instant, and
the hands of all men would beraised to take and slay him. I
resolved in my future conduct to redeemthe past, and I can say with

(30:03):
honesty that my resolve was fruitful ofsome good. You know yourself, how
earnestly, in the last months ofthe last year I labored to relieve suffering.
You know that much was done forothers, and that the days passed
quietly, almost happily for myself.Nor can I truly say that I wearied
of this beneficent and innocent life.I think instead that I daily enjoyed it

(30:29):
more completely. But I was stillcursed with my duality of purpose. And
as the first edge of my penitencewore off, the lower side of me,
so long indulged, so recently chaineddown, began to growl for license.
Not that I dreamed of a resuscitatinghide, the bare idea of that
would startle me to frenzy. No, it was my own person that I

(30:55):
was once more attempted to trifle withmy conscience. And it was as an
ordinary a secret sinner, that Iat last fell before the assaults of temptation.
There comes an end to all things, The most capacious measure is filled
at last, And this brief condescensionto my evil finally destroyed the balance of

(31:15):
my soul. And yet I wasnot alarmed. The fall seemed natural,
like a return to the old daysbefore I had made my discovery. It
was a fine, clear January day, wet underfoot where the frost had melted,
but cloudless overhead, and the Regent'sPark was full of winter chirrupings and

(31:36):
sweet with spring odors. I satin the sun on a bench, the
animal within me, licking the chopsof memory, the spiritual side a little
drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, butnot yet moved to begin. After all,
I reflected, I was like myneighbors, And then I smiled,
comparing myself with other men, comparemy active good will with the lazy cruelty

(32:01):
of their neglect. And at thevery moment of that vainglorious thought, a
qualm came over me, a horridnausea, and the most deadly shuddering.
These passed away and left me faint. And then, as in its turned
faintness subsided, I began to beaware of a change in the temper of

(32:22):
my thoughts, a greater boldness,a contempt of danger, a solution of
the bonds of obligation. I lookeddown, my clothes hung formlessly on my
shrunken limbs. The hand that layon my knee was cordid and hairy.
I was once more edward hide amoment before I had been safe of all

(32:44):
men's respect, wealthy, beloved.The cloth laying for me in the dining
room at home and now I wasthe common quarry of mankind, hunted houseless,
a known murderer, thrall to thegallows. My reason wavered, but
it did not fail me utterly.I have more than once observed that in

(33:06):
my second character, my faculties seemedsharpened to a point, and my spirits
more tensely elastic. Thus it cameabout that where Jekyl perhaps might have succumbed,
hide rose to the importance of themoment. My drugs were in one
of the presses of my cabinet.How was I to reach them? That
was the problem, that crushing mytemples in my hands. I set myself

(33:30):
to solve the laboratory door I hadclosed. If I sought to enter by
the house, my own servants wouldconsign me to the gallows. I saw
I must employ another hand, andthought of Lanyon. How was he to
be reached, how persuaded? Supposingthat I escaped capture in the streets,

(33:51):
How was I to make my wayinto his presence? And how should I,
an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevailon the famous physician to rifle the
study of his colleague doctor Jekyl.Then I remembered that of my original character.
One part remained to me. Icould write my own hand, and
once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way that I must follow became

(34:15):
lighted up from end to end.Thereupon I arranged my clothes as best I
could, and, summoning a passinghansom, drove to an hotel in Portland
Street, the name of which Ichanced to remember at my appearance, which
was indeed comical enough. However tragica fate these garments covered. The driver

(34:36):
could not conceal his mirth. Ignashed my teeth upon him with a gust
of devilish fury, and the smilewithered from his face, happily for him,
yet more happily for myself, forin another instant I had certainly dragged
him from his perch at the inn. As I entered, I looked about
me with so black a countenance asmade the attendants tremble. Not a look

(35:00):
did they exchange in my presence,but obsequaciously took my orders, led me
to a private room, and broughtme wherewithal to write. Hide in danger
of his life was a creature newto me, shaken with inordinate anger,
strung to the pitch of murder,lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature
was astute, mastered his fury witha great effort of the will, composed

(35:24):
his two important letters, one toLanyon and one to Pool, and that
he might receive actual evidence of theirbeing posted, sent them out with directions
that they should be registered. Thenceforwardhe sat all day over the fire in
the private room, gnawing his nails. There he dined, sitting alone with

(35:45):
his fears, the waiter visibly quailingbefore his eye. And thence, when
the night was fully come, heset forth in the corner of a closed
cab, and was driven to andfro about the streets of the city.
He I, I cannot say Ithat child of Hell had nothing human,

(36:05):
nothing lived in him but fear andhatred. And when at last, thinking
the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he discharged the cab and ventured on
foot, attired in his misfitting clothes, an object marked out for observation,
into the midst of the nocturnal passengers. These two base passions raged within him

(36:27):
like a tempest. He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to
himself, skulking through the less frequentedthoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided
him from midnight. Once a womanspoke to him, offering, I think
a box of lights. He smoteher in the face, and she fled.
When I came to myself at Lanyon's, the horror of my old friend

(36:52):
perhaps affected me somewhat. I donot know. It was at least but
a drop in the sea to theabhorrence with which I looked back upon these
hours. A change had come overme. It was no longer the fear
of the gallows. It was thehorror of being hide that racked me.
I received Lanyon's condemnation partly in adream. It was partly in a dream

(37:15):
that I came home to my ownhouse and got into bed. I slept
after the prostration of the day,with a stringent and profound slumber, which
not even the nightmares that wrung mecould avail to break. I awoke in
the morning, shaken, weakened,but refreshed. I still hated and feared
the thought of the brute that sleptwithin me, and I had not,

(37:37):
of course forgotten the appalling dangers ofthe day before. But I was once
more at home in my own houseand close to my drugs, and gratitude
for Anniah escape shone so strong inmy soul that it almost rivaled the brightness
of hope. I was stepping leisurelyacross the court after breakfast, drinking the

(37:58):
chill of the air with pleasure,when I was seized again with those indescribable
sensations that heralded the change. AndI had but the time to gain the
shelter of my cabinet before I wasonce again raging and freezing with the passions
of hide. It took, onthis occasion a double dose to recall me
to myself, and alas six hoursafter, as I sat looking sadly in

(38:22):
the fire, the pangs returned andthe drug had to be re administered in
short From that day forth, itseemed only by a great effort as of
gymnastics, and only under the immediatestimulation of the drug, that I was
able to wear the countenance of Jekyl. At all hours of the day and

(38:43):
night, I would be taken witha premonitory shudder. Above all, if
I slept or even dozed for amoment in my chair, it was always
as high that I awakened under thestrain of this continually impending doom, and
by the sleeplessness to which I nowcondemned myself, I even beyond what I

(39:04):
had thought possible to man. Ibecame in my own person a creature eaten
up and emptied by fever, languidly, weak both in body and mind,
and solely occupied by one thought,the horror of my other self. But
when I slept, or when thevirtue of the medicine wore off, I
would leap almost without transition, forthe pangs of transformation grew daily less,

(39:30):
marked into the possession of a fancybrimming with images of terror, a soul
boiling with causeless hatreds, and abody that seemed not strong enough to contain
the raging energies of life. Thepowers of hide seemed to have grown with
the sickliness of Jekyl, and certainlythe hate that now divided them was equal

(39:51):
on each side. With Jekyl.It was a thing of vital instinct.
He had now seen the full deformityof that creature that shared with him some
of the phenomena of consciousness, andwas co heir with him to death and
beyond these links of community which inthemselves made the most poignant part of his

(40:12):
distress. He thought of hide,for all his energy of life, as
of something not only hellish but inorganic. This was the shocking thing that the
slime of the pit seemed to uttercries and voices, that the amorphous dust
gesticulated and sinned, that what wasdead and had no shape should usurp the

(40:35):
offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to
him, closer than a wife,closer than an eye, lay caged in
his flesh, where he heard itmutter and felt it struggle to be borne,
and at every hour of weakness andin the confidence of slumber, prevailed
against him and deposed him out oflife. The hatred of hide, for

(40:59):
Jekyl was a different order. Histerror of the gallows drove him continually to
commit temporary suicide and return to hissubordinate station of a part instead of a
person. But he loathed the necessity. He loathed the despondency into which Jekyl
was now fallen, and he resentedthe dislike with which he was himself regarded.

(41:22):
Hence the apelike tricks that he wouldplay me scrawling in my own hand
blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters, and destroying the
portrait of my father. And indeed, had it not been for his fear
of death, he would long agohave ruined himself in order to involve me

(41:43):
in the ruin. But his loveof me is wonderful. I go further,
I who sticken and freeze at themere thought of him, When I
recall the objection and passion of thisattachment, and when I know how he
fears my power to cut him offsuicide, I find it in my heart
to pity him. It is useless, and the time awfully fails me to

(42:07):
prolong this description. No one hasever suffered such torments, let that suffice.
And yet even to these habit broughtno not alleviation, but a certain
callousness of soul, a certain acquiescenceof despair. And my punishment might have
gone on for years but for thelast calamity which has now fallen, and

(42:31):
which has finally severed me from myown face and nature. My provision of
the salt, which had never beenrenewed since the day of the first experiment,
began to run low. I sentout for a fresh supply, and
mixed the draft. The abolition followed, and the first change of color,
not the second. I drank it, and it was without efficiency. You

(42:54):
will learn from pool how I havehad London ransacked. It was in vain,
and I am now persuaded that myfirst supply was impure, and that
it was that unknown impurity which lentefficacy to the draft. About a week
has passed, and I am nowfinishing this statement under the influence of the

(43:14):
last of the old powders. Thisthen, is the last time, short
of a miracle, that Henry Jekyllcan think his own thoughts or see his
own face now, how sadly alteredin the glass. Nor must I delay
too long to bring my writing toan end. For if my narrative has

(43:35):
hitherto escaped destruction, it has beenby a combination of great prudence and great
good luck. Should the throes ofchange take me in the act of writing
it, hide will tear it inpieces. But if some time shall have
elapsed after I have laid it byhis wonderful selfishness and circumscriptions, the moment

(43:55):
will probably save it once again fromthe action of his ape like spite.
And indeed the doom that is closingon us both has already changed and crushed
him. Half an hour from now, when I shall again and forever reindue
that hated personality. I know howI shall sit shuddering and weeping in my

(44:17):
chair, or continue with the moststrained and fear struck ecstasy of listening to
pace up and down this room,my last earthly refuge, and give ear
to every sound of menace? Willhide die upon the scaffold, or will
he find courage to release himself atthe last moment? God knows I am

(44:39):
careless. This is my true hourof death, and what is to follow
concerns another than myself. Here,then, as I lay down the pen
and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy
Henry Jekyl to an end