Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde

We had started this and had noted the key point about Utterson’s “custom of a Sunday”. RLS sets in
place there the scene that would have been familiar in many Victorian middle and upper-middle class
households: respectability is the watchword.

Jekyll’s will
We have talked about this too: its contents and what it would suggest to the legal mind. Utterson is
sure that the character Edward Hyde must have a hold of some sort over Jekyll. (Blackmail was a big
problem in a society which placed such emphasis upon “respectability”.) He is also aware that the will
provided Hyde with a fine motive for murder. These two thoughts are summed up (p9) in his words,
“madness” and “disgrace”.

NOTE
Now I had to point out that WE know that Jekyll and Hyde are one and the same. The reader is NOT
intended to. (The very clever Victorian reader might be able to deduct this from the evidence provided
but we do not yet have enough of that evidence. This is another feature of the writing that is well
done.)

Dr. Lanyon – this will be the first of numerous sets of notes you must make about him
Another of Henry Jekyll’s old friends – the same social milieu: rich, respectable, solidly upper-middle
class. Note his view of J as someone who “began to go wrong” and the other word, “too fanciful”.
The word is close to our sense of “imaginative dreamer” but without any good side. It means someone
or something alien to respectable (again) pragmatic English character. He dismisses J’s ideas as
“unscientific balderdash” (an expression used by the upper-class gentlemen, not women) and note too
Classical allusion
Damon and Pythias – Google this for yourselves but remember the educated nineteenth century
reader was expected to understand classical references.

Utterson reflects on J more after going to bed. Note the language used here: “imagination”,
“enslaved”, “gross darkness of night”, “nocturnal city”, “haunted all night” &c. These touches belong
in a “Gothic fiction” (we should just say horror film!) The Victorian equivalent of film is mentioned:
the “scroll of lighted pictures”. (Google Victorian magic lantern!)

Utterson takes to hanging around the place where Enfield saw Hyde trample the child. Note
how the description of London plays an important part in the atmosphere here.

Mr. Hyde
Note very carefully the presentation here when Utterson accosts Hyde at the door to the house.
“Hissing intake of breath” is sinister. The other detail is significant fir Hyde is defiant; he speaks like
a well-educated gentleman (note “à propos”) and claims to reside in SOHO.
But he then “snarls” and has a “savage laugh” – NOT characteristic of polite society. Note too that H
is “pale and dwarfish”. Has too a “husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice”. Note all these and
think about them. Why so significant to the Victorian reader? Ask me later. See too
https://www.answers.com/Q/Who_is_the_Dr_Fell_referred_to_in_Ch_2_of_Dr._Jekyll_and_Mr._Hy
de

SOHO
Well chosen by RLS, for that part of London, though it still had many grand houses (it has still!), it
was not quite as respectable as it had been. Look at the description later (p22-23): “a dingy street, a
gin palace, a low French eating house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers…many ragged children,
and many women of many different nationalities…). NB so different from HJ’s front door in c2 (p14)
“”worse great air of wealth and comfort”).
Note the description of the hall of HJ’s house (it will be seen again when the servants congregate
there and really shock Utterson that these “below stairs” people have come “upstairs” where they just
do not belong (see p38).

GOOD CLUE – detective novel style. The butler, Poole, reveals HJ not at home but Utterson has seen
EH enter the house by the side door. Deduction: could HJ and EH be one and the same?

Utterson’s comment about HJ: “He was wild when he was young…in the law of God there is no
statute of limitation…it is must be the ghost of some old sin, the cancer some concealed disgrace:
punishment coming, pede claudo.”

Jack-in-the-box: a Victorian toy. (I had one when I was very young: great fun. A grotesque face on a
spring which jumped up out of a boy when the lid was lifted. )

Chapter three
A very short chapter but a useful one.
Do make notes here (remember the importance of the chapter headings to give you a sense of the
book’s structure).
This follows chapter 2 chronologically: a fortnight later.
HJ gives a party and is the model host.

Physical description: take note.

Note to HJ’s comment about Lanyon and use of the expression “scientific heresies”. What does
“heresy” mean? What is a “pedant”?

Note the change in HJ’s “large handsome face” when Utterson mentions EH.
Note to the finely ambiguous expression, “I can be rid of Mr. Hyde”. This too can give a clue, or it
could suggest the worst (does he intend to murder Hyde? Of course not. He means give Hyde up in
the way of giving up gambling, smoking &c).

Chapter four
The murder of Sir Danvers Carew is certainly an incident which you should use in your writing.
Firstly, it is characteristic that the murder of a member of society is treated as something particularly
shocking; it also states that fear the Victorians had that metropolitan life was increasingly dangerous.
This is an age when the upper class carry protection against ruffians who might assault them: the
swordstick or the “life preserver” (in fact a very hard rubber cosh carried inside one’s topcoat).

Note the way the incident is presented in the style of a police report. Newspapers carried such stories
(they helped sell papers), and the style would be familiar to the Victorian audience. Note too that a
servant’s life is sketched: the maidservant living in a garret. See too the way in which Carew is
presented in such a way that the dichotomy between J and H, civilized and bestial (back to LoF!) is
emphasized. Carew is “aged and beautiful”, the moon on his face makes it “breathe such an innocent
and old-world kindness of disposition”; his manners are exquisite: he bows politely. H carries a heavy
cane; he responds to Carew not with civility but with “a great flame of anger” (back to destructive
elemental imagery as in LoF). Note now the lexis: “clubbed”, “ape-like fury” (back to the Victorian
horror of the idea of recidivism engendered by Darwin’s theories of origins and of course we are back
in LoF, the descent into savagery, primitivism which is hidden by a wafer of civilized convention).
Also “trampling”, “storm of blows” the detail f the bones being “audibly shattered”. This owes quite a
lot to the “penny dreadful” genre I have mentioned and which I typed up in yesterday’s presentation.
We have still more: the maid faints (a common feature of literature and the stage in the eighteenth and
nineteenth century), the body is “mangled”, the weapon is splintered and had been wielded with
“insensate cruelty”. And then the nice link: Carew is carrying a letter addressed to Utterson who is
able to identify the stick as one of the possessions of, yes you have it, HJ! Another clue! More
evidence of the detective story genre.

Page 22 offers a great atmospheric description of London (you might remember some elements in use
in Hardy’s poem about the delivery of the telegram). Do take note of this detail. Some of it could
usefully be presented in an essay.

We then go to Soho. I have already commented on this. Next character is EH’s housekeeper, not
much detail but enough to give the Victorian reader a frisson of horror. We also have the name of the
police officer, Inspector Newcomen. Is RLS really choosing this name because it is but a final letter
away from “newcomer”? The man is certainly something of an arriviste or parvenu, another type of
whom the Victorian upper classes were distrustful. Note how he is interested in this case because it
will give him access (of a kind) to that upper-class world.

Note too (lots to note today!) the rich decoration of EH’s rooms: summed up as “luxury and good
taste”. Yes, you have it! Another clue – this is the taste of the well-educated HJ! The other clue is the
cheque book.

Finally note the return to the “deformity” detail which comes to characterize EH and to distance him
from the noble upright (physically and socially) HJ.

Chapter five
Significant here is the ref to HJ speciality: chemical not anatomical. This is picked up in chapter ten
when HJ writes (another letter) about himself and all that has happened: in other words the dramatic
denouement. The disarray might not worry a modern audience, but it would be disturbing for the
middle /upper-class Victorian reader – suggestive of poor discipline, bad habits &c.

Jekyll’s cabinet – this means a room: his study or workroom.

Very significant later (Jekyll dies there) and right that RLS should introduce it AND the cheval
mirror. (Google this if you do not have one at home, for the use of one of these mirrors is very
significant – especially the way it is positioned at the end of the story. For the present it’s enough you
should be aware that HJ uses it to look at himself. (Another clue!)

The conversation with Utterson follows the same line as the last that HJ had. He promises that he can
finish with EH – by which of course he means the drug that makes him EH.

The letter
Note in good Sherlock Holmes style Utterson asks for the envelope (Holmes deduces so much from
them). HJ is of course lying for he has written this letter himself – as revealed so thrillingly at the end
of this chapter (“HJ forge for a murderer! And his blood ran cold in his veins”) EXCEPT Utterson
draws the WRONG conclusion as to the PURPOSE of the letter. He believes Jekyll has made up the
letter to cover for Hyde.

Back in Utterson’s chambers we meet his clerk, Mr. Guest. He is the observant one who sees the
letter is in HJ’s hand. Do take time to look at (and enjoy please!) the description of the fog and the
warmth within – another dichotomy.

Chapter six
RLS is moving the action along successfully and economically, writing here “Time ran on”.
Do not miss detail which a careless reader could overlook. The first few lines report the extent of the
police investigation into EH’s life. Now RLS gives very little attention to this. Interesting that this is
so very vague. What we have is:
“disreputable”, “tales of…cruelty”, “callous and violent”, “his vile life”, “his strange associates”,
This is set against the reformed HJ who is reported to:
“be known for charities…now no less distinguished for religion”. Of course – another CLUE (no EH
and HJ is a model Victorian. ALSO a nice dichotomy: religion versus scientific experimentation and
of course by extension, religion (or simply Christianity) versus evil/ depravity.

BUT this apparent conversion is short-lived, and we are given dates when HJ is “not at home”. Of
course this is the point when, as we learn later, he is starting to realize that he cannot exercise any
control whatsoever over his becoming EH. This can be taken literally or figuratively, of course; the
latter meaning he cannot resist succumbing to the temptation of the attractions of EH’s life: “his vile
life” “with strange associates”. About whom RLS is so reticent.

Utterson visits Lanyon and realizes his old friend is terminally ill. RLS uses Lanyon to build up the
suspense using the “when I am dead you might find out” tactic.
Now we have TWO MORE LETTERS:
Utterson to HJ re Lanyon
HJ to Utterson
Note here the expression “suffer me (i.e. allow me) to go my own dark way”, “chief of sinners”, chief
of sufferers”
This points to another fine dichotomy: the nature of HJ’s character - reprobate or victim of social
prejudice, a martyr to a cause. All really worth thinking through and writing up, for I think few
students will do so well.
NOW ANOTHER LETTER – from Lanyon to Utterson SEALED and containing ANOTHER
SEALED and not to be opened until HJ has gone. This is a dilemma for Utterson, but he is honourable
and does not take a peek! But he decides he is no longer keen on HJ’s acquaintance and visits
infrequently (not that HJ is “at home” to anyone.

Chapter seven
VERY SHORT!
Utterson and Enfield stroll past the side entrance to HJ’s and catch sight of him looking “like some
disconsolate prisoner”, he wears “an infinite sadness of mien”. He has just agreed to have a chat from
the window when there is a sudden change, and he shuts the window. They have caught sight of HJ’s
expression. RLS keeps suspense by giving so little detail about that and the reaction of Utterson and
Enfield.

Chapter eight
An important chapter (as the succeeding two) for the dénouement is presented. Read carefully the
detail of Poole’s visit to Utterson requesting his help. Do spare longer than you would usually give the
description of the “wild, cold seasonable night of March”. This is part of the “gothic” atmosphere of
the writing.
Key point which I have mentioned before in class is the way Utterson is shocked by the way all the
servants gather in the hall. This would represent for the Victorian reader confirmation of the gravity of
the situation: the world is turned upside down. (Literally for the master is downstairs and the servants
are upstairs!) Shakespeare pulls off a similar effect in Macbeth where things fall apart because the
natural order has been wrecked by regicide. Here the message that the Victorians like Lanyon and
Utterson want to see is that social order is subverted when its members stray from their social class.
HJ as EH has done just that in the way he has behaved. More of this later. (If I forget to “tie this
down”, ask me!)
Note Poole’s account of the eight days in which the household have been anxious. Note that HJ had
cried “upon the name of God”. An indication of repentance? All of the detail about HJ’s crying about
some chemical is to be addressed and explained in chapter nine in which Utterson reads the sealed
account that Lanyon had sent him. To the discerning reader, however, the situation could even now be
clear: HJ has realized that it’s impossible for him to avoid becoming EH because he does have the
right batch of ingredients that made the transitions possible. Here too we find the seeds of moralizing:
is this a poetic justice moment? Is HJ rightly punished for meddling in things that should remain
beyond man’s knowledge? That is certainly Lanyon’s view and it was a view maintained by many in
the established C of E. Remember what I told you about the opposition of religion and science
reflected in the reaction again Darwin’s work and the debate with the Bishop of Oxford, Bishop
Wilberforce. Enjoy following this up by looking at the following sites (and others):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_Oxford_evolution_debate
https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1371.htm

The next clue is that Poole saw HJ wearing a face covering.

Utterson draws the wrong conclusion: “Your master….seized with one of those maladies that both
torture and deform the sufferer”. He also refers to the change of voice, avoidance of friends &c. I
believe this would be enough to convince the educated Victorian reader that the problem is syphilis.
Even more shocking material apparently embedded in the book but actually it is not this.

Breaking into the Cabinet.

Just before this is done Poole describes seeing “that masked thing like a monkey”. This leads Utterson
to deduce that HJ has been killed. More description of the weather to build up atmosphere and the
additional detail that Poole had once heard “it” note – “weeping like a woman or a lost soul”. All of
these references, “thing”, “monkey”, woman (not a man) “lost soul” intended to shock the original
reader as images of the unnatural. For “monkey” and connecting now with Golding’s LoF, you could
usefully begin to think about the meaning of the words “ATAVISM”, “ATAVISTIC”.

They hear HJ’s last words and find him dead on the floor of the Cabinet but do not realize it is him.
(“Glazed presses” means cupboards!)

Do note (easily missed) p48 “Utterson knew that he was looking on the body of a self-destroyer”. Of
course a reference to suicide. Now enjoy this rather gruesome link!
https://oldoperatingtheatre.com/victorian-attitudes-towards-self-murder/
I cheerfully leave you to follow Utterson and Poole running around, thinking that they will find HJ’s
corpse. I turn next to the cheval glass (google for a pic of one if you need to but many of you will
have one at home – basically a mirror in a frame and hinged at the half-way point so it tilts). SO!
WHY do you think it lies flat – horizontal? Nice CLUE!

NEXT – Documents – the WILL of HJ –leaving everything to Utterson; a brief note by HJ affording
evidence that HJ had been alive that very day (and not murdered as they had thought); and next “a
considerable packet”. This will be the conclusion.

The brief note tells Utterson to read the sealed Lanyon document. In chapter 9 Utterson does so.
How EXCITING!

Do make bring up to date your notes about character of Utterson, the gothic, Victorian concerns,
themes.
Chapter nine
This chapter, the penultimate, presents the full contents of the document that Lanyon had sent to
Utterson recorded in chapter six. It begins by noting the arrival of a “registered envelope” bearing
HJ’s writing. This indicates naturally enough that Jekyll attached the greatest importance to it.

Jekyll requests Lanyon to collect from his Cabinet a drawer containing chemicals and to take them
home in order to deliver them to a visitor. The postscript is interesting, for it anticipates a possibility
of catastrophe which can be found in literary texts when so much depends upon the prompt delivery
of a letter or message. (Think of Romeo and Juliet, for example, where Friar Lawrence’s letter to
Romeo is held up when the bearer is trapped within a walled city due to the plague.)

Lanyon thinks this a farrago – a Latin word meaning hotch-potch. He describes his visit to HJ’s house
and notes some of the items he finds in the drawer he is asked to retrieve. Note his use of the word
“flighty” to describe HJ. Note too the description of EH/HJ who turns up to collect the drawer. You
will by now have linked this desperate request with Poole’s account of HJ’s concern for the chemical
supplied by Messrs. Maw (p40). The words used to describe the visitor should be noted: “something
abnormal and misbegotten…something seizing, surprising and revolting”.
Worth too looking closely at the detail RLS provides to convince his Victorian reader of the reality of
a scientific situation: the following words lending some authority to it: “tincture” (a word used by
dispensing pharmacists), “effervesce”, “ebullition”, “compound”, metamorphoses”.

About to drink the concoction, EH/HJ challenges Lanyon. You need to record the detail:
Will he give way to curiosity? If he should do so, he will have “ a new province of knowledge and
new avenues to fame and power”. It will be a “prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan”.
Think about these claims. How do you respond to them?

A certain theatrical scene follows –much loved by all the directors who have staged or filmed the
book!

Note Lanyon’s words, “O God” which he screams. Note too his likening of HJ to a “man restored
from death”.

The impact of what he has witnessed is huge. For HJ proceeds to explain all but we do not hear it. We
are only allowed Lanyon’s summary: “As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me”. He cannot
bring himself to name HJ nor can record the specific detail.

Chapter ten (1)

This, the final chapter, resolves all the plotlines but we may ask if it helps us understand what the
novel is about. How full in fact is “Henry Jekyll’s full statement of the case”? It is packed full of
detail but equally there seems to be detail that it omitted.

He presents himself as the man who has it all: wealth, health, industrious, gregarious, respected. But
he admits there was another side: “A certain impatient gaiety of disposition”. He senses that though
others carry this off easily, he finds it ill-suited to his desire for great respect and to “wear a more than
commonly grave countenance before the public”. Think about these things. What do YOU understand
by them? There is a clue when he tells us that he then “concealed my pleasures” and was therefore
committed to “a profound duplicity of life”. He notes again that others might show openly the ways
they behave, and he names these as “irregularities as I was guilty of”. The word “guilty” is of interest
if by this he really means he was doing things which were illegal. But does he? Whether or not they
were, he regards them “with an almost morbid sense of shame”.
He now broadens the discussion to talk about “man’s dual nature”: not just his own. Reference is also
made to “that hard law of life”: it springs from religion and is “one of the most plentiful springs of
distress”. Are we content to define this as the knowledge of what is good and what is evil? But he
states he was no hypocrite, being equally content with both sides of himself: “plunged in shame” and
in the day job treating the sick and being a scientist. Still this other nature is not defined. The
scientific interest is defined as “mystic and transcendental”. Here he would have lost Lanyon! But he
then restates it as nothing more than the prosaic conclusion: “man is not truly one, but truly two”.

At this point I can offer a couple of interesting points of reference. Firstly, either the Guardian or the
Independent on the Portuguese writer, Pessoa.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/04/fernando-pessoa-portuguese-writer-
multiple-faces
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/will-the-real-pessoa-step-forward-1621878.html
Or let’s take a different approach: the Freudian view of the tripartite person:
https://www.simplypsychology.org/psyche.html#:~:text=According%20to%20Freud
%20psychoanalytic%20theory,id%20and%20the%20super%2Dego.

But is any of this what HJ (or RLS) is getting at? He seems to be anticipating what Freud said of the
ID and the Super Ego when he describes how useful it would be to separate the two conflicting parts
of himself that life would be bearable:

“the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright
twin”

“and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in
which he found his pleasures and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of
this extraneous evil.”

That these two – “incongruous faggots” - are bound together he calls “the curse of mankind”.
He sketches – no more than that- his developing a drug which releases the “lower elements”.
He describes the effects of drinking his potion –all good exciting “Grand Guignol”!
PANGS! NAUSEA! AGONIES!
They give way to being YOUNGER, LIGHTER, HAPPIER IN BODY
BUT he finds too HEADY RECKLESSNESS, DISORDERED SENSUAL IMAGES.
It BRACED and DELIGHTED like WINE
BUT he has lost stature. This means physically but we can take that to be emblematic of his
diminished status.

Note that he sees in this “evil” self “a livelier image of the spirit”. He does not find it “repugnant”.
Interestingly, he notes that the drug releases EH but when taken gain restores HJ but not some hyper-
good HJ. He relates how he enjoyed EH so much he created another life for him: flat in Soho and a
new Will which protected his interests.

Let’s make a note of the various ways he presents the new life:

“transact crimes” 62, “the sea of liberty”

“the pleasures were…undignified” 63 but in the hands of EH “monstrous”.
“vicarious depravity”, “every act and thought centred on self”
“drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another”
He recalls the trampling of the child witnessed by Enfield.
He refers next to “his adventures” but begins to relate the beginning of the horror of finding himself
changing into EH without taking the drug.
Some powerful biblical imagery introduced here: (p65) “like the Babylonian finger on the wall”. One
of the great moments in the Old Testament! MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN!
Enjoy it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belshazzar%27s_feast

Chapter ten (2)

We left the narrative at the point HJ had an intimation that he has “been weighed in the balance and
found wanting” in the words of The Book of Daniel (5,27). Now he has to deal with the problem of
choosing with which “self” he wishes to continue.

I urge you (not now but when you have finished your reading) to complete the following table:

JEKYLL HYDE
Prizes social esteem Shuns polite society and rejects its values
“had more than father’s interest” Had “more than a son’s indifference”
Elderly doctor Comparative youth
“kindness” “callous”
“a tall fine build” “dwarfish”
“all men’s respect” “damnable”

Expand it as you see fit but include as much detail as you can, setting binary details against one
another wherever possible (for example, the ones I offer).

HJ offers interesting self-analysis here, especially where he provides evidence to show that in not
giving up the Soho house he was not absolutely rejecting EH. Of course this is, as he demonstrates,
impossible and after two months of abstinence (p67) his resolve weakens, and he takes the drug again.
Do, please, note the wonderful (wonderful!) lines:

My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.

The spirit of hell awoke in me and raged.

This coincides with the Danvers Carew incident, about which he writes little except to mention
Carew’s “civilities” and “so pitiful a provocation”. Interestingly, he describes EH’s “tempest of
impatience” as the conduct of a “sick child” who breaks a plaything.
For a time his delirious enjoyment of the murder of Carew and the breaking of his body convinces HJ
he just has to give up EH and as a sign of his pledge to do so he destroys the key to the side door. But
the morning in Regent’s Park forces him to return to EH. No longer able to slip into his house
unobserved to get to his Cabinet he has to take refuge in an hotel in Portland Street and begs Lanyon
to help him. Note the way he treats the unfortunate cabdriver who finds his appearance funny:

I gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury.

EH is now a “child of Hell” full of two “base passions” (fear and hatred). He strikes a woman who is
a street vendor (selling matches we would say – at the time they were “lights” or “Lucifers”). This
could be a concealed reference to the advances of a female prostitute).

Back in his Cabinet he notices that the powers of EH have grown:

The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickness of Jekyll.
HJ is aware too that “that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife” (interesting simile) and
“lay caged in his flesh”.
See too how he analyses EH’s loathing of HJ. This is why he turns to scrawling blasphemous graffiti
in JH’s religious books, destroying the picture of his father.

These figures: apparent hatred and rejection of the father figure, revulsion of the closeness of a wife
and the prostitute are becoming more and more suggestive in Freudian analysis.
The narrative nearly done, he discovers that it had been the original stock of the salt that had been
impure and consequently potent. This supply is exhausted after a week since he realized this and the
final paragraph is written in the hope that he has some respite from EH who would tear to pieces his
confession in his “ape-like spite”. His last desperate act is to take his life.

Having finished our reading we have many questions to ask. How do we view Jekyll?
If we regard the book as a morality tale, HJ is a sinner who in Christian terms at least is utterly
damned for his act of self-destruction.
We could regard him as a victim. Perhaps as a PROMETHEAN figure. See this quotation from
Wikipedia:
“In the Western Classical Tradition, Prometheus became a figure who represented human striving
(particularly the quest for scientific knowledge) and the risk of overreaching or unintended
consequences. In particular, he was regarded in the Romantic era as embodying the lone genius
whose efforts to improve human existence could also result in tragedy: Mary Shelley, for instance,
gave The Modern Prometheus as the subtitle to her novel Frankenstein (1818).”
Equally, we have to ask: How do we view Hyde?
This is trickier, for when we interrogate the text we might say there is too little detail. But others
might object and say Hyde is clearly a murderer, an atavistic figure or throwback to the most bestial
and ruthless and amoral type of man. True, he tramples a child. Others might look more closely at
some of the detail and advance an idea that RLS was exploring in coded language that Hyde
represents an aspect of man which is denied either a name or existence by Victorian society.
To help answer these questions, the best thing we can do is to go to chapter one and read the book
again. YES! Certainly! If you look closely and deliberately at Enfield’s narrative, various points will
strike you which possibly made little impact before.
1. Enfield says of Hyde, “I never saw a man I so disliked”. But he is vague about everything else.
Even the idea of deformity is uncertain, only “He must be deformed somewhere”. “gives a strong
feeling of deformity”. Finally, “I can’t describe him”.
2. Note the emphasis he places (and Utterson so readily agrees) on not inquiring too closely into
matters. “You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone”. The consequence being “some bland old
bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the
family have to change their name.”