SEEKING
Hyde
To the memory of my sister
Penelope Reed Doob
(1943–2017)
Spirit of play and soul of inspiration …
SEEKING
Hyde
A NOVEL
THOMAS REED
Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Lloyd Reed, Jr.
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except in cases of a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review.
Seeking Hyde is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, locals, events, and occasional newspaper article and letter that appear in the narrative, places, incidents portrayed, and names are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
The following collections were quoted with permission: Stevenson, Robert Louis, and Thea Kliros. Childs Garden of Verses. Dover Pubns., 1993.
Stevenson, Robert Louis, and Katherine Linehan. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Performance Adaptations, Criticism. New York: Norton, 2003.
Stevenson, Robert Louis., and Ernest Mehew. Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2001.
Stevenson, Robert Louis, and Janet Adam Smith. Collected Poems (of) Robert Louis Stevenson Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Janet Adam Smith. London: Hart Davis, 1971.
“Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Times (London).” Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Introduction to the Case. Accessed June 07, 2018. http://www.casebook.org/press_reports/times/.
Punch Magazine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request
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Reed, Thomas
Seeking Hyde
ISBN:
hardcover: 9780825308833
eBook: 9780825307713
Cover Design by Michael Short, cover image courtesy of Shutterstock
Interior Layout Design by Mark Karis
Contents
A Note to Readers
Retrospective
PART ONE: FERRIER
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
PART TWO: JEKYLL
9
10
11
12
13
14
PART THREE: M R. H.
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
A Note to Readers
Much of what follows is fact—or could be.
Much of what follows is fiction—or could be.
Some disentangling of the one from the other may be found among the final pages.
Retrospective
(Stevenson to J. M. Barrie, 2 or 3 April, 1893)
Vailima
My dear Barrie.
Thank you for your most amusing self-portrait. Tit for tat. Now for your correspondent, holed up here in Samoa:
R.L.S.
The Tame Celebrity
Native name, Tusi Tala (“Tale-Teller”)
Exceedingly lean, dark, rather ruddy—black eyes crow’s-footed, beginning to be grizzled, general appearance of a blasted boy—or blighted youth—or to borrow Carlyle on De Quincey “Child that has been in hell.” Past eccentric—obscure and O no we never mention it—presently industrious, respectable and fatuously contented. Used to be very fond of talking about Art, don’t talk about it any more. Name in family, The Tame Celebrity. Cigarettes without intermission except when coughing or kissing. Hopelessly entangled in apron strings. Drinks plenty. Curses some. Temper unstable. Manners purple on an emergency, but liable to trances. Eternally the common old copybook gentleman of commerce: if accused of cheating at cards, would feel bound to blow out accuser’s brains, little as he would like the job. Has been an invalid for ten years, but can boldly claim that you can’t tell it on him. Given to explaining the universe. Scotch, sir, Scotch.
And now my dear fellow I want to thank you, encore un fois, for your last. I am quite sure that I know you and quite sure that you know me. People mayn’t be like their books. They are their books.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Part One
FERRIER
1
I was born in the year 18—to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellow men, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance towards the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures.
—HENRY JEKYLL, STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1886)
LONDON, APRIL 1883
“Good morning, Mr. Stevenson. May I call you a hansom?”
The moderately well known author of Treasure Island was passing through the paneled foyer of the Savile Club towards the front door, leather traveling-case in hand. He paused in mid-stride, canting his head to catch up with what he had just heard. The ache in his right temple flared with the gesture into a stab of real pain, but he huffed it resolutely away.
“Beg pardon?” he asked, setting down the well-worn Gladstone and turning to the roundish attendant.
“A hansom, sir. May I call you a cab?”
“Ah! Yes, of course. A cab.” He pinched at his chevron of a moustache, wondering distractedly if the man had exchanged any words with the night porter as he began his day—perhaps heard an embarrassing tale involving the past evening. The fellow’s expression seemed stolid enough. “I’m afraid my mind was elsewhere,” explained the writer. “I thought you’d asked, ‘May I call you handsome?’”
“Oh my goodness, no.”
It occurred to Stevenson that his flippant candor might have caused the man discomfort. It was something he might have called back, something that would not likely have escaped him in the first place had last night’s indulgences not left his judgment somewhat compromised. He scanned the porter’s face for a sign of his response. The ghost of a twinkle in his eye seemed the only possible rift in his professional composure. “Of course not. Much relieved, though, Dobbs. It would have been forward of you, don’t you think?”
“Of course, sir,” the man replied, with what was unmistakably a narrow smile. “Very forward indeed.”
Stevenson nodded. What to say? “Now, Mrs. Stevenson, for some reason, frequently tells me I’m handsome.”
“Of course she does, sir.”
“Blinded by love, I expect.” He managed a grin. “Are you a married man, Dobbs?” And if so, he wondered on the fly, must your wife ever assist you to your bed of a drunken evening, as I was assisted only hours ago…sadly not by my spouse?
“W
hy, yes, sir. Blessed to be, sir. Been dead and married, what, these thirty years?”
“‘Dead and married,’” echoed Stevenson through a chuckle that approached a cough. “Excellent, Dobbs. Worth remembering.” On a burdened morning such as this, an ounce of levity was worth hours of light opera on a sunnier day. Perhaps he could risk one more sally, if only to be sure his wits were truly restored. “Not to belabor a point, but I do sometimes find it a wee bit confusing when anyone but my dear wife, you know, claims to find me…” Stevenson’s hand fluttered to his unfashionably long brown locks.
“Of course, sir. Very sorry, sir.”
“No need for apologies,” declared the writer. “It was all in my damned head, wasn’t it?” Damned head indeed! “No escaping it. We writers are constantly making things up.”
“Yes, sir. And it does you credit, if you ask me.”
“That’s very good of you, Dobbs, I’m sure. Now, shall we put it all behind us? And, yes, thank you. Please do.”
“Sir?”
“Do call me a hansom.” He winked at the man, not without another twinge in his temple. “If you’d be so kind.”
“Of course, sir. Right away.” Dobbs snatched the bag from the lustrous tile and backed decorously towards the door. “Thank you, sir.”
Waiting at the portico, taking in a reviving breath, Stevenson wondered how many London clubs boasted attendants as ready as this man to take such measured but refreshing liberties. Likely none. The Savile, though, had been specifically founded on “relaxed” principles. This, Stevenson assured himself, was the sole reason he hadn’t laughed in Colvin’s face nine years back when his friend and mentor offered to propose for membership an unknown scribbler such as himself. A quasi-Socialist Bohemian into the bargain, if Stevenson’s père’s despairing estimate were to be trusted! As it happened, the Savile had proven an oasis of tempered ease amidst the arid respectability of Mayfair, especially since it had fled Savile Row and resettled just across Piccadilly from Green Park.
Today, of all days, it was cheering to witness that soupçon of wit flit across Dobbs’s lips. The news in from Edinburgh with the most recent post weighed on him gravely, a fact he recalled trying to explain to Dobbs’s fellow porter just the other side of a fitful sleep—as though sad tidings might excuse his humiliating condition. He tapped his stick, straightened his hat, felt vaguely for the letter in the breast pocket of his frock coat, and stepped as resolutely as he could manage down to the street.
“Thank you, Dobbs,” he said, smiling as he joined the attendant at the curbside. “I am much obliged.”
“Not at all, sir.” The man extended his arm to help the lanky figure up into the cab, then handed up the bag. “Travel safely, Mr. Stevenson.”
“Thank you, Dobbs. And thank you also for your flattering observations. Truly voiced or not. King’s Cross, please, driver.”
As the cab lurched away in a clatter of hooves, Stevenson craned back to spy Dobbs looking out after him, tautly erect in the morning sun. A full grin split the man’s ruddy face. Heaven only knew what exactly for.
Settling himself on the tufted bench, Stevenson unbuttoned his coat and checked his watch. 8:43. The Flying Scotsman departed at ten sharp. That would put him into Waverley Station shortly after six in the evening, in time to drop his bag at his parents’ house before joining Baxter in Old Town for dinner—assuming they bothered to eat. Well, eat they must, he quietly told himself. Surely, by then, he would be able to compass the thought of a meal.
He gazed idly at the minute engraving inside the cover of the turnip. Robert Louis Stevenson, Attorney, 16 July, 1875. From an Admiring Father and Mother. That legal career had lasted, what? A matter of weeks? Nothing more than an effective but disingenuous bridge between the engineering career he’d refused to pursue and the literary life to which Thomas Stevenson had sworn no son of his would ever stoop. He grinned, shook his head, closed the timepiece with a snap, and slipped it back into his vest pocket.
The hansom rattled through Piccadilly Circus and on up Shaftesbury Avenue, moving at a brisk trot despite the morning crush. Just short of Charing Cross Road, they slowed. There was some sort of disturbance ahead, and waves of curious pedestrians flowed across the thoroughfare and swelled into a mass on the left pavement.
Stevenson tapped on the hatch and the cabman opened up.
“What is it, do you know?” asked Stevenson.
“Can’t rightly say, sir. P’raps we’ll see in a moment.”
“My train departs at ten.”
“Naught to worry you, sir. There’s a mess o’ Metropolitans on the scene already. ’Ello there, constable! They’ll see us through, certain.”
The hansom edged forward until Stevenson could see through the shifting crowd. A slender, plainly dressed young man stood above the throng atop an imposing row of hogsheads stacked on a brewer’s dray. His face was crimson, his veins distended, and he flourished his cloth cap right and left like a limp cattle switch. He was doing his best to shout over the buzzing crowd. Stevenson could pick up a phrase here, a word there—“Devil’s cargo,” “brothers,” “every dram!” Some of the jockeying masses shook their fists and roared, “Aye!” Others scrambled to pull the lad from his perch, and he kicked vigorously at their grasping hands. “Fearful rocks,” he bellowed on, struggling to maintain his balance. “Tear the bottom.” Something “of life.” Barque? “Barque of life?”
“Damme! It’s them teetotalers again,” sneered the driver, leaning his head into the cab. Stevenson caught a whiff of gin on the man’s breath. Gin and onions. He bit back the urge to retch. “Lawson’s mob. Can’t abide a single drop, that lot. And can’t abide no-one else ’avin’ ’is.” A belch might have added the perfect touch. Another pickled cabman. Everyman at Work. “I’d like to jump down and fix ’is wagon.”
“I quite understand,” remarked Stevenson, thinking that he himself would have done well to embrace Sir Wilfrid’s abstemious principles the previous evening. “At the same time, there’s a train to catch.”
“Naught to worry about, guv’nor. Like I said.” The hatch clapped shut, and the lean bay was soon back at a trot, wheeling them north towards the Great Eastern terminal.
Naught to worry about. That might be the case, for the short and the long term equally. It was hard to take too seriously any soul who could declaim in public about “the barque of life,” if that is what the fellow had indeed said. Facile metaphors tried Stevenson sorely; at times, he thought, adversely affecting his digestion—especially on days when he had risen early and damaged. Still, disruptions like this one had become frequent throughout Britain as the multiple incarnations of the Temperance Movement grew ever bolder and more organized. Their nay-saying militancy had provoked an equally fervent and boisterous opposition, such that uniformed soldiers of the Salvation Army were now regularly challenged by rag-tag masses dubbing themselves a “Skeleton Army.” Marching under a black flag emblazoned with skull and cross bones, Stevenson had been intrigued to learn, these real-life, gin-swilling mates of Long John Silver had taken to pelting their sanctimonious opponents with anything they could lay their drunken hands on: mud, stones, paint, hot coals—even, in one lurid incident, dead cats. Their increasingly violent clashes had left millenarian pundits at the Times declaring that the Drink Question had turned “one nation into two”—as indeed, thought Stevenson ruefully, drink itself so often turned a man against his own better judgment. Thinking selfishly, Stevenson doubted any new legislation would ever deny wine-lovers such as himself the pleasure of an evening glass or two.
In any event, any resolution to the fiery debate wouldn’t matter much for Ferrier. The damage had long been done.
Goodge Street. Another ten minutes? Stevenson reached for the letter that had found him in Bournemouth the day before and called him away on the next express to London. He raised the flap of the envelope, removing and unfolding the single sheet of bond stationery. Dearest Louis, wrote his mother. It pains me beyond words to
let you know that we have heard again from Mrs. Ferrier. As we feared, poor Walter continues to decline, and his dear mother assures us that it must now be weeks and not months before he goes to his Eternal Rest.
It struck Stevenson once again that Margaret Stevenson had not mentioned an “Eternal Reward.” But would a good Scottish Calvinist ever use the term? Rewards presupposed a measure of control over one’s doings on this earth—merit for deeds freely chosen, virtue freely embraced; an orange for the good boy, a wormy apple for the bad. Neither the watered-down catechisms of his nursery nor the interminable harangues of his boyhood kirk had ever spoken to him of “rewards”—scarcely ever about “choice,” if truth were told. And by what Christian theology, even those based on some notion of the free and independent will, would Ferrier in particular “rest?” Would he not writhe interminably in deserved or undeserved perdition? Poor Walter! Had he ever been able to steer his “barque” at all?
Your father and I, he read on, know how consuming your affairs have become these recent days and months. We are profoundly gratified to see the path upon which you have so promisingly ventured of late. Nevertheless, I know you realize that we are put on this earth to look after those who are dear to us. Walter, I know, yearns to see you one last time before he departs. Please, if ever you may, dear Louis, hasten home and dispatch this last obligation to one who has counted you among his most faithful friends. With the greatest hopes of seeing and embracing you very soon, I remain, as ever, your loving Mother.
He lowered the sheet despondently to his lap. Could there have been any doubt he would come? He dearly hoped not. At the same time, he was pained to recall, his father had once declared that his sole child’s godless antics had rendered his own life “an utter failure.” The words of that particular missive had ever after stuck in Stevenson’s head with the tenacity of a jagged splinter: I would ten times sooner have seen you lying in your grave than that you should be shaking the faith of other young men and bringing such ruin on other houses as you have brought already upon this. A father who could pen such words might easily think anything of him. Still, more nights than he could remember, Stevenson had staggered back to Ferrier’s rooms under the weight of his nodding friend, lowering him into his bed and tossing a blanket over his crumpled frame before he lurched back to his own digs as first light began to glow over Arthur’s Seat. One did not hold a man’s head while he vomited or shield his eyes from a clawing whore and not speed to his deathbed when the call arrived.
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