“Hmm,” mused Stevenson. “Perhaps they are married to their work.”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps they were married…but they wore their wives out with their conjugal attentions.”
“Not very likely. We women are made of stouter stuff than that.”
“American women, it may be,” observed Stevenson drily. “But British ladies?”
“You’d be surprised. Maybe their author hates women. Maybe that explains it.”
“Curses! You’ve found me out.”
“Will you send a copy to your father?” asked Fanny after a pause. “Will he want to read it?”
“I don’t know. On either score.”
“I wonder what he’ll make of it all?”
“I wonder. At least you made me clean out all the whores.”
“What about the dead old men? All the dead old men?”
“All of them?”
“Carew? Lanyon? Jekyll?”
“Father’s an old man himself. He’ll understand about old men dying. Whether or not he finds it diverting.”
“It’s interesting, though.”
“What is?”
“You take out the whores, and it turns into a story about Hyde killing old men.”
13
Jekyll had more than a father’s interest; Hyde had more than a son’s indifference. To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless.
—DR. HENRY JEKYLL
LONDON, MARCH 1886
Stevenson strode into his parents’ rooms at the Grosvenor with a definite bounce in his step.
“Hello, dear Màthair,” he chirped as he whisked across the sitting room, hat in hand, to embrace his mother.
“My,” replied the woman, offering him her cheek, “I can feel the chill coming off of you. It must still be very cold.”
“It is. Very. And I have run up as fast as my spindly legs would carry me to bring some refreshment into this stuffy room.” He peeled off his gloves, tossed them along with his hat onto the nearest chair, and stripped off his heavy overcoat.
“Would you like to hang that up? It looks wet.”
“I’m afraid I can’t stay long. I’ve promised to meet Colvin and Mrs. Sitwell at Claridge’s.”
“I thought we were dining together this evening.”
“I am certain I told you that we weren’t.” Stevenson draped his coat over the back of the chair and took a seat near his mother. “Perhaps we ought to hire a secretary for you and father. To keep track of your engagements.”
The look on Margaret Stevenson’s face spoke volumes.
“I am sorry, Mother. I was simply trying to be cheerful.”
“Perhaps you could find another way.”
“I shall.” He rubbed his hands together, blowing into them. “Is father napping?”
“He napped earlier. At the moment, I believe he is attending to some needs. Now, your afternoon. Was it successful?”
“I don’t know about the afternoon itself, but I did receive some telling news.” Stevenson had been to visit his publisher in Paternoster Row, and Charles Longman himself had taken a half-hour to speak with him. Stevenson let his statement hang pregnantly in the overheated room.
“Well,” said his mother, after a considerable pause. “What was it? Why must you always tease me?”
Stevenson fingered his moustache puckishly. “I don’t wish to bother you with details that would be of no interest.”
“Now why on earth would I not be interested in what your publisher tells you?”
“It only concerns money, Mother. Filthy lucre. Far beneath the notice of the Angel in the House.”
“If you weren’t too old for a thrashing, Louis, I would take you over my knee.”
“That was father’s business, was it not?”
“Unfortunately. And I fear he failed to exercise the prerogative often enough. Behold the result!”
“I take your point, dear Mama,” laughed Stevenson. “And to answer your curiosity, Longman informs me that, ever since the review in the Times, Jekyll has exceeded their wildest expectations.”
“Oh, Louis,” exclaimed his mother with a shiver of delight. “That is wonderful news.” She rose from her chair and, shuffling across to him, took his head in her hands and kissed his forehead. The heavy scent of perfumed talc swept him back to another place and age.
“I wish it were a better tale,” he said, resisting a boyish urge to brush the kiss away. “But I am happy enough with the results.”
“What is all this commotion?” asked a raspy voice from behind the writer. Stevenson looked around to see his father standing in the bedroom door, cane in hand.
“Oh, Thomas,” declared his mother. “Louis is just back from Longman’s. The report is that the book is selling very well.”
“The book? Which book?”
“Jekyll and Hyde,” answered Stevenson.
“That one!” The old man let go of the doorjamb and took a stride into the room, stumbling slightly before he steadied himself with his cane.
“May I help you, Father?” Stevenson half-rose.
“I can manage perfectly,” snapped Thomas. “It’s just that I canna sit for half an hour now without getting up. It is enough to wear any man out. All this bloody you-rination.”
“Thomas!” exclaimed his wife. “My word!”
For all of his teasing, Stevenson couldn’t help but share his mother’s shock that his father would broach this particular topic in a forum even this public. It was as though Baxter stood there in disguise, playing at being a doddering father.
“Forgive me, then. I’m not myself lately,” sighed the older man, smiling gamely. “So what is this about Longman’s?”
“Over three thousand volumes purchased so far,” replied his son. “They are certainly going to reprint, and they expect to be into the tens of thousands by the end of the year.”
“Well, that’s good, I suppose.”
“Of course it’s good,” exclaimed Margaret Stevenson. “In fact, it’s wonderful.”
“Thank you, Mother,” said Stevenson, as he rose to help his father into his chair. The old man dropped down like a sack of potatoes, letting the cane tumble to the carpet.
“Thank you, Smout,” he grunted. “And I am happy for you. Is there any news on that David thing?”
“Only that it will appear in Young Folks very soon.”
“Have you added those thoughts on religion? The passages we discussed?” He eyed his son sternly.
“Not yet, Father. It was already in the magazine’s hands.”
“Surely they could change it.”
“They say not.”
“For the book edition, then.”
“Perhaps.”
Thomas Stevenson fixed him again with his best effort at an imperious gaze.
“It was excellent advice you offered me, Father,” said Stevenson. “I would be foolish not to consider it.”
“You would.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?” asked Stevenson, reaching inside his coat for his cigarette case. The craving was sudden and strong.
“Must you?” asked his mother.
“Leave the boy alone!”
“Thank you,” said Stevenson. He extracted a cigarette and lit it. “You know, Longman’s has just heard from Richard Mansfield.”
“Richard Mansfield the actor?” asked his mother.
“The very one.”
“I am surprised you have heard of him, Maggie,” observed her husband, archly. “You are hardly a theatergoer.”
“Nor have I been living under a log, for heaven’s sake. I am sure it was Mansfield we saw in The Mikado.”
“Did we?”
“I’m certain of it.” She turned to her son with a little shake of the head. “What does he want with
Longman’s?”
“Want with me, in truth. He says he would like to commission a theatrical version of Jekyll. There’s an American he works with, and they are very keen on doing it. So Longman claims.”
“Would it bring any money?” asked his father. “To you, Smout. Not to Longman’s.”
“To both of us, I would think.”
“Oh, Louis. How very exciting!” Margaret Stevenson looked with great satisfaction at her husband, who sat there nodding. “And Mansfield would play Jekyll? And Hyde?”
“I can’t imagine he would want to play anyone else.”
“No. You must tell Fanny. Cable her. How thrilled she will be.”
“If it comes to pass,” agreed Stevenson. “She will be.”
“Fanny,” pronounced his father, reaching up vacantly to pull at his ear. “Fanny.”
“Yes, dear. Louis’s wife.”
“Of course. Yes. Fanny will be thrilled.”
Nothing in Stevenson’s communications with Edinburgh had suggested anything like his father’s state of decline. It left him feeling that some significant action was called for. Colvin and Fanny Sitwell, over dinner, suggested Smedley’s Hydropathic Establishment in Matlock, declaring it the very best healing spot in all of England—outside of Bath, which the senior Stevenson had written off after an ineffectual visit months back. The old man had initially opposed, tooth and nail, anything other than a direct return to Edinburgh, but he was finally convinced to spend a fortnight in Derbyshire, provided Stevenson himself went along and took the full treatment as well.
“It will either extinguish all the remaining Stevensons,” announced his father, “or they shall come away new men.”
Stevenson’s mother observed that it offered the pair of them an ideal opportunity to spend precious time with each other, and she resolved to wend her way back north on her own. When the old man complained that he would then have no one to share his bed at the spa, Stevenson remarked it was surely not for nothing that his father had been such a longstanding and generous benefactor of Edinburgh’s Magdalen mission: perhaps his wife could arrange for one of the erstwhile wayward ladies to come down from Auld Reekie. Perhaps even a pair of them, he added, if this were truly to be a time of paternal and filial sharing. It was an open question whether Margaret Stevenson was more annoyed by her son or embarrassed by her spouse.
The journey up from London was neither long nor particularly arduous in the first-class carriage of the Manchester, Buxton, Matlock, and Midlands Railway. Margaret had provided them with a basket of delicacies from Fortnum and Mason’s, and they feasted like giddy youths on an assortment of cheeses, pâtés, biscuits, chocolates, and ginger beer. Engineer that he was, Thomas Stevenson was especially taken by what he deemed the miracles of the Willersley and High Tor tunnels between Cromford and Matlock, 800 and 600 yards long respectively. While Stevenson all but held his breath through each of the dark transits, ready at any moment to be crushed by incalculable tonnes of falling limestone, his father seized the chance to remind him that his life would be far better had he never cast aside his compass and rule for a barrister’s wig, let alone for a scribbler’s pen and notebook.
“You could have built these very tunnels,” he declared. “And better.” Stevenson had managed to hold his tongue. If his father were indeed slipping into a second childhood, he himself was determined not to be dragged back along with him.
They arrived in Matlock in the thick of a rare spring blizzard, with huge clots of wet snow driving down off the peaks into the tight Derwent Valley. They stood for a full ten minutes outside the station awaiting their carriage to Smedley’s, stamping their feet in the inch or two of slush that had accumulated on the pavement. Reluctant to drop their bags in the mess, Stevenson held them in his hands, half-relishing the way their weight strained the muscles on the top of his shoulders. His father suggested in vain that he put them down, then nobly offered to relieve his son of the burden. Stevenson declined. He nonetheless found himself wishing he had a hand free to sweep the flakes away from the old man’s blinking eyes as he stood there, enduringly resolute, smiling at his only child.
For days they took the cure, now wrapped from head to toe in wet flannel, now with their feet set soaking in mustard, now with their chests anointed in chili paste while their limbs were rubbed, then rubbed again, with vinegar. Stevenson’s skin balked at being seasoned like a goose for the oven, and he developed a full-body itch the likes of which he had never remotely experienced. His father somehow found this amusing, and he excoriated his wife for importing the inherent weakness of the Balfour constitution into the hardy stock of the Stevenson clan.
For his part, Stevenson took to wearing white cotton gloves day and night so as to be deterred from raking his nails into the dreadful crawly tickle. For three nights running, he lay sleepless on his back, hour upon hour, fancying his whole body a giant, en-crimsoned male member, aching for climax. Surely his brownies had never contrived a more thoroughly dehumanizing notion than that. Fortunately, on the third day, after a strict regimen of oatmeal baths, he rose like Lazarus from his affliction to refocus his energies on his father’s welfare.
On day twelve, at four in the afternoon, the two Stevensons sat at one of the wicker tables in Smedley’s winter garden. The sun had shone brightly through the midday, and the rays passing through the glass of the sizeable conservatory had warmed the air surprisingly. Liberally spaced paraffin heaters maintained a comfortable temperature, at least for the moment, and broad fronds of potted palms arched over the two men’s heads, lending to the air a welcome botanical fragrance and a touch of humidity.
“You do seem better, Father,” observed Stevenson as he poured the older man another cup of tea. “Would you agree?” Frankly, it was difficult to imagine how mere anointings of the flesh could ever find their way to the real seat of Thomas Stevenson’s failing, deep under the steel-gray hair.
His father shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe. I miss Maggie.”
“Well, you shall be seeing her again very soon.”
His father nodded. “When?”
“In two more days.”
“In London?”
“No, Father. Back in Edinburgh.”
“Good. Are you feeling better as well, Smout?”
“Like a new man, Father. As you said.”
“As I said,” nodded the other. “And you’ll be going back to London?”
“Only after we go together to Edinburgh. I need to see you safely home.”
“Thank you for that.” He took his napkin and dabbed lightly under the tip of his nose. “I expect Fanny misses you.”
“I expect she does. Would you like another?” He pushed a small tray of teacakes across the table. His father took one and laid it on his plate. His hand trembled noticeably.
“Now, if you must keep writing,” proclaimed his father, stressing the if, “be mindful always of what I have told you about piety. More than once, as I recall.”
Of a sudden, their penultimate day at the spa was bidding to become a Time for Final Words. Stevenson realized with surprise that he was not in the least prepared for it.
“Of course, Father.”
“Everything we do in life, we must have final regard for the state of our souls.” He looked at Stevenson, who met his gaze but said nothing. A son being launched into life or a son being left behind required, it seemed, exactly the same fatherly tuition.
“Everything you write must have a regard for the same.” The old man reached out and turned the teacake slowly on the plate.
“Fanny and I have often spoken of that. She very much agrees.”
“Good. And you do as well?”
“I agree with everything Fanny says,” laughed Stevenson. “You know that.”
“Fanny is a good woman,” said his father. “Despite her provincial… her provincial origins.” For a moment, his old eyes glinted with merriment. “So, you promised me, did you not, that your young David would take heed of the catechists a
nd finish up as a prime example of a life well and piously lived?”
“I did, Father.”
His father smiled and reached again for the cake. He took a small bite and set it back down. “I shall die a fat man.”
“No time soon, I hope,” said Stevenson, with another twinge.
“I believe I have had a good life,” pronounced Thomas Stevenson.
“You have, Father. Long may it continue.”
“Perhaps.” For a moment the older man sat quietly. “Do you ever wish, Lou, you had done something more with your life?”
“What do you mean?”
“Done something. As opposed to writing something.”
“Something such as?”
“Well,” his father responded with a smile, “you know I’ll say like building a lighthouse.”
“Or a tunnel?”
“Or a lighthouse. Leaving behind a Skerryvore that you did more than give a name to. One that you conceived of and drew up and labored to bring into tangible being. So everyone could say, ‘Look there. That is Lou Stevenson’s light!’”
The son laughed. “The Stevensons have already scattered more than their fair share of Pharoses around Scotland, don’t you think? There are some who say the coast has grown unsightly as a consequence.”
“Perhaps.” Again his father grinned. “Of course you could have done something with the law as well. Argued cases of great moment. Swayed judgments of note.”
“Or spared my special friends a few of the depredations of the tax collector?”
His father chuckled and took another small bite of the teacake. “I confess I can make nothing of this Jekyll book of yours. However, it does seem to have made its mark.”
Stevenson’s thoughts flashed back to Fanny’s wondering what his father might make of the trail of dead old gentlemen strewn in Hyde’s wake. He evidently had no focused grievance with that. Perhaps he had not noticed.
“Indeed it has.”
“The reviews have been commendatory?”
“Generally.”
“And the sales good?”
“Remarkably.”
“I suppose you do warn against the perils of self-indulgence.”
Seeking Hyde Page 22