Redemption and Crime, Conan Doyle's Journey into Light versus Hyde's descent into Darkness

When I first set out to record the forgotten and unknown adventures of Sherlock Holmes and his fabulous, famous friends, my first thought was how could I possibly have enough years to put them all down on paper.

I have never known such a rich plethora of men and ideas in all my life. They range from incredibly bright scholars, to wild adventurers, famous magicians, exceedingly brave sea captains, and even a few monsters of hairy and invisible kinds.

Such a diversion of characters is bound to intimidate the lesser talented, or more abstracted writer, because most of us prefer to focus on one or two characters at the most.

But the rich history and parallel elements of the Bake Street Universe demand and command that I take all thrift of time and hurl it aside, allowing the mountainslide of adventure, mystery, fantasy and hope to tumble down where it may.

Last week I focused on Hyde, a very notorious character, first embodied in the personality of Doctor Jekyll on your world, but then later released to terrorize the parallel world of the Baker Street Universe.

But it seems that character demands further clarity and justice. For any being, even the least of them must have some motive for life, even as banal as just taking life might seem.

The horror of taking another man's life is only exceeded by the terror of it being your own. Perhaps that is why we cluster about accident scenes, slow down like long lines of cattle to watch the cars that are crashed along side the road, knowing that some day that could be us.

Fear of death is a mighty champion and takes no prisoners.

Hyde embodies all that is worst in man, and yet at the same time offers redemption, for that which is dark can be removed...we pray and hope...in time with the advent of Light.

What makes our Hyde so unique is that he doesn't just seek to take life to sustain his...or is it a he...life, but to also conquer those whom he slakes his thirst upon.

In many ways this horrible creature is also symbolic of power mad governments that slaughter innocents and enslave them to take their riches and wealth and gain domination. He also is a dark star in the sky of selfisness...showing all that man can fall prey to...lust, envy, greed, power, terror, murder. He embodies the seven sins.

What he does when placed in a story is to counterpoint that aspect of man which must strike out against the darkness in his own soul, fling off the possessions that strive to control his mind, heart and body, as well as soul, and move fully into the Light of pure determination and kindness.

Not kindness which is weak and easily slaughtered, but a kindness born of strength and determination to not give into the darkness, for any price!

One thing that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's father realized as he separated himself from his family of loved ones, was that sometimes we must sacrifice all that we hold dear and love to protect a higher cause.

And so it is that we honor the soldiers who go into battle...sometimes wrongly...but do so to clear the path of darkness for those who seek a Greater Comfort and Light in their lives.

Thus the Baker Street Adventurers are a New Age team, captained by Sherlock Holmes, to right injustice, fight against evil, and to  stop the perpetuation of darkness upon the world by those blind to the good that dwells in their very own hearts.

And one day Conan of the Baker Street Universe, will not only have helped the greatest mind of crime detection, but also have found a place for himself wherein he can find peace at last. For though dead to his old world, he has risen like the Phoenix to be born to a longer, fuller life in the new.

Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde Animated Cartoon...somewhat silly, but fun.

Sherlock's biggest enemy is on the way! The Baker Street Universe, Adventures, Thrills and Chills (http://johnpirillo1.blogspot.com/)

Just kidding!

Or am I?

But don't be surprised. Things can happen when you least expect it in the Baker Street Universe. And from the direction you would least expect it.

The biggest, baddest villain ever is on the way. And that's for sure.

John

(New) The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Part 14 " at ImagineNation (http://johnpirillo1.blogspot.com/)

HENRY JEKYLL'S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE part fourteen

By Robert Louis Stevenson 

I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but

that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my nature, to

which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and

less developed than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in the

course of my life, which had been, after all, nine tenths a life of

effort, virtue and control, it had been much less exercised and much

less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde

was so much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as

good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly

and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still

believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint

of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the

glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome.

This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore

a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than

the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed

to call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I have observed that

when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at

first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, was

because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good

and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.

I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive

experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if I had

lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before daylight from a

house that was no longer mine; and hurrying back to my cabinet, I

once more prepared and drank the cup, once more suffered the pangs

of dissolution, and came to myself once more with the character, the

stature and the face of Henry Jekyll.

That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I approached my

discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while

under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been

otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth

an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no discriminating action;

it was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the

prisonhouse of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that

which stood within ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil,

kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and

the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I had now

two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the

other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of

whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair. The

movement was thus wholly toward the worse.

Even at that time, I had not conquered my aversions to the dryness of

a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my

pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only well

known and highly considered, but growing towards the elderly man, this

incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. It was on this

side that my new power tempted me until I fell in slavery. I had but to

drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and to

assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. I smiled at the notion;

it seemed to me at the time to be humourous; and I made my preparations

with the most studious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho,

to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as a housekeeper

a creature whom I knew well to be silent and unscrupulous. On the other

side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described)

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 object, in

my second character. I next drew up that will to which you so much

objected; so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr. Jekyll,

I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss. And thus

fortified, as I supposed, on every side, I began to profit by the

strange immunities of my position.

Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own

person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did

so for his pleasures. I was the first that could plod in the public eye

with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy,

strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty.

But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Think

of it--I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my laboratory door,

give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the draught that I had

always standing ready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde would pass

away like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead,

quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a man who

could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.

The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have

said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of

Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I would

come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of

wonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of

my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being

inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centered on

self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture

to another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times

aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from

ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was

Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse;

he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even

make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And

thus his conscience slumbered.

Into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived (for even now

I can scarce grant that I committed it) I have no design of entering; I

mean but to point out the warnings and the successive steps with which

my chastisement approached. I met with one accident which, as it brought

on no consequence, I shall no more than mention. An act of cruelty to a

child aroused against me the anger of a passer-by, whom I recognised

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 my life; 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 cheque drawn in the name of

Henry Jekyll. But this danger was easily eliminated from the future, by

opening an account at another bank in the name of Edward Hyde himself;

and when, by sloping my own hand backward, I had supplied my double with

a signature, I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.

Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been out for one

of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke the next day in

bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in vain I looked about me; in

vain I saw the decent furniture and tall proportions of my room in the

square; in vain that I recognised the pattern of the bed curtains and

the design of the mahogany frame; something still kept insisting that I

was not where I was, that I had not wakened where I seemed to be, but in

the little room in Soho where I was accustomed to sleep in the body

of Edward Hyde. I smiled to myself, and in my 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, in one of my more wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon

my hand. Now the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was

professional in shape and size: it was large, firm, white and comely.

But the hand which I now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a

mid-London morning, lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, corder,

knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of

hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.

(New) The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Part Eleven "Dr. Lanyon's Narrative" continued at The Baker Street Universe

The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde 

By Robert Louis Stevenson

Part Twelve "Dr. Lanyon's Narrative" Continued

He told me "yes" by a constrained gesture; and when I had bidden him

enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward glance into the

darkness of the square. There was a policeman not far off, advancing

with his bull's eye open; and at the sight, I thought my visitor started

and made greater haste.

These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followed

him into the bright light of the consulting room, I kept my hand ready

on my weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I had

never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, as

I have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his

face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and

great apparent debility of constitution, and--last but not least--with

the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore

some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked

sinking of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic,

personal distaste, and merely wondered at the acuteness of the symptoms;

but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in

the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the principle

of hatred.

This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck

in me what I can only, describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed

in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable; his

clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober fabric,

were enormously too large for him in every measurement--the trousers

hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground, the

waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar sprawling wide upon

his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was far

from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was something abnormal

and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced

me--something seizing, surprising and revolting--this fresh disparity

seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that to my interest

in the man's nature and character, there was added a curiosity as to his

origin, his life, his fortune and status in the world.

These observations, though they have taken so great a space to be set

down in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed, on

fire with sombre excitement.

"Have you got it?" he cried. "Have you got it?" And so lively was his

impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake

me.

I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my

blood. "Come, sir," said I. "You forget that I have not yet the pleasure

of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please." And I showed him an

example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as fair an

imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness of the

hour, the nature of my preoccupations, and the horror I had of my

visitor, would suffer me to muster.

"I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon," he replied civilly enough. "What you

say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to my

politeness. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry

Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood..." He

paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his

collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the

hysteria--"I understood, a drawer..."

But here I took pity on my visitor's suspense, and some perhaps on my

own growing curiosity.

"There it is, sir," said I, pointing to the drawer, where it lay on the

floor behind a table and still covered with the sheet.

He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart: I

could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and

his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life and

reason.

"Compose yourself," said I.

He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision of

despair, plucked away the sheet. At sight of the contents, he uttered

one loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the next

moment, in a voice that was already fairly well under control, "Have you

a graduated glass?" he asked.

I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him what he

asked.

He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red

tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first

of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to

brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes

of vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and

the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to

a watery green. My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a

keen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned and

looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.

"And now," said he, "to settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you

be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to

go forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of

curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall

be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were

before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service

rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches

of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of

knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you,

here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by

a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan."

"Sir," said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly

possessing, "you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that I

hear you with no very strong impression of belief. But I have gone too

far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end."

"It is well," replied my visitor. "Lanyon, you remember your vows: what

follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so

long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have

denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your

superiors--behold!"

He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed;

he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with

injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I

thought, a change--he seemed to swell--his face became suddenly black

and the features seemed to melt and alter--and the next moment, I had

sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arms raised to

shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.

"O God!" I screamed, and "O God!" again and again; for there before my

eyes--pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with

his hands, like a man restored from death--there stood Henry Jekyll!

What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on

paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at

it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if

I believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep

has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day and

night; and I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die;

and yet I shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man

unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I can not, even in

memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say but one thing,

Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be

more than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night was,

on Jekyll's own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in

every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.

HASTIE LANYON