Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case

I was born in the year 18— to a large fortune, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition. When I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. I hid my views with a morbid sense of shame. It was the nature of my aspirations that made me what I was. I was driven to reflect deeply on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion. Though I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were earnest. I drew steadily nearer to that truth that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous, and independent denizens. I, for my part, from the nature of my life, learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man. It was the curse of mankind that these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How to dissociate them?

I was so far in my reflections when a light began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive the trembling immateriality, the mist-like transience of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to shake and to pluck back that fleshly vestment. I not only recognised my natural body for the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from their supremacy.

I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I knew well that I risked death. But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound, at last overcame the suggestions of alarm.

I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, drank off the potion.

The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself.

There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; I was conscious of an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature.

There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands beside me as I write, was brought there later on and for the very purpose of these transformations. The night, however, was far gone into the morning. I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me; I went through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.

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 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 had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. But this, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me without some visible disgust. This was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde alone was pure evil.

The second and conclusive experiment had yet to be attempted. 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 crossroads. The drug was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prison-house of my disposition. 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. The movement was wholly toward the worse.

Even at that time, I had not yet conquered my aversion to the life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures were undignified, the incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. And 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 humorous; 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 a housekeeper whom I knew 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. And I began to profit by the strange immunities of my position.

Men have before hired killers to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his pleasures. 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 would be Henry Jekyll!

My pleasures were, as I have said, undignified. But in the hands of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. This person that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone, was a being inherently malign and villainous. Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from ordinary laws. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was not bad; he woke again to his good qualities; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde.

I do not want to go into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived. But 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 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 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 returned at a late hour, and woke the next day in bed with somewhat odd sensations. My eyes fell upon my hand. Now the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have often remarked) 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 bed-clothes, was lean, corded, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.

I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, before terror woke up in my breast; and I rushed to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes, my blood was changed into something icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde! How was this to be explained? I asked myself, and then, with another bound of terror—how was it to be remedied?

It was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all my drugs were in the cabinet—a long journey down two pairs of stairs, through the back passage, across the open court and through the anatomical theatre, from where I was then standing horror-struck.

It might indeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use was that, when I was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? And then with an overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back upon my mind that the servants were already used to the coming and going of my second self. I had soon dressed, as well as I was able, in clothes of my own size: had soon passed through the house, where Bradshaw stared and drew back at seeing Mr. Hyde at such an hour and in such a strange array; and ten minutes later, Dr. Jekyll had returned to his own shape and was sitting down.

Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this reversal of my previous experience, seemed to be spelling out the letters of my judgment; and I began to reflect more seriously than ever before on the issues and possibilities of my double existence. That part of me which I had the power of projecting, had lately been much exercised and nourished. It had seemed to me as though the body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature, as though I were conscious 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 overthrown, the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine.

The power of the drug had not been always equally displayed. Whereas, in the beginning, the difficulty had been to throw off the body of Jekyll, it had gradually transferred itself to the other side. All things therefore seemed to point to this: that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.

Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them. Jekyll projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had a father’s interest; Hyde a son’s indifference. What to choose? I chose the better part and did not have strength to keep to it.

Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes. I made this choice, but I did not give up the house in Soho, did not destroy the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet. For two months, however, I was true to my determination. But I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.

And I was punished. My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even when I took the draught, of a more furious propensity to ill. I had voluntarily stripped myself of all balancing instincts.

Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. I met a man and I killed him. I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow. Then a mist dispersed; and I fled from the scene. I ran to the house in Soho, and destroyed my papers. After that Hyde compounded the draught and drank it.

The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had with my father’s hand, and through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I tried with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against me.

As the acuteness of the remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy. The problem of my conduct was solved. Hyde was thenceforth impossible; whether I would or not, I was now confined to the better part of my existence; and oh, how I rejoiced to think it! I locked the door by which I had so often gone and come, and ground the key under my heel!

The next day, came the news that the murder had been overlooked, that the guilt of Hyde was known to the world, and that the victim was a man high in public estimation. It was not only a crime, it had been a tragic folly. I think I was glad to know it. Jekyll was now my city of refuge.

I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past. You know yourself how earnestly in the last months of last year, I laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily for myself. I led beneficent and innocent life; but I was still cursed with my duality; and the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl. And I fell before the assaults of temptation.

There comes an end to all things. And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I had made discovery. It was a fine, clear, January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the park was full of winter birds and sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.

After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been wealthy, beloved; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.

My reason wavered. My drugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was I to reach them? That was the problem that I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I had closed. If I sought to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached? How persuaded?

How should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered that of my original character, one part remained to me: I could write my own hand.

Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoning a passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street. At my appearance (which was indeed comical enough) the driver could not conceal his mirth. I gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury; and the smile withered from his face—happily for him. At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me. The men obsequiously took my orders, led me to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde mastered his fury with a great effort of the will; composed his two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and sent them.

Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city. He, I say—I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And then at last he discharged the cab and ventured on foot. He walked fast, hunted by his fears. Once a woman spoke to him. He smote her in the face, and she fled.

When I came to myself at Lanyon’s, the horror of my old friend perhaps affected me somewhat: A change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon’s condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed. I awoke in the morning weakened, but refreshed.

I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast, drinking the chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with those indescribable sensations that heralded the change; and I had but the time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again raging and freezing with the passions of Hyde. It took on this occasion a double dose to recall me to myself; and alas! Six hours after, as I sat looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be re-administered.

In short, at all hours of the day and night, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was always as Hyde that I awakened. I became, 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.

Jekyll thought of Hyde as of something not only hellish but inorganic. This was the shocking thing, that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life.

The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll, was of a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself regarded.

It is useless to prolong this description; no one has ever suffered such torments. My provision of the salt began to run low. I sent out for a fresh supply, and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed; I drank it and it was without efficiency. I am now persuaded that my first supply was impure, and that it was that unknown impurity which made the trick.

About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this letter under the influence of the last of the old powders. If Hyde finds my letter, he will tear it in pieces. Indeed the doom that is closing on us both, has already changed and crushed him. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death.

Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.