Chapter 2: Eyes That Weigh Souls. Eyes That Weigh Flesh

Excerpts from the Memoirs of Hastie Lanyon Jekyll

I remember when I first saw Henry Jekyll. I remember his eyes.

It was in 1881, at my father’s regimental reunion. Years before my matriculation to Bedford College. Before London, before marriage, and long before I encountered Edward Hyde. I was seventeen—barely a woman, yet already well on my way to spinsterhood—when I saw the man who would forever alter the direction of my life.

The reunion commemorated the first anniversary of my father’s return from Afghanistan. In the year following his discharge from the regiment, Colonel Edward Lanyon, Baron of Haywardshire, had largely recuperated from the injuries he’d received in combat, but was still unable to travel great distances. Consequently, we hosted the event at Elysianum, our family estate in West Hayward. It was to be a weekend of hunting, feasting, dancing, and—for the veterans who attended—an opportunity to remember comrades who had fallen and reminisce with those who had returned.

To borrow from Miss Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a country maiden in possession of a fetching dress must be in want of a dance partner. So it was no surprise that young ladies from across the county arrived at our house far in advance of the fête, eager to display their latest finery and avail themselves of the young men of good families who were sure to be in attendance.

The night of the great ball, the house was alight, full of women bedecked in their finest gowns, men attired in dress uniforms and evening suits, and tables groaning under the weight of Cook’s most masterful creations. Father had engaged the services of a string quartet, and the ballroom was filled with scores of dancers swooping in and out in elaborate arcs and parabolae. While I admired the revelry of the ball, I resolved to join my father in the salon, where he had adjourned with several of his old comrades for the requisite port and cigars.

I couldn’t hear most of the words that the men were saying; those that I could hear, I could barely understand, as their conversation was peppered with martial recollections and the peculiar jargon of men at arms. Still, I hearkened to the rhythms of their discourse, the voices rising and falling as they veered between joyous remembrance and solemn regret. I wondered what mysteries these men had seen, what horrific knowledge they’d gained in distant, exotic lands.

How they had been forever transformed by their experiences.

In my father, the transformation was unmistakable. When he left for the war, Colonel Lanyon was a hale and gregarious man, in the peak of health and humor. Two years later, he returned a quiet, sad invalid, nursing a crushed hip and an arm that was rendered largely useless.

When Father came home, he was attended by Jacob Poole, his former Sergeant Major. Poole had been at my father’s side for most of the war and was in his command tent at the Battle of Maiwand. When the regiment was overrun, he defended Father to the last, ultimately saving his life at the expense of his own welfare. My father was nothing if not grateful: After Poole was discharged due to his injuries, Father offered him employment with our family.

In the year between Father’s return and the regimental reunion, I watched him struggle. His body healed slowly, but steadily: A few months after returning home, he took his first, tentative jaunt atop Odysseus, our most gentle mount. By the time of the reunion, he was taking daily rides across the countryside.

His spirit, however, took longer to recover. Father had always been a jovial man, filled with energy and a touch of mischief, which found their most eloquent expression in his eyes. When he came back to us, his eyes seemed empty. Vacant.

As the months wore on, his spirits slowly returned, and there were times when I could pretend that the war had never happened; that he had never left, that the joy had never fled his eyes. But in moments of repose, that haunted, empty expression would sometimes return and he would stare at the fire, lost in dark remembrance.

Seeing my father and his men gathered together, I realized that he was not the only veteran who struggled with invisible injuries. At times, their eyes brimmed with joy or humor, anger or sadness, but in moments of repose—or when they gathered together—the emptiness fought to gain the upper hand.

I remarked on this to my mother and sisters. Mother expressed annoyance at my fanciful notions, while my sisters suggested that I was indulging in sour grapes because none of the young gentlemen had asked me to dance. All three claimed that they couldn’t see the emptiness.

I wondered at their blindness.

That was the night I first saw Henry Jekyll. In the company of men surrounding my father, he shone out, if only because of his eyes. Icy blue, they radiated a sharp, furious excitement; a zealous, searching hunger that was almost palpable as he scanned the faces of the evening’s attendees, scrutinizing each before moving on. It was as if he was measuring them, searching for something. Genius? Humor? Intelligence? I didn’t know what he sought, but I imagined it as a missing force to match his own barely-constrained energy.

His eyes briefly lit on me, then immediately flicked away, leaving me insulted ... and perhaps a bit relieved. Was I dismissed because I was young? A woman? Did he look at my gown and automatically discard me as a useless ornament? An object to be observed rather than a subject to be engaged?

Whatever Jekyll was looking for, he did not find it that night. In its absence, he seemed lonely, even as he was surrounded by revelers.

Henry Jekyll’s eyes scared me. Excited me. I wondered what it would be like to be truly seen by such a man. To be measured and found worthy. I wondered if I might one day be the person on whom his gaze would linger. In whom it would find satiation.

That was Henry Jekyll.

I remember when I first saw Edward Hyde. I remember his eyes.

It was late one night in 1885, a year after Dr. Jekyll, Poole, Mrs. Willoughby and I moved to London and I began my studies at Bedford College. I had retired early, exhausted after a day in the laboratory and a long evening of study. I was almost asleep as I heard a clamour erupting from the parlor below.

“Let me be!” a hoarse voice shouted. “I need to secure the documents I left in the laboratory!”

“I do not know you, sir! You must leave immediately!” Poole exclaimed.

“I am Mr. Edward Hyde,” the voice said. “I am here at Jekyll’s request. You have no right—”

“Dr. Jekyll is not here,” Poole interrupted. “You are welcome to return tomorrow. And if Dr. Jekyll is willing to see you—”

“But it will be too late! Too late!”

The voice was rough and husky, yet there was something in it that drew me. It simultaneously whined and sneered, complained and cajoled. Even before I saw the man, his voice told me that there was something detestable—yet compelling—in its owner.

I silently moved to the head of the stairs, where I was able to observe the turmoil in the hall. As Poole propelled the intruder toward the front door, the man turned back and his gaze locked on me.

Those eyes!

They were tan—the eyes of a jackal. They locked upon my own, then slid down my body. I felt myself measured. Weighed. This wasn’t the cordial regard of a gentleman or the proud gaze of a parent or professor. No, it was the eye of a butcher or a whoremonger. A dealer in flesh. Hungry eyes judging my breasts, my hips, my belly.

The eyes moved back up to my own and the man smiled. It was predatory. Feral. “Hello! I—”

He said no more, as Poole unceremoniously propelled him out the door. The Sergeant turned and saw me. “Lanyon!” he snapped. “You mustn’t be here. Please retire to your bedchamber!”

Without another word, I scurried off.

Lying in bed that night, my thoughts returned to the man’s eyes. I saw in them a voracious greed. And, to my shame, I felt an unwilling hunger rising within me to match it. I shied from that sensation—and from the keening desire deep in the pit of my belly that compelled me to sate the man’s appetite. Slake his thirst.

That was Edward Hyde.

Later, when I came to understand the complex relationship between Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde, I was astounded that it took me so long to recognize their resemblance to each other. Having spent much time in both their company, I can easily recall each component of their respective visages—their ears and noses, mouths and hair.

Their teeth.

With the exception of the eyes, the features were almost identical.

Despite those similarities, Jekyll and Hyde—taken in aggregate—could not be more different if one was the Prince of Wales and the other the King of Siam. It was as if they were two separate spirits slipping into the same shared flesh, yet each so fundamentally at odds with the other that their diametrically opposed characters shone through the suit of skin. On one side stood the angel—cool and commanding. On the other lay the demon—hot and intemperate. From the set of their lips to the way they carried themselves, the look of their eyes to the cock of their heads, there was nothing that linked the two, no clear road from the Apollonian doctor to the Dionysian beast.

Though I first saw Henry Jekyll in 1881, he first saw me—truly saw me—three years later. In the intervening span, I had gained some knowledge of the gentleman, and he had gained a trace of tarnish on his otherwise sterling reputation.

According to my father, Dr. Jekyll’s story began estimably—an alumnus of the medical school at the University of Edinburgh, the doctor was widely lauded for his dedication, enthusiasm, and precocious genius. Upon his graduation in 1878, it was generally assumed that he would go into private practice, attach himself to the staff at a preeminent hospital, or join the faculty of a prestigious university. However, these predictions failed to credit young Jekyll’s idealism—a fervor that drove him to serve with Her Majesty’s Army, where he aspired to put his medical education to work for the greater glory of England.

Doctors—particularly skilled and impassioned ones—were at a premium, and the Army was quick to engage Jekyll’s services. He distinguished himself at Al Masjid and Charasiab, and after the Treaty of Gandemak, he was seconded to my father’s regiment before the Battle of Maiwand. When those forces were overrun, that is where he saved the lives of both my father and Sergeant Major Poole.

Dr. Jekyll rarely spoke of his military service, but it was clear that his time in the regiment indelibly altered the path of his life. After the war ended, he again defied expectations, abandoning his medical practice to pursue a course of study in the sciences at Cambridge. It was at approximately this time that I first saw him at my father’s regimental reunion. I later imagined that the excitement radiating from his eyes that night was at the anticipation of the explorations upon which he poised to embark at the University.

When we again crossed paths three years later, that fervor had cooled. Dr. Jekyll had quietly left Cambridge under some dark cloud—a scandal that was hinted at but never discussed. My sisters speculated that perhaps he had courted the wrong woman or found affection in an inconvenient bedchamber, but I dismissed their gossip. One need only look in the man’s eyes to realize that—whatever his transgression—it was of an intellectual nature, not a venereal one.

While Dr. Jekyll found himself at a professional crossroads, my family was also struggling with some vexing quandaries. As long-established members of the landed gentry, the Lanyon family had historically taken a traditional line with regard to class and the “right” people. However, this generational inheritance ended with my father: While outwardly conservative in his politics, my father’s experience at Sandhurst and his rise through the military ranks had encouraged a more egalitarian outlook toward women and the lower classes. He and my mother became quiet adherents of Mill, Godwin, and Wollstonecraft—political leanings that would likely have been an impediment to my father’s career had they become widely known.

While Father’s physical healing was largely a matter of time and exercise, his spiritual recovery required something more. He had always been a man of action and passion: Had he joined the church, he would no doubt have become a bishop; had he pursued a life in politics, he might have become a prominent back bencher in the House of Lords. Instead, he had directed his efforts toward a life in the military, and his career in the Army had provided a structure to which he could apply his impressive energies. With his retirement from the same, he was left with a gaping hole in his life. In the months after his return, he cast about for a similar preoccupation to restore his sense of purpose.

The answer was provided by Bedford College, London, which appointed him to its board of trustees. An institute for the higher education of women, it was well-funded, but its youth, lack of prestige, and controversial mission to teach women left it struggling to attract top-tier educators. My father’s logistical expertise and societal connections put him in a unique position to advance the cause of the College. Before long, his work on behalf of Bedford became something of an obsession, and seemed to restore some of the enthusiasm and vitality that he had left behind on the battlefields of Middle Asia.

My father’s illness also provided the catalyst for my own intellectual pursuits, as I sought to help him heal his mind and body. I began by searching Elysianum’s library for guidance on my father’s ailments, only to find that my family’s literary holdings skewed greatly toward fiction, poetry, history, and travelogues. In fact, apart from a vast collection of texts related to butterflies that had been donated by my Great Uncle Bertram, the scientific offerings were nearly nonexistent, and it was not long before I had exhausted what meager insights the library had to offer.

With my mother’s assistance, I secured an internship of sorts in the office of our local physician, Dr. Whitestone. He was tepid at the prospect of training the hungry and often impatient mind of a daughter of the local gentry—were I the offspring of a less notable family, I am quite sure that I would have been swiftly sent on my way, possibly with a twisted ear. However, the Doctor could scarcely afford to offend the most prominent family in the district; consequently, he suffered my presence with ill grace. I was given free rein of his medical library, which I consumed with alacrity. Before long, I had wrangled my way into his examination room, where I aided in the treatment of his patients—even, on occasion, taking the reins when the doctor’s lassitude and my own enthusiasm conspired to make it worth his while. Before a year had passed, I had developed a considerable skill at suturing—a facility that my mother smilingly attributed to my youthful mastery of sewing and needlepoint.