Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novel, read in four episodes. This week: "Story of the Door" and "Search for Mr Hyde" — a lawyer, a cheque that should be a forgery, and a man nobody can describe.
Need an easier version? Read this episode at A2/B1 level → · Episode 2 →
Ten words unlock these two chapters. Work through the four short activities — say your answer out loud before you reveal it.
Three words from these chapters: sneer · blackmail · reputable. Match each definition to the right word — out loud, then reveal.
These are the first two chapters of the novel, in Stevenson's own words, tightly abridged into three parts. Read them as a Victorian reader would have — knowing nothing. After each part there's a quick check (try it from memory first), then one thing to discuss.
Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others, and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. “I incline to Cain’s heresy,” he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.” In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of downgoing men.
His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest. Hence, no doubt, the bond that united him to Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man about town. It was a nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull and would hail with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two men put the greatest store by these excursions, and counted them the chief jewel of each week.
It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a by-street in a busy quarter of London. The street was small and what is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the weekdays; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, it shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a forest.
Two doors from one corner, the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point a certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. It was two storeys high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower storey and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. The door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches on the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; and for close on a generation, no one had appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their ravages.
Mr. Enfield lifted up his cane and pointed. “Did you ever remark that door?” he asked. “It is connected in my mind with a very odd story.”
“Indeed?” said Mr. Utterson, with a slight change of voice, “and what was that?”
“Well, it was this way,” returned Mr. Enfield: “I was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church. All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave a few halloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running. The child was not much the worse, more frightened, according to the doctor. But there was one curious circumstance. I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight. So had the child’s family. But the doctor’s case was what struck me. He was the usual cut and dry apothecary, about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. Killing being out of the question, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this as should make his name stink from one end of London to the other. And there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black sneering coolness—frightened too, I could see that—but carrying it off, sir, really like Satan. ‘If you choose to make capital out of this accident,’ said he, ‘I am naturally helpless. Name your figure.’ Well, we screwed him up to a hundred pounds for the child’s family. The next thing was to get the money; and where do you think he carried us but to that place with the door?—whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance, signed with a name that I can’t mention, though it’s one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least very well known and often printed. I took the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman that a man does not, in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning and come out with another man’s cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite easy and sneering. ‘Set your mind at rest,’ says he, ‘I will stay with you till the banks open and cash the cheque myself.’ So next day we went in a body to the bank. I gave in the cheque myself, and said I had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not a bit of it. The cheque was genuine.”
“Tut-tut!” said Mr. Utterson.
“Yes, it’s a bad story,” said Mr. Enfield. “For my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with, a really damnable man; and the person that drew the cheque is the very pink of the proprieties, celebrated too, and one of your fellows who do what they call good. Blackmail, I suppose; an honest man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth. Black Mail House is what I call the place with the door, in consequence.”
“And you never asked about the—place with the door?” said Mr. Utterson.
“No, sir; I had a delicacy. You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird is knocked on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name. No sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.”
“A very good rule, too,” said the lawyer. “But for all that, there’s one point I want to ask. I want to ask the name of that man who walked over the child.”
“Well,” said Mr. Enfield, “I can’t see what harm it would do. It was a man of the name of Hyde.”
“Hm,” said Mr. Utterson. “What sort of a man is he to see?”
“He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. No, sir; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.”
Mr. Utterson again walked some way in silence. “You are sure he used a key?” he inquired at last.
“My dear sir...” began Enfield, surprised out of himself.
“Yes, I know,” said Utterson; “I know it must seem strange. The fact is, if I do not ask you the name of the other party, it is because I know it already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone home.”
“The fellow had a key; and what’s more, he has it still. I saw him use it not a week ago.”
Mr. Utterson sighed deeply but said never a word; and the young man presently resumed. “Here is another lesson to say nothing,” said he. “I am ashamed of my long tongue. Let us make a bargain never to refer to this again.”
“With all my heart,” said the lawyer. “I shake hands on that, Richard.”
1. What did Enfield see at three in the morning — and how did the man end the matter?
2. Why does Utterson stop Enfield from telling him the name on the cheque?
1. A small man and a running girl collided at a corner; the man walked straight over her and left her screaming. Enfield caught him, and the crowd threatened him with public scandal. He paid a hundred pounds — ten in gold, the rest by cheque — fetched from behind the sinister door, and the cheque was signed by a well-known, respectable man. Enfield expected a forgery; the bank paid.
2. Because he already knows it. The story "has gone home": the door, the key and the famous signature all point to someone Utterson knows — and to a document he has in his safe.
That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. As soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his business room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll’s Will, and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson, though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his “friend and benefactor Edward Hyde,” but that in case of Dr. Jekyll’s “disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months,” the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll’s shoes without further delay. This document had long been the lawyer’s eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. Out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a fiend.
“I thought it was madness,” he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper in the safe, “and now I begin to fear it is disgrace.”
With that he blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set forth in the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house. “If anyone knows, it will be Lanyon,” he had thought.
Dr. Lanyon sat alone over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. For these two were old friends, old mates both at school and college.
“I suppose, Lanyon,” said Utterson, “you and I must be the two oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has?”
“I wish the friends were younger,” chuckled Dr. Lanyon. “But I suppose we are. And what of that? I see little of him now.”
“Indeed?” said Utterson. “I thought you had a bond of common interest.”
“We had,” was the reply. “But it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old sake’s sake, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash,” added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, “would have estranged Damon and Pythias.”
This little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to Mr. Utterson. “They have only differed on some point of science,” he thought. He gave his friend a few seconds to recover his composure, and then approached the question he had come to put. “Did you ever come across a protégé of his—one Hyde?” he asked.
“Hyde?” repeated Lanyon. “No. Never heard of him. Since my time.”
That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with him to the great, dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, until the small hours of the morning began to grow large. It was a night of little ease to his toiling mind, toiling in mere darkness and besieged by questions. Mr. Enfield’s tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures. He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child running from the doctor’s; and then these met, and that human Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams. Or else he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeper recalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure to whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding. And still the figure had no face by which he might know it; even in his dreams, it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in the lawyer’s mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity to behold the features of the real Mr. Hyde. If he could but once set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps roll altogether away.
From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plenty and time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post.
“If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr. Seek.”
And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine dry night; frost in the air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps, unshaken by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow. By ten o’clock, when the shops were closed, the by-street was very solitary and, in spite of the low growl of London from all round, very silent. Mr. Utterson had been some minutes at his post, when he was aware of an odd light footstep drawing near. It was with a strong, superstitious prevision of success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.
The steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out suddenly louder as they turned the end of the street. The lawyer, looking forth from the entry, could soon see what manner of man he had to deal with. He was small and very plainly dressed and the look of him, even at that distance, went somehow strongly against the watcher’s inclination. But he made straight for the door, crossing the roadway to save time; and as he came, he drew a key from his pocket like one approaching home.
Mr. Utterson stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed. “Mr. Hyde, I think?”
1. What are the two conditions in Jekyll's will — and why has Utterson always hated it?
2. What does Dr Lanyon know about Hyde, and what does his outburst about Jekyll tell Utterson?
1. If Jekyll dies, everything goes to "his friend and benefactor Edward Hyde"; and if Jekyll disappears or is absent without explanation for more than three months, Hyde takes over anyway. Utterson hated it as a lawyer (it is irregular — Jekyll wrote it himself because Utterson refused to help) and as a man who distrusts anything fanciful. Now that he has a picture of Hyde, it frightens him.
2. Nothing — he has never heard the name; Hyde came "since my time". But Lanyon reveals that he and Jekyll fell out over ten years ago because Jekyll's science became "unscientific balderdash". Utterson is relieved: a quarrel about science is nothing worse than a quarrel about science. Or so he tells himself.
Mr. Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath. But his fear was only momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face, he answered coolly enough: “That is my name. What do you want?”
“I see you are going in,” returned the lawyer. “I am an old friend of Dr. Jekyll’s—Mr. Utterson of Gaunt Street—you must have heard of my name; and meeting you so conveniently, I thought you might admit me.”
“You will not find Dr. Jekyll; he is from home,” replied Mr. Hyde, blowing in the key. And then suddenly, but still without looking up, “How did you know me?” he asked.
“On your side,” said Mr. Utterson, “will you do me a favour? Will you let me see your face?”
Mr. Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if upon some sudden reflection, fronted about with an air of defiance; and the pair stared at each other pretty fixedly for a few seconds. “Now I shall know you again,” said Mr. Utterson. “It may be useful.”
“Yes,” returned Mr. Hyde, “it is as well we have met; and à propos, you should have my address.” And he gave a number of a street in Soho.
“Good God!” thought Mr. Utterson, “can he, too, have been thinking of the will?” But he kept his feelings to himself and only grunted in acknowledgment of the address.
“And now,” said the other, “how did you know me?”
“By description,” was the reply.
“Whose description?”
“We have common friends,” said Mr. Utterson.
“Common friends,” echoed Mr. Hyde, a little hoarsely. “Who are they?”
“Jekyll, for instance,” said the lawyer.
“He never told you,” cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush of anger. “I did not think you would have lied.”
“Come,” said Mr. Utterson, “that is not fitting language.”
The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the house.
The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the picture of disquietude. Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him. “There must be something else,” said the perplexed gentleman. “There is something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.”
Round the corner from the by-street, there was a square of ancient, handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men. One house, however, second from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fanlight, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed, elderly servant opened the door.
“Is Dr. Jekyll at home, Poole?” asked the lawyer.
“I will see, Mr. Utterson,” said Poole, admitting the visitor into a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall, warmed by a bright, open fire, and furnished with costly cabinets of oak. This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of his friend the doctor’s; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest room in London. But tonight there was a shudder in his blood; the face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to read a menace in the flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief, when Poole presently returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.
“I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting room door, Poole,” he said. “Is that right, when Dr. Jekyll is from home?”
“Quite right, Mr. Utterson, sir,” replied the servant. “Mr. Hyde has a key.”
“Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man, Poole,” resumed the other musingly.
“Yes, sir, he does indeed,” said Poole. “We have all orders to obey him.”
“I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde?” asked Utterson.
“O, dear no, sir. He never dines here,” replied the butler. “Indeed we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostly comes and goes by the laboratory.”
“Well, good-night, Poole.”
And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart. “Poor Harry Jekyll,” he thought, “my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. Ah, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault.” And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded awhile on his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, lest by chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light there. And then he conceived a spark of hope. “This Master Hyde, if he were studied,” thought he, “must have secrets of his own; black secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor Jekyll’s worst would be like sunshine. Things cannot continue as they are. It turns me cold to think of this creature stealing like a thief to Harry’s bedside; poor Harry, what a wakening! And the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects the existence of the will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Ah, I must put my shoulder to the wheel—if Jekyll will but let me,” he added, “if Jekyll will only let me.”
1. List the "points against" Hyde that Utterson notices — and say why, in the end, they don't satisfy him.
2. What does Poole reveal about Hyde's position in Dr Jekyll's house?
1. Pale and dwarfish; an impression of deformity with nothing he can name; a displeasing smile; a "murderous mixture of timidity and boldness"; a husky, whispering, broken voice. But "not all of these together" explain the disgust and fear Utterson feels. He decides the only explanation is a foul soul shining through the body — "Satan's signature upon a face".
2. Hyde has a key to the laboratory door, comes and goes that way, never dines in the house, is rarely seen by the servants — and yet "we have all orders to obey him". A stranger with a master's authority.
Utterson is a lawyer, and these two chapters are one long piece of reasoning. He never sees inside the house; he never speaks to Jekyll. Everything he concludes, he concludes from evidence: a key, a signature, a chimney that smokes, a friend's outburst. English has a small set of modal verbs for exactly this — reasoning from what you can see to what you can't.
One word for each gap. Think about how sure the speaker can be, given the evidence.
1. He drew a key from his pocket like a man approaching home. He be a regular visitor to that house.
2. Lanyon has known Jekyll since school and has never heard of Hyde, so Hyde be a friend from those days.
3. Nobody has seen inside the building for years. It be a laboratory of some kind — there is a chimney that smokes.
4. Hyde already knows Utterson's name and address without being told. Jekyll talk about his lawyer to him.
1. must — the key and the manner are strong evidence.
2. can't — the evidence rules it out.
3. might — a guess, nothing more; "of some kind" gives it away.
4. must — how else would Hyde know? Notice: must + verb, no be.
Use the verb in brackets. Each gap needs a modal, have, and the past participle.
1. The bank paid the cheque without a question. The signature (be) genuine.
2. Hyde was small enough for Enfield to seize by the collar and march back down the street. He (be) a strong man.
3. Utterson knew the name on the cheque before Enfield said it. He (read) that name in a document of his own.
4. The child's doctor turned white with the desire to kill Hyde. Perhaps he (see) something in Hyde's face that the others could not name.
1. must have been
2. can't have been (or couldn't have been)
3. must have read — said "red"
4. might have seen (or may / could have seen)
Fill each gap with must, can't or might and the verb in brackets, in the right form. Then read the whole paragraph aloud as if you were the lawyer lying awake.
Hyde has a key, so he (have) Jekyll's permission to use it. Lanyon has never heard of him, so he (be) an old friend from their student days. Jekyll (meet) him recently, after he and Lanyon fell out. The will was written without a lawyer's help, so Jekyll (want) to keep the details from his oldest adviser. Why would a respected doctor leave everything to such a man? Hyde (be) blackmailing him — or Jekyll (be) protecting him for reasons of his own. Either way, Utterson decides, poor Harry (be) in deep waters.
must have · can't be · must have met · must have wanted · might be blackmailing · might be protecting · must be
In the two "or" sentences, may and could are also correct — the point is that Utterson is weighing two possibilities, so certainty is impossible. Now read it back and notice how much of a detective's thinking is just these three words.
Hold on to these forms — in the Speak tab you'll retell the episode as a chain of deductions, and then predict what Utterson will find out next.
Robert Louis Stevenson was a sickly Edinburgh Scot living in Bournemouth when he wrote this in the autumn of 1885 — the story came to him in a dream, he drafted it in a few days, and he wrote against a Victorian world that prized respectability above almost everything and had a great deal to hide behind it.
This is the heart of the lesson — do all of it out loud. The timer is there to keep you going: fill the time with detail rather than racing through it.
Retell the two chapters as Utterson would — not just what happened, but what each piece of evidence proves. Move through the arc: the Sunday walk → the door → Enfield's story of the trampled child → the cheque with the famous signature → the name Hyde → the will in the safe → Lanyon's outburst → the faceless dreams → "Mr Seek" → the meeting at the door → Poole and the laboratory key → "poor Harry Jekyll".
Use at least four modals of deduction (must be, can't be, might have, must have) and at least five key words (sinister, trample, loathing, reputable, sneer, blackmail, deformity, haunt, brood, misgivings).
Enfield's rule is: "the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask." Take a side and argue it properly. Is refusing to ask questions a kindness — a way of letting people keep their private lives — or is it how respectable people let terrible things continue? Build your case with at least three reasons, deal with the strongest objection to your own position, and say what Utterson should do next.
Then swap: argue the opposite side for one minute. It is harder — and it is where the good language comes out.
What happens next — and what would have to be true for it to happen? Choose a direction, then reason it through like a lawyer: "If Hyde is X, then Jekyll must have… and Lanyon can't have… and the will might be…" Give the evidence from these two chapters that supports your theory, and one piece that works against it.
Stuck for an idea? Pick one of these and run with it: