Jekyll and Hyde – Chapter 1 (Part 1)

[00:00:00] You’re listening to. Elaine is reading the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, episode one, chapter one, part one. In this episode, I’ll be discussing the story of the door, which is the first chapter in the book. And I can tell you that I’m absolutely not having this wildly epic and bonkers nonsense. Seriously, make it make sense. The start to this story is equal part bizarre and wonderful.

[00:00:50] Hey, everyone, it’s Elaine back again. Gonna be talking more. I’m so sorry if you’re tired of listening to me speak. But then again, you wouldn’t be watching these videos if that was the case. So if you’ve been watching my Wonder Woman revisitation rewatching Elena’s watching show, thank you very much. I’ll be getting back to that the next episode, hopefully this week. But I wanted to also work on one of my other sort of passion projects, I guess, which is rediscovering classics.

[00:01:26] I recently started listening to audiobooks in 2020 during the pandemic. And I started with books that I had never actually read before.

[00:01:37] And a lot of them were kind of classics, classic literature books. And it occurred to me after, like, visiting with them or revisiting them or newly visiting them, that I feel I’ve been misled.

[00:01:55] A lot of people have been misled about some of these classics.

[00:02:00] I started working on a podcast about this a while ago, and I. I didn’t really like the format that I was sort of doing it in, so I decided to redo it. And it also gave me some time to think about these stories and how I kind of wanted to present them. I’m not a literature person. I not do a lot of reading of books because I have Aphantasia, for one. But I only recently started getting into books because of audiobooks, which allowed me to really engage with literature in a way that I hadn’t been able to before because of just how my brain works or doesn’t work or however you want to put that.

[00:02:42] I was really lucky to find, or to start with audiobook versions of these that were narrated by absolutely amazing people. That helps, too.

[00:02:52] But I realized that I just.

[00:02:56] I did not have as much of a grasp on these stories as I thought that I did. And I don’t know how I could have if I never read them. But I think a lot of people think that they have an understanding of books that they haven’t actually read before because you’ve seen. Seen so much about them or heard so much about them or seen movie versions of them, etc. But those aren’t really accurate. And I think that was one of the things that I.

[00:03:25] I realized how deeply off a lot of these interpretations, and that’s what they are interpretations of these stories are.

[00:03:37] And I. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with someone, an artist or writer or director, deciding that they want to make their version of something that they read or enjoyed or at some point. I think that’s part of being artistic and that’s the artistic process.

[00:03:57] But I think when you have a large sort of public of people that then think that those are, you know, accurate versions of those stories and they kind of use those as reference, that’s where you kind of run into problems. I did not read a lot of classic literature in school.

[00:04:21] I was a relatively good English student, but I don’t know that I was, you know, in the special, you know, AP classes or whatever they were called.

[00:04:38] We didn’t have a lot of required classic reading. I know we read a lot of short stories that are quite famous, but I don’t remember being assigned books like this.

[00:04:50] I started reading what I would consider to be classic literature when I was in high school, and only just because I kept hearing names of books and I never read them. So I just would check them out and read them on my own. I never had any classes where I studied classic literature until I got to college.

[00:05:08] And even then it was mostly Shakespeare, Chaucer, that sort of stuff. It wasn’t necessarily Jane Eyre’s or Dracula’s and stuff like that. We just. I never had that exposure at any point in public school and in college. I did not. It was mostly, like I said, the Shakespeare stuff, the old English literature and things like that.

[00:05:31] So I did not read these until literally 2020. But I had heard about them and I had seen movies and TV series versions and all these different interpretations, but never actually read them.

[00:05:47] And I was really surprised. I was really kind of shocked, to be honest with you.

[00:05:55] I would wake up, know, in the mornings after, you know, listening to the audiobooks before bed, and I would just be ranting to my Trib mates, like, this book is amazing, or whatever. Like, I don’t understand how no one ever thought to make this version of the book or this version of the story. Like, I don’t understand why someone would read this book and then go, you know what? I don’t like this. I would like it better if it was this way. Or I would like it better if this was a part of it.

[00:06:27] And it’s just like, what’s the point then? Like, if everything is about what you like better or. Or how you would prefer it. And I guess if you’re an artist or a director or writer, you have that power to say, you know, I didn’t like this part of the book. I’ll. I’ll leave it out of this version. Or I didn’t like this character, so I’ll change it in my version. And again, artistically, that’s your right to do that.

[00:06:56] But I just feel like so many people are missing if they don’t read or they haven’t been exposed to the actual books or don’t like reading and haven’t listened to the audiobooks or whatever reason it is that you, you know, haven’t had this chance or opportunity. I think they’re missing something so amazing, especially with these, the three books that I want to talk about.

[00:07:22] So the first book or novella really I’m gonna get into is Jekyll and Hyde. And I want to tackle it chapter by chapter only because it’s super short. It’s really short.

[00:07:39] I think it’s only 80 pages. Is that true? No, it’s like a hundred and.

[00:07:46] Yeah. 106 pages long.

[00:07:49] This is not. Jekyll and Hyde is not long.

[00:07:52] And in that regard, I mean, I would think that anybody could pick this up and read it. It’s not a difficult. It’s not like asking someone to read Chaucer. It’s not really difficult to get into the language.

[00:08:07] The English is very easy to read. There might be some words that people aren’t necessarily familiar with or some usage of. Of words, of English words at this time that people aren’t familiar with. But I don’t think it’s something that, you know, would really throw you off. It’s not like trying to read Shakespeare. And again, this isn’t about me saying that, you know, people who can’t read Shakespeare are X and people who can or Y or whatever. I had trouble reading Shakespeare in college. And frankly, if I hadn’t had BBC theatrical versions of the text to watch while I was reading it, I don’t think I would have understand it as readily. It was because I could see the actors and actresses performing the work as it was written in the full, you know, Shakespearean language and everything and see the acting help me to better understand and read the work.

[00:09:04] But it’s hard if you are only just sort of coming across it and really understanding the language. That said, Jekyll and Hyde is not like that. It’s. I Think a book that most people can pick up and read, and you may have a little difficulty, but you can interpret pretty easily what the person means by a given word. Or you can just look it up because we have the Internet.

[00:09:29] I luckily found an audiobook version of this read by Richard Armitage.

[00:09:36] You can’t go wrong. I mean, Richard Armitage is amazing. And he not only narrated it beautifully, but as far as characters, the way that he could slide between, especially at the end, slide in and out of Jekyll’s voice and Hyde’s voice, like, simultaneously and kind of interpret his change into Hyde and his return to Jekyll, just with these.

[00:10:02] With his vocal quality. It was just an amazing experience. But we’ll get to that. So I’m gonna do this chapter by chapter. The chapters are super short, so I don’t think it’ll take very long to get through this at all. As opposed to something like Dracula, which I’m gonna tackle later because I will die on the Hill. That. That’s one of the greatest books ever written. And nobody knows it because they never read it.

[00:10:27] So I revisited this just a few minutes ago because it’s been a while since I listened to it and read it. And I do read along with. Again, listening to the audio. I don’t know how much you know about Aphantasia, but it can be pretty detrimental as far as reading books.

[00:10:50] I find that listening to a person sort of telling me what I’m reading helps fill in that blank space where I would be trying to imagine or put my own kind of version of it onto a page. The page become.

[00:11:12] The words on the page become that person’s voice kind of telling me.

[00:11:17] And it’s like a play at that point, like an audio play.

[00:11:22] And I don’t. The blank space in my mind isn’t distracting because I’m just listening to that person’s voice. And I read along with it because, again, they’re reading from the actual text. So you can just sort of follow along.

[00:11:37] And it just really helps me to connect with the book in a way that I couldn’t. I couldn’t connect with books growing up. I read a lot of books as a child, but they were sort of empty experiences because I couldn’t really imagine things at all.

[00:11:55] Dialogue was something I really gravitated towards because, again, it’s not hard to.

[00:11:59] You don’t have to see dialogue in your mind. You more hear dialogue. So books that were heavy on dialogue I really liked. But then any kind of book that was really like fantasy or relied heavily on your ability to conjure visual imagery in your mind, which I could not do.

[00:12:18] They weren’t as exciting for me. So I never. I read a lot of books, but I didn’t really connect to books very well.

[00:12:25] So I’m. I’m really being. Being able to do that now with audiobooks, like really good audiobooks that are read by either actors or incredibly accomplished voice actors and narrators that bring the characters to life. I’m really finding that I enjoy books a lot better this way.

[00:12:45] So Jekyll and Hyde is one of those books that I think everybody says that they know and a story that everybody says that they know and that they’re familiar with. I think there have been quite a few movies in a television series that actually really liked at the time that have been made.

[00:13:03] I think the general gist of Jekyll and Hyde is something that maybe everybody knows. Everybody. If you say Jekyll and Hyde, I don’t think that there’s a person that would say, who are those two people?

[00:13:15] Or who are those people? Whatever. I don’t think anyone is unfamiliar with the names Jekyll, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But what I think a lot of people are unfamiliar with is just how the story goes. Right.

[00:13:31] A good test for me, I’m finding with Jekyll and Hyde is to ask people who the main character of the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is. Who’s the main character of the story? And most people, like on Discord and like, in forums and stuff that I’m in where I’ve asked, like my friends and acquaintances, they usually say Jekyll is the main character.

[00:13:58] No one says that Hyde is the main character, which I kind of wouldn’t expect. But they usually say Dr. Jekyll is the main character of the book.

[00:14:06] And usually they think it’s a trick question. So they’re like, you know, this is a trick question. Like why are you asking who the main character is? Because the main character is obviously Dr. Jekyll. But that usually tells me that they didn’t read it because Dr. Jekyll is not the main character of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I guess maybe it depends on your interpretation of what main character means.

[00:14:28] Main character, I think for most people just means who is the story about?

[00:14:34] And it literally front it says who it is. But to me, the main character is not necessarily.

[00:14:44] Not just who the story is about, but who is who you’re most connected to. Right. Who are you following who are you?

[00:14:58] Who’s connecting you to this, to the story? That main character, which could sometimes be an unreliable narrator or whatever, who’s telling you the story of a person or, and you’re not sure, you know, if their interpretation can be trusted, those types of characters.

[00:15:15] The main subject of this book is Dr. Jekyll.

[00:15:21] That’s who you’re being told about.

[00:15:27] But to me, the main character of this book is a character who I have never seen any reference to in any movie or television version of this story that I’ve seen. And I haven’t seen all of them. So there might be a movie out there where I.

[00:15:49] This guy is the main character or he’s featured in some way.

[00:15:54] But Mr. Utterson is a lawyer.

[00:16:00] He is the main character of the story. He is the person who is not just sitting at a, you know, candlelit desk telling you a story on a stormy evening. He’s not that kind of narrator. He, he is the character with whom you are traversing the entire story. It is from his perspective. Dr. Jekyll does not have a perspective in this book until literally the last chapter of the book in which you are presented with his journal, his account of his life as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is the last chapter of the book and it’s not even a whole heck of a lot of pages. That is the only time you get Dr. Jekyll’s perspective. He doesn’t even have that many physical spoken lines in this book.

[00:17:03] He has very few appearances, maybe two or three.

[00:17:07] I don’t know because I can’t remember specifically, but I’ll kind of count them as I go through this time.

[00:17:15] He is hardly present at all.

[00:17:21] Dr. Jekyll is very similar to Dracula. Dracula is not the main character of Dracula. He is barely in the book.

[00:17:33] He is almost a non player character. He’s someone who you just hear about and think about and are about. He rarely, rarely shows up in the book. Dracula is not about Dracula.

[00:17:48] It just isn’t.

[00:17:49] And I think that makes people really angry because every movie I’ve ever seen about Dracula is all about Dracula. And I think everybody who read Dracula said the same thing. Dracula would be so much better if it was about Dracula. And they make it about Dracula. And I disagree and I will die on that hill. But we’ll get to that later. The point is, Dr. Jekyll and Dracula are not the main characters.

[00:18:13] The stories are about them and about kind of the havoc they wreak, let’s say, or the, the, the problems that Their presence in the world creates, but it’s not about them directly. It is not their perspective. It is not their voice hardly at all.

[00:18:35] And it is more about how everybody navigates the world that these people inhabit.

[00:18:43] So Jekyll and Hyde is about Mr. Utterson.

[00:18:48] Mr. Utterson is probably one of the most interesting characters ever.

[00:18:54] And I hate that he has almost zero representation in the world.

[00:19:00] He should have more representation. There should be entire movies just about this man. I don’t understand how anyone could have read this book and not know who Mr. Utterson is. And it’s not the kind of thing where Mr. Utterson is a hate, hate, hateable, dislikable character. So we’re like, you know, forget him.

[00:19:25] It’s not. That’s not the case. That’s not who this man is. I love this guy, and he has some flaws, sure. But I want to see someone do Jekyll and Hyde the way that it’s done in this book.

[00:19:44] The book that was written by Robert Lewis, Louis Stevenson, this guy right here who wrote this book right here, that nobody seems to like the way that it is written.

[00:19:59] I don’t understand the point.

[00:20:02] I don’t understand taking a book that somebody has written and going, it sucks. Let’s do it this way.

[00:20:13] I. I just. What did you not like about this? Like, I would love to ask someone who made an interpretation of this story, what about this? Did you not like what about this? Like, when you read it, did you go, I didn’t. I thought this sucked. Or I thought there could be more. I want to know what these people literally read.

[00:20:37] Did they read it in school under duress?

[00:20:40] Did they have to write a book report? Did some teacher force them to do some kind of analysis that made the book just unenjoyable for them? Like, what was it going through the mind of these people that read this? Where they just hated every part of it and just wanted to cut it up into pieces and then only make movies about X, Y and Z.

[00:21:02] If you’re only going to make a movie about Dr. Jekyll. Dr. Jekyll is not that interesting. And you can come at me as much as you want.

[00:21:12] I don’t think his motivations for doing what he did are terribly interesting.

[00:21:19] I get where at the time of this book being written, there was a lot going on. And his perspective is refreshing, I think, in a way. Refreshingly.

[00:21:33] Is the word hedonistic? Or like, there’s something about his perspective of how he wants to move through society and how he wants to reject all These constraints and how he just hates society in a way that’s very compelling. And I. I see where he’s coming from and what he wants to do in becoming Hyde and exploring what that’s like. I get that. I, I’m.

[00:22:08] I understood that when I got to this book, at the end of the book, and I was like, what was he thinking?

[00:22:15] Reading what he was thinking, and his process made it very clear.

[00:22:21] It didn’t change my feeling about the book as a whole, but more.

[00:22:27] It was probably the least interesting part of the book for me. I am not trying to tell people how to read or interpret a book. I’m just saying that what I want to know is the people that read this and then went on to make a film about it or a television series about it.

[00:22:51] What made you make the changes or cuts that you made, Right? Like, people who made Dracula. Why would you cut out Mina, who is literally the most important character in the entire book?

[00:23:12] Why would you read the book and then say, mina, let’s get her out of there. Like, let’s make her just some idiot.

[00:23:21] Like, what part of the book made you hate character that is literally the linchpin of an entire story? Like, I, I don’t understand that motivation, aside from just saying I hate Mina or I hate women or she’s not sexy enough or she’s not whatever. Like, I would like a real literary response to why you would cut something out of a book.

[00:23:49] I don’t think that there’s a literary response. I think there’s a personal bias response. And I think there is a. As an artist, as a director, as a writer, I want to make this my own, or I want to focus on the parts that I really liked and emphasize those parts.

[00:24:06] In the case of Dracula, I understand where people may have read it and thought, I want to know more about Dracula. So they kind of took the Dracula character and sort of gave him his own kind of entire sort of life and, and fiction that was not really kind of delved into as much as maybe people would have liked in the book. I understand that too.

[00:24:31] I. There’s a couple of characters in here that I would love to see expounded upon. I think that’s the word I’m looking for.

[00:24:39] But I guess when I’ve met so many people that don’t know this book and just know, you know, a general version of the book or the idea of Jekyll and Hyde, it makes me sad. And it made me sad myself when I finally read it, that I completely didn’t understand how amazing the book was until my 50s.

[00:25:11] That was sort of a bummer. And I’m sad that I missed that opportunity growing up. But I’m glad that I have that opportunity now.

[00:25:22] So Utterson, the main character of this story.

[00:25:28] The first chapter of this book is called the Story of the Door.

[00:25:32] And I kind of like that start. The story of.

[00:25:37] Of the door.

[00:25:39] The thing I liked about this chapter, and this chapter is only nine pages long, I liked when I first read this, I didn’t expect to start here.

[00:25:56] It’s not like I expected to put my headphones on and get Dr. Jekyll turning into Hyde or something. Like I knew that there was obviously going to be some kind of build up to Jekyll transforming into Hyde or whatever. But as a person with no exposure to this book and no ability to really visualize information, I. I can read it in a way where I don’t know anything about it. And I can come at it from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know anything about the story.

[00:26:29] And I didn’t expect it to begin with these two guys walking in a park gossiping it. I did not expect that. I don’t know what I expected. I don’t know. I didn’t expect someone to just straight up get murdered or something. I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought. But I didn’t know. The book began.

[00:26:53] So is the word innocuously, like. Like.

[00:27:00] Like in a way where like I couldn’t have imagined it.

[00:27:04] I like Mr. Utterson instantly.

[00:27:09] I. The. The.

[00:27:11] The. The book literally starts. The first line is, Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of 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. That’s the first sentence of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is about Mr. Utterson, the lawyer.

[00:27:48] It is not about Jekyll or Hyde or anything. It is about this lovely lawyer who is a little backward in sentiment and embarrassed in discourse. Hardly ever smiles, is a little cold, a little dusty, a little dreary and yet somehow lovable.

[00:28:11] It goes on to further describe him as somebody who goes to a lot of dinner parties and has a little bit of wine and has a little gin when he drinks by himself.

[00:28:26] And that he likes theater but hasn’t been to one in 20 years.

[00:28:33] But that he has an approved tolerance for others.

[00:28:42] And that’s a very key line, right? That and the fact that it says 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.

[00:29:00] And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanor.

[00:29:09] He’s described as being incredibly loyal. He’s the kind of man who has friends from a very long time ago. He’s kept his oldest friends near and dear to him. But at the same time, he’s not big on judging others for what they do. And not because he’s a shady, gross lawyer. That’s not the impression that we get. But that he’s someone who’s loyal and sort of lets people be who they’re gonna be.

[00:29:40] And I like that that 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.

[00:29:54] I like this guy and I like the way that he is described. He is so interesting to me right off the bat. Why is this guy the person that’s going to carry us through this entire story? What is it about?

[00:30:10] Why do we need to know so much about Utterson and his personality type and the type of friend he is and how loyal he is and how even though people are around him, maybe doing things that are not great and he’s not faulting them and judging them and changing his demeanor and the way he treats people based on the. The types of things that they do, that he’s always sort of a loyal person to the end and that he kind of will always be someone who kind of stands back a bit and isn’t all about the you shouldn’t be doing this, or you shouldn’t be doing this. But at the same time, he’s sort of a hopeless gossip as well.

[00:30:49] This is the guy that’s going to tell us the story.

[00:30:53] If you don’t understand him right off the bat, then I think that definitely will color how you go about understanding the rest of the story.

[00:31:04] I was curious as to why we got so much information about him at the very beginning of this story. Why is he important?

[00:31:14] And again, I’m not expecting this book to start like this. I don’t know what I was expecting, as I said, but I’m like, who is this guy? Who is his lawyer? At no point in my life in understanding this story or what I thought I understood of the story have I ever heard his name mentioned.

[00:31:32] I, I Again, I haven’t seen every interpretation of this movie or story or TV series that’s ever been made. But I have seen a few, even some of the old black and white ones. And I don’t remember anyone mentioning him as a character or being a character or even a character being inspired by Utterson. It’s like he’s not even a second thought, but he literally is the person telling the story and coloring your interpretation of the story the entire time.

[00:32:07] So right off the bat, I like this guy. I’m so interested in him.

[00:32:11] He is walking with his friend, Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman and a well known man about town.

[00:32:26] And they are a strange pair.

[00:32:31] It was a nut to crack for many what these two could see in each other or what subject they could find in common. It was reported by those who encountered them on their Sunday walks that they said nothing, looked singularly dull and would hail with obvious relief at the appearance of a friend. I like that. Like they see these two people walking and they’re not speaking to each other and it looks like almost like that they’re looking for someone else to. To make their.

[00:33:00] This partnership more jovial. Like. Like that they can’t possibly be friends. That they’re just there together to wait for another friend. I thought that was hilarious.

[00:33:08] For all that, the two men put the greatest store by these excursions, countered them as the chief jewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls of business that they might enjoy them uninterrupted. So these two very different men who have been friends for a very long, long time, walk together through their park, the park on Sunday. They have very little to say to one another. They have these comfortable silences.

[00:33:41] They don’t even do any business. They don’t talk business or anything. They just enjoy these walks. These walks are the chief jewel of each week for these two men.

[00:33:51] And I’m so interested in these two men right off the bat. I just think that that’s the coolest thing ever and that the whole book starts with this description of these two people and how important their Sunday walks are to them and what kind of men these are and how people perceive them.

[00:34:10] That really caught my interest.

[00:34:12] Like why are we being told about these people? Like, what is it about these two men?

[00:34:18] The rest of the chapter is our first introduction to Hyde. He’s the first person we know by name and I thought that that was significant.

[00:34:33] They won’t mention Jekyll by name in the first chapter because Enfield doesn’t want to talk.

[00:34:42] He doesn’t want to gossip about him, even though he’s totally gossiping right now. He’s absolutely gossiping. But he doesn’t want to mention the name of somebody who is so reputable and well known. Like, he doesn’t want to say who the person is.

[00:34:59] So you don’t actually get Jekyll’s name in the first chapter. But the first name you get is Hyde, which is interesting to me.

[00:35:08] But what fascinated me about this is that Mr. Enfield, they. They walk, they come around a corner and they come across a building and there’s a door.

[00:35:17] And Enfield, the whole story rolls out because of the most, like, completely innocent line in the world. Did you ever remark that door?

[00:35:26] Right?

[00:35:28] And he’s like, you know, it’s connected with this thing in my mind. And it’s such a simple thing. It’s like, you know, have you ever, like, noticed that door there?

[00:35:42] And Utterson is sort of like, yeah. And he’s like, you know, that door makes me think of this incident that happened, right? And that’s how this whole thing starts rolling out. This whole beginning section is just because they walked by this door. And he’s like, you know, that door reminds me of something. Let me tell you this story, right?

[00:36:05] This story is so bizarre too, to me.

[00:36:08] Really weird.

[00:36:10] The whole book is weird, but this is weird.

[00:36:13] So he’s talking about how he was walking back at 3:00 clock, you know, in the. In the a.m.

[00:36:20] i don’t know why, coming from somewhere. And he’s walking down a dark street and he sees two people. There’s no one anywhere, right? Except these street lamps. And I love this line. He’s like, you know, street after street and all the folks asleep, street after street all lighted up as if for a procession. And all as empty as a church. Till at last I got into the state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman. Like he’s like just walking down the street and like, you know what? This feels a little dangerous. I like that. So all at once he says he sees two figures.

[00:36:55] One little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk.

[00:37:01] And the other a girl of maybe 8 or 10 who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street.

[00:37:08] Those are the only two people in sight. The little stumpy man and a girl running. And basically they collide, okay? I mean, this guy’s going at a good clip. This girl is running for her life for whatever reason, trying to get to this other guy’s place.

[00:37:26] And they.

[00:37:29] They collide, okay?

[00:37:32] That’s nothing strange about that.

[00:37:35] The problem Was that the girl, like, fell to the ground, and the little stumpy dude just kept going like she was not even an object in his pet. Like she was a pebble as far as he was concerned. He was on his way somewhere and he. These two ran into each other. He knocked her down and just kept walking. That is literally what happened. Nobody took out a baseball bat and beat somebody’s legs. Nobody ran over anybody with a car. It wasn’t that serious. It was literally, they were running and. Or he was, he said, walking or stumping along at a good walk. So this guy is going at a brisk pace, this chick is running, and they collide, and he just keeps walking. He doesn’t help her up. He doesn’t say, excuse me. He doesn’t say, oh, I’m so sorry. He just keeps going as if it never happened.

[00:38:27] As far as everybody in this whole book is concerned, that is the action of Satan.

[00:38:39] That is as far as they’re concerned. This man, Satan, Nobody died.

[00:38:49] Nobody was injured. I think he said, you know, she was, you know, she was more frightened than anything else.

[00:38:59] No injuries. Just.

[00:39:02] Let’s just call it rudeness.

[00:39:04] Okay?

[00:39:05] Now, I understand at the time we’re talking about gentlemanly virtues and courtesy, and, you know, that is just not something that you do. I understand that. I’m not suggesting that at the time that this book was written, in the time that it took place, and his actions aren’t abominable. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that from a person reading this book now and looking at this incident, yes, this is absolutely the worst thing a gentleman could do is to trample over a female, a woman, a girl, and not even extend his hand to help her up. Not even apologize profusely and help her get wherever she was getting to. I understand the etiquette part of it. What I’m saying is it ain’t that serious for what happens next.

[00:40:03] Enfield sees this and he’s like, you know, he says, I gave a few holla.

[00:40:09] Took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the screaming child. So Enfield, who sees this happen is like, oh, hell, no. Right? He’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So he goes after the guy, grabs him by the collar, and drags him back to where all the people are standing about where this girl is, is screaming.

[00:40:32] So he took it upon himself to get involved in this because he just felt this was absolutely unacceptable.

[00:40:40] So everyone is out there, and apparently, I guess the girl was running to get a doctor. So maybe someone in her family was.

[00:40:48] Was sick or something, and she was running to get the doctor because it’s a doctor that came out of the house that she was trying to get to.

[00:40:55] And here’s the thing that took me aback.

[00:41:01] He said there was one curious circumstance.

[00:41:05] I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight.

[00:41:11] So had the child’s family, which was only natural because he had run over the girl.

[00:41:23] But the doctor’s case was what struck me. He was the usual cut and dry apothecary of no particular age and color, with a strong Edinburgh accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe.

[00:41:34] Well, sir, he was like the rest of us. Every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw the sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him.

[00:41:46] I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine. And killing being out of the question, we did the next best.

[00:41:57] This is the thing that blows my mind.

[00:42:00] This short, stumpy dude who ran over the girl, he physically grabs him and pulls him back to this crowd of people.

[00:42:09] And everybody, including him in this crowd, instantly hates him and wants to kill him.

[00:42:19] Instantly, I saw this guy run over this girl and thought to myself, I want to kill this man.

[00:42:28] There was one curious circumstance. I taken a loathing to him at first sight and wanted to kill him.

[00:42:38] All right, I’m.

[00:42:40] I get.

[00:42:42] There’s a little bit of all right. You ran over this child.

[00:42:46] How dare you walk away. Apologize. No, no, no, no, no. I want to kill you. Everybody in the circle, the family, the people who maybe witnessed it, him, they’re ready to kill this guy.

[00:43:00] But since they can’t kill him, right, since killing was out of the question, we did the next best thing, which is 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.

[00:43:25] If he had any friends or any credit, we undertook that he should lose them.

[00:43:30] And all the time, as we were pitching it in red hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we could, for they were as wild as harpies.

[00:43:40] What? I never saw a circle of such hateful faces. 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.

[00:44:00] So this short, stumpy dude who you have now physically accosted and dragged back to a circle of people who are ready to kill him, who have decided that he’s absolutely detestable and gross and horrible and rude and ungentlemanly and want to kill him. But instead of killing him, you basically say, we are going to destroy your life. We are going to destroy your reputation. We are going to make sure that your name is basically mud from one end of London to the next.

[00:44:39] At no point in time did I hear anybody say to him, excuse me, why did you run over this girl? Shouldn’t you apologize?

[00:44:49] I didn’t hear anybody say, sir, apologize. Did you not see what you just did?

[00:44:56] Do you. Do you not see the girl on the ground screaming apologize? Nor did I hear the man say her.

[00:45:04] I’m not apologizing that if he had said that, maybe not that, you know, anyone would speak like this or whatever at that time, but I’m saying, like, if he had literally said the equivalent to that. I’m not saying anything. I got to get to wherever I’m getting to. I could see the justification for like, oh, no, hell no.

[00:45:22] Get your ass back here. We’re gonna beat you into the ground.

[00:45:27] I. I could maybe say that I understood the mentality the group think of people who witness this guy saying that, girl, I don’t give a.

[00:45:38] He hasn’t spoken at all. He hasn’t done anything except be a rude and, like, ignore this chick screaming and crying in the street.

[00:45:48] It’s not like he injured her. It says that she was not injured. She was just mostly frightened by the collision.

[00:45:53] He just. He walks along his merry way.

[00:45:57] These people have decided that since they can’t kill him, they’re going to destroy his life instead.

[00:46:05] Have they asked him to apologize? Have they asked him how he feels about what he did? Has he indicated in any way that he does not feel any remorse or that he doesn’t care about what he did?

[00:46:18] He hasn’t said anything, but they already have decided he should die.

[00:46:24] And since they can’t kill him in the middle of the street, because that would be uncouth, we’re going to ruin his life and reputation instead.

[00:46:37] So the gentleman who he’s described as. Because he’s calm and cool in the midst of all these clearly insane people yelling at him and trying to kill him, that he must be Satan because he’s not responding in the way that they expect him to.

[00:46:52] He says, if you choose to make capital out of this incident, I am naturally helpless. No gentleman, but wishes to avoid a scene. Name your figure. So he already knows what this is about. This is about money. This is about compensation. And he’s just like, oh, well, you know, of course there’s nothing I could do. If you decide to make a scandal out of this, how much do you want?

[00:47:18] As far as I’m concerned, as of right now, pretending I know nothing about this book.

[00:47:24] This guy is being treated so badly, he’s being treated so unfairly for the circumstances that have just occurred. There is an angry mob of people who have pretty much decided that he should die for running into somebody and not apologizing, essentially, and not doing his gentlemanly duty to, you know, help her up.

[00:47:46] That’s basically. You might as well be dead. You’re a horrible person. And because he’s not responding, he’s frightened and he’s surrounded by all these screaming men and women, and he’s acting as if it doesn’t bother him. He must be Satan. The word Satan is. Is there. Enfield says he’s responding. He. He’s acting like Satan.

[00:48:07] I could see that, but for carrying it off, sir, really, like, Satan, Satan, Satan.

[00:48:17] It’s not the people that are surrounding him screaming like harpies and deciding instantly that he should be killed and despising him just by how he looks. They’re not Satan. No, no, no, no.

[00:48:34] He’s Satan. And he hasn’t even spoken a word yet.

[00:48:38] That immediately put me off.

[00:48:41] I was just like, what the?

[00:48:43] Like, who are these people? Who is this girl? Did he just run over the Queen or a princess or something?

[00:48:50] Seriously, what the. It didn’t make any sense to me. I couldn’t wrap my head around what was happening.

[00:48:55] But I loved that he was like, oh, God forbid.

[00:48:59] We don’t want a scandal. How much do you want?

[00:49:03] That was awesome. So Enfield says, well, we screwed him up to £100 for the child’s family.

[00:49:14] I’m sorry you got this man, that you don’t even know, that you haven’t even asked to apologize, that you haven’t even asked any questions to.

[00:49:28] You basically told him that you were going to ruin his life and ruin his name and ruin his reputation and his credit if he didn’t cough up £100 for the child’s family.

[00:49:44] Is this for harm rendered? Is this for PTSD treatments? Is this for something that I’m just missing? Does she have a hospital bill that she needs to pay for?

[00:49:59] Can you imagine if the world operated like this, that if you walked down a street and did something rude like didn’t hold a door open for somebody and an entire mob of people came out of the place or whatever and were just like, you know, we’re going to ruin your life. We’re going to go on social media and post a video of you not holding a door open for this woman. And we’re going to make sure that you are completely discredited unless you cough up a hundred pounds or for this person’s family.

[00:50:31] And by the way, we hate you and we want to kill you because you just look disgusting.

[00:50:41] I.

[00:50:44] I had such an extreme problem with this.

[00:50:48] This didn’t make a shred of sense to me. I’m sorry. It did not.

[00:50:52] It doesn’t read like it makes any sense. It doesn’t read terribly extreme. And again, I got to put myself back into the mindset of the people of this time and what it is to have etiquette and what it is to have, you know, a certain amount of decorum and a certain amount of gentlemanliness. And what does that mean? And how you’re supposed to treat people.

[00:51:12] What he did, I understand, is absolutely a breach of all rules of etiquette, and that is just simply not what you do. And that’s absolutely despicable. I understand that part of it.

[00:51:25] Their response, though, and what they decided about this man, what they decided about his life, what they decided about his reputation, what they decided about how he responded because it was cold and it was emotionless, even though they’re screaming like harpies and ready to kill him, even though he’s responding calm and cool and he’s Satan for this.

[00:51:54] No, sorry, you’re not going to get me with that one. I.

[00:51:58] I don’t know. As far as I’m concerned, these people are disgusting. Yes, the guy is horrible for running into the kid and keeping going and not apologizing and not helping her up.

[00:52:15] Should he be sentenced to death physically, socially? Should he be bribed, blackmailed out of a hundred pounds for the girl’s family?

[00:52:29] Has her honor been tarnished in some way? Like, am I missing something? Am I just not literary enough to understand there’s some deeper thing happening here?

[00:52:41] Or is it literally a bunch of assholes deciding that this man, this short, gross dude who they just don’t like on site, I.

[00:52:56] It did not work for me in any way, shape or form. As far as I was concerned. These people are disgusting. And I did not understand how you can justify any of what they did. And I love the fact that he’s like, oh, no gentleman, but wishes to avoid a scene. Name your price.

[00:53:17] It’s like. And that was fine by them.

[00:53:20] Obviously, he’s not sorry when he says his, oh, I know. Gentleman wants a scene.

[00:53:30] How Much do you want? Like they buy that. They’re like, oh, give us a hundred pounds and we’ll let you go.

[00:53:40] I don’t understand the judge and jury here on this.

[00:53:44] And it makes me a little sick and I don’t get it.

[00:53:51] And even Enfield says there was something about the lot of us that meant mischief.

[00:53:59] So he’s already kind of admitting, you know, we wanted to create a problem for this man. The group of us, instantly, a group of strangers saw something and got together and decided they’re going to make this man’s life miserable and get money out of him without, with any. No, no, it was completely unspoken, right, that they, they meant mischief.

[00:54:26] Why?

[00:54:27] What? It’s three o’ clock in the damn morning.

[00:54:31] Like, what do you, you don’t got nothing to do except for real.

[00:54:39] It blew my mind. So then it gets even weirder.

[00:54:43] He says he’s gonna go get the money.

[00:54:46] So they all went with him.

[00:54:50] They all followed him to the location. He’s like, I’ll get the money for you.

[00:54:56] So they followed him. Can you imagine this crowd of people just following this man down the street to go get this money?

[00:55:03] And he goes to the aforementioned door, he pulls out a key, he goes inside and he comes back out with this money.

[00:55:20] And he says it was, it comes out with a check, a check drawn, payable to bearer and 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. So the person who signed this blank check, or not blank check, the, the 100 pound check or whatever was a person that everybody knows or at least Enfield knows.

[00:55:46] And it’s like that can’t be.

[00:55:50] Like there’s some reason it can’t be, it can’t be real, right? It can’t be.

[00:55:58] The check can’t be real. Like you, you don’t just walk into, you know, this creepy door and come back out with a check signed by somebody. It can’t be a real check. This just does not happen, right? That, this makes no sense. Now he thinks it doesn’t make sense. What happened before the blackmail, that made sense. But him going into a random house and coming out with a check signed by somebody who’s very well known in the, in the community, that, that’s fake. That’s, that can’t be fake.

[00:56:26] I mean, that has to be fake, right?

[00:56:28] So it just, it didn’t make sense. And I, and I love the way it, he, this is described. He’s like a man does not in real life walk into a cellar door at four in the morning and come out with another man’s check for close upon pounds. Doesn’t he though?

[00:56:48] But a mob of people comes randomly out of the street at 3 o’ clock in the morning to blackmail a guy for a hundred pounds?

[00:56:56] Because that makes sense to you.

[00:56:59] But the issue was that how does this guy, who everybody knows the name printed on the check, how does that guy know this guy, Right?

[00:57:10] That’s, that’s the thing, that’s the issue, right?

[00:57:14] He’s like for my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with. A really damnable man. And the person that drew the check is the very pink of proprieties celebrated too, one of your fellows who do what they call good.

[00:57:35] That’s extraordinary to me. So there’s no way in hell that this well to do well known, upstanding, good man could possibly be acquainted with this small, stumpy, nasty, rude asshole.

[00:57:54] How in the world do you know this guy?

[00:58:00] How does this guy know you well enough to go into your house at 4 o’ clock in the morning and say dude, I just ran over a kid, I need a check and get it.

[00:58:13] How is that possible?

[00:58:15] Well, blackmail, I suppose, an honest man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his use.

[00:58:26] Blackmail house is what I call the place with the door.

[00:58:32] So you have determined all of this in a matter of one hour?

[00:58:37] That the well to do good man that everybody knows that signed this check is being blackmailed by the short stumpy guy that ran over the girl and didn’t apologize. Because there’s no way in hell the well to do good man could possibly be acquainted with this disgusting ungentlemanly dwarf that everybody wants to kill. Unless the ungentlemanly dwarf is blackmailing him.

[00:59:12] I have seen some leaps in my life.

[00:59:18] That is an extraordinary leap.

[00:59:21] That is a wild leap. That is the leap that you make when you are at the nail salon getting your nails done and gossiping about some bullshit in your neighborhood.

[00:59:34] That makes no sense. They have determined this man’s entire life in less than an hour over one incident.

[00:59:43] And they’re the ones in my mind that are completely lunatics.

[00:59:49] How they cash the check, of course, because they think the check is fake. They’re like he this is a fake signature. It’s forged.

[01:00:02] It’s not forged. It’s a genuine signature.

[01:00:05] They cash the check and go about their business, right? They literally, I think he says they go to Enfield’s House and they, they sleep, right? They go back to his place and. And spend the night. So we set off the doctor, the child’s father and our friend, our friend and myself, and passed the night rest of the night in my chambers. And the next day when we had breakfasted, went in a body to the bank.

[01:00:37] So they kept this guy with them the whole night at Enfield’s place, right?

[01:00:45] The doctor, the child’s father, the guy that ran over the girl and Enfield all passed the rest of the night in Enfield’s chambers. And then the next day had breakfast and all went to the bank together.

[01:01:07] I can’t picture things in my mind visually, as in a font, but I can draw from memory and that’s usually what I do.

[01:01:17] So I basically photoshop together an image of something taken from existing memories. And a lot more people do this than you realize, which is why they don’t realize they have aphantasia. But anyway, the point is I’m picturing a group of random people. A Dr.

[01:01:36] Enfield, who I kind of picture as some sort of businessman, the father of the child, who is just some sort of faceless, formless man.

[01:01:45] The short stumpy guy, Hyde.

[01:01:49] All sort of hanging out together in this one guy’s front room, taking a nap in a bunch of chairs and maybe on a sofa waiting for the morning to come, then sitting around a table and having breakfast in absolute silence with the short stumpy man. Because they’re all like thinking that when they get to the bank this check is gonna bounce because it’s fake.

[01:02:15] And then they all get up collectively and go to the bank.

[01:02:19] It says went in a body to the bank. So they all sort of go together in this group to the bank to present this check. And I’m picturing this bank teller, right, standing there at the wee hours of the morning and there’s a whole group of these mismatched people coming into this bank right after breakfast, first thing when the bank opens. What in hell’s name is going on?

[01:02:46] You.

[01:02:49] Can you. Just, for those of you with imaginations, can you picture this?

[01:02:55] Can you picture this deep, like the mind of Minolta, you know what I’m saying? Like, can you picture this group of people?

[01:03:05] First of all, what I’m picturing is the night of. I’m picturing them all going like, first of all, following this guy to the door, watching him take out a key, go in, come out with a check at 4 o’ clock in the morning.

[01:03:19] Then they’re all like, what? And then they all decide to go Back as a group, like to have this group sleepover where they all kind of don’t know each other, but hate each other. And they’re all just kind of sitting there drinking their. Their tea and their cognacs, you know, just sitting there, sitting in silence, right? Watching. Watching time pass.

[01:03:43] No one’s talking to each other. They’re all just like, that chick is gonna bounce. This creepy bastard. We should have killed him on the. On the road, you know, sipping there, you know, can you just picture this? And then they fall asleep.

[01:03:58] And then they wake up first thing in the morning with the creepy stumpy guy still sitting there.

[01:04:03] Let’s have breakfast. And then they have breakfast, and they’re still not talking.

[01:04:10] And they’re. And they’re just. In their minds, they’re just, like, cutting their steak and eggs or whatever.

[01:04:17] This guy, fucking rude asshole. Should have killed him instead of taking his money.

[01:04:25] I bet it’s gonna bounce, right? And they just. They eat breakfast and then they collectively decide that breakfast is over. They all stand up from the table together and put on their top hats and. Are they wearing the same clothes?

[01:04:37] You just have to think about this. And then they all go to the bank and they all shuffle in there like. Like one, like mob of people right up to the. To the teller. And the teller’s like, jesus Christ. And they present this check.

[01:04:51] Corey, are you following how ridiculous this is?

[01:04:55] Then I gave in the check myself and I said I had every reason to believe it was a forgery, but it wasn’t. It was genuine.

[01:05:08] So after all that, all that brandy swirling, angry breakfast eating and going to the bank, it was a real check?

[01:05:21] Because you couldn’t possibly imagine that the guy that signed that check would know this gross stumpy dude that you wanted to kill instantly for rudeness.

[01:05:41] As far as I’m concerned. This is bonkers. Already in the first nine pages. This is insane.

[01:05:50] End of part one. Thanks for listening.