‘Yes. The other important aspect there was, was
the fact that Rebus had been part of the SAS, and part of the training for that was psychological warfare, and it used to be very traumatic. So Rebus and this Hyde character were wrapped up in that: they had gone through that training together – and that’s where Hyde begins to think that he had been sold out by Rebus and tries to kill him.’
‘It’s interesting that you read so much into
Jekyll
and Hyde
. What is the real pull for you with that story?’
‘It’s not just
Jekyll and Hyde
– I love some of Stevenson’s other novels, such as
The Master of Ballantrae
and
The Weir of Hermiston
, all the dark stuff really. But there’s something about
Jekyll and Hyde
: it’s such a simple story in a way and yet it is this transformational story that people still relate to. Everybody has a dark side
to them and that’s interesting, and to take that further to look into criminals and how they are made is the next step, so there is so much within the story.’
‘But do you believe the story of the burning of the original manuscript, or as you suggest, maybe he didn’t burn it at all?’
‘Either is a nice story – a great story – to believe, but there are other great stories based around Jekyll and
Hyde. I love the story that when he was a kid he [Stevenson] had a piece of furniture in his bedroom actually made by Deacon Brodie and the nurse would tell him the story of Deacon Brodie over and again as a bedtime story. No wonder he turned out with a warped and twisted imagination!
‘Stevenson had always suffered from nightmares. They began as a child growing up in Heriot Row, which is two
streets away from where we are right now! One of Stevenson’s nightmare dreams as a child concerned a real-life wizard Major Tom Weir. A respectable preacher, Weir shocked his parishioners by confiding that he practised bestiality and incest. Weir and his sister Jean were sentenced to be strangled and burned at the stake in 1670, and Stevenson’s nanny “Cummy” used to scare him with spooky tales of
Weir!’
When I analyse the Jekyll and Hyde story I find some interesting things. The first is the amount of wine consumed or, at least poured, for the various characters! There are many references made to wine consumption, drinking in excess, such as a drunk who
‘reasons with himself upon his vice…’
But the inner secret about Jekyll and Hyde wasn’t about alcohol, was it?
‘I began to be tortured
with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once again… swallowed the transforming draught.’
If we replace ‘draught’ with ‘drug’ and then view the
‘tortured… throes of longing’
as a form of cold turkey, we may well be unlocking a very sinister chapter within the story and, quite possibly, its author’s life!
Dr Henry Jekyll becomes
addicted to his own drug. When he first takes it he describes the extreme sensations of the transformation into Mr Hyde as something not so unpleasant as what may be initially thought:
‘There was something in my sensation, something indescribably new, and, from its novelty, incredibly sweet.’
Any drug has this effect to begin with and Jekyll admits to the beginning of his folly:
‘… It was an
ordinary secret summer that I at last fell before the assaults of temptation.’
Could this indeed be the Hyde in Stevenson talking – the man in the velvet jacket? I think not. Well, not about himself anyway – perhaps an old university friend, a man who took the temptations of life a lot further than Stevenson, a man who would – like Henry Jekyll – confide his sins to an old school friend (Dr Lanyon
in the book; Stevenson in real life?):
‘I mean from henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, nor must you doubt my friendship, if my door is often shut even to you. You must suffer me to go my own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot name. If I am the chief of all sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. I could not think
that this earth contained a place for suffering and terrors so unmanning; and you can do but one thing… to lighten this destiny, and that is to respect my silence.’
Two people share – suffer – Dr Jekyll’s terrible secret, and one of them dies through the knowledge of its facts. We know that Stevenson woke from a fever dream to write
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
at pace (30,000 words
in three days apparently). Was this rush a determined push to exorcise himself from a past episode in his own life, one that he now needed to confront? Did he feel guilty that he couldn’t help a former friend who had fallen from grace? Who had to be
‘close to… drugs’
and who committed suicide – like Henry Jekyll – as redemption for something he did under that terrible influence?
It cannot be
ruled out but it cannot be proved. However, it is fascinating to speculate, isn’t it? I share my thought processes with Rankin.
‘I talk about Jekyll and Hyde in a BBC4 documentary and discuss the reasons why the story is set in London,’ he says. ‘Robert Louis Stevenson was thinking of a real doctor, John Hunter, who was a Scot. His home sat on Leicester Square. In the book Stevenson gives a description
of Jekyll’s home and it is identical to Hunter’s. But Hunter was a dark man: he would receive corpses at the back door to examine, stuff like that.’
Every time Rankin and I meet, we love to talk about Jekyll and Hyde. What adds extra intrigue to the legacy of the novella is the fact that two years after it was written, the theatrical production was a huge hit on the London stage during the Jack
the Ripper murders. The leading man was so convincing in his role, he was even suspected of being the Ripper himself! This isn’t something Stevenson could have predicted, but it does allow us to muse if he knew the Ripper’s counterpart on the backstreets of Edinburgh’s Old Town and changed the location to Soho, London (but sadly not London’s East End) in the final novel.
Sadly, I have gone a
little too far, as Rankin shakes his head sadly. ‘No, there were no Ripper murders in Edinburgh – just Burke and Hare, about whom RLS wrote short fiction. Plenty of other grim stuff was happening though… I think another reason why Stevenson set the book in London is that he didn’t want readers equating Jekyll with the author – RLS having explored his own “dark side” when a young man on the streets
of Edinburgh. And maybe Fanny saw too much of her husband in the story and the locations got swapped because of that.’
Well, yes, maybe it was as simple as that…
‘Nearly a year later, in the month of 18-, London was startled by a crime of singular ferocity, and rendered all the more notable by the high position of the victim. The details were few and startling.’
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Strange
Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
The works of Ian Rankin
(copyright Ian Rankin) quotes used by permission of the author
Rebus’s Scotland: A Personal Journey
(Orion, 2005), Ian Rankin, photographed by Tricia Malley and Ross Gillespie
Kidnapped
(Cassell & Co Limited, 1886), Robert Louis Stevenson
Catriona
(Cassell & Co Limited, 1893), Robert Louis Stevenson
Ballads
(Cassell & Co Limited,
1890), Robert Louis Stevenson
Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes
(1879)
,
Robert Louis Stevenson (Pallas Editions, 2001) used in research of this book
The Complete Short Stories
(The Centenary Edition), Robert Louis Stevenson, Edited by Ian Bell, Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Ltd in association with The Scottish Arts Council (2 vols, 1993)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
(Macmillan, 1961),
Muriel Spark
Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
, James Hogg (Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Green, 1824)
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
, Arthur Conan Doyle (Vintage Classics, 2009) (150th Anniversary edition with an Introduction by P D James)
Poems of Robert Burns – Selected and with an Introduction by Ian Rankin
(Penguin Classics, 2008)
February 2000, 11 November 2000, 14 January 2002, March 2002, 27 August 2003, 22 September 2004, 5 November 2004, 11 August 2005, 26 July 2009, 19 August 2009, 20 August 2009, 4 September 2009.
L
ike Ian Rankin I believe in serendipity. While writing this book there were more happy coincidences than I could ever wish for, from the small – Rebus putting on the Rolling Stones’
Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus
(
The Hanging Garden
), which I had done several hours previously – to the large – sitting next to a Scot on a London commuter train and reading the same Rebus novel and consequently
getting his perception of the series and Edinburgh and forming a friendship.
All of this would bring a smile to Rankin’s face, I’m sure. The whole of the Rebus series is about serendipity, happenstance, synchronicity, coincidence, call it what you will. It’s about the people that flow in and out of our humble lives and influence and shape it for better or worse (yes, exactly what the Rebus series
embraces – although Rebus doesn’t believe in such a thing!).
I would just like to give thanks to all the people who have provided a bit of serendipity for me in the writing of this book.
Craig Cabell
Blackheath, London
June 2009
C
raig Cabell was a freelance journalist and writer for 20 years. He spent five years as an in-house reporter at
Focus,
the house journal of the Ministry of Defence, and has written 15 books as a biographer and historian. He is an expert on rare and collectable fiction, from Charles Dickens to Ian Rankin, and wrote several regular wine columns for different magazines as well as
travelling the world, from Kuwait to Venezuela, for government services. Some of his previous books, such as
Operation Big Ben, the anti-V2 Spitfire Mission 1944-45
(with Graham A Thomas) and
Ian Fleming’s Secret War
, have attracted much praise. His previous books with John Blake,
James Herbert – Devil in the Dark, Snipers
(with Richard Brown) and
Getting Away with Murder
(with Lenny Hamilton),
have showcased his diversity and specialist skills in literature, small arms and true crime. He lives in London with his wife and three children.
BOOKS BY CRAIG CABELL
Frederick Forsyth – A Matter of Protocol, the Authorised Biography
The Kray Brothers – The Image Shattered
James Herbert – Devil in the Dark, the Authorised True Story
Operation Big Ben – The Anti-V2 Spitfire Missions 1944-45
(with Graham A Thomas)
VE Day – A Day to Remember
(with Allan Richards)
Snipers
(with Richard Brown)
Dennis Wheatley – Churchill’s
Storyteller
Getting AwayWith Murder
(with Lenny Hamilton)
Witchfinder General – the Biography of Matthew Hopkins
Ian Fleming’s Secret War – Author of James Bond
The History of 30 Assault Unit – Ian Fleming’s Red Indians
Ian Rankin and Inspector Rebus
Captain Kidd
(with Graham A Thomas and Allan Richards)
Blackbeard
(with Graham A Thomas and Allan Richards)
The Doctors Who’s Who
CHAP
BOOKS
Dennis Wheatley and the Occult
Black Sniper
(fiction)
I Was Alive Then – The Spike Milligan Interviews
The Grapes of MoD – Ten Years of Wine Consumption
30 Assault Unit User Manual
Tales of Verona
The Curse of the Baskervilles
William – A Marine’s Story
Robert Heinlein – The Complete UK Bibliography and Collector’s Guide
Stephen King – Illustrated UK Bibliography and Collector’s
Guide
Ian Rankin Illustrated UK Bibliography and Collector’s Guide
A Christmas Vampire
(fiction)
Why Did I Ask Them Around to Dinner?
(fiction)
The Arms Dealers Arms
Stories with Wine
SPECIAL INTRODUCTIONS
Furies Over Korea – the story of the men of the Fleet Air Arm, RAF
and Commonwealth who defended South Korea
1950-1953
by Graham A Thomas
Firestorm, Typhoons Over Caen, 1944
by
Graham A Thomas
Terror from the Sky – the Battle Against the Flying Bomb
by Graham A Thomas
The Biography of Dan Brown
by Graham A Thomas
1
Author interview 14 January 2002.
2
From ‘The Tracks of my Years’ by Andrew Preston,
Night & Day
, Association Newspapers, 24 October 2004.
3
Author interview 14 January 2002.
4
See Introduction to
Beggars Banquet
and segment that forms the introduction to
The Scotsman Exclusive Souvenir Paperback Celebrating 20 Years of Inspector Rebus.
5
A very interesting pastime for die-hard Rankin
fans, is spotting
Dr Who/SF
references throughout Ian’s work (several times at least, see Black and Blue, special intro to
Knots and Crosses
and others).
6
See
Rebus’s Scotland – A Personal Guide
(Orion, 2005).
7
Artworks Scotland – When Ian Rankin met Jack Vettriano
(2009).
8
Artworks Scotland – When Ian Rankin met Jack Vettriano
(2009).
9
Author interview 14 January 2002.