It is a heady mix, a member of the professional ruling classes, with a criminal tendency. And it necessitates a bit of a double life.
Are they the forbears of our superheroes, these uber-villains dressed in dove grey and silk cravats? Always in need of a respectable cover, they cultivate two personalities, one in the light, one swathed in shadow.
From the Robin Hoods to the Dorian Greys, they seduce us still.
Today is a tale of two gentleman criminals, one rather more sinister than the other: one a villainous brute, the other a role model and action hero. And both were published in the same quarter-century.
Doctor has been an honourable profession for many a long year.
Bound by an oath to preserve life at all costs, Dr Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L, L.L.D., FRS appears to have it all. He is moneyed, with his own house in a district of London. His friends are “intelligent, reputable men and all judges of good wine.” He is a stylish man, Robert Louis Stevenson records in his iconic novel ‘The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ first published in 1886, but with “every mark of capacity and kindness.”
But there is a rum business afoot: and the first to know about these things is invariably the lawyer.
Enter Gabriel John Utterson, who is forced to have truck with one of the strangest wills he has ever read. It stipulates that if Jekyll dies, all his possessions should pass to “his friend and benefactor, My Hyde.”
Moreover, if the Doctor disappeared for more than three months, Hyde should ‘step into his shoes’.
The grotesque nature of the will emerges only if one meets Mr Hyde. It seems he inspires loathing on first sight. His acts of barbarism have been witnessed or more than one occasion and he proves himself more than capable of cold-blooded murder.
A master of the tall tale, Louis Stevenson weaves the character of the mild-mannered gentleman who meets a sorry end.
He has discovered a potion which will cause him to metamorphose into a different personality, devoid of conscience. As Hyde, he can leave his civilised self behind, and experience life in the raw – evil, and without remorse.
But the potion takes control: and as with so many others who choose two personalities, his dark side begins to grasp more than its fair share of life. Greed and avarice will out, sermonises the writer who wrote the whole story in six days, allegedly fuelled by cocaine.
But will it?
Not if one believes our second speculator in the Underworld.
Those who love Sherlock Holmes may have discovered this figure already. He has a boys-own adventure feel about him, and yet is rather magnetic.
His name is A.J. Raffles, and he is a monument to an English public school education.
An athlete and sportsman, he was captain of the eleven – the school cricket team – when he was younger: and he is, we suppose when we first meet him, rich enough to spend all Summer playing cricket and do nothing for the rest of the year.
If Hyde inspires immediate loathing, Raffles- whose first adventures, written by E.W. Hornung, were published in 1899- engenders a very different response: something akin to hero-worship.
When we first meet him, he has been playing baccarat all night: the smokey room is still turned upside down, but he has exchanged his evening jacket for one of his innumerable blazers.
Another participant in the night’s events returns with a confession. He has lost roundly to everyone else: and every one of the £200 cheques he has written for his companions in recompense will, come Monday morning and bank opening time, bounce.
Raffles does not rave or explode. He does not turn a hair when his friend brandishes a revolver and threatens to shoot himself there and then to end his despair.
He thinks. For, I believe, almost two hours.
And then he turns to his friend and asks: how far would you go to keep your good name?
When the man replies that he would even walk on the wrong side of the law, Raffles undertakes to solve his money problems that very night.
And he does: because by night he is a thief. He styles himself an artist, robbing the rich and foolish to help the poor or embarrassed. He is smooth, handsome, even tempered and ingenious. And during the heist on which he takes his companion that very night, despite the boy’s-own style of Hornung’s prose, one cannot help but fall under Raffles’ thrall.
Two anti-heroes, in stories published just 13 years apart. There is a critical difference, though, between the two.
One leaves conscience far behind: one chooses to keep his near at hand.
In Jekyll’s full statement of the case, he tells his lawyer: “I knew myself, at the breath of this new life,, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.”
But to Raffles, honour matters. His thieving is an intellectual challenge: a whiff of the wild side, but art nevertheless.
Discussing one of his heists he tells his newly acquired accomplice; : “Art for art’s sake is a vile catchword, but I confess it appeals to me.
“My motives are absolutely pure, for I doubt if we shall ever be able to dispose of such peculiar stones. But if I don’t have a try for them…I shall never be able to hold my head up again.”
Hornung adds, with infinite perception: “His eye twinkled, but it glittered too.”
Hyde began to grasp the half-life his alter ego Jekyll possessed.
As for Raffles, he prefers not to grasp, but to reach. As he puts it so well: “A man’s reach must exceed his grasp dear boy, or what the dickens is a heaven for?”
Kate Shrewsday 
I loved Ronald Colman as Raffles! He always seemed to play such dapper gents. He didn’t look exactly the way i had pictured him from the novels, but still – he had that air about him!
One can forgive someone who doesn’t look right if they have the air right, can’t one, Paula?
I am besotted with the Raffles in the pages of my book…
Jekyll must have had that evil streak in him and used the potion as an excuse to let it out. It’s like hypnosis: you won’t do anything under it that you wouldn’t do when fully conscious.
Raffles is altogether more interesting, I think. A sociopath, perhaps, using the poor and needy as an excuse?
Do you remember the tv series that used to be on in the afternoons with Anthony Valentine? I loved it.
I don’t think I ever saw it, Tilly, must see if I can catch some repeats.
Raffles felt Edwardian to me, where Hyde was Victorian. Far more modern. I wonder if he reflected the zeitgeist of the time? He does appear right through the books to have a compassionate streak to those he knows: but chooses either not to see, or to know, the effects of his nocturnal adventures. he does all the Holmsian stuff though – dressing up and such.
You have Hyde in a nutshell there…
I don’t think it’s been repeated in years. It is available on dvd, or you can find bits on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGrdPauoEyY
It was quality tv in its day.
Cheers, Tilly. I’m still watching Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes so I am no stranger to fine vintage telly 🙂
Interesting thought, ‘a reflection of the era’. How many stories are incomprehensible when taken from their context of a society at a point in time?
Context is everything, isn’t it, Sidey?
I suppose that is one test of a classic, is it understandable over time and in other cukltures?
You may be right….does it bring its time and culture to us, but explain the conventions so we can understand them?
Re Raffles. Isn’t that over reaching? I think President Theodore Roosevelt put the sentiment better: “Reach for the stars, but keep your feet on the ground.”
Roosevelt always had a lovely turn of phrase 🙂
Thanks, Carl…
Poor old rich, always copping it as apparently worthy targets of so-called conscience crims who are bent on helping the poor but for their own ends – Raffles seems to have strong shades of Robin Hood. And Jekyll and Hyde, of Ted Bundy.
Conscience crims. That’s it in a nutshell, BB. And the comparisons work well too… Bundy….*shudder*
not heard of this Raffles, though I’m not a huge Hyde person either…I read a lot of Agatha when I was young, Hercule being my fave (bought me a French dictionary and everything, I did…thought I was sooo worldly at the ripe age of 12 ;))
as an aside, I’m not great with social, current events, but have failed to turn off the world news on our PBS (your BBC) and they are doing a wedding special as I type …is your country as obsessed as ours….
Angela, they talk of nothing else. News crews have built towers on top of towers at the church so they can get good pix. Children are staging royal weddings complete with carriages and horses. I kid you not. They are bringing huge trees into the Abbey for the flower arrangements. We all have a day off on Friday. My prediction for the dress: Jane Austen, empire line….you saw it here first.
I only read both of these villains recently. The writing is just SO page turning. I shall be investing in an audiobook I think!
I haven’t heard of Raffles. Thank you, Kate, I will seek him out. It sounds like there was an interesting series there with his character as well.
Oooh, yes,some compulsive viewing there, Penny, thanks to Tilly for rooting it out for us. I have fallen head over heels for Raffles…
Now I have to read some Raffles stories. Thanks, Kate 🙂
James, great to hear from you! They’re primary colours, James, but they’re page turners. As, I have a feeling, would be the hero of your novel….hope it’s finding its way to a publisher…
Wonderful post.
I’m amazed that RLS wrote J&H in 6 days . . . maybe I need some mind altering drugs to give my creative output a boost. 😀
Have you seen the movie Limitless? There’s a drug I’d love to get my hands on.
A must-watch, by the sounds of it..
I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s in my queue. Can’t wait.
LOL! He was a very clever, very obsessed, slightly crazed man at the time. The story around the writing is a post all its own. But Oh, the writing! Just fantastic storytelling.
I need to read it again . . . it’s been a long time.
I think we all feel sympathy for someone who takes from those we envy and feel are undeserving of their good fate.
But how many of us have looked our own ‘dark side’ in the face and truly know it, or would we want to know it? I think I’d prefer never to know if I were capable of dreadful deeds.
I know what you mean, Sidey. Throwing conscience to the wind is a dangerous choice to make: Jekyll became addicted to his dark side: not a healthy relationship. And you’re right: at the heart of the rob-from-the-rich philosophy sits the very same envy and avarice we purport to despise in them. Hmmm.
Not necessarily, Kate.
If I rob from the rich SOLELY to feed starving children . . . my actions would not, of necessity, stem from greed or envy.
My, but this Raffles sounds compelling, Kate! And as for the Jane Austen empire line – I’ll be watching for it 😀
😀 Probably way off the mark, Naomi: but we can dream….
You have made me want to reread those books. Now where did I put them?
If you’ve wondered where I had disappeared to again – my computer was attacked by a rogue virus pretending to be a security programme that had detected a problem – it was the problem. It took over my computer and I had to, to be rid of it, restore the computer’s original system. This meant I lost everything that was on there. Fortunately, when I remember, the most important files are saved to a mobile drive, as well as several thumb drives. It still meant programmes were lost and had to be re-uploaded or re-downloaded.
So a heads up to anyone else on PCs. never forget to enavble your security if it has been disabled to install a programm, which is what happened to me. The rogue virus fronts as “XP Security 2011”, at present, although it has quite a number of similar names.
My next computer will be a Mac 🙂
I swear by mine….Oh, Liz, so sorry you’ve had all that aggro! What a nightmare! Thank goodness for the mobile drive- I don’t have one…must invest. Hope all the book material is safe and sound!
I’d never heard of Raffles–one more to put on my list. I was shocked when I learned that RLS wrote J&H under the influence–the lovely man who wrote “The Cow” and “The Swing.” But I guess that’s the point.
Jane Austen would be a good choice. Elegant.
Jeckyll had his dark side and Louis Stevenson had his too…enjoy Raffles….