Gerard
Manley Hopkins
‘Jekyll and Hyde’ I have
read. You speak of the ‘gross absurdity’ of the
interchange. Enough that it is impossible and might
perhaps have been a little better masked: it must be connived at, and it gives
rise to a fine situation. It is not more impossible
than fairies, giants, heathen gods, and lots of things that literature teems
with – and
none more than yours. You are certainly
wrong about Hyde being overdrawn: my Hyde is worse. The trampling scene is perhaps a convention:
he was thinking of something unsuitable for fiction. I can
by no means grant that the characters are not characterized, though how deep the springs of
their surface action are I am not yet clear. But the superficial touches
of character are
admirable: how can
you be so blind as not to see them? e.g. Utterson frowning, biting the end of this
finger, and saying
to the butler ‘This is a strange tale you tell me, my man, a very strange
tale.’ And Dr. Lanyon: ‘I used to like it, sir [life]; yes sir, I
liked it. Sometimes I think if we knew
all’ etc. These are worthy of Shakespeare.
Excerpt: Gerard
Manley Hopkins, In Defense of Treasure Island and Jekyll and Hyde, from a letter to Robert
Bridges, October 28, 1886.
