Robert Louis Stevenson

The Suicide Club

In New Arabian Nights. 1882. Collins Clear Type Press, 1908.

Rochester House was a magnificent residence on the banks of the canal. The large extent of the garden isolated it in an unusual degree from the annoyances of the neighbourhood. It seemed the parc aux cerfs of some great nobleman or millionaire. As far as could be seen from the street, there was not a glimmer of light in any of the numerous windows of the mansion; and the place had a look of neglect, as though the master had been long from home

The house in fact belongs to the President of the Suicide Club, who intends this evening to 'assist' at yet another highly profitable death. Arriving at the rendezvous, he finds the tables are turned. The intended victim, Prince Florizel, addresses him:

"President", he said, "you have laid your last snare, and your own feet are taken in it. The day is beginning; it is your last morning. You have just swum the Regent's Canal; it is your last bathe in this world...And the grave you had dug for me this afternoon shall serve, in God's almighty providence, to hide your own just doom from the curiosity of mankind"

S.M. Ellis, in Mainly Victorian (Hutchinson, 1925), says that the model for Rochester House was Grove Lodge (later Nuffield Lodge, now Grove House), at the north-west corner of the park. It was the home of the writer Frank Smedley, and 'one of the most delightful houses in London...the President of the Suicide Club meets his death in a duel with Prince Florizel in a secluded corner of the grounds, now the site of the Rose Garden'. Not Queen Mary's Rose Garden of course, which did not exist at that time.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

1886. Penguin Popular Classics, 1994.

It was a fine, clear January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the Regent's Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with Spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin

In his 'Full Statement of the Case' Henry Jekyll recounts his investigations into the 'thorough and primitive duality of man', and his conviction that if these different elements could be 'housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable'. His experiment goes disastrously wrong, and he is further horrified to discover that he can no longer control the effects of the potion he has been taking.

I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bounds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde