Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: R L Stevenson
From ‘Incident of the Letter’ – Mr Utterson has gone to see Dr Jekyll following
Sir Danvers Carew’s murder. Mr Utterson fears that Dr Jekyll may be hiding
Mr Hyde.
It was late in the afternoon when Mr Utterson found his way to Dr Jekyll’s door, where
he was at once admitted by Poole, and carried down by the kitchen offices and across a
yard which had once been a garden, to the building which was indifferently known as
the laboratory or the dissecting-rooms. The doctor had bought the house from the heirs
of a celebrated surgeon; and his own tastes being rather chemical than anatomical, had
changed the destination of the block at the bottom of the garden. It was the first time
that the lawyer had been received in that part of his friend’s quarters; and he eyed the
dingy windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of
strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students and now lying
gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical apparatus, the floor strewn with crates
and littered with packing straw, and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. At
the further end, a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered with red baize; and through
this, Mr Utterson was at last received into the doctor’s cabinet. It was a large room,
fitted round with glass presses, furnished, among other things, with a cheval-glass and
a business table, and looking out upon the court by three dusty windows barred with
iron. The fire burned in the grate; a lamp was set lighted on the chimney-shelf, for even in
the houses the fog began to lie thickly; and there, close up to the warmth, sat Dr Jekyll,
looking deadly sick. He did not rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and bade
him welcome in a changed voice.
‘And now,’ said Mr Utterson, as soon as Poole had left them, ‘you have heard the news?’
The doctor shuddered. ‘They were crying it in the square,’ he said. ‘I heard them in my
dining-room.’
‘One word,’ said the lawyer. ‘Carew was my client, but so are you; and I want to know what
I am doing. You have not been mad enough to hide this fellow?’
‘Utterson, I swear to God,’ cried the doctor, ‘I swear to God I will never set eyes on him
again. I bind my honour to you that I am done with him in this world. It is all at an end.
And indeed he does not want my help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is
quite safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of.’

Explore how Stevenson presents Dr Jekyll’s laboratory and cabinet in this extract.
Give examples from the extract to support your ideas.