the old story of Dr. Fell

The old story of Dr. Fell is a proverbial expression that Mr. Utterson, the lawyer, reaches for in his attempt to name the nameless horror he experiences when he first confronts Edward Hyde. The phrase appears in the second chapter of Robert Louis Stevenson's novella, during Utterson's tormented reflection immediately after his encounter with Hyde outside the by-street door. Having observed Hyde's pale, dwarfish appearance, his displeasing smile, and his husky, broken voice, Utterson finds that none of these specific defects can account for the "hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear" that the man inspires in him. Casting about for an explanation, he asks himself: "Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent?" The reference to Dr. Fell thus stands as one of three competing hypotheses—the troglodytic, the proverbial, and the spiritual—each attempting to give a name to a reaction that exceeds the sum of Hyde's observable features.

The Proverb's Origin and Meaning

The old story of Dr. Fell refers to a well-known English nursery rhyme and epigram traditionally attributed to the seventeenth-century satirist Tom Brown. According to the anecdote, Brown, while a student at Christ Church, Oxford, was threatened with expulsion by the dean, Dr. John Fell, and was told he could remain only if he could translate an epigram of Martial. Brown's extemporaneous translation became the famous lines: "I do not love thee, Dr. Fell, / The reason why I cannot tell; / But this I know, and know full well, / I do not love thee, Dr. Fell." The rhyme encapsulates a feeling of instinctive, unaccountable dislike—a repulsion that has no identifiable cause yet is felt with absolute certainty. By invoking this proverb, Utterson aligns his own visceral reaction to Hyde with a cultural touchstone of irrational antipathy, suggesting that his loathing is as fundamental and as inexplicable as the schoolboy's dislike of his dean.

Utterson's Three Hypotheses

Utterson's invocation of the Dr. Fell story is embedded in a sequence of three conjectures, each of which attempts to categorize the source of Hyde's repulsiveness. The first—"Something troglodytic"—evokes a primitive, cave-dwelling quality, suggesting that Hyde appears subhuman or atavistic. The second—"the old story of Dr. Fell"—offers a social and psychological explanation: a purely personal, unaccountable aversion. The third—"the mere radiance of a foul soul"—proposes a moral or metaphysical cause, that Hyde's inner evil physically manifests on his face. Utterson ultimately settles on the third explanation, concluding: "for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend." Yet the very fact that he cycles through these three possibilities—the primitive, the proverbial, and the spiritual—reveals the depth of his perplexity. No single framework suffices; the old story of Dr. Fell is not the answer but a placeholder for the inadequacy of language itself when confronted with Hyde's peculiar deformity.

Narrative Function and Thematic Resonance

The allusion to Dr. Fell serves a crucial narrative function at this early stage of the story. Utterson, a rational and undemonstrative man, is forced to resort to folklore and proverb because his usual analytical tools fail him. The reference also foreshadows the central mystery of the novella: the reason for the universal hatred Hyde inspires is indeed something that cannot be told—not because it is irrational, but because it is supernatural. The reader, like Utterson, is left in a state of productive uncertainty, sensing that the answer lies beyond the reach of ordinary explanation. The proverb thus becomes a bridge between the natural and the uncanny, marking the point at which the story's rational detective-work begins to give way to the Gothic and the inexplicable. In the broader thematic architecture of the book, the old story of Dr. Fell resonates with the novella's preoccupation with duality, secrecy, and the limits of human knowledge. Just as the rhyme's speaker cannot articulate why he dislikes Dr. Fell, the characters in Jekyll and Hyde repeatedly find themselves unable to describe Hyde's appearance or account for the horror he provokes. The phrase becomes a shorthand for the ineffable—a recognition that some truths resist articulation and must be felt rather than explained.