| Quote #13 A purse and gold watch were found upon the victim: but no cards or papers, except a sealed and stamped envelope, which he had been probably carrying to the post, and which bore the name and address of Mr. Utterson. |
Mr. Utterson’s friendships help him obtain crucial information regarding the mysterious Jekyll/Hyde connection. This is how friendship drives the plot forward.
| Quote #14 This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for Mr. Hyde had numbered few familiars –even the master of the servant maid had only seen him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as common observers will. Only on one point were they agreed; and that was the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed his beholders. (4.18) |
In other words, Mr. Hyde doesn’t have any friends. His isolation is a consequence of his evil nature.
| Quote #15 The newsboys, as he went, were crying themselves hoarse along the footways: "Special edition. Shocking murder of an M.P." That was the funeral oration of one friend and client; and he could not help a certain apprehension lest the good name of another should be sucked down in the eddy of the scandal. It was, at least, a ticklish decision that he had to make; and self-reliant as he was by habit, he began to cherish a longing for advice. (5.21) |
Mr. Utterson does not want the murder of one friend to cause the ruin of another – yet his conscience does prick him regarding Hyde’s letter.