"One night, he had a dream, a nightmare presumably, from which he dared not wake. When he did..."

"... he ate a brief lunch, and retired to his room, took a large draft of laudanum, and, presumably high as a kite, spent the next three days and nights penning what would become The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, finishing it in a state of exhausted triumph. Here, the author—this one, me—would like to interject. Sixty thousand words in three days! Good God. Where, exactly, does one procure this laudanum? It sounds like a downer, and yet . . . did I read that cocaine was involved? So it’s an upper, mellowed by morphine? Can it be synthesized? Is it smokeable? Injected? Why aren’t we making this stuff now? . . . Ahem. What’s really remarkable is what happened afterward. Stevenson gathered [his wife] Fanny and [his stepson] Lloyd around him and proceeded to read his tale.... Fanny...  insisted that Stevenson had... failed to see the essential allegory of the tale. Furious, Stevenson tossed the manuscript into the fireplace."

Writes J. Maarten Troost, in "Headhunters on My Doorstep: A True Treasure Island Ghost Story" #CommissionsEarned.

"He raged at her myopic imbecility. They had a colossal argument, and then, pointing to the ashes of his work, he conceded that, well, perhaps on second thought, she’d been right after all, and he returned to his room, to his laudanum, and wrote a new draft, again in three days. I have a special affection for Dr. Jekyll, of course. I think anyone who has engaged in a course of action that violated their moral code, and did so not with remorse but rather great enthusiasm, will empathize with the tale. That it was written during the height of the Victorian era, with its buoyant belief in the inevitability of progress and rectitude, makes it all the more remarkable. Stevenson, clearly, had a dark side, and perhaps this too explains his wandering ways. The contented stay put. The disaffected always have one foot out the door...."

I read Troost's book a while ago, but I'm rereading that part because I just watched the 1931 movie — part of the Criterion Channel's "Pre-Code Horror" collection — starring Fredric March. Highly recommended. Excerpt:

"The University of Wisconsin Smears a Once-Treasured Alum."

A column by John McWhorter (NYT). 

The alum is Fredric March, an actor most people going to school today probably don't remember. Try streaming "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946). He was important enough to the University of Wisconsin that they put his name on some theater buildings.

He's been attacked for an obvious reason: He belonged to the Ku Klux Klan! But it wasn't that Ku Klux Klan. It was back in 1919/1920 and there was an interfraternity group that called itself the Ku Klux Klan. To think that means something awful is to be historically ignorant, McWhorter explains:

The later 20th century Klan emerged gradually in the wake of the racist film “The Birth of a Nation” in 1915, and only became a national phenomenon starting in 1921. In Wisconsin in 1919, when March was inducted into his group, it was possible to have never heard of the Ku Klux Klan that was later so notorious.... 

Even Madison’s chancellor, Rebecca Blank, has written that March had “fought the persecution of Hollywood artists, many of them Jewish, in the 1950s by the House Un-American Activities Committee” and that March “took actions later in life to suggest (he) opposed discrimination.”...

So... it was 4 years after "The Birth of a Nation." And "it was possible to have never heard of the Ku Klux Klan"? But why was it called "the Ku Klux Klan"? McWhorter says there's "no evidence" that it's the same Ku Klux Klan. But the name is some evidence, and the lack of any other explanation of the name, and the fact that "The Birth of a Nation" had been out for 4 years are at least some evidence.

I agree with McWhorter that March shouldn't be tarred as a racist for something he did for a year as a young man and that might have been genuinely racist. But the question is whether his name should be used to name the campus theaters. We have a much more important theater-related alum — Lorraine Hansberry. I'd put her name on the theaters. Update the honoring.

Back to McWhorter:

This witch-burning mentality is something most of us less concur with than fear.... The students who got March’s name taken off those buildings made a mistake, as did the administrators who again caved to weakly justified demands, seemingly too scared of being called racists to take a deep breath and engage in reason. The University of Wisconsin must apologize to March and his survivors. His name should be restored to both of the theaters now denuded of his name, including the Madison building, which he in fact helped bring into being and funded the lighting equipment even before the building was named after him. This must happen in the name of what all involved in this mistake are committed to: social justice — which motivated March throughout his life.

ADDED: As someone who has taught the law school course called Evidence, I rankle at the phrase "no evidence." Evidence is anything that makes a fact of consequence either more likely to be true or less likely to be true. There is clearly some evidence that March affiliated himself with a racist group. It's fine to say there's not enough evidence to justify removing March's name from these buildings, especially when we also have evidence that March was an anti-racist. That's all you need to say. 

AND: This isn't a trial of March where his accusers must meet a burden of proof and the question is whether he ought to be convicted of racism. That ought to fail because he has a constitutional right to be a racist. We wouldn't even go to trial. But if it did, there wouldn't be enough evidence to convict him. But the important point here is that the question in issue is whether his name ought to be on campus buildings today. What should the burden of proof be and is it met? That's the way to analyze this controversy.