# Phipps — An Ideal Husband character guide

> Phipps in An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Lord Goring Phipps, Enter Phipps, Exit Phipps

**First appearance:** 0001-an-ideal-husband

## Snapshot

Lord Goring's butler, so perfectly impassive that Wilde calls him the Ideal Butler — a mask with a manner, representing the dominance of form.

## Who they are

Phipps presides over Lord Goring's Adam-style library, receiving hats, presenting buttonholes on a salver, and answering every epigram with a level 'Yes, my lord.' His deadpan composure is the perfect foil to his master's dandy philosophy, and his one volunteered remark — that the florist has had a loss in her family — quietly punctures Goring's talk about the lower classes. He matters because his inscrutability sets the play's comic temperature and makes the fashionable world around him look almost as performed as he is.

## Relationships

### [Lord Goring](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/lord_goring)

_professional_

Phipps is Lord Goring's impeccably formal and loyal butler, serving him with quiet efficiency.

### [Sir Robert Chiltern](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/sir_robert_chiltern)

_professional_

Phipps, as Lord Goring's butler, respectfully attends to Sir Robert when he visits.

### [Lord Goring](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/lord_goring)

_professional_

Phipps is Lord Goring's impeccably formal and loyal butler, serving him with quiet efficiency.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters/phipps
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_ideal_husband_se/characters