# Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories — Character guide

> Key figures in Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde.

- [Lord Arthur Savile](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/lord_arthur_savile.md): Lord Arthur moves easily through Lady Windermere's glittering set, a practical, athletic young man with a horror of idleness and a fiancée he adores. When a cheiromantist reads his hand, the prophecy lands on him like a 
- [Sybil Merton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/sybil_merton.md): Sybil is the radiant centre of Lord Arthur's hopes, the girl whose lightest touch thrills him and whose innocence he is desperate to deserve. She never suspects that his sudden scruples about marrying are anything but te
- [Mr. Septimus R. Podgers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/mr_podgers.md): Mr. Podgers is the season's novelty, summoned twice a week to read Lady Windermere's hand and treated by her set as a deliciously dubious oracle. He is unctuous, self-assured, and entirely at home among duchesses, which 
- [Lady Clementina Beauchamp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/lady_clementina_beauchamp.md): Lady Clem lives quietly in Curzon Street, fond of her nephew and doted on by him in return, a gentle fixture of the family he cannot imagine harming. Her frailty and her affection make her the most painful possible candi
- [Herr Winckelkopf](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/herr_winckelkopf.md): A German anarchist who supplies explosives to Lord Arthur.
- [The Canterville Ghost](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/the_canterville_ghost.md): For three hundred years the Canterville Ghost has rattled chains and dripped blood with professional pride, terrifying generations of Stiltons and Cantervilles. The Otises' cheerful indifference — oil, parboiled peas, an
- [Virginia E. Otis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/virginia_otis.md): Virginia rides ponies with the young Duke of Cheshire and moves through Canterville Chase with the easy confidence of her American family. Where her brothers torment the ghost with pillow-fights and her parents dismiss h
- [Mr. Hiram B. Otis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/mr_hiram_otis.md): Mr. Otis arrives at Canterville Chase as the embodiment of New World pragmatism, dismissing ancestral curses as so much superstitious nonsense. His cheerful refusal to be frightened by the family ghost sets up a collisio
- [Mrs. Otis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/mrs_otis.md): Mrs. Otis brings brisk American efficiency to the ancient halls of Canterville Chase, offering the ghost Dr. Dobell's tincture and scolding him like a wayward servant. Her sensible, unflappable temperament contrasts shar
- [Washington Otis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/washington_otis.md): The eldest Otis son, who tries to remove the bloodstain with cleaner.
- [The Duke of Cheshire](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/the_duke_of_cheshire.md): The little Duke of Cheshire is a warmhearted young aristocrat hopelessly smitten with Virginia Otis, trailing after her with the earnestness of a schoolboy. His puppyish devotion and hot temper make him both endearing an
- [Lord Canterville](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/lord_canterville.md): The English nobleman who sells Canterville Chase to the Otis family.
- [Mrs. Umney](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/mrs_umney.md): The housekeeper at Canterville Chase, who believes in the ghost.
- [Lady Alroy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/lady_alroy.md): Lady Alroy drifts through London drawing rooms with an air of quiet mystery, slipping away to a rented house in a shabby street and refusing to explain herself to anyone. Her secrecy torments Lord Murchison, who loves he
- [Lord Murchison](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/lord_murchison.md): Lord Murchison is a decent, straightforward nobleman who falls hard for the enigmatic Lady Alroy and cannot bear her evasions. His desire to marry her collides with his compulsion to know where she goes and why she lies,
- [Hughie Erskine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/hughie_erskine.md): Hughie Erskine is the most popular and least employable man in London, blessed with good looks, good humor, and an utter inability to make money. He adores Laura Merton, but her retired colonel father refuses to hear of 
- [Alan Trevor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/alan_trevor.md): A successful painter whose studio becomes the stage for a beggar's strange request, testing his friend Hughie's luck and conscience.
- [Baron Hausberg](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/baron_hausberg.md): Baron Hausberg moves through fashionable London as a man of immense wealth and quiet influence, yet he chooses to sit for Alan Trevor as a ragged beggar. The deception is not cruelty but a kind of amused experiment: he w
- [Laura Merton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/laura_merton.md): The woman Hughie Erskine loves, daughter of a retired colonel.
- [Mr. Merton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/mr_merton.md): Laura's father, a retired colonel who disapproves of Hughie's poverty.
- [Cyril Graham](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/cyril_graham.md): Cyril Graham is the kind of person who lights up a room and then burns it down, all in the name of a beautiful idea. He abandons a diplomatic career for the theatre and then for a theory: that Shakespeare's Mr. W. H. was
- [Erskine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/erskine.md): Erskine is the quiet centre of the frame: older, steadier, and still carrying the weight of Cyril Graham's ruin. He tells the story of the forgery with the bitterness of someone who loved the forger and cannot quite forg
- [Mr. W. H.](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/mr_w_h.md): Mr. W. H. exists first as initials on a dedication page and then as a theory: Willie Hughes, a young actor whose beauty and talent captivated Shakespeare and inspired the sonnets. He is never quite real—no record confirm
- [Lady Windermere](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/lady_windermere.md): A society hostess who appears in the frame story of the portrait.
- [Lady Erskine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/lady_erskine.md): Erskine's mother, a society woman who hosts gatherings.
- [Lady Clementina Beauchamp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/lady_clementina.md): Lord Arthur's elderly aunt who dies under mysterious circumstances.
- [Edward Merton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/edward_merton.md): Sybil Merton's brother, a practical man of business.
- [Count Rouvaloff](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/count_rouvaloff.md): A Russian anarchist who introduces Lord Arthur to Herr Winckelkopf.
- [Lady Barbara Modish](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/lady_barbara_modish.md): A pretty society woman mentioned in passing.
- [Lord Surbiton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/lord_surbiton.md): A young lord who appears at social functions.
- [Lady Jedburgh](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/lady_jedburgh.md): A society woman who appears at Lady Clementina's.
- [Gerald](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/gerald.md): A minor character mentioned in the narrative.
- [The Doctor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/the_doctor.md): A physician who attends to Lady Clementina in her final illness.
- [William Shakespeare](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters/shakespeare.md): Shakespeare never appears in the flesh, but his sonnets are the engine of the entire mystery: who was Mr. W. H., and what did he mean to the man who wrote those passionate lines? The theory that Cyril Graham constructs—a

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lord_arthur_savile_s_crime_and_other_stories_se/characters