Character guide

Scythrop Glowry

major

Also known as Scythrop, cousin Scythrop, Mr. Scythrop, poor Scythrop, the mysterious Mr. Scythrop

Scythrop returns from university a well-threshed ear of corn, his head emptied of learning but filled with romantic dreams and schemes for reforming society. Jilted once by Emily Girouette, he becomes easy prey to his cousin Marionetta's lures, then retreats to his tower to muffle himself in a nightcap and summon imaginary tribunals. His oscillation between amorous distraction and utopian ambition drives the Abbey's central comedy of indecision.

Mr. Glowry

major

Also known as the melancholy Mr. Glowry, the sympathetic Mr. Glowry, the moody Mr. Glowry

Mr. Glowry presides over Nightmare Abbey as a connoisseur of melancholy, gathering moody guests and toasting sad partings with a bumper of wine. Widowed and bitter, he insists that women's minds are locked up by vanity and interest, and that choice in marriage is a delusion. His determination to marry Scythrop to the serious Stella Toobad, against his son's attraction to the sprightly Marionetta, sets the household's romantic machinery in motion.

Marionetta Celestina O'Carroll

major

Also known as Marionetta, Miss O'Carroll, divine Marionetta, the real Marionetta

Marionetta arrives at the Abbey a compound of O'Carroll vivacity and Glowry dolor, sparkling with music and light conversation but little moral sympathy. She lures Scythrop deliberately, then alters her tactics to coldness the moment she perceives his conquest, tormenting him with coquetry toward Mr. Listless. Her caprice and his romantic posturing collide in the tower scene, making her the engine of the novel's central romantic comedy.

Mr. Flosky

supporting

Also known as the sublime Mr. Flosky, Mr. Flosky Filling

Mr. Flosky haunts Nightmare Abbey as its resident metaphysician, dispensing obscurities about pure reason and the pleasures of unattainable abstraction. When Marionetta begs a plain answer about Scythrop's melancholy, he lectures her on the art of being miserable for misery's sake and refuses to speak intelligibly. His parody of Coleridgean idealism satirizes the intellectual fashions that Scythrop himself half-imbibes.

Mr. Toobad

supporting

Also known as Toobad, Mr. Toobad Filling

Mr. Toobad belongs to Mr. Glowry's circle of gloom-enthusiasts, convinced that the world is a theatre of evil and merriment fit only for baboons. He urges Scythrop's match with his daughter Stella, then rushes into the library crying that the devil has come among them with great wrath, departing the next morning without explanation. His Manichaean alarms deepen the Abbey's atmosphere of superstitious foreboding.

Honourable Mr. Listless

supporting

Also known as Mr. Listless, The Honourable Mr. Listless

The Honourable Mr. Listless drifts through the Abbey as a specimen of fashionable ennui, too languid even to go abroad, since the most eccentric Englishman is the one who stays home. He submits to Marionetta's coquetry and bursts briefly into life under her influence, like an evening primrose, while professing his own nothingness before Mr. Flosky. His indolence sharpens the satire of fashionable vapours that the novel sets against Scythrop's more ardent follies.

Mr. Hilary

supporting

Also known as Hilary, Mr. Hilary Filling

Mr. Hilary is the elastic, good-humoured counterweight to his melancholic brother-in-law: his London house is filled with the gayest of the gay, and it is under his roof that Scythrop first falls in love with the beautiful Miss Emily Girouette. Where Glowry reads Ecclesiastes and calls marriage a lottery, Hilary simply lives as if the opposite were true, and the mismatch between the two households quietly frames the novel's debate about temperament and choice. His hospitality sets the early romantic machinery in motion, then hands Scythrop back to Nightmare Abbey to brood over it.

Stella

supporting

Stella enters the abbey as an enigma, her face hidden and her history withheld, and immediately becomes the object of Scythrop's most fervent and speculative affections. Her secrecy generates the tension that drives the middle of the book: Scythrop, already bruised by Miss Girouette's desertion, projects onto her all his theories about love, solitude, and intellectual companionship. She matters because she forces the novel's central question — whether a woman can be known at all, or only imagined — into the open, while the reader waits for the veil to lift.

Raven

minor

Also known as Raven de butler

The lugubrious butler of Nightmare Abbey, fond of funereal pronouncements.

Mr. Asterias

minor

Also known as Mr. Asterias Filling

A scientific enthusiast obsessed with catching a mermaid.

Reverend Mr. Larynx

minor

Also known as Mr. Larynx, The Reverend Mr. Larynx

A clergyman who enjoys good food and company, often at Mr. Hilary's table.

Fatout

minor

Also known as Fatout Mermaid

Mr. Listless's French valet, who assists with his master's indolence.

Celinda Flosky

minor

Also known as Celinda

Mr. Flosky's neglected wife, briefly mentioned in the household.

Crow

minor

A servant at Nightmare Abbey, often delivering messages.

Mr. Cypress

minor

Also known as Mr. Cypress Sir, Mr. Cypress Human

A Byronic poet who visits the abbey and spouts cynical verses.

Diggory Deathshead

minor

Also known as Diggory, Deathshead

A grim servant of Mr. Glowry, named for his skull-like appearance.

Miss Toobad

minor

Daughter of Mr. Toobad, later revealed to be the mysterious Stella.

Aquarius

minor

A water-drinking guest at Mr. Hilary's party, mocked for his temperance.