# Robert Webb — On a Chinese Screen character guide

> Robert Webb in On a Chinese Screen by W. Somerset Maugham.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Webb

**First appearance:** 0005-iv-the-rolling-stone

## Snapshot

A British consul near fifty, affable at the club and deft at his dignity, who has not seen his wife or children in eight years.

## Who they are

Robert Webb is the peacemaker and promotion-marked official every treaty port likes: a good table, a pleasant piano, better-than-average bridge, blue friendly eyes, and the tact to be His Britannic Majesty's Consul without portentousness. He keeps photographs of a son at Charterhouse and a daughter now nineteen and married — a girl he last saw as a child, and whom he speaks of with a curious, peevish evasion when asked about going home. His long separation is one of the quiet tragedies of China life, and it shadows every agreeable evening he spends among men who will never leave.

## Relationships

### [The Consul](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_a_chinese_screen_se/characters/the_consul)

_social_

Robert Webb is a fellow expatriate who socializes with the Consul at club events and diplomatic gatherings.

## In the story

### [XLIV: The Normal Man](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_a_chinese_screen_se/chapters/xliv-the-normal-man)

The consul in a smaller Chinese port, initially presented as a normal, popular, and capable man, but later reveals deep emotional wounds from prolonged separation from his family.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_a_chinese_screen_se/characters/robert_webb
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_a_chinese_screen_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/on_a_chinese_screen_se/characters