# Captain Jennings — Short Fiction character guide

> Captain Jennings in Short Fiction by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** Jennings, the faithless Captain Jennings

**First appearance:** 0004-passage-in-the-secret-history-of-an-irish-countess

## Snapshot

A tall, gentle-faced sufferer who keeps exact count of his torment, narrating in a dim Richmond drawing-room how his studies summoned something he cannot undo.

## Who they are

Jennings arrives with quiet, stealthy steps to tell a friend the story of his ruin, his face flushed with a suffering that stands out like a portrait against the darkness. Once a scholar absorbed in the religious metaphysics of the ancients, he wrote late into the night, feeding his abstraction with ever-stronger tea until the subject infected him. His confession of a degrading fascination and a sure nemesis gives the tale its confessional gravity and its warning about the price of certain knowledge.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_31_se/characters/captain_jennings
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_31_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_31_se/characters