# Short Fiction — Character guide

> Key figures in Short Fiction by Arthur Machen.

- [Mr. Villiers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/villiers.md): Villiers moves easily through Piccadilly and the clubland of men who know things, but it is a beggar in the street he cannot forget: Herbert, ruined, who said his wife had destroyed him body and soul. Where his friend Au
- [Mr. Dyson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/dyson.md): Dyson is the kind of man who notices a name above a shop and a lamppost's lettering at the same moment, and who enjoys watching perplexity dawn on a stranger's face. He wields a phrase about grass and lasses and maple-tr
- [Mr. Clarke](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/clarke.md): Clarke's character is an odd mingling of caution and curiosity: he repudiates the occult in his sober hours, yet pines for the unseen and secretly compiles his Memoirs to Prove the Existence of the Devil. The horrors of 
- [Mary](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/mary.md): Mary sits hand in hand with Darnell in the dusk, and as the ugly walls of Shepherd's Bush dissolve into shadow, she seems to know something of the secret of the wood and the valley shut in by high hills. Her relations sh
- [Mrs. Darnell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/mrs_darnell.md): A character involved in the domestic life of the Darnell family.
- [Edward Darnell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/edward_darnell.md): Darnell is an English City clerk flourishing toward the end of the nineteenth century, equipped with a commercial education that left him unable to articulate any thought worth thinking. Yet on certain mornings he grows 
- [Mr. and Mrs. Merritt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/mr_and_mrs_merritt.md): A couple who encounter strange phenomena during the Terror.
- [Dr. Lewis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/dr_lewis.md): Lewis is a man of normal temperature and a pint of Graves with dinner, which makes the tree in his garden all the more disturbing: he is not delirious, not drunk, not poisoned, and yet the impossible pine stands against 
- [Alice](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/alice.md): A young woman who appears in the narrative of the White People.
- [Austin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/austin.md): A character who interacts with the supernatural in the story.
- [Mr. Remnant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/mr_remnant.md): Remnant moves through the Welsh countryside as a man of apparatus and explanation, hearing the wailing darkness dismissed by neighbours as Judgment Day while he coolly attributes it to a blowhole in the Tredonoc woods. H
- [Dr. Raymond](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/raymond.md): Dr. Raymond moves among theories that his friend Clarke privately dismisses as the wildest nonsense, yet he commands enough gravity to draw a reluctant observer into his dreary laboratory. His confidence in experiment as
- [Mr. Salisbury](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/salisbury.md): Salisbury lives among green rep, oleographs, and gilt-framed mirrors, a man of ordinary habits whose morning novel suddenly loses its power to hold him. The rhyme he found in an archway lodges in his head like a music-ha
- [Cotgrave](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/cotgrave.md): Cotgrave moves through clubs and quiet rooms collecting stories that others would rather leave untold, and he listens to Herbert's narrative as proof rather than hearsay. His habit of thinking in nested boxes, each openi
- [Dr. Black](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/dr_black.md): A doctor involved in the strange events of Harlesden.
- [Mrs. Nixon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/nixon.md): A woman who appears in the story of the Terror.
- [Charles Herbert](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/charles_herbert.md): A character involved in the events of the Terror.
- [Ambrose](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/ambrose.md): A reclusive man who writes about the occult.
- [Mrs. Beaumont](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/mrs_beaumont.md): A woman connected to the supernatural in the story.
- [Lord Argentine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/lord_argentine.md): A nobleman who commits suicide under mysterious circumstances.
- [Mrs. Wilson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/wilson.md): A character in the story of the Terror.
- [Professor Huvelius](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/huvelius.md): A scholar who studies the occult and the White People.
- [Mr. Darnell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/old_mr_darnell.md): The father of Edward Darnell, a figure in the family.
- [Johnnie Roberts](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/little_johnnie.md): A young boy who encounters strange events.
- [Mr. Williams](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/mr_williams.md): A man involved in the events of the Great Return.
- [Helen V.](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/helen_v.md): A woman who appears in the narrative of the White People.
- [Tom Griffith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/tom_griffith.md): A man who dies mysteriously during the Terror.
- [Mr. Secretan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/secretan.md): A man who leaves a final message about the Terror.
- [Uncle Robert](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/uncle_robert.md): An uncle figure in the narrative of the White People.
- [Helen Vaughan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/helen_vaughan.md): Helen arrives at Mr. R.'s farm as a girl of twelve, reticent about her past and unlike anyone in the hamlet, with a foreign cast to her features and a guardian who lets her do as she chooses. She spends whole days in the
- [Mr. Sidney Crashaw](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/mr_crashaw.md): A man who encounters the supernatural in the city.
- [Mrs. Black](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/mrs_black.md): The wife of Dr. Black, involved in the Harlesden events.
- [Mrs. Griffith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/mrs_griffith.md): A woman affected by the Terror.
- [Dr. Phillips](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/dr_phillips.md): A doctor who appears in the endnotes.
- [Mrs. Roberts](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/mrs_roberts.md): A woman in the story of the Terror.
- [Trevor M.](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/trevor_m.md): A character in the narrative.
- [Miss Mary Reynolds](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/miss_mary_reynolds.md): A woman who appears in the story.
- [Rachel M.](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/rachel_m.md): A woman who appears in the narrative.
- [Olwen Phillips](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/olwen_phillips.md): A woman who has a dream of the Sangraal.
- [Young Griffith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/young_griffith.md): A young man affected by the Terror.
- [Mr. Evans](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/old_mr_evans.md): An old man in the narrative.
- [Philip James](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/philip_james.md): A character in the narrative.
- [Sir Oliver Lodge](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/sir_oliver_lodge.md): A real-life scientist mentioned in the narrative.
- [Mrs. Morgan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/mrs_morgan.md): A woman in the narrative.
- [Lewis Prothero](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/lewis_prothero.md): A character in the Great Return.
- [David Williams](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters/david_williams.md): A character in the narrative.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_6_se/characters