Nightmare Abbey - Characters

Characters

Mr Christopher Glowry, Esquire

The master of Nightmare Abbey; a gentleman of an atrabilarious temperament, a widower and the father of Scythrop Glowry. Mr Glowry regularly suffers from depression and melancholy and cannot abide to see other people cheerful. He surrounds himself with domestics whose only qualification is a long face or a dismal name. His house is open to those of his friends and acquaintances who share his gloomy outlook on life. Mr Glowry is apparently a purely fictional character.

Scythrop Glowry

Mr Glowry's only son. Scythrop's forename was that of an ancestor of Mr Glowry's who hanged himself. It is generally accepted that Scythrop is a humorous portrait of Peacock's friend the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. His name is actually derived from the Greek skythrōpos (σκυθρωπος), "of sad or gloomy countenance", which does not suit Shelley; but almost everything else about him confirms this identification. Like Shelley, Scythrop is devoted to social regeneration, and has a penchant for the gothic and the mysterious. Nor is Scythrop conventionally monogamous: he would much prefer to enjoy two mistresses than choose between them. (It has also not escaped the notice of some critics that in both of Shelley's gothic novels Zastrozzi and St Irvyne, the hero is loved by two women at the same time.) Scythrop's impenetrable treatise on social regeneration, Philosophical Gas; or, a Project for a General Illumination of the Human Mind, pokes fun at Shelley's pamphleteering, his ambitions to reform society and his long-held desire to create a utopian society of kindred spirits.

Miss Marionetta Celestina O'Carroll

The orphaned daughter of Mr Glowry's youngest sister. She made a runaway love-match with an Irish officer O'Carroll. In one year her fortune was gone; in two years love was gone; and in three years the Irishman was gone. When her mother died, Marionetta was taken in by Mr Glowry's other sister, Mrs Hilary. Marionetta is a blooming and accomplished young lady; she combines in her character the Allegro Vivace of the O'Carrolls and the Andante Doloroso of the Glowries. She is pretty and graceful, and proficient in music. Her conversation is sprightly but light in nature. Moral sympathies have no place in her mind. She is capricious and a coquette. She is generally identified with Harriet Westbrook, a schoolmate of Shelley's sister Hellen. She and Shelley eloped to Scotland and got married in 1811; he was 19 and she was 16 at the time. Three years later Shelley left her and fell in love with and eventually married Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (the future Mary Shelley). In 1816, barely a year before Peacock began Nightmare Abbey, Harriet committed suicide and Shelley married Mary. It has also been noted that in 1814-15 Peacock himself was involved in a love triangle with two women: Marianne de St Croix, to whom he had been attached for many years; and a supposedly rich heiress who fell in love with him. It has been suggested that there is something of Marianne in Marionetta.

Miss Celinda Toobad

Mr Toobad's daughter. Celinda's intellectual and philosophical qualities are contrasted with the more conventional femininity of Marionetta. She is the "Penserosa" to Marionetta's "Allegra". Her father, who describes her as being "altogether as gloomy and antithalian a young lady as Mr Glowry himself could desire", sends her to a German convent to finish her education. When her father arranges for her to marry a man she has never met, she absconds. She later turns up at Nightmare Abbey to seek the assistance of Scythrop Glowry, the author of a treatise that has affected her greatly, not realizing the Scythrop is none other than her intended husband. She adopts the pseudonym Stella, the name of the eponymous heroine of a drama by Goethe who is involved in a similar love-triangle. There is some uncertainty about the identity of Celinda's historical counterpart. It is often said that she is based upon Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. In 1814 Shelley abandoned his wife Harriet Westbrook and eloped with the 16-year-old daughter of William Godwin and the late Mary Wollstonecraft, taking with him also Mary's 16-year-old stepsister Jane (later Claire) Clairmont. But Celinda's appearance is quite different from that of the future Mary Shelley, and this has led some commentators to surmise that the person Peacock had in mind when he created Celinda/Stella was in fact Elizabeth Hitchener or Claire Clairmont. Shelley had met Hitchener at Hurstpierpont in Sussex in 1811; the following year she paid a lengthy visit to Shelley and Harriet. Claire had lived with Shelley and Mary for much of the time from their elopement in 1814 until Shelley's death in August 1822; she was undoubtedly very close to Shelley throughout this period, though how close their relationship was is not known.

Mr Ferdinando Flosky

A very lachrymose and morbid gentleman, of some note in the literary world. His name is identified in a footnote by Peacock as a corruption of Filosky, from the Greek philoskios (φιλοσκιος), "a lover, or sectator, of shadows". Mr Flosky is a satirical portrait of the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His criticisms of contemporary literature echo remarks made by Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria; his ability to compose verses in his sleep is a playful reference to Coleridge's account of the composition of Kubla Khan; and his claim to have written the best parts of his friends' books also echoes a similar claim made by Coleridge. Both men are deeply influenced by German philosophy, especially the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant. Throughout the novel there are many minor allusions that confirm the Flosky-Coleridge identification. Peacock also satirizes Coleridge as Mr Skionar in Crotchet Castle.

Mr Hilary

Scythrop's uncle, the husband of Mr Glowry's elder sister. His name is derived from the Latin hilaris, "cheerful", which is an apt description of his outlook on life. If Nightmare Abbey has a character who acts as the author's mouthpiece, it is surely Mr Hilary. His criticisms of the contemporary "conspiracy against cheerfulness" and his advocacy of nature, the music of Mozart and the life-affirming wisdom of the ancient Greeks are distinctly Peacockian qualities.

Mrs Hilary

Mr Hilary's wife; a model of propriety and social rectitude.

Mr Toobad

A Manichaean Millenarian. That is to say, he is a Manichaean in that he believes that the world is governed by two powers, one good and one evil, and he is a Millenarian in that he believes that the evil power is currently in the ascendant but will eventually be succeeded by the good power – "though not in our time". His favourite quotation is Revelation 12:12: "Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come among you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time". His character is based on J. F. Newton, a member of Shelley's circle.

Reverend Mr Larynx

The vicar of Claydyke, a village about ten miles from Nightmare Abbey. Like most clergymen in Peacock's novels, he loves nothing better than "a dinner and a bed at the house of any country gentleman in distress for a companion".

The Honourable Mr Listless

A former fellow-collegian of Scythrop's and a fashionable young gentleman. Mr Glowry comes across him on a visit to London and is sufficiently impressed by his gloomy and misanthropical nil curo that he invites him to Nightmare Abbey. He is based on Sir Lumley Skeffington, a friend of Shelley's, and represents the "reading public" (a phrase which occurs frequently in Coleridge's critical works and is thought to have been coined by him).

Mr Asterias

An ichthyologist, Mr Asterias is an amateur gentleman scientist. His name is that of the genus of echinoderms to which starfish belong. He is a comical character, but his denunciations of the "inexhaustible varieties of ennui" and his enthusiasm for "the more humane pursuits of philosophy and science" set him apart from the melancholic guests and identify him firmly with Mr Hilary and Peacock himself.

Mr Cypress

A misanthropic poet, who is about to go into exile. Mr Cypress is a friend whom Scythrop had known at college and a great favourite of Mr Glowry's. He is based on Lord Byron. Although he only appears briefly in a single chapter, and one which has all the feeling of being an interpolation that does nothing to advance the plot, Mr Cypress is partly the reason Peacock wrote Nightmare Abbey in the first place. Writing to Shelley on 30 May 1818, Peacock notes: "I have almost finished Nightmare Abbey. I think it necessary to 'make a stand' against 'encroachments' of black bile. The fourth canto of Childe Harold is really too bad. I cannot consent to be auditor tantum of this systematical 'poisoning' of the 'mind' of the 'reading public'". Most of Mr Cypress's conversation in Chapter XI is made up of phrases borrowed from the fourth canto of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, whose misanthropy Peacock could not stomach.

Fatout

Mr Listless's French valet. He also doubles as Mr Listless's walking memory, constantly reminding his master of things that Mr Listless is too listless to bother remembering for himself (such as whether he ever saw a mermaid).

Miss Emily Girouette

A young woman with whom Scythrop is for a time in love. He meets her at his uncle Mr Hilary's house in London and the match is favourably viewed by both Mr Glowry and Mr Girouette, but the latter quarrel over terms and the match is called off. Emily and Scythrop pledge their undying love for one another, but within three weeks Emily is married to the Honourable Mr Lackwit. She is usually identified with Harriet Grove, Shelley's cousin and first love. In 1809 Shelley developed an attachment for her, but when she reported his republican and atheistic views to her father, the pair were separated. Shelley poured his feelings of regret into his poetry. Emily's surname, Girouette, is French for "weathercock", which is probably an allusion to the apparent facility with which Harriet transferred her affections elsewhere after she and Shelley were forced to give up their affair. In 1811 Harriet married William Helyar of Sedghill and Coker Court, to whom she bore 14 children.

Mr Girouette

Emily Girouette's father. He does not appear in the novel and is mentioned only once.

The Honourable Mr Lackwit

Emily Girouette's husband after she and Scythrop become forcibly estranged. He does not appear in the novel and is mentioned only once.

Raven

Mr Glowry's butler.

Crow

Mr Glowry's steward.

Skellet

Mr Glowry's valet. It is Mr Glowry's opinion that he is of French extraction and that his name is a corrupt form of the French squellette, "skeleton".

Mattocks

One of Mr Glowry's grooms.

Graves

One of Mr Glowry's grooms.

Diggory Deathshead

Formerly Mr Glowry's footman. He was hired solely on account of his gloomy name, but Mr Glowry was horrified to discover that he had a round ruddy face, a pair of laughing eyes and was always smiling. By the time Mr Glowry gives him his discharge, he has bedded all the maids and left Mr Glowry with a flourishing colony of young Deathsheads.