The Hound of the Baskervilles

Dr. John H Watson, a longtime friend of Sherlock Holmes, writes up many of Holmes’s cases and narrates their events. Effectively, he serves as Holmes’s biographer. A veteran of British armed skirmishes in the Middle East, Watson maintains an occasional medical practice and sometimes lodges with Holmes. Though intelligent and well trained, Dr. Watson is no match for Holmes’s genius. His purpose in the book and throughout the Sherlock Holmes stories is to narrate the adventures and to stand in for the reader as an intelligent amateur who marvels at Holmes’s abilities.

The last of the Baskervilles, Sir Henry inherits the Baskerville estate when his uncle, Sir Charles, dies of fright after seeing a strange apparition on the moor. Sir Henry grew up on the coast of England and never saw the Hall as a youth. He moved to America and then to Canada. He is described as “a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face” (12).

Holmes believes something sinister is afoot on the moor near the Hall, and he fears Sir Henry might become the next in a line of baronets who have died there under suspicious circumstances. Sir Henry has plenty of courage, and he gets along well with others. He is game for a ploy that might flush out the man, Stapleton, who seems bent on killing him, but the encounter with the terrifying hound upends him, and he and Dr. Mortimer go on a world tour while Sir Henry’s spirit heals. In the process, Sir Henry also must get over his love for Beryl, who deceives him while her husband plots against him.

Surgeon James Mortimer appears at Holmes’s door in search of advice about mysterious deaths at Baskerville Hall. He is “a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak […]. Though young, his long back was already bowed, and he walked with a forward thrust of his head and a general air of peering benevolence” (3).

Mortimer married and moved to the country, where he became doctor and friend to Sir Charles Baskerville. He was troubled by Sir Charles’s death, apparently from fright, and he brings the case and the baronet’s heir, Sir Henry, to Holmes. He also alerts Holmes to a piece of forensic evidence: the cigar ashes that establish that Sir Charles waited in vain at a gate for a visit from Laura Lyons. His character is an intermediary who connects Holmes to the case by introducing him to Sir Henry. Though important early in the story, he fades from view toward the end of the novel.

A naturalist who lives near the Baskervilles with his wife, the pretend-sister Beryl, Jack Stapleton is a “small, slim, clean-shaven, prim-faced man, flaxen-haired and leanjawed, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a gray suit and wearing a straw hat” (26). He moved to the moor about the same time that Sir Charles took residency at the Hall, which raises Holmes’s suspicions.

Stapleton is the main antagonist of the story. His real identity is Rodger Baskerville, the son of Sir Charles’s ne’er-do-well brother Rodger, Sr. Stapleton’s goal is to remove the Baskerville baronets, both Sir Charles and Sir Henry, so that he can try to lay claim to the clan’s inheritance. Stapleton’s fascination with butterflies and other insects is real, but it also serves as cover for his many jaunts across the moor as he prepares to kill Sir Henry. His interest in the natural world also gives him an air of innocence that makes him an uncertain suspect.

Holmes ignores the noise and blather thrown up by Stapleton and homes in on him as the chief suspect. Stapleton emerges as a sociopathic monster who stops at nothing to steal and kill. His ironic death in the Grimpen Mire that he uses as a hideout becomes a fitting end for someone so thoroughly, unremittingly evil.

A beautiful young woman, Costa Rican émigré Beryl Garcia appears to be Jack Stapleton’s sister, but he is “neutral tinted, with light hair and gray eyes, while she was darker than any brunette whom I have seen in England—slim, elegant, and tall” (29). In fact, Beryl is Stapleton’s wife, but he presents her as a sibling to draw Sir Henry onto the moor where he might be killed by Stapleton’s hound. On meeting Watson and thinking he is Sir Henry, Beryl warns him to leave the area at once because his life is in danger.

Beryl is trapped between deceit and disloyalty. Her attempts to make right the situation only get her into trouble with Stapleton, who beats her and ties her up, so she won’t reveal his plans for Sir Henry. The baronet is deeply hurt to discover that this woman, for whom he developed strong feelings and wanted to marry, was part of a plot to kill him. Beryl’s purpose in the story is to sow confusion about the identity of the would-be murderer and to create a false hope, in both Sir Henry and the reader, that the baronet might find love at his doorstep. She is also an example of the tragedy of women’s limited options during the patriarchal early Industrial Age in England.

Barrymore, the long-serving butler at Baskerville Hall, is tall, slender, handsome, and thickly bearded. He is one of the main suspects in the story. Barrymore is discovered transferring foodstuffs to escaped convict Selden, brother to Barrymore’s wife. He also gives Selden clothing donated to him by Sir Henry, which causes the hound to chase Selden, leading to the escapee’s death. Barrymore’s beard makes him a candidate for the spy who follows Sir Henry in London. His austere, solemn manner adds a chill to the already gloomy Baskerville mansion that he oversees.

Wife of Barrymore the butler and herself one of the Baskerville servants, Mrs. Barrymore is “a large, impassive, heavy-featured woman with a stern set expression of mouth” (25). She has the habit, during Watson’s visit to Baskerville Hall, of sobbing late at night. Her sorrows stem from the tragedy of her brother, Selden, a convicted murderer who escapes onto the moor and whom she tries, through her husband, to protect. She serves the story as a suspect, and she adds a sense of gloom and foreboding to Baskerville Hall.

Selden, an escaped convict, hides out on the moor. Famous for the “ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin” (23), Selden received the death sentence, but it was commuted on the grounds of insanity. Watson and Sir Henry discover that Selden has been receiving food from his sister, Mrs. Barrymore, and her husband.

Selden dies from a fall on the moor while being chased by the hound. He is wearing clothes donated to Barrymore by Sir Henry and transferred to Selden to aid his escape. The hound, trained to recognize and attack Sir Henry by the smell of his clothes, chases Selden instead. Selden’s purpose in the story is twofold: His presence adds the thrill of danger for anyone who wanders out on the moor, and his death makes clear to Holmes how Stapleton plans to murder Sir Henry.

A minor suspect, Laura Lyons is the mysterious, beautiful woman who was to meet Sir Charles at the side gate at Baskerville Hall. She explains to Watson that she needed money for her divorce and meant to ask it of Sir Charles, but that her bills were paid, and she never went to the meeting. In fact, she is in league with Stapleton, thinking he might marry her and solve her financial ills. Indeed, the bills were paid by him, and her request for a private meeting with the baronet was Stapleton’s way getting him out to the moor so that Stapleton’s hound could kill him.

Lyons does not know that Stapleton is already married and has no intentions toward her at all. Her own needs pull her into his schemes and make her a pawn in his plans. Lyons’s name sounds somewhat like “lying,” and, along with Beryl Stapleton, Laura Lyons is one of the crime genre’s first ingenues: beautiful, untrustworthy, and complicated. She is also an early example in modern literature of the idea that women are capable of the same level of complex strategizing as men but are frustrated by social rules that marginalize them.

An inspector in the London police, Inspector Lestrade is “a small, wiry bulldog of a man” (61) who assists Holmes in capturing Stapleton. Though a minor character in this story, Lestrade is famous in the Sherlockian literature as a not-too-bright doubter of Holmes’s abilities. His own conclusions about a case invariably are overturned by Holmes’s better interpretations. Lestrade’s purpose in the story is to put the police onto the trail of the culprit and lend their official seal to any arrests. His cameo marks the return of another of the regulars in the Sherlock Holmes stories.