Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

Oscar Wilde’s short story, “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime: A Study of Duty,” was first serialized in the literary magazine The Court and Society Review in 1887, and later published in the collection Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories (1891). Like many of Wilde’s longer, better-known works, including the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere’s Fan, “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime” is a satire of the British upper classes and contains several of his trademark epigrams.

This story has been made into a film (1920) and a BBC Radio 4 drama, and it has been adapted twice for the stage: once by Constance Cox under the same title (1952) and again by Rob Urbanati under the title Murder on West Moon Street (2006). It inspired an episode of the TV show Climax! (“A Promise to Murder,” 1955). The story continues to find new life as a graphic novel by Flavio Soares (Escafandro: O Crime de Lord Arthur, 2021).

This guide references the edition hosted by Project Gutenberg and uses a combination of chapter numbers and paragraph numbers for citations.

The opening chapter unfolds at a society party thrown by Lady Windermere that brings together all of the luminaries of the moment, from Cabinet members to European princesses, along with artists, musicians, and economists. Among these “lions”—Lady Windermere’s term for her most valued guests—is Mr. Septimus R. Podgers, the hostess’s “cheiromantist,” that is, a professional palm reader. Lady Windermere is eager to introduce him to her friend, the Duchess of Paisley, affirming that he tells both fortunes and “misfortunes.” Although the Duchess accuses her of “tempting Providence” with these glimpses into the future, Lady Windermere insists that the practice is essentially harmless; regular palm reading, she claims, can be useful for telling a person what they shouldn’t do—even if they then go on to do it. Having overheard this conversation, Lord Arthur Savile offers to find Mr. Podgers in the crowd of guests, but Mr. Podgers—who does not, Lady Windermere explains ruefully, much resemble a stereotypical “cheiromantist” with his bald head and glasses—makes his way to them.

Although the Duchess is at first reluctant to have her palm read, Mr. Podgers wins her over by telling her what she wants to hear, such as the anodyne prediction that she will live a long and happy life. Several guests have Mr. Podgers read their palms as well, though his revelations quickly come to verge on the indiscreet. Lord Arthur is also eager to have his palm read, but Mr. Podgers becomes agitated when he does so and can only be convinced to share his findings in the most general terms: Lord Arthur will travel in the coming months and will lose a distant relative. Lord Arthur panics, worried that his palm has revealed some horrible “[d]oom.” When they are alone in the room, he presses Mr. Podgers to say more. Mr. Podgers agrees only when Lord Arthur agrees to pay him more than 100 pounds for the information.

In Chapter 2, Lord Arthur wanders the streets of London, reeling from the prediction that he will become a murderer; this prediction goes against everything that Lord Arthur has ever believed about himself and his capabilities. As he traverses the London night, he encounters beggars and sex workers, sensing a new kinship with them as “the puppets of a monstrous show” (Chapter 2, Paragraph 4). Lord Arthur’s “horror” relates not so much to the act itself, but to its aftermath: the possibility, for instance, that his image will be plastered across London as a criminal. As he returns to his home at dawn, he observes the “rustics” coming to London to sell their wares and envies their limited understanding of the city’s darker possibilities.

A morning’s sleep in his well-appointed bedroom and a cup of hot chocolate put Lord Arthur in a calmer mood by the beginning of Chapter 3. He smokes a cigarette while contemplating a photograph of his betrothed, Sybil Merton, with her “small, exquisitely-shaped head,” her “thin, reed-like throat [that] could hardly bear the burden of so much beauty,” and “dreaming eyes” (Chapter 3, Paragraph 3). As eager as he is to marry her, Lord Arthur resolves that he must commit his predestined murder before doing so.

Calming his turbulent feelings and engaging his “common sense,” Lord Arthur contemplates the task before him. His chosen victim is Lady Clementina Beauchamp, a “dear old lady” (Chapter 3, Paragraph 6) and his mother’s second cousin, and poison seems the most effective and discreet method for carrying out the act. Accordingly, after sending flowers to Sybil and the check to Mr. Podgers, Lord Arthur sets to work consulting books on toxicology. He purchases the fatal dose of aconitine from one Mr. Pestle, who is surprised that anyone would need that much. However, Lord Arthur tells him that he needs to put down a large dog, and any doubts are banished from Mr. Pestle’s mind. As a final touch, Lord Arthur places the capsule in “pretty little silver bonbonnière” (Chapter 3, Paragraph 10)—a fancy box for sweets—before presenting it to Lady Clementina as the “perfect cure” for her heartburn. After a pleasant visit, Lady Clementina promises to take the pill for her next attack, and Lord Arthur departs feeling as though his duty has been done. Later that evening, he explains to Sybil that their wedding needs to be postponed due to a “terrible difficulty” that he must resolve first. Sybil weeps at the news, but Lord Arthur steels himself against his duty. Before he departs for Venice the next morning, he writes a “manly” letter to Sybil’s father explaining the need for a postponement.

As Chapter 4 opens, Lord Arthur is spending two weeks in Venice with his brother. Despite the luxuriousness of the surroundings, Lord Arthur cannot relax and checks the obituaries every day for news of Lady Clementina’s death. His brother convinces him to join an excursion to Ravenna, but Lord Arthur cuts the visit short to return to Venice, where he receives the telegram that informs him of Lady Clementina’s death. He returns to London immediately and is touched that the old woman left him her house and most of her belongings in her will. The date of his wedding with Sybil is once again set. As they go through the items in the house, Sybil discovers the bonbonnière—with the pill still inside it. Lord Arthur is horrified to realize the lady died of natural causes and he is not yet a murderer.

At the beginning of Chapter 5, The marriage is once again postponed, leading Sybil’s parents to wonder whether she should be marrying Lord Arthur at all. For his part, Lord Arthur spends several days reeling with disappointment, before applying himself to his task once again. Since poison had failed to have the desired effect, he turns his attention to an explosive device. He further resolves to target his uncle, the Dean of Chichester, with an exploding clock. To procure the device, Lord Arthur visits Count Rouvaloff, who had been a guest at Lady Windermere’s party in Chapter 1. Although Count Rouvaloff is a Russian aristocrat and moves in the same society circles as Lord Arthur, he is also widely known to be a Nihilist agent with connections to more radical groups. He sends Lord Arthur to meet Herr Winckelkopf, who immediately recognizes him from Lady Windermere’s party as well. Winckelkopf is surprised to find that Lord Arthur is seeking the clock for personal, rather than ideological reasons, but, eager to help a friend of Rouvaloff’s, he makes the necessary arrangements to have the explosive device sent to Chichester.

For several days, Lord Arthur nervously anticipates the news from Chichester, but the day of the planned delivery comes and goes with no reports of an explosion. Herr Winckelkopf is apologetic and even offers to replace the clock at no charge; still, he says to Lord Arthur, the device might still explode belatedly. Two days later, however, even that hope is erased. He reads letter to his mother from his cousin Jane—one of the Dean’s daughters—that contains a lighthearted anecdote about a clock that had been anonymously sent to her father and that emitted a small, ridiculous explosion shortly thereafter. The “alarum clock” now, Jane relates, is kept in the schoolroom, where it continues to make small explosions. She assumes that they are “quite fashionable” in the city, and asks her aunt whether Lord Arthur might like one as a wedding gift. Lord Arthur’s mother cannot understand why this letter has made him so dismayed, and he refuses further conversation about the amusing clock.

The failure of this second murder attempt sends Lord Arthur into despair; he does not understand why he is unable to carry out his duty. He considers breaking off the marriage to Sybil entirely, as his own life no longer has meaning. That evening, he dines at his club, but is in no mood to socialize. He once again stalks dejectedly through London, just as he did the evening he first heard his fortune. Shortly after two o’clock in the morning, Lord Arthur notices Mr. Podgers leaning on a parapet on a bridge over the Thames. Seized with a stroke of inspiration, Lord Arthur throws the man over the side. For several days after, Lord Arthur “alternated between hope and fear” (Chapter 5, Paragraph 45), as he waits for confirmation of Mr. Podgers’s death. That confirmation comes in the form of a newspaper item headlined “Suicide of a Cheiromantist” (Chapter 5, Paragraph 47). Realizing that he has both carried out his duty and gotten away with murder, Lord Arthur immediately rushes to Sybil’s house and declares they should be married the next day.

The wedding, as Chapter 6 relates, takes place some three weeks later and is performed by the Dean of Chichester. Lord Arthur and Sybil enter a life of enduring happiness. Some years later, Lady Windermere visits them and their children. As she and Sybil reminisce about her “lions” from parties past, Lady Windermere brings up Mr. Podgers as one of the most disappointing. It was not so much that he was a “dreadful imposter,” she says, but that he had the temerity to flirt with her. At any rate, she continues, cheiromancy is old news; she is now a devotee of telepathy. Sybil warns Lady Windermere that Lord Arthur takes cheiromancy very seriously. As he joins the conversation, he affirms that he owes to the practice “all the happiness of my life” (Chapter 6, Paragraph 15): that is, his wife. Lady Windermere, however gets the last word: “I never heard such nonsense in all my life” (Chapter 6, Paragraph 18).