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Henry Miles
Richard Smythe is an atheist who regularly goes to a public park to speak to passersby about the nonexistence of God and passes out cards with his sister, Miss Smythe, inviting people to talk privately with him in his apartment. Sarah hears him talk one day and feels bad for him because everyone throws his cards away. She keeps a card and later decides to go talk to him, hoping that if he talks her out of believing in God, then she can break her promise to God not to be with Bendrix anymore. Sarah starts going to Smythe’s house regularly, but instead of convincing her that God doesn’t exist, he accidentally makes her believe in God even more. At their final meeting, Sarah tells Smythe that she comes to listen him just because she likes him and he proposes marriage, which she refuses. Smythe also has a peculiar set of spots on one of his cheeks, and he very self-consciously tries to hide that cheek when talking to people. After Sarah’s death, the spots miraculously disappear and Smythe tries to tell Bendrix that it was a miracle, but Bendrix refuses to admit it’s more than a coincidence. It would seem that Smythe, like Bendrix, begins believing in God after Sarah’s death.
Richard Smythe Quotes in The End of the Affair
The The End of the Affair quotes below are all either spoken by Richard Smythe or refer to Richard Smythe. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 5, Chapter 1 Quotes
I though, I’ve got to be careful. I mustn’t be like Richard Smythe, I mustn’t hate, for if I were really to hate I would believe, and if I were to believe, what a triumph for You and her. This is to play act, talking about revenge and jealousy: it’s just something to fill the brain with, so that I can forget the absoluteness of her death. […] She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
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‘Oh, she doesn’t belong to anybody now,’ he said, and suddenly I saw her for what she was—a piece of refuse waiting to be cleared away: if you needed a bit of hair you could take it, or trim her nails if nail trimmings had value to you. Like a saint’s her bones could be divided up—if anybody required them. She was going to be burnt soon, so why shouldn’t everybody have what he wanted first? What a fool I had been during three years to imagine that in any way I had possessed her. We are possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves.
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Richard Smythe Character Timeline in The End of the Affair
The timeline below shows where the character Richard Smythe appears in The End of the Affair. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 2, Chapter 6
...the story, Bendrix says that Mr. Parkis’s next report revealed that Sarah was seeing a Richard Smythe and his sister, Miss Smythe. Bendrix decides he has to see Richard Smythe for...
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Book 2, Chapter 7
The next day Bendrix takes Lance to Cedar Road to try to see Richard Smythe. Bendrix instructs Lance to pretend to be sick, and they walk up to Smythe’s...
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Richard looks closely at Bendrix and Lance before proclaiming that he’s seen Lance around somewhere. Bendrix...
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Book 3, Chapter 5
...that while she was cleaning out an old purse, she found a business card for Richard Smythe with an address for those who wanted to visit him. Sarah writes that she...
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Sarah asked Richard how she should decide what to do if love didn’t really exist. Although Richard claimed...
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...contemplated whether God had a material body or was just a vapour, she thought about Richard and the fact that he “hated a fable.” She thought about how Richard hated the...
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Book 3, Chapter 7
...Pontefract Arms but that he didn’t see her. Sarah writes that she had been at Richard’s, trying to understand his arguments but instead gaining an increased sense of belief in God....
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...“that wasn’t me, me, me.” Instead, Sarah tried to think about the “awful spots on Richard’s cheek” and Henry’s tear-stained face. In her prayer, Sarah begged God to “Teach [her] to...
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On February 6, 1946 Sarah records a “terrible scene” she had with Richard. Richard noticed that Sarah was distracted and asked her, “What do you come here for?”...
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Book 5, Chapter 1
...answers in the affirmative, but in his mind Bendrix warns himself not to hate like Richard Smythe, because if he “were really to hate [he] would believe.”
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...himself that he is capable of falling in love with anyone else. While Bendrix eats, Richard Smythe is shown into the room. When Richard says that he’s come to offer help...
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Richard asks to see Sarah’s body, so Bendrix points him in the direction of the spare...
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Richard asks Bendrix if he knows that Sarah wrote to him. This makes Bendrix remember, with...
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Book 5, Chapter 8
...well, so he goes for a walk in the park. At the park, Bendrix notices Richard Smythe in a crowd in front of a street performer. Bendrix approaches Richard and asks...
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While Henry is getting his shoes on, the phone rings. Bendrix runs to get it himself—Richard Smythe is on the other end and anxiously reveals that he lied about how his...
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...Bertram saved him from having dinner with Sylvia, the story about Lance and Sarah’s book, Richard’s cheek, and Sarah’s childhood baptism. Despite all of this, Bendrix thinks that he has a...
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