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The Marquis de St. Eustache/Inspector Ratcliffe/Wednesday
The Central Anarchist Committee member nicknamed “Friday” appears to be the elderly German nihilist philosopher Professor de Worms. When Gabriel Syme first meets him, he is so old and senile that he can barely get across a coherent thought or control his own body. Yet after the meeting, he manages to follow Syme around central London for several hours, even as Syme runs away from him as fast as he can. This baffles Syme until the Professor explains himself: he is really an actor and detective named Wilks, who has spent several years professionally impersonating the Professor. (However, the narrator continues to mostly call him “The Professor.”) Wilks’s disguise is extremely believable—in fact, he began wearing it full-time after he convinced an audience of the Professor’s students and supporters that he was the real Professor, and the real Professor was an impostor. Ever since, Wilks has adopted many of the Professor’s mannerisms even when he is not consciously in character. This breakdown in the relationship between actor and role is one of the clearest ways in which the novel asks whether people can know what their true identities really are. The Professor is the first of the other anarchists to tell Syme that he’s really a detective, and the two men work together to try and sabotage Sunday’s assassination plans throughout the second half of the novel. At the end of the book, Wilks wears a purple suit that represents God creating birds and sea creatures on the fifth day.
The Professor de Worms/Wilks/Friday Quotes in The Man Who Was Thursday
The The Man Who Was Thursday quotes below are all either spoken by The Professor de Worms/Wilks/Friday or refer to The Professor de Worms/Wilks/Friday. 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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Chapter 7 Quotes
Every movement of the old man’s tottering figure and vague hands, every uncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put it beyond question that he was helpless, that he was in the last imbecility of the body. He moved by inches, he let himself down with little gasps of caution. And yet, unless the philosophical entities called time and space have no vestige even of a practical existence, it appeared quite unquestionable that he had run after the omnibus.
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Chapter 8 Quotes
Syme had for a flash the sensation that the cosmos had turned exactly upside down, that all the trees were growing downwards and that all stars were under his feet. Then came slowly the opposite conviction. For the last twenty-four hours the cosmos had really been upside down, but now the capsized universe had come right side up again. The devil from whom he had been fleeing all day was only an elder brother of his own house, who on the other side of the table lay back and laughed at him.
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Chapter 12 Quotes
The next instant the automobile had come with a catastrophic jar against an iron object. The instant after that four men had crawled out from under a chaos of metal, and a tall lean lamp-post that had stood up straight on the edge of the marine parade stood out, bent and twisted, like the branch of a broken tree.
“Well, we smashed something,” said the Professor, with a faint smile. “That’s some comfort.”
“You’re becoming an anarchist,” said Syme, dusting his clothes with his instinct of daintiness.
“Everyone is,” said Ratcliffe.
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Chapter 13 Quotes
“I confess that I should feel a bit afraid of asking Sunday who he really is.”
“Why?” asked the Secretary; “for fear of bombs?”
“No,” said the Professor, “for fear he might tell me.”
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Chapter 14 Quotes
“Have you noticed an odd thing,” he said, “about all your descriptions? Each man of you finds Sunday quite different, yet each man of you can only find one thing to compare him to—the universe itself. Bull finds him like the earth in spring, Gogol like the sun at noonday. The Secretary is reminded of the shapeless protoplasm, and the Inspector of the carelessness of virgin forests. The Professor says he is like a changing landscape. This is queer, but it is queerer still that I also have had my odd notion about the President, and I also find that I think of Sunday as I think of the whole world.”
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The Professor de Worms/Wilks/Friday Character Timeline in The Man Who Was Thursday
The timeline below shows where the character The Professor de Worms/Wilks/Friday appears in The Man Who Was Thursday. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: The Feast of Fear
...de St. Eustache, looks too at home in his luxurious clothes, like a sinister tyrant. Friday, the Professor de Worms , is a senile old man who seems to be decaying from his very corruption....
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Chapter 7: The Unaccountable Conduct of Professor de Worms
...it starts to snow. He sees a wax doll in a barbershop window, then notices the filthy, snow-covered Professor de Worms staring intently at it. He wonders whether the Professor is enamored with the doll, or...
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...to Fleet Street, about a mile, then pops into a tea shop for a coffee. The Professor staggers in right after him and orders milk. Syme drops his walking-stick in surprise, but...
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...the snow-covered cathedral dome and decides to confront his pursuer. He turns around and watches the Professor hobble toward him—and then right past him, without acknowledging him or blinking an eye. Syme...
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Chapter 8: The Professor Explains
In the pub, the Professor de Worms sits down right across from Gabriel Syme. Syme downs his beer and wonders what the...
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“That’s a pity,” replies the Professor , “because I am.” He jokes that he should arrest Syme, then pulls out a...
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Even though three of them were policemen, the Professor laments, they still couldn’t have taken on Sunday—who, they both agree, is frightening and must...
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...in the police, and then the other man explains that he’s really an actor named Wilks. There is a real Professor de Worms, a nihilist philosopher from Germany. In fact, Wilks...
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Chapter 9: The Man in Spectacles
Even though Wilks has revealed his true identity, he still drinks his wine slowly and sorrowfully, like the...
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When he wakes up in the morning, Syme trusts the Professor entirely, but he dreads the dangers he knows they must face together. When Syme asks...
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The Professor very slowly tells Dr. Bull that he has important news about their plans in Paris—but...
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Syme starts signing to the Professor that he’s had an important, poetic intuition—but the Professor tells him not to say anything,...
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Syme, the Professor , and Dr. Bull descend to the street. They point out that, between them and...
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Chapter 10: The Duel
Syme, Dr. Bull, and the Professor sit and share a bottle of wine at the café in Calais. Syme gets drunk...
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Syme walks back to his table, where he tells the Professor and Dr. Bull that they have to insist on scheduling the duel for the next...
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...men take their swords, remove their coats, and start fighting. Syme remembers how he feared the Professor and Dr. Bull before realizing they were policemen—but this doesn’t compare to the fear of...
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...make his train, but Dr. Bull and Syme declare that he won’t be taking it. The Professor announces that the Marquis will set off a bomb if he boards the train. But...
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Chapter 11: The Criminals Chase the Police
...anyone is really who they appear to be at all. After all, Syme’s enemies ( the Professor , Dr. Bull, and the Marquis) have all turned out to be his friends. And...
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Chapter 12: The Earth in Anarchy
The Professor hears the sound of Dr. Renard’s other two cars, which are speeding at them, full...
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Syme wants to ram the car into the crowd, Dr. Bull wants to wait, and the Professor wants to go back. But the rest of the army is fast catching up on...
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...to the inn is in the crowd. “We are the last of humankind,” laments Ratcliffe. The Professor quotes a verse about the end of the world from Alexander Pope’s Dunciad. The men...
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Chapter 13: The Pursuit of the President
...taking off with the President inside. He throws down one last note, this time for the Professor , commenting on his beauty. The detectives chase after the balloon.
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Chapter 14: The Six Philosophers
...trait in an evil person. Gogol says he doesn’t think about Sunday at all. And the Professor says that Sunday’s face is “too large and loose”—it seems to constantly change, and it...
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...sink down into the forest. Gogol announces that the President is dead, but the Secretary, the Professor , and Dr. Bull disagree. Syme leads them toward the balloon. A large, old man...
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Chapter 15: The Accuser
...lampposts and ships. They find a set of seven chairs, where Gogol, Dr. Bull, and the Professor are already waiting for them. Gogol’s silver dress represents the separation of the waters on...
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