The Clerk is the warden of the church at Old Welmingham, where evidence of the forgery that Sir Percival Glyde committed—claiming that his parents were married when they really were not—is stored in the vestry. The Clerk is a talkative, forgetful and slightly pompous old man. He helps Walter Hartright when Walter visits the church to examine the marriage register, which Walter rightly suspects contains Sir Percival’s secret, and is present again during the fire which Sir Percival accidentally starts when he breaks into the vestry to destroy the forgery and in which he is killed.
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The Clerk Character Timeline in The Woman in White
The timeline below shows where the character The Clerk appears in The Woman in White. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Third Epoch: Part 1, Chapter 9
...him in London are posted outside. They do not approach him, however, and Walter finds the clerk ’s house and asks to be shown the vestry. The clerk is a cheerful, talkative...
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...register is left out in the open in the vestry and not locked up, and the clerk replies that there is a second copy of it, kept by a lawyer in the...
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...a page in a space which looks narrower than the entries around it. He asks the clerk for the address of the man who keeps the copy, and the clerk willingly passes...
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The Third Epoch: Part 1, Chapter 10
...to outrun them, escaping across the fields in the direction of the village. He reaches the clerk ’s house and is about to knock on the door, when the clerk bursts out...
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The servant, Walter, and the clerk run to the church. As they approach, they realize that the vestry is on fire....
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...door. They cannot get into the vestry, however; it is totally consumed by the fire. The clerk begs them to “save the church” and the fire engine arrives to put out the...
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