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Professor Pesca
Mr. Gilmore is the Fairlie family’s lawyer and has been with the family for a long time, since Laura Fairlie was a child. He is in charge of arranging the Laura’s marriage settlement during her engagement to Sir Percival Glyde. He is charged with helping Laura to organize her will and decide to whom she will leave her inheritance: the thirty thousand pounds she will receive when she comes of age, and Limmeridge House, which she will become heir to in the event of Mr. Fairlie’s death. Mr. Gilmore is a kindly and decent man who wants the best for Laura and Marian. At first, he is taken in by Sir Percival Glyde and believes that he is a noble, honest man who Laura should be grateful to marry. Mr. Gilmore is a little conservative and old fashioned in his outlook and thinks that Laura is perhaps just being capricious or teasing Sir Percival when she insists on postponing the wedding. However, once Mr. Gilmore has spoken to Laura, and sees how genuinely upset the prospect of this marriage makes her, he feels very sorry for her and wishes that there was something he could do to help. When Mr. Gilmore draws up Laura’s marriage settlement and sends it to Mr. Merriman, Sir Percival’s lawyer, he is concerned about the reply he gets. He comes to believe that Sir Percival is marrying Laura for her money and that her life may be in danger. He goes to speak to Mr. Fairlie and insists that he cancel the wedding, but Mr. Fairlie is characteristically unfeeling and dismisses the lawyer, who leaves in a rage. Ultimately, there is nothing he can do since Laura herself agrees to the wedding in and end. Mr. Gilmore becomes ill shortly after this and is replaced by Mr. Kyrle as the Fairlie’s lawyer.
Mr. Gilmore Quotes in The Woman in White
The The Woman in White quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Gilmore or refer to Mr. Gilmore. 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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The First Epoch: Part 2, Chapter 1
Quotes
It is the great beauty of the Law that it can dispute any human statement, made under any circumstances, and reduced to any form. If I had felt professionally called upon to set up a case against Sir Percival Glyde, on the strength of his own explanation, I could have done so beyond all doubt. But my duty did not lie in this direction: my function was of the purely judicial kind. I was to weigh the explanation we had just heard; to allow all due force to the high reputation of the gentleman who offered it; and to decide honestly whether the probabilities, on Sir Percival’s own showing, were plainly with him, or plainly against him. My own conviction was that they were plainly with him; and I accordingly declared that his explanation was, to my mind, unquestionably a satisfactory one.
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The First Epoch: Part 2, Chapter 3
Quotes
As matters stood, my client – Miss Fairlie not having yet completed her twenty-first year – was her guardian, Mr. Frederick Fairlie. I wrote by that day’s post and put the case before him exactly as it stood; not only urging every argument I could think of to induce him to maintain the clause as I had drawn it, but stating to him plainly the mercenary motive which was at the bottom of the opposition to my settlement of the twenty thousand pounds. The knowledge of Sir Percival’s affairs which I had necessarily gained when the provisions of the deed on his side were submitted in due course to my examination, had but too plainly informed me that the debts on his estate were enormous, and that his income, though nominally a large one, was, virtually, for a man in his position, next to nothing.
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Mr. Gilmore Quotes in The Woman in White
The The Woman in White quotes below are all either spoken by Mr. Gilmore or refer to Mr. Gilmore. 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:
).
The First Epoch: Part 2, Chapter 1
Quotes
It is the great beauty of the Law that it can dispute any human statement, made under any circumstances, and reduced to any form. If I had felt professionally called upon to set up a case against Sir Percival Glyde, on the strength of his own explanation, I could have done so beyond all doubt. But my duty did not lie in this direction: my function was of the purely judicial kind. I was to weigh the explanation we had just heard; to allow all due force to the high reputation of the gentleman who offered it; and to decide honestly whether the probabilities, on Sir Percival’s own showing, were plainly with him, or plainly against him. My own conviction was that they were plainly with him; and I accordingly declared that his explanation was, to my mind, unquestionably a satisfactory one.
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The First Epoch: Part 2, Chapter 3
Quotes
As matters stood, my client – Miss Fairlie not having yet completed her twenty-first year – was her guardian, Mr. Frederick Fairlie. I wrote by that day’s post and put the case before him exactly as it stood; not only urging every argument I could think of to induce him to maintain the clause as I had drawn it, but stating to him plainly the mercenary motive which was at the bottom of the opposition to my settlement of the twenty thousand pounds. The knowledge of Sir Percival’s affairs which I had necessarily gained when the provisions of the deed on his side were submitted in due course to my examination, had but too plainly informed me that the debts on his estate were enormous, and that his income, though nominally a large one, was, virtually, for a man in his position, next to nothing.
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