Mr. Gabriel John Utterson

Mr. Utterson is a notary, whose stern face is never covered with a smile. He was a self-contained man, taciturn and awkward in society, lean, dusty, boring, and very likable as well. In the circle of friends, and especially when he liked the wine, a spark of soft humanity began to glow in his eyes, which didn’t find access to his speech. But he spoke not only in these silent centers of the afternoon complacency but also in his affairs.

He was very strict: when he dined alone, he drank the lust for fine wines, drank gin and, fond of dramatic art, didn’t cross the threshold of the theater for more than twenty years. However, to the weaknesses of his neighbors, he showed admirable indulgence, sometimes with envy, he was amazed at the lush cheerfulness that was hidden in their sins, and when the hour of reckoning dawned for them, he preferred to help, not to blame.

Mr. Utterson was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable.

At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human arose from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face but more often and loudly in the acts of his life.

He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theater, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity, he inclined to help rather than to reprove.