Edwin Thurlow

Edwin Thurlow is an Episcopal minister whose earnest commitment to church practice and mild, conciliatory manner define his place in Richard Ellsworth Savage’s adolescence. His religious life offers Richard a model of faith and a path into the Thurlow household; at the same time, Edwin’s regular absences create the circumstances in which Hilda Thurlow and Richard form a private relationship that he does not recognize. The contrast between Edwin’s confidence in religious redemption and the hidden intimacy around him gives his brief appearances a significance beyond his own intentions.

Ministry and Introduction

Edwin ministers at St. Mary’s-by-the-Sea, a small Episcopal chapel in Bay Head. Richard, who has begun attending services and discussing doctrine and ceremony with him, is invited home to dinner. Edwin is presented as gentle and unassuming: when Hilda makes fun of his effort to restore primitive Christianity to the boardwalk, he quietly tells her she ought not speak that way, then reassures Richard that her bark is worse than her bite. His response suggests a husband accustomed to softening his wife’s sharpness rather than confronting it.

The Thurlows’ home is an unpainted bungalow near the station, and it becomes a place Richard seeks out whenever his hotel work allows. He and Edwin share an interest in religious questions, while Hilda mocks Edwin’s ecclesiastical ambitions. Richard is drawn to both the household’s intellectual life and Hilda’s irreverence, though he does not yet know how deeply those attachments will conflict. Edwin’s clerical identity is not merely background: the marriage, the chapel, and the habits of Sunday worship establish the moral setting through which Richard understands what follows.

Absence and the Hidden Affair

On Sunday afternoons, Edwin travels to Elberon to conduct services at another summer chapel. Hilda stays behind and invites Richard for walks or tea. In Edwin’s absence, the two establish a private world in which they talk about him, often making him the object of their jokes. Hilda describes herself and Richard as people who want more from life than people without passion can understand. She speaks of wanting travel, money, smart clothes, and freedom from household duties, and complains about Edwin’s mildness. Richard, who is young and inexperienced, listens while his attraction to her intensifies.

Edwin generally returns on the 10:53 train. On evenings when Richard is free from his hotel job, he and Hilda have supper alone and walk along the beach. Richard becomes preoccupied with these meetings and sometimes resolves not to go, troubled afterward by what they mean to him. One night, while Edwin is away, Hilda and Richard cross a boundary in their relationship. Hilda tells Richard that she does not want to become pregnant and connects that fear with the distance between herself and Edwin. Richard returns to the Bayview shaken. He considers suicide, fears damnation, and is distressed that he cannot remember the Lord’s Prayer.

The next day, Richard works at the hotel desk while turning the episode into a poem about sin and damnation. When he shows it to the Thurlows, Edwin asks where he got such morbid ideas but takes comfort in the poem’s religious ending, believing that faith and the church have triumphed. Hilda laughs and suggests Richard might become a writer. Edwin’s response reveals how differently the three understand the same episode: for him, the poem resolves into a return to faith; for Richard, it is an expression of guilt; and Hilda treats it as material for amusement. The affair continues on later Sundays while Edwin is conducting services elsewhere.

Marriage, Change, and Richard’s Departure

During a later Christmas visit, Richard tries throughout the week to be alone with Hilda. When Edwin leaves to make parochial calls, Richard and Hilda resume their relationship. This time Richard is more self-assured, and the encounter is accompanied by laughter rather than the earlier emphasis on sin. When Edwin returns for supper, he notices their good humor and asks what the joke is. Richard diverts the conversation by telling stories about his aunt and her boarders; the three part at the train amid laughter. Edwin’s question registers the unusual mood, but the scene gives no indication that he understands its cause.

By the time Richard visits Bay Head again, Edwin’s circumstances and marriage appear changed. He has taken an assistant’s position at a wealthy church on Long Island. His concern is now that some parishioners object to chanting and incense, though he takes comfort in their acceptance of candles on the altar. At supper, Richard is unsettled to see Edwin and Hilda holding hands. Alone with Richard, Hilda says that she and Edwin are happy, that she is expecting a baby, and that the past should be left behind. Edwin is not shown making this announcement himself; the reader learns of the changed marriage through Hilda’s account and the gesture Richard witnesses.

Richard responds with bitterness, speaking darkly about death and damnation. Later, in a conversation about religion with the couple, he says he has lost his faith and believes only in Pan and Bacchus. Edwin is startled, while Hilda dismisses the claim as a passing stage of growth. Richard subsequently sends Hilda a poem titled “To a Common Prostitute,” with a postscript declaring his devotion to Beauty and Sin. Edwin’s part in this ending is indirect but important: his apparent reconciliation with Hilda and their expected child mark a new family life, while Richard leaves the relationship feeling rejected and turns his disillusionment into literary defiance.

Character and Narrative Role

Edwin is drawn through a narrow but telling contrast. He is attentive to doctrine, ceremony, and the practical limits of parish life, yet his gentleness also leaves him outside the private exchange between his wife and Richard. The text does not establish that Edwin knows about the affair, and his interpretations of Richard’s poem and laughter instead show the limits of what he perceives. His belief that the church has triumphed over Richard’s morbid thoughts is especially ironic: the poem follows a crisis shaped by the very relationship Edwin fails to see.

The later image of Edwin and Hilda holding hands complicates the earlier portrait of a husband mocked for his mildness. Hilda’s report that they are happy and her pregnancy indicate a substantial change in their marriage, though the account does not explain how that change came about. Edwin therefore functions less as an agent in Richard’s romantic and spiritual crisis than as its unsuspecting center: his Sundays away make the affair possible, his religious confidence gives Richard’s guilt its language, and his renewed closeness with Hilda closes off Richard’s hope of continuing their private bond.