David Dirry-Moir

David Dirry-Moir moves between courtship, court surveillance, and aristocratic confrontation. First presented as a courtier to Duchess Josiana and an officer of the fleet, he becomes a conspicuous defender of Gwynplaine when the peers ridicule him. That defense does not settle their relationship: David then confronts Gwynplaine over an insult to his mother, and the exchange reveals that they are brothers.

Identity and Position

David holds the title of Lord and serves as an officer of the fleet. At the time of the parliamentary confrontation, he is also described as a possible heir to a peerage, a position that gives him a place near the hereditary aristocracy without making him one of the peers whose conduct he later challenges. His costume marks his own public identity: while the peers wear white-plumed hats, he wears one with green plumes tipped in orange, and his richly ornamented clothes carry the anchors associated with his naval office.

His standing is therefore both social and institutional. He belongs sufficiently to the world of rank to address the peers as one of their order, yet he does not accept their authority to decide what deserves respect. The contrast becomes important when he steps between them and Gwynplaine: David speaks from within aristocratic society while condemning the behavior by which that society protects its own dignity.

Courtship and Surveillance

David and Josiana share a public life shaped by an impending marriage. Josiana leads an almost princely existence, keeping something like a court; David is among its courtiers. Because they are engaged, they can appear together without provoking ridicule. They often travel in the same carriage to plays and racecourses and sit together in the same box. Their companionship is genuine, but the marriage hanging over them is not simply their private choice: it has been permitted and imposed upon them. They remain attracted to each other’s company while refraining from crossing a boundary that the narrative presents as a matter of decorum.

Their apparent openness has a concealed counterpart. Josiana arranges for Barkilphedro, a trusted dependent, to watch David discreetly, while David also has Josiana observed through Barkilphedro. Queen Anne secretly keeps informed about both of them through the same courtier. Barkilphedro thus occupies an unusual position between the couple and the sovereign, carrying knowledge across a network in which intimacy and political attention overlap. David’s relationship with Josiana is not presented as wholly private, even when the two are together in public.

Josiana’s small gesture as she leaves—taking David’s arm—is tolerated because they are engaged. It reinforces how their visible closeness operates within the formal permissions of their expected marriage. The relationship combines attraction and constraint: they seek each other’s company, but their future union is already bound up with dynastic arrangements and watched by others.

Defense of Gwynplaine

After Gwynplaine speaks in the House of Lords and the peers mock him, David waits at the exit and blocks the young lords from leaving. His appearance is deliberately unlike theirs, but he uses his social standing to address them directly. He concedes that Gwynplaine’s speech was confused and poorly delivered; he does not pretend that its form was polished. Instead, he insists that some of its claims were true, particularly its account of the lepers at Burton Lazars, and argues that an inexperienced speaker should not be judged by standards reserved for practiced orators.

David’s defense is also an attack on the audience. He rebukes the peers for treating Gwynplaine’s appearance and laughter as grounds for contempt, and turns their ridicule back on their own pretensions, education, and manner of speaking. He distinguishes the substance of Gwynplaine’s argument from its imperfect presentation and condemns the group for jeering at a man whose misfortune is not his fault. In doing so, he refuses the easy solidarity of rank: the newcomer may have spoken awkwardly, but the peers’ collective response, in David’s view, is worse.

He makes his protest personal by challenging the assembled nobles to duels. Naming himself as David Dirry-Moir and identifying his naval office, he calls on the men present to appoint seconds and umpires and offers to meet them under the conditions they choose. The breadth of the challenge gives the scene its force: he is not merely offering sympathy to Gwynplaine but placing himself in open conflict with the group that has humiliated him. David also says that the return of the inheritance to its heir is a beautiful reversal, whether or not it affects his own interests. His defense therefore recognizes Gwynplaine’s restored standing even as it challenges the peers’ response to him.

The Disclosure of Kinship

Gwynplaine emerges from the shadows and tells David that the matter is his own. David turns from the peers to confront him, referring to Gwynplaine’s earlier words about a woman who had loved Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie, and later Charles II. Gwynplaine confirms that this was true. David takes the reference as an insult to his mother.

Gwynplaine then realizes what the accusation implies and begins to recognize a closer connection between them. David confirms it: they are brothers. The revelation changes the meaning of the encounter without erasing its conflict. Moments earlier David had stood up for Gwynplaine against a hostile group; now he treats Gwynplaine as an equal with whom he can demand satisfaction. He strikes him and promises to send seconds for a fight the next day. The brotherhood brings them onto equal footing in David’s account, but it immediately becomes the basis for a personal challenge rather than a reconciliation.

Narrative Role

David’s intervention makes him a counterpoint to the peers’ collective mockery. He can acknowledge the weaknesses in Gwynplaine’s speech while defending its truths, and he regards the return of Gwynplaine’s inheritance as a just and striking change in status. His words expose a difference between possessing rank and behaving honorably: David’s aristocratic position does not prevent him from condemning the other nobles, and his challenge puts that condemnation into action.

The sudden disclosure of kinship then complicates his role. David is at once Gwynplaine’s defender in public and his antagonist in the intimate dispute over their mother. The scene links inheritance, family history, and peerage to the conduct of the men who claim authority through rank. David recognizes Gwynplaine as an equal, but the recognition arrives through anger and a proposed duel. His appearance at the threshold thus marks both a defense of the newly restored heir and the beginning of a conflict between the brothers.