Sir Simon de Canterville and the Otis family

The conflict between Sir Simon de Canterville and the Otis family turns the old rituals of haunting into a contest between inherited fear and modern practicality. Sir Simon arrives with centuries of supernatural reputation, but the Otises meet his chains with lubricant, his bloodstain with detergent, and his appearances with jokes and traps. Their exchanges first reduce his power to a comic nuisance; ultimately, Virginia Otis’s compassion changes the terms of the encounter, bringing his hidden history to light and making reconciliation possible.

Origins of the Conflict

When Hiram B. Otis buys Canterville Chase, he is warned that the estate is haunted. Lord Canterville explains that his family has avoided living there after a skeleton-handed apparition frightened the Dowager Duchess of Bolton into a lasting fit. He adds that servants had refused to stay, that Lady Canterville lost sleep over noises from the corridor and library, and that the ghost had been seen by family members and the parish rector. The sale therefore brings the Otis family into a house where the haunting is already part of both family history and domestic life.

Hiram B. Otis does not accept the warning as a reason to withdraw. He treats the ghost as something that could be bought along with the furniture, and jokes that a genuine European ghost would soon be exhibited in a museum or touring as a show in America. Lord Canterville counters that the ghost has been known for three centuries, since 1584, and appears before a family member’s death. Hiram B. Otis answers that natural laws will not be suspended for British aristocracy. Their disagreement sets the pattern for what follows: Lord Canterville speaks from inherited experience, while the new owner treats supernatural claims as a challenge to modern common sense.

The family’s first encounter with the house’s past is the bloodstain in the library. Mrs. Umney identifies it as the blood of Lady Eleanore de Canterville, murdered there by her husband, Sir Simon de Canterville, in 1575. She says Sir Simon survived her by nine years, disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and has continued to haunt the estate; she also insists that tourists admire the stain and that it cannot be removed. Washington Otis immediately tests that claim with Pinkerton’s Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent, scrubbing the floor until the stain vanishes. A flash of lightning and a peal of thunder follow, but Hiram B. Otis calmly treats the disturbance as bad weather rather than as proof of a ghost.

Practical Remedies Meet the Haunting

The stain’s return turns the first cleaning into a recurring contest. It reappears the next morning, returns after Washington has tried the detergent again, and is there even after Hiram B. Otis locks the library and takes the key upstairs. The family’s certainty begins to shift: Hiram B. Otis suspects he may have been too dogmatic, Mrs. Otis considers joining the Psychical Society, and Washington prepares a letter about the permanence of bloodstains associated with crime. Yet the repeated appearance does not restore the stain’s old power over the household. Its colors change from dull red to vermilion, purple, and even emerald green; the family makes bets about its color, while Virginia Otis alone remains distressed by it.

Sir Simon’s first direct encounter with Hiram B. Otis makes the mismatch between their expectations explicit. At one o’clock, Hiram hears chains and footsteps in the corridor, opens his door, and sees the ghost in the moonlight, wearing manacles and rusty gyves. Rather than flee, he offers him a bottle of Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator and explains that it is intended to quiet the chains. He leaves it on a marble table and goes back to bed. Sir Simon, affronted, throws the bottle down and flees, only to meet two of the Otis twins, who appear in white robes and throw a pillow at him. He escapes through the wainscoting. What should have been a display of terrifying authority instead becomes a chain of practical intervention and comic retreat.

The next morning, Hiram B. Otis objects that throwing pillows at the ghost was impolite, though the twins laugh at the rebuke. He also makes clear that if the ghost will not use the lubricant, the family may have to take away his chains because their noise disturbs the household’s sleep. This response reframes the haunting as a problem of noise and domestic convenience. Sir Simon’s traditional signs of menace are not ignored so much as assigned a practical remedy.

The second appearance escalates the physical comedy without restoring the ghost’s advantage. After a suit of old armour falls in the hall, Sir Simon is found seated in a chair and rubbing his knees. The twins fire pea-shooter pellets at him while Hiram B. Otis covers him with a revolver and orders him to raise his hands. Sir Simon passes through the family like a mist, extinguishing Washington Otis’s candle and leaving them in darkness. He then tries to recover his authority with a celebrated laugh, but Mrs. Otis comes out in a light blue dressing-gown carrying Doctor Dobell’s tincture in case he has indigestion. As the twins approach, he abandons his plan to become a large black dog and vanishes with a groan. Again, an attempt at supernatural intimidation is answered as though it were a household ailment.

Escalation, Humiliation, and Retreat

The twins’ tricks turn the house’s corridors into part of the conflict. Strings are stretched across the passage, and a butter-slide runs from the entrance of the Tapestry Chamber to the top of the oak staircase. Sir Simon trips on it while dressed as Black Isaac, suffering a fall that convinces him he must make one last effort to defend his dignity. He chooses the elaborate persona of Reckless Rupert, or the Headless Earl, a disguise that takes three hours to prepare. The boots are too large and he can find only one of the two horse-pistols, but he nevertheless enters the corridor at a quarter-past one and tries to make an effective appearance at the twins’ bedroom. A heavy jug of water falls on him, missing his shoulder by inches, and the twins’ stifled laughter sends him fleeing. The next day he is laid up with a severe cold.

Sir Simon eventually gives up hope of frightening the family. He retreats to moving about in slippers, wearing a red muffler and carrying an arquebuse in case the twins attack. His final nocturnal attempt comes on September 19, when he visits the entrance hall dressed as Jonas the Graveless, carrying a lantern and sexton’s spade. While heading toward the library to see whether any trace of the bloodstain remains, he is startled by two figures who leap out and shout “BOO!” Washington Otis waits by the staircase with a garden syringe, leaving Sir Simon hemmed in. He escapes through an unlit iron stove and makes his way back to his room through the flues and chimneys.

After this encounter, Sir Simon undertakes no further nocturnal expeditions. The twins continue to lie in wait and scatter nutshells in the passages, but he does not appear. The family resumes its ordinary routines, and Hiram B. Otis writes to Lord Canterville that the ghost seems to have gone away. The report is a mistaken account of the conflict’s end: Sir Simon has withdrawn from the night-time contest, but his history and suffering remain concealed within the house.

Hidden History and Reconciliation

Virginia Otis changes the relationship between Sir Simon and the family by going beyond their repeated practical confrontations. When she returns after being missing, she tells her family that she has been with the ghost, that he is dead, and that he was sorry for his actions. She also says he gave her a box of jewels before he died. Virginia then leads the family through an opening in the wainscoting and down a narrow secret corridor to a low, vaulted room with a tiny grated window. There they find Sir Simon’s gaunt skeleton chained to an iron ring in the wall, its fingers stretched toward a trencher and ewer placed just beyond reach. The ewer is coated inside with green mould, and the trencher holds only dust. This discovery reveals why Sir Simon’s ghost had remained: the apparent haunting was bound to the undisclosed circumstances of his death and his confinement.

Virginia kneels beside the skeleton and prays silently while the family looks on. Her response contrasts with the family’s earlier treatment of the ghost as an inconvenience or target. The conflict is no longer a contest over whether the supernatural can be disproved, cleaned away, or outwitted; Virginia’s compassion and prayer accompany the disclosure of the tragedy and Sir Simon’s release. His gift of jewels marks the personal connection formed between them, and his reported remorse gives the family a reason to understand him as more than the frightening figure of the old stories.

Jewels, Ownership, and the Conflict’s Legacy

After Sir Simon’s death and burial, the encounter continues in a different form: Hiram B. Otis and Lord Canterville dispute who should keep the jewels given to Virginia. The gems are magnificent, including a ruby necklace in an old Venetian setting, and their value troubles Hiram B. Otis. He argues that English mortmain applies to ornaments as well as land and that the jewels should be family heirlooms. He asks Lord Canterville to take them to London, presenting their return as appropriate to the family’s property claim and as consistent with the Otises’ Republican simplicity. He is especially willing to let Virginia keep the old, damaged box as a memento of an unfortunate ancestor.

Lord Canterville refuses to take the jewels. He says that Virginia rendered Sir Simon an important service and that his family owes her a debt of gratitude. He also argues that the jewels cannot be established as heirlooms without a will or legal document, and that their existence was unknown. Finally, he invokes the terms of the purchase: Hiram B. Otis bought the furniture and the ghost at a valuation, and anything belonging to Sir Simon passed with the purchase because, in law, he was dead. The exchange sets formal property arguments beside family custom and personal gratitude; Lord Canterville’s decision allows Virginia to retain the gift.

The jewels remain with Virginia, who wears them when she is presented at court as the young Duchess of Cheshire in the spring of 1890. Her marriage to Cecil, Duke of Cheshire, carries the story beyond the original confrontation, while Hiram B. Otis’s theoretical objection to aristocratic titles survives even as he walks proudly with his daughter at her wedding. The conflict thus leaves a double legacy: the haunting ends through an act of compassion rather than a victory over the supernatural, and the dispute over the ghost’s possessions brings the old family past into a new relationship between the Otises and the Cantervilles.