Toby Esterhase
Encyclopedia
Toby Esterhase is a fictional character in John le Carré
's George Smiley
spy novels including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
; The Honourable Schoolboy
; and Smiley's People
, as well as some of the stories in The Secret Pilgrim
.
He is a high-ranking officer in "The Circus" (the British Secret Intelligence Service
), eventually becoming head of "lamplighters."
, possibly a scion of the famous Esterhazy
family. George Smiley
recruited him in Vienna
, when he was a starving student living in the ruins of a museum of which his dead uncle had been curator.
He eventually rose to be head of the Lamplighter division (the Circus name for a host of covert "service" personnel, whose duties include covert surveillance, courier deliveries, and maintaining safe house
s).
At the time of Tinker, Tailor, Esterhase has a son at Westminster
and a daughter at medical school. He is married, but has a reputation as a womaniser.
When the Circus became polarised between supporters of the ailing Chief, "Control," and his rival, Percy Alleline
, Esterhase gravitated towards Alleline out of ambition, forgetting his past loyalty to Smiley, who was Control's supporter. Along with Alleline, Bill Haydon
, and Roy Bland
, Esterhase forms part of the "magic circle" with access to the marvelous Soviet intelligence code-named "Witchcraft," supplied by the mysterious "Source Merlin."
Esterhase is one of the five high-ranking Circus officers Control suspects of being a Soviet mole
. After Control's death, Esterhase embraces the new Alleline regime and allows his lamplighters to be almost entirely given over to serving Operation Witchcraft, which is in fact nothing but a disinformation campaign orchestrated by Soviet spymaster Karla
. Esterhase's own role is to pretend to be a Soviet mole when meeting with the Soviets. They know he is not, of course, but his pretense provides a cover story for Alleline, Bland, and Esterhase himself, justifying his role as a courier between the real mole, Haydon, and his Soviet controllers.
After patient investigation, Smiley decides to interview Esterhase in private, explaining to him how Karla has fooled them all into providing cover for his own mole's activities. Esterhase appears disbelieving, but professes himself willing to help when he realises that Smiley has the official backing of Whitehall
and realises the implications of his having been the courier for sealed packets, whose contents he has not seen, to the Soviet agents. He tells Smiley enough about the contact procedures for Operation Witchcraft for Smiley to entrap the real mole, Bill Haydon. In the aftermath of Haydon's exposure, Esterhase and the rest of the magic circle are disgraced.
In The Honourable Schoolboy, it is revealed that Esterhase, unlike Alleline and Bland, has managed to retain a position in the Circus, albeit one much more humble than his former one. Partially this may be explained by his (cosmetic) switch of loyalty to Smiley's side just before the mole's exposure, and partially by the fact that his expertise is more technical than Alleline's or Bland's, and thus has not been rendered completely useless by Haydon's treachery.
In Smiley's People, he has retired from the Circus and opened a second-rate art gallery in London, whose wares are of dubious provenance. An old Circus agent, Vladimir, approaches him, asking for help with a private operation, but Esterhase refuses adamantly. When Vladimir is later killed, Esterhase somewhat shamefacedly recounts their meeting to Smiley.
When Vladimir's death leads Smiley to a possible means of trapping Karla, he recruits Esterhase for an espionage operation in Berne
, to capture and interrogate one of Karla's agents. Esterhase serves as Smiley's field commander, overseeing the agents who follow, investigate, and eventually trap the Soviet spy in question—to use Smiley's theatrical analogy, Smiley writes the show, and Esterhase produces it—a job he performs superbly. He is also with Smiley in Berlin
when Karla defects
to the West and surrenders himself to Circus custody.
Esterhase also appears in a rather farcical vignette from The Secret Pilgrim, placed in the mid-1970s at some time after the events of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In it, Esterhase gets rid of a charlatan—an exiled Hungarian professor based in Frankfurt
, who provides the British with virtually worthless information—by successfully convincing the Americans that he is a dauntless anti-Communist hero.
called him "Tiny Toby"), stiff-backed man, with silvery hair and a crisp, unfriendly jaw; he rarely smiles. Peter Guillam
once remarked to himself that he and Esterhase shared a hotel room in Berne for three months during an operation, at the end of which he knew Esterhase no better than he did on the first day.
Bill Haydon
called him "Our shadow foreign secretary," while the MI6 security functionaries known as "the Janitors" called him "Snow White
" because of his hair.
A snob, and something of a dandy, Esterhase knows the places to eat and "be seen," washes his own clothes, and wears a hair net over his trademark mane. Smiley reflects that Esterhase tries hard to be an English gentleman rather than a Hungarian, with sometimes comical results.
Both Guillam and Ned (the narrator of The Secret Pilgrim) sum up Esterhase's character by saying that at certain times they want nothing to do with Esterhase, while at others they are glad to have him by their side. On the one hand, Esterhase is an ambitious "climber," who will grasp any means to advance his own position or else avoid any embarrassment to himself. On the other hand, Esterhase is undeniably good at his work, and a definite asset to any intelligence operation, while he also retains some honest loyalty to the institution of the Circus, and some honest affection for Smiley, who rescued him from a life of poverty.
As noted by Ned in The Secret Pilgrim, though he had lived much of his life away from Hungary, when Esterhase is in the company of other Hungarians and speaking his mother tongue with them, he seems far more vivid than Ned ever saw him before.
Though never explicitly referred to, the character's name is clearly drawn from the well-known Hungarian aristocratic House of Esterházy.
played Esterhase in the BBC television dramatizations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. In the former he played Esterhase as a typical Englishman with a mostly standard/educated accent. In Smiley's People he adopted a more Eastern European accent.
BBC later dramatized both novels for radio; in these, Charles Kay
appeared in the role of Esterhase.
In the 2011 film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
the character is played by David Dencik
.
John le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...
's George Smiley
George Smiley
George Smiley is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Smiley is an intelligence officer working for MI6 , the British overseas intelligence agency...
spy novels including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a 1974 British spy novel by John le Carré, featuring George Smiley. Smiley is a middle-aged, taciturn, perspicacious intelligence expert in forced retirement. He is recalled to hunt down a Soviet mole in the "Circus", the highest echelon of the Secret Intelligence...
; The Honourable Schoolboy
The Honourable Schoolboy
The Honourable Schoolboy is a spy novel by John le Carré. George Smiley tries to reconstruct an intelligence service and to run a successful offensive espionage operation to save the service from falling to the "war hawks" in government...
; and Smiley's People
Smiley's People
Smiley's People is a spy novel by John le Carré, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy George Smiley, it is the third and final novel of the "Karla Trilogy", following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy...
, as well as some of the stories in The Secret Pilgrim
The Secret Pilgrim
The Secret Pilgrim is a 1990 novel, set within the frame narrative of a series of lectures by John le Carré's George Smiley, famous only within the 'Circus'. The memoirs, narrated by Ned, a former pupil of Smiley's, are, except for the last, triggered by tangential Smiley comments in lectures given...
.
He is a high-ranking officer in "The Circus" (the British Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
), eventually becoming head of "lamplighters."
History
Esterhase is HungarianHungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, possibly a scion of the famous Esterhazy
Esterházy
The House of Esterházy was a Hungarian noble family in Hungary beginning in the Middle Ages. From the 17th century they were among the great landowner magnates of the Kingdom of Hungary, during the time it was part of the Habsburg Empire and later Austria-Hungary.-History:The Esterházys arose...
family. George Smiley
George Smiley
George Smiley is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Smiley is an intelligence officer working for MI6 , the British overseas intelligence agency...
recruited him in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, when he was a starving student living in the ruins of a museum of which his dead uncle had been curator.
He eventually rose to be head of the Lamplighter division (the Circus name for a host of covert "service" personnel, whose duties include covert surveillance, courier deliveries, and maintaining safe house
Safe house
In the jargon of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, a safe house is a secure location, suitable for hiding witnesses, agents or other persons perceived as being in danger...
s).
At the time of Tinker, Tailor, Esterhase has a son at Westminster
Westminster School
The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...
and a daughter at medical school. He is married, but has a reputation as a womaniser.
When the Circus became polarised between supporters of the ailing Chief, "Control," and his rival, Percy Alleline
Percy Alleline
Sir Percy Alleline is a fictional character in British novelist John le Carré's work. He is the Chief of the "Circus", Le Carré's fictionalised version of MI6/SIS, in the novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy....
, Esterhase gravitated towards Alleline out of ambition, forgetting his past loyalty to Smiley, who was Control's supporter. Along with Alleline, Bill Haydon
Bill Haydon
Bill Haydon is a fictional character created by John le Carré, and is a major figure in le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.-Biography:...
, and Roy Bland
Roy Bland
Roy Bland is a fictional character in the novels of John le Carré, appearing most prominently inTinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. He is a high-ranking official in "The Circus" , and one of five men suspected of being a mole for the Russians.-Background:Unusually for Circus officers, Bland is from a...
, Esterhase forms part of the "magic circle" with access to the marvelous Soviet intelligence code-named "Witchcraft," supplied by the mysterious "Source Merlin."
Esterhase is one of the five high-ranking Circus officers Control suspects of being a Soviet mole
Mole (espionage)
A mole is a spy who works for an enemy nation, but whose loyalty ostensibly lies with his own nation's government. In some usage, a mole differs from a defector in that a mole is a spy before gaining access to classified information, while a defector becomes a spy only after gaining access...
. After Control's death, Esterhase embraces the new Alleline regime and allows his lamplighters to be almost entirely given over to serving Operation Witchcraft, which is in fact nothing but a disinformation campaign orchestrated by Soviet spymaster Karla
Karla (fictional character)
Karla is a fictional character in several novels by John le Carré. A Soviet Intelligence officer, he most often appears as a distant antagonist of George Smiley...
. Esterhase's own role is to pretend to be a Soviet mole when meeting with the Soviets. They know he is not, of course, but his pretense provides a cover story for Alleline, Bland, and Esterhase himself, justifying his role as a courier between the real mole, Haydon, and his Soviet controllers.
After patient investigation, Smiley decides to interview Esterhase in private, explaining to him how Karla has fooled them all into providing cover for his own mole's activities. Esterhase appears disbelieving, but professes himself willing to help when he realises that Smiley has the official backing of Whitehall
Whitehall
Whitehall is a road in Westminster, in London, England. It is the main artery running north from Parliament Square, towards Charing Cross at the southern end of Trafalgar Square...
and realises the implications of his having been the courier for sealed packets, whose contents he has not seen, to the Soviet agents. He tells Smiley enough about the contact procedures for Operation Witchcraft for Smiley to entrap the real mole, Bill Haydon. In the aftermath of Haydon's exposure, Esterhase and the rest of the magic circle are disgraced.
In The Honourable Schoolboy, it is revealed that Esterhase, unlike Alleline and Bland, has managed to retain a position in the Circus, albeit one much more humble than his former one. Partially this may be explained by his (cosmetic) switch of loyalty to Smiley's side just before the mole's exposure, and partially by the fact that his expertise is more technical than Alleline's or Bland's, and thus has not been rendered completely useless by Haydon's treachery.
In Smiley's People, he has retired from the Circus and opened a second-rate art gallery in London, whose wares are of dubious provenance. An old Circus agent, Vladimir, approaches him, asking for help with a private operation, but Esterhase refuses adamantly. When Vladimir is later killed, Esterhase somewhat shamefacedly recounts their meeting to Smiley.
When Vladimir's death leads Smiley to a possible means of trapping Karla, he recruits Esterhase for an espionage operation in Berne
Berne
The city of Bern or Berne is the Bundesstadt of Switzerland, and, with a population of , the fourth most populous city in Switzerland. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 43 municipalities, has a population of 349,000. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000...
, to capture and interrogate one of Karla's agents. Esterhase serves as Smiley's field commander, overseeing the agents who follow, investigate, and eventually trap the Soviet spy in question—to use Smiley's theatrical analogy, Smiley writes the show, and Esterhase produces it—a job he performs superbly. He is also with Smiley in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
when Karla defects
Defection
In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state or political entity in exchange for allegiance to another. More broadly, it involves abandoning a person, cause or doctrine to whom or to which one is bound by some tie, as of allegiance or duty.This term is also applied,...
to the West and surrenders himself to Circus custody.
Esterhase also appears in a rather farcical vignette from The Secret Pilgrim, placed in the mid-1970s at some time after the events of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In it, Esterhase gets rid of a charlatan—an exiled Hungarian professor based in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, who provides the British with virtually worthless information—by successfully convincing the Americans that he is a dauntless anti-Communist hero.
Appearance and Character
Esterhase is described as a very slight (Connie SachsConnie Sachs
Connie Sachs is a fictional character created by John le Carré. Sachs plays a key supporting role in le Carré's Karla Trilogy of spy novels including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley's People....
called him "Tiny Toby"), stiff-backed man, with silvery hair and a crisp, unfriendly jaw; he rarely smiles. Peter Guillam
Peter Guillam
Peter Guillam is a fictional character in John le Carré's series of espionage novels. He first appears in Call for the Dead at which time he is working for the Ministry of Defence....
once remarked to himself that he and Esterhase shared a hotel room in Berne for three months during an operation, at the end of which he knew Esterhase no better than he did on the first day.
Bill Haydon
Bill Haydon
Bill Haydon is a fictional character created by John le Carré, and is a major figure in le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.-Biography:...
called him "Our shadow foreign secretary," while the MI6 security functionaries known as "the Janitors" called him "Snow White
Snow White
"Snow White" is a fairy tale known from many countries in Europe, the best known version being the German one collected by the Brothers Grimm...
" because of his hair.
A snob, and something of a dandy, Esterhase knows the places to eat and "be seen," washes his own clothes, and wears a hair net over his trademark mane. Smiley reflects that Esterhase tries hard to be an English gentleman rather than a Hungarian, with sometimes comical results.
Both Guillam and Ned (the narrator of The Secret Pilgrim) sum up Esterhase's character by saying that at certain times they want nothing to do with Esterhase, while at others they are glad to have him by their side. On the one hand, Esterhase is an ambitious "climber," who will grasp any means to advance his own position or else avoid any embarrassment to himself. On the other hand, Esterhase is undeniably good at his work, and a definite asset to any intelligence operation, while he also retains some honest loyalty to the institution of the Circus, and some honest affection for Smiley, who rescued him from a life of poverty.
As noted by Ned in The Secret Pilgrim, though he had lived much of his life away from Hungary, when Esterhase is in the company of other Hungarians and speaking his mother tongue with them, he seems far more vivid than Ned ever saw him before.
Though never explicitly referred to, the character's name is clearly drawn from the well-known Hungarian aristocratic House of Esterházy.
In Other Media
Bernard HeptonBernard Hepton
Bernard Hepton is a British actor of stage, film and television.Hepton is known as a particularly versatile character actor. He trained at Bradford Civic Theatre school under Esme Church along with actors such as Robert Stephens...
played Esterhase in the BBC television dramatizations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. In the former he played Esterhase as a typical Englishman with a mostly standard/educated accent. In Smiley's People he adopted a more Eastern European accent.
BBC later dramatized both novels for radio; in these, Charles Kay
Charles Kay
Charles Kay is an English actor.Kay was born in Coventry, West Midlands, the son of Frances and Charles Beckingham Piff....
appeared in the role of Esterhase.
In the 2011 film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (film)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 2011 English-language espionage film directed by Tomas Alfredson, from a screenplay written by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan based on the 1974 novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré...
the character is played by David Dencik
David Dencik
David Dencik is a Swedish actor.After having had minor roles in different films, David Dencik became an established actor in Sweden for his role as the killer John Ausonius in the three-part TV mini-series Lasermannen in 2005...
.