Charles Delaware Tate

Roger Davis as Charles Delaware Tate

Charles Delaware Tate was a famous painter, particularly of portraits. The world did not suspect that his gift came from Count Andreas Petofi nor that his paintings sometimes were magical.

Charles Delaware Tate - the noted painter, pursued by rich women and beautiful girls, all hoping to be captured in one of your immoral canvases. - description by Count Andreas Petofi when CDT first arrives at Collinwood.

Tate was hired by Petofi (in the body of Jamison Collins) to paint the Portrait of Quentin Collins. Count Petofi noticed a sketch of a woman Tate had drawn many times, who was his ideal woman, and asked for the sketch, but Tate refused. Later Petofi saw Amanda Harris and recognized her as that woman and arranged for she and Tate to meet. Tate was later asked by Gregory Trask to paint his daughter's portrait also, but then the decided he should paint Amanda's instead. This gave Tate a chance to talk to Amanda and discover she suffered from amnesia, and the first day she could remember was the exact same day Tate drew his initial sketch of her. To relieve his mind at his inability to remember meeting Amanda, Tate drew a still life of a bowl of fruit, then decided the sketch needed a vase to fill in an empty space. To his shock, when he finished with the sketch, the vase was on the table where the table had previously been empty.

In an attempt to convince Amanda that he had created her, Tate drew a portrait of a man, who then appeared in his studio (842). Amanda told Tim Shaw about the man and Tim got him away from Tate. But just as the man was starting to talk, Tate burst into Tim's room at the Collinsport Inn (843) and shot the man. His corpse then vanished (844).

Count Petofi removed Tate's ability to paint at all after Tate stole the portrait of Quentin Collins and refused to say where it was. This prompted Tate to agree to help in the search for the proper hexagram that would take Count Petofi to the future. In fact, it was Tate who discovered that the 49th hexagram was the needed one for the journey, for which Petofi was grateful enough to restore Tate's talent for painting. Tate also helped Petofi with killing Aristede. Petofi told Tate about how he was persued by Garth Blackwood. Petofi gave Tate the information he needed into to draw Blackwood and bring him to life. Blackwood later captured Petofi and set Tate's studio on fire.

Tate's abilities were not as good as before, and he gave up painting portraits and began painting landscapes. It was one of these landscapes that Julia Hoffman purchased from Phillip Todd in 1969, triggering her to wonder if Tate were still alive and could paint a portrait of Chris Jennings to cure him of his werewolf curse. She discovered that Tate had died about 10 years ago, but the discovery of another landscape which was identical to the one she purchased led her to believe Tate was still alive and painting under a new name. Tate painted under the name, Harrison Munroe. She went to visit Tate, who was nearly 100 in 1970 and found him to be very uncooperative. Tate made a mechanical dummy of his younger self and through his voice from behind a curtain to hide his aging self.

When Chris Jennings went to visit him, with Grant Douglas (Quentin with no knowledge of his real identity) he forced Tate to paint his portrait, but it was not magical and Chris killed the painter when he transformed into a werewolf in his studio (938). Shortly before his death he was reunited with Amanda Harris whom he had never forgotten. Amanda, who had not aged in over seventy years, looked as beautiful as he remembered. Content that his lost love had returned, Charles Delaware Tate died peacefully at her side.

Notes

Charles Delaware Tate was the fifth and final character played by Roger Davis.

Charles Delaware Tate was Roger Davis' second role in the 1897 flashback.