Character guide

Angus Beaton

major

Also known as Mr. Beaton, Beaton, Prince Beaton, X Beaton

Beaton drifts through the drawing rooms and studios of New York as a man of taste, talent, and no fixed purpose, courted by Fulkerson for the art department of Every Other Week even as he sneers at the enterprise. His on-again, off-again entanglement with Miss Leighton exposes the gap between his aesthetic ideals and his willingness to commit to anything or anyone. He matters because his refusal to be practical tests whether the magazine — and the people around him — can tolerate genius that won't be managed.

Basil March

major

Also known as March, Mr. March, old March, Basil

March leaves a comfortable, book-lined existence for the uncertain prospect of Every Other Week, drawn by Fulkerson's enthusiasm and his own unfulfilled ambitions. He is thoughtful, self-aware, and quietly torn between his aesthetic scruples and the commercial machinery that pays for them. His divided conscience — about art, money, and the people the magazine drags into its orbit — makes him the novel's central lens on the moral weather of the enterprise.

Mrs. March

major

Also known as March, Isabel, Bella

Isabel March presides over the family's refined household and its move to New York with a mixture of wifely loyalty and unillusioned judgment. She takes Fulkerson's side against her husband's scruples, dismisses the notion of an artistic career for a woman, and quietly steadies the family through each new upheaval. Her running commentary — affectionate, skeptical, sometimes startlingly conventional — gives the novel its domestic counterweight to the magazine's public dramas.

Fulkerson

major

Also known as Mr. Fulkerson, Mrs. Fulkerson

Fulkerson is the engine of the whole venture: he recruits March, courts Beaton, flatters Dryfoos, and arranges the disastrous dinner that brings Lindau and the magnate under one roof. His buoyant confidence and cynical readiness to improvise make him both indispensable and dangerous. He matters because his cheerful pragmatism keeps the magazine afloat while steadily accumulating the social collisions that will test everyone involved.

Mr. Dryfoos

major

Also known as old Dryfoos, Dryfoos, the elder Dryfoos, Father Dryfoos

Dryfoos has risen from the farm to a fortune and now wants a respectable literary property to crown his success, but he cannot quite comprehend the men of ideas his money has hired. Proud, touchy, and quick to take offense — especially at Lindau's socialist outbursts — he embodies the uneasy marriage of capital and culture the magazine represents. His clash with March over who controls the editorial page forces the novel's central question of whose interests art actually serves.

Mr. Lindau

supporting

Also known as Lindau, poor old Lindau, old Mr. Lindau, old Lindau

Lindau is a veteran of European revolutions and a translator of manuscripts for Every Other Week, hired out of gratitude and old friendship but incapable of softening his denunciations of the rich. His fierce, unbending socialism — a partial truth that hurts worse than the whole — turns a dinner invitation into a social explosion. He matters because his presence forces the magazine's comfortable men to confront the class contradictions they would rather keep in the abstract.

Conrad Dryfoos

supporting

Also known as Conrad, Dryfoos, Coonrod, Coonrod Dryfoos

Conrad works in the counting-room of his father's new magazine, Every Other Week, forever smoothing over the old man's explosions and gently excusing even the socialist Lindau. His mildness hides a fanatic's conviction: he tells March that Christ meant the kingdom of heaven on earth, and that the rich can hardly enter it. That contradiction—dutiful son, radical conscience—makes him the moral fault line running through the Dryfoos family's sudden fortune.

Christine Dryfoos

supporting

Also known as Christine, Miss Christine, Dryfoos

Raised on a farm and dropped into New York wealth, Christine meets the city's indifference with impassioned suspicion rather than humility, reading every caller as a fortune-hunter and every kindness as a maneuver. She resists Margaret Vance's advances until she can learn who the Vances are, and she sees her father's money as both shield and answer. Her bristling pride measures exactly how far the Dryfooses have come—and how unsettled they remain.

Mela Dryfoos

supporting

Also known as Miss Mela Dryfoos, Miss Mela, Mela, Mely, Miss Mela—Pamela

Where her sister bristles, Mela fawns: delighted by Margaret Vance's politeness, eager to pry Beaton for gossip, she assumes the world will come to her because her father's money says so. She has none of Christine's vigilance and all of her confidence, treating social exclusion as a mistake soon to be repaired. Her unguarded appetite for admiration makes the Dryfooses' entry into New York society both comic and precarious.

Alma Leighton

supporting

Also known as Alma, Miss Alma, Leighton

Alma lives with her widowed mother in rooms the Leightons must let to make ends meet, and she studies drawing with a clear eye for both people and prices. When the Virginian Woodburns arrive to rent, she watches Miss Woodburn's homemade bonnet and her own mother's awkwardness with equal precision, half amused, half ashamed. Her frankness about money and ambition—and her friendship with the Marches—gives the novel its sharpest view of women making art on slender means.

Margaret Vance

supporting

Also known as Margaret, Miss Vance, Vance, Passil Marge, Marge

Margaret moves easily among artists, concerts, and fashionable charity, a girl of culture and conscience whose aunt mistakes conventionality for ideals. She visits the Dryfooses determined to let them patronize her, aware that she is playing a part even as she tries not to, and makes her banjo the little comedy's prop. Her well-meant attempt to cross New York's social lines exposes how much her generosity is a matter of principle—and how little she yet understands the people she means to help.

Mrs. Mandel

supporting

Also known as Mandel

Mrs. Mandel manages the Dryfoos household and, more delicately, their entry into society, measuring Mrs. Horn's address and explaining that her standing is independent of money. She can make her charges understand a chance like the musicale only imperfectly, since they lack the premises for it, and her efforts are half undone by their own assumptions. Her quiet expertise marks the distance between the Dryfooses' wealth and the taste and connections it cannot simply buy.

Miss Woodburn

supporting

Daughter of Colonel Woodburn, she lodges with the Leightons and becomes the household's resident charmer, her Virginia accent and dry wit delighting Mrs. Leighton and unsettling Basil March's circle. Beneath the cooing talk she is clear-eyed about courtship and self-respect, and she will not let Fulkerson announce their engagement until Beaton can hear it honestly. Her presence turns the boardinghouse into a small stage where Northern and Southern manners test each other.

Mrs. Leighton

supporting

Also known as Mrs. ¬ÝLeighton

She runs the household where the Woodburns and the Marches cross paths, and she measures every new lodger by whether they will do her daughters good. She is no sentimentalist, but she feels for Beaton even as she sees Alma freeze him out, and she cannot quite approve of her daughter's tactics. Her steady, slightly anxious presence anchors the novel's domestic comedy and gives the social climbing around her a moral baseline.

Colonel Woodburn

supporting

Also known as the colonel, Colonel Woodburn, Woodburn, Mr. Woodburn

He is the resident 'real live author' of the Leighton household, a Confederate veteran whose aristocratic airs and old-fashioned opinions make him both comic and faintly tragic among the Northern boarders. His daughter Miss Woodburn manages the family's dignity while he pursues his manuscript and his theories. He embodies the novel's fascination with a defeated class trying to find a place in a commercial, modern America.

Mrs. Horn

minor

Also known as That rich Mrs. Horn, VI Mrs. Horn

A wealthy, fashionable society matron.

Mr. Wetmore

minor

Also known as Wetmore, Mrs. Wetmore

An artist friend of Beaton and the Leightons.

Mrs. Dryfoos

minor

Also known as Mother, Mother Dryfoos

The quiet, pious wife of Mr. Dryfoos.

Mr. Kendricks

minor

Also known as Kendricks

A young writer and contributor to the magazine.

Mrs. Grosvenor Green

minor

Also known as Mrs. Green, the Grosvenor Green, Green

A fashionable acquaintance of the Marches with ornate taste.

Tom

minor

A young man, possibly a servant or minor acquaintance.

Jacob

minor

A servant or workman mentioned in passing.

Frescobaldi

minor

An Italian musician or singer mentioned briefly.

Maroni

minor

An Italian restaurateur or character in a minor scene.

Mr. Hubbell

minor

Also known as Hubbell

A minor acquaintance or business contact.

Mike

minor

Also known as Micky

A servant or laborer mentioned in passing.

Humphrey Williams

minor

Also known as Williams

A minor character, possibly a clerk or acquaintance.

Maxwell

minor

A minor character, possibly a journalist or worker.

Watkins

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or tradesman.

Liz'beth

minor

A servant or maid in the Dryfoos household.

Moffitt

minor

Also known as all Moffitt

A minor character, possibly a business associate.

Bevans

minor

A minor character, possibly a doctor or acquaintance.

Sheney

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or worker.