# Antic Hay — Character guide

> Key figures in Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley.

- [Theodore Gumbril](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/theodore_gumbril.md): A restless young inventor of pneumatic trousers, Theodore Gumbril drifts through post-war London chasing love and meaning with self-mocking wit and a talent for grand, silly phrases.
- [Myra Viveash](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/myra_viveash.md): Beautiful, wealthy, and elegantly bored, Myra Viveash holds her admirers at arm's length while reclining on sofas like a professional invalid, dispensing charm and quiet devastation in equal measure.
- [Casimir Lypiatt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/casimir_lypiatt.md): A painter and poet of violent sincerity, Lypiatt turns every canvas and every emotion into a matter of life and death, especially where Myra Viveash is concerned.
- [Rosie Shearwater](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/rosie_shearwater.md): Rosie Shearwater arrives at a strange man's door rehearsing a speech about civilization, only to find herself bandaging a bleeding poet and discovering she rather enjoys it.
- [Coleman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/coleman.md): A bearded, Bible-quoting Cossack of a man who bleeds freely and philosophizes about love, Coleman lives on Christian principles and other people's discomfort.
- [Gumbril Senior](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/gumbril_senior.md): Theodore's father, a retired schoolmaster with a taste for invention and a cabman's ear for history, delivers bleak wisdom about liberty with the cheerfulness of a man who has made peace with disappointment.
- [Mercaptan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/mercaptan.md): Mercaptan moves through Mrs. Viveash's exhibition as a one-man tribunal, ridiculing Lypiatt's catalogue mottoes and reducing a nude to 'Carracis with cubical muscles' before the paint is dry. His wit is genuine but paras
- [Emily](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/emily.md): Emily is the elder, graver half of a giggling pair, first encountered when Molly whispers 'Beaver' behind Gumbril's back and she blushes to the eyes. Her marriage is real but kept deliberately vague, wrapped in silences 
- [Boldero](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/boldero.md): Boldero lunches, devours, and annexes: within one meal he has absorbed a lecture on modern painting and begun pronouncing on 'Bacosso' as an old master. Unpunctual, untidy, perpetually busy, he gets away with it because 
- [Shearwater](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/shearwater.md): Shearwater believes passion is nonsense that half an hour of willpower can shut out, and he has ordered his marriage and his research accordingly. But a violent bubbling from below has shattered his calm, and he finds hi
- [Bojanus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/bojanus.md): A mysterious and wealthy foreigner who hosts a memorable party.
- [James Shearwater](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/james_shearwater.md): The brother of the physiologist Shearwater, a practical and blunt man.
- [Porteous](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/porteous.md): An elderly classical scholar and friend of Gumbril Senior.
- [Albemarle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/albemarle.md): A friend of Gumbril's from Oxford, encountered in London.
- [Toto](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters/toto.md): A flamboyant young man who attends parties.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/antic_hay_se/characters