Character guide

Vance Weston

major

Also known as Vance, young Vance, little Vance, Weston, Vance Weston of Euphoria, poor Weston

Vance Weston comes East expecting to conquer and instead feels like a single raindrop in a towering wilderness of masonry, humiliated by his cousin's borrowed buggy and his mother's taunt to see if he finds anything better than Euphoria. He is raw, proud, and porous — a writer whose creative fervour carries him to a point where effort ceases and he can only hold his breath and watch. His hunger to transmute experience into art, and his inability to fit the literary world's easy brightness, drive the novel's central struggle between ambition and belonging.

Laura Lou

major

Also known as Laura, Lou, Laura Lou's, Poor Laura Lou

Laura Lou is the girl who married Vance early, filling a thermos with coffee and swinging his hand like a schoolchild through a Hudson snowstorm, frightened of extravagance lest her mother hear. She has never thought of a snowstorm as beautiful until he tells her it is, and her compliance both touches and irritates him — she can only reflect, never originate. When illness strips her to fever and terror, she becomes the human cost of his restlessness, clinging to a husband whose mind is already elsewhere.

Halo Tarrant

major

Also known as Halo, Tarrant, poor Halo, Halo Spear, Miss Halo

Halo Tarrant moves through the Willows and New York with a generosity that Vance mistakes for something simpler, her hands held out as if ready to receive or give while her eyes ask which it will be. Trapped in a marriage to a controlling editor and disinherited by a cousin, she mistakes tenderness for love and is swept into a dull backwater. She becomes Vance's muse and reader, the one person who sees the book forming in him — and the breach her husband forces between them leaves her ravaged and waiting.

George Frenside

supporting

Also known as old George Frenside, Frenside, George, Poor Frenside, old Frenside, Mr. Frenside

Frenside is the older man in the room who listens musingly over his pipe and then delivers the sentence no one wants — 'Well, my dear, you have made a mess of it!' He moves easily among editors, salons, and the Tarrants' circle, a friend whose loyalty never softens his judgment. His presence gives the novel its clearest window onto the literary establishment Vance is trying to enter, and his verdicts measure the distance between ambition and achievement.

Bunty Hayes

supporting

Also known as Bunty, the Hayes, Hayes

Bunty Hayes has turned hometown brashness into commercial empire, leaning across polished wood to pitch Vance a 'Storecraft' series of foreign novels tied to the Paris Department — read the book, buy the scent, take the facial. He is coarse, friendly, and utterly without aesthetic shame, and his reverential curiosity about a real novelist is both comic and humiliating. He represents the market Vance must either court or refuse, and their encounter forces the question of what a writer will swallow to eat.

Lewis Tarrant

supporting

Also known as Lewis, Lewis Tarrant, young Tarrant, Tarrant, Handling Tarrant

Lewis Tarrant married Halo on a tidal wave of her mistaken gratitude, after her cousin Tom disinherited her, and he has been exacting his pound of flesh ever since. He destroys Vance's manuscript and then moves carefully to make certain of his legal rights, a man who never makes a blunder and never forgives one. His cold, proprietary grip on Halo is the wall between her and Vance, and the quiet engine of the novel's central rupture.

Miss Spear

supporting

Also known as young Spear, Miss Spear and Mr. Lorburn, Héloïse Spear, Héloïse, Lorry Spear, Lorry

Lorry Spear moves through the Spear household as its liveliest and least guarded member, sharing her sister Halo's artistic leanings but without Halo's caution or social calculation. She is drawn to the same currents of novelty and spiritual experimentation that sweep through her mother's circle, and her warmth toward Vance makes her one of the few Spears he can meet without armor. Her presence sharpens the contrast between genuine feeling and the family's appetite for new sensations, and she becomes a quiet measure of what Vance stands to gain or lose in that world.

Upton Tracy

supporting

Also known as Upton, Tracy, young Upton, young Tracy, the Tracys' Upton, the real Upton

Upton Tracy is the son of Lucilla Lorburn Tracy, raised among the decaying gentility of Paul's Landing where Tracys and Lorburns have lived since before the Revolution. He meets Vance at Grand Central with the easy manners of a boy who has never had to prove his place, yet there is something wistful in his gray eyes that suggests he too feels the weight of a family in decline. Through Upton, Vance first glimpses the Willows and the Lorburn inheritance, and the friendship becomes one of the threads binding him to a past he never knew he had.

Miss Elinor Lorburn

supporting

Also known as Miss Lorburn, old Miss Lorburn, Elinor Lorburn, Lorburn, Elinor, poor Elinor, Cousin Elinor

Elinor Lorburn owns the Willows, the old Hudson River house that haunts Vance's imagination, though she can no longer keep an eye on it from her sickroom in Stuyvesant Square. Her world is peopled with relatives she pities as 'poor,' and she speaks of Halo Tarrant waiting for the Willows with the same resigned compassion she extends to everyone but herself. Her refusal to see her own frailty, her reverence for the place's past, and her slow relinquishment of it make her the living embodiment of the continuity Vance is only beginning to understand.

Mrs. Scrimser

supporting

Also known as old Mrs. Scrimser, Dear Mrs. Scrimser, Euphoria Mrs. Scrimser, Mrs. Loraine Scrimser

Mrs. Loraine Scrimser arrives in New York billed as 'God's Confidant,' convinced that her spiritual vision will find receptive ears, only to discover that fashionable audiences regard her as a curiosity rather than a prophet. She dreams of using her lecture tour's proceeds to buy a little house in Euphoria where Vance and Laura Lou can live with her, and her tenderness toward her grandson is genuine and unguarded. Her failure to read the room, and Vance's anguished recognition that her 'message' is neither new nor wanted, becomes one of the novel's sharpest studies of the gap between provincial sincerity and metropolitan sophistication.

Mrs. Spear

supporting

Also known as Mrs. Spear of genius

Mrs. Spear presides over a household of artistic and spiritual experimentation, her hobbies and passions reported to Vance with humorous exasperation by Halo. She belongs to the same world of 'Seekers' that Vance comes to despise for dragging his grandmother out of Euphoria and into a city that only wants new catchwords to batten on. Her pretensions to genius and her appetite for novelty make her a foil to Mrs. Scrimser's plain sincerity, and her circle becomes the arena in which Vance must decide what kind of artist, and what kind of man, he intends to be.

Mrs. Tracy

supporting

Also known as XXIII Mrs. Tracy, Mrs. Lorburn Tracy, poor Mrs. Tracy

Mrs. Tracy is remembered by the Westons as a pretty bride in stylish New York clothes who once visited Advance on her wedding trip, and her marriage into the Lorburn line ties her to the Willows and the Tracys' fading Hudson Valley gentility. She is the mother of Upton, and her decision to entrust the Willows to caretakers unconnected with its past becomes a small betrayal of the continuity the old house represents. Her absence from Paul's Landing, and the decline of the Tracy fortunes, shadow the early chapters and help explain why Vance's arrival there matters as much as it does.

Mrs. Pulsifer

supporting

Also known as old Pulsifer, this strange Mrs. Pulsifer, the Pulsifer, Pulsifer, Mrs. Pulsifer

Mrs. Pulsifer presides over the glittering parties where the New Hour's contributors are paraded and appraised, though she lives in quiet terror that every writer introduced to her will angle for the prize. Halo Tarrant calls her a 'symptom' rather than a person—one of those who catch each new literary fashion and pass it on—yet her shyness gives her an oddly human edge. For Vance Weston, fresh from Euphoria and attending his first real party, she becomes the gatekeeper of the world he is trying to enter.

Vanny

minor

Also known as Poor old Vanny

An elderly, eccentric servant at the Willows.

Eric Rauch

minor

Also known as Rauch, Eric, Eric Rauch's

A German-American composer and friend of the Tarrants.

Mr. Spear

minor

Also known as Today Mr. Spear

Halo's father, a mild-mannered and scholarly man.

Tom Lorburn

minor

Also known as old Tom Lorburn, Lorburn, old Tom, Mr. Tom Lorburn, Mr. Lorburn, This Mr. Lorburn, old Mr. Lorburn, poor Tom, Cousin Tom

Miss Lorburn's nephew, a kindly but ineffectual man.

Mrs. Lorin Weston

minor

Also known as Mrs. Weston, Lorin Weston, the silent Lorin Weston

Vance's mother, a quiet and religious woman.

Grandma Scrimser

minor

Also known as Grandma

Vance's great-grandmother, a very old and frail woman.

Grandpa Scrimser

minor

Also known as Grandpa

Vance's grandfather, a taciturn farmer.

Rebecca Stram

minor

Also known as Rebecca, Stram girl, Rebecca Strain

A pretty, flirtatious girl from Euphoria.

Pearl

minor

A young woman working at the Willows.

Jet Pulsifer

minor

Also known as Jet

Mrs. Pulsifer's flighty, modern daughter.

Saidie Toler

minor

Also known as Saidie, Aunt Saidie Toler

Vance's aunt in Euphoria.

Tristram Fynes

minor

Also known as Fynes, Mr. Fynes

A British literary agent who visits New York.

Floss Delaney

minor

Also known as Floss, Delaney

Harrison Delaney's flashy wife.

Lorburn Spear

minor

Halo's brother, a young man studying law.

Lorburn Tracy

minor

Also known as Lorburn, Mrs. Lorburn Tracy

Upton's sister, a quiet and observant young woman.

Mrs. Tarrant

minor

Also known as Presently Mrs. Tarrant

Lewis Tarrant's mother, a conventional society woman.

Myra Larcom

minor

Also known as Myra

A young woman from Euphoria who briefly attracts Vance.

Jacob

minor

An elderly black servant at the Willows.

Harrison Delaney

minor

Also known as Delaney

A slick, unscrupulous businessman from Euphoria.

Mrs. Hubbard

minor

A gossipy neighbor in Euphoria.

Mr. Dreck

minor

Also known as Dreck

A German music teacher in Euphoria.

Saltzer

minor

A Jewish tailor in Euphoria.

Alida Thorpe

minor

Also known as Alida

A sophisticated New York socialite and friend of Halo.

Paul

minor

A young man who works at the Willows.

Ben Purchase

minor

Also known as Ben

A local handyman and friend to Vance at the Willows.

Gratz Blemer

minor

Also known as Blemer, This Gratz Blemer

A pretentious poet and acquaintance of the Tarrants.

Mae

minor

A waitress in a New York restaurant.

Lucilla Tracy

minor

Also known as Lucilla

Upton's younger sister, a debutante.

Frenny

minor

George Frenside's wife, a quiet woman.

Mrs. Lotus Mennenkoop

minor

Also known as Mrs. Mennenkoop

A wealthy, eccentric widow who collects artists.

Mr. Hayes

minor

Bunty's father, a storekeeper in Euphoria.

Mr. Lambart

minor

Also known as Lambart, the Mr. Lambart

A wealthy art patron and collector.

Mr. Lorry

minor

Also known as Lorry

A friend of the Spear family.

Mandel

minor

A Jewish businessman in New York.

Miss Marphy

minor

A secretary at a publishing house.

Mr. Scrimser

minor

Vance's grandfather, a stern farmer.

Tullia Larcom

minor

Also known as Tullia

Myra Larcom's mother.

Cuty Cran

minor

Also known as the Cran, Cuty

A local character in Euphoria.