# Hudson River Bracketed — Character guide

> Key figures in Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton.

- [Vance Weston](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/vance_weston.md): 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 bett
- [Laura Lou](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/laura_lou.md): 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 
- [Halo Tarrant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/halo_tarrant.md): 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 marriag
- [George Frenside](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/george_frenside.md): 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'
- [Bunty Hayes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/bunty_hayes.md): 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 
- [Lewis Tarrant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/lewis_tarrant.md): 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
- [Miss Spear](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/miss_spear.md): 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 
- [Upton Tracy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/upton_tracy.md): 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 manne
- [Miss Elinor Lorburn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/miss_lorburn.md): 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 piti
- [Mrs. Scrimser](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/mrs_scrimser.md): 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 pro
- [Mrs. Spear](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/mrs_spear.md): 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 t
- [Mrs. Tracy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/mrs_tracy.md): 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 Hu
- [Mrs. Pulsifer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/old_pulsifer.md): 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 
- [Vanny](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/vanny.md): An elderly, eccentric servant at the Willows.
- [Eric Rauch](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/eric_rauch.md): A German-American composer and friend of the Tarrants.
- [Mr. Spear](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/mr_spear.md): Halo's father, a mild-mannered and scholarly man.
- [Tom Lorburn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/old_tom_lorburn.md): Miss Lorburn's nephew, a kindly but ineffectual man.
- [Mrs. Lorin Weston](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/mrs_weston.md): Vance's mother, a quiet and religious woman.
- [Grandma Scrimser](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/grandma_scrimser.md): Vance's great-grandmother, a very old and frail woman.
- [Grandpa Scrimser](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/grandpa_scrimser.md): Vance's grandfather, a taciturn farmer.
- [Rebecca Stram](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/rebecca_stram.md): A pretty, flirtatious girl from Euphoria.
- [Pearl](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/pearl.md): A young woman working at the Willows.
- [Jet Pulsifer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/jet_pulsifer.md): Mrs. Pulsifer's flighty, modern daughter.
- [Saidie Toler](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/saidie_toler.md): Vance's aunt in Euphoria.
- [Tristram Fynes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/tristram_fynes.md): A British literary agent who visits New York.
- [Floss Delaney](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/floss_delaney.md): Harrison Delaney's flashy wife.
- [Lorburn Spear](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/hudson_river_bracketed_se/characters/lorburn_spear.md): Halo's brother, a young man studying law.

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