Character guide

Willie Leadford

major

Also known as Willie asthore, Leadford, Willie

Willie scrapes by as third man in Rawdon's office, walks home debating religion and Socialism with Parload, and nurses a fierce, class-bitter love for Nettie Stuart. His jealousy of young Verrall curdles into something dangerous, yet he is also the book's confessing narrator, looking back across the Change at his own blindness. Everything the comet will overturn is first felt in his hot head and aching heart.

Nettie Stuart

major

Also known as Nettie, old Stuart, Stuart

Nettie grew up in the cottage at Checkshill Towers, schoolfellow and second cousin to Willie, and pledged herself to him one July dusk beside the goldfish pond. She is beautiful, self-possessed, and quietly ambitious for a life beyond Clayton's smoke; her upper lip breaks sweetly to a smile that haunts the narrator for decades. Her choices in the middle of the book force Willie to confront what he actually wants, and what he is.

Edward Verrall

major

Also known as Teddy, young Verrall, Edward, Verrall

Young Verrall has university honors, talk of a parliamentary seat, and a habit of taking as a matter of course what Willie would face the rack to get. He meets Willie on a disputed footpath with amiable challenge and gets the better of him without raising his voice. His easy charm and his growing proximity to Nettie turn Willie's class resentment into something personal and combustible.

Mr. Gabbitas

supporting

Also known as Gabbitas, the Rev. E. B. Gabbitas, the Rev. Gabbitas

The Rev. E. B. Gabbitas is the local intellectual, mentor, and sparring partner whose drawing-room hosts Willie's half-learned heresies and whose face flushes when the higher criticism is invoked. He is flattered by the attention of the Verralls, embarrassed by his own gaps, and generous enough to keep the argument going. His small vanities and genuine kindnesses sketch the old world's muddle of faith, class, and good intentions.

Parload

supporting

Also known as II Parload, IV Always with Parload

Parload is Willie's closest friend — fellow socialist, fellow doubter, met in the Y.M.C.A. Parliament and kept through evening classes and Sunday suppers. He is gawky, capable of vast enthusiasm, and utterly possessed by the deeps of space, so that day and moonlight are mere interruptions to his watching. When Willie arrives feverish with love troubles, Parload makes him look through the glass anyway: the comet enters the story through this friendship.

Mrs. Verrall

supporting

Also known as old Mrs. Verrall, young Verrall, Young Verrall, Verrall

Mrs. Verrall belongs to the family that owns the great estate, the collieries, and more than half of Rawdon's pot-bank; her arrival at a Clayton doorstep is a small social earthquake. She is glimpsed through windows and doorways — a coachman, a pair of grays, a name that commands deference — and her presence measures the gulf between Willie's world and Edward's. She matters as the visible machinery of the old order the comet is about to sweep away.

Melmount

supporting

Melmount moves through the corridors of power in the old order, a figure whose influence extends far beyond any single nation or faction. His distinctive tension lies in balancing the machinery of governance against the sudden moral transformation the comet brings, forcing him to reconsider what leadership even means. He matters to the early-middle arc because his decisions and alliances determine whether the Change becomes a foundation for peace or collapses into new forms of conflict.

Lord Redcar

supporting

Also known as young Lord Redcar, Redcar

Lord Redcar belongs to the leisured class of the old world, moving easily through the social circles that Willie Leadford can only glimpse from outside. His tension is the gap between aristocratic ease and the raw urgency of the pursuit he becomes entangled in, a pursuit that demands more of him than his upbringing prepared him for. He matters because his presence in the narrative shows how the old hierarchies persist even as the comet's influence begins to dissolve them, and his choices ripple through the middle arc.

Anna Reeves

supporting

Also known as Anna

Anna Reeves enters Willie Leadford's life as a blue-clad, white-aproned nurse tending his dying mother, one of those hidden, unthanked women who held the old world's suffering together. She is three years older than Willie, short and ruddy with red-tinged hair, and at first he finds no beauty in her—only the apt help of her freckled hands and the good cheer of her voice. She matters because her patient devotion, rooted in the dark old times yet pointing toward the new, becomes the quiet counterweight to Willie's bitterness and the emotional anchor of the story's middle arc.

Mrs. Leadford

supporting

Also known as my poor old mother, Mother

Mrs. Leadford is a working-class widow in the industrial Midlands, her life narrowed by poverty and her health failing as the comet approaches. In her final illness she tells Willie the story of the baby sister he never knew, dead at twenty-nine months because a doctor would not come without his fee—a memory that crystallizes the old order's indifference to suffering. She matters because her death and her stories are the emotional bedrock of Willie's early arc, giving his bitterness a human face and making the Change feel like a personal deliverance.

Pettigrew

minor

Also known as old Pettigrew, old Mr. Pettigrew, Mr. Pettigrew, Old Pettigrew

An elderly socialist and friend of Gabbitas, active in local politics.

Rawdon

minor

Also known as old Rawdon, Old Rawdon, Mr. Rawdon

A local businessman and political figure, often in conflict with the socialists.

Madgett

minor

A socialist colleague of Willie's, involved in local organizing.

Miss Ramell

minor

A young woman who appears in the new world after the Change.

Swindells

minor

A local tradesman and minor character in Willie's hometown.

Mrs. Stuart

minor

Nettie's mother, a working-class woman concerned for her daughter.

Mitchell

minor

A minor character mentioned in the political circles of the town.

Burble

minor

Also known as The excellent Burble

A minor socialist orator and acquaintance of Willie.

Laycock

minor

A minor character in the socialist group.

Carton

minor

A minor character mentioned in the political context.

Gurker

minor

A wealthy financier and political figure in the old world.

Lord Adisham

minor

A government minister involved in the cabinet council after the Change.

Wiggins

minor

Also known as Mr. Wiggins

A minor socialist acquaintance of Willie's group.

Jack Briscoe

minor

A minor character from Willie's past, mentioned briefly.

Hampton

minor

A minor political figure in the socialist circles.

Parker

minor

A minor servant or worker mentioned in passing.

Frobisher

minor

A minor character mentioned in the new world sequence.

Revel

minor

A minor character appearing after the Change.