# Miss Primrose Crabapple — Lud-in-the-Mist character guide

> Miss Primrose Crabapple in Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Miss Primrose, Miss Crabapple, old Primrose

**First appearance:** 0003-i-master-nathaniel-chanticleer

## Snapshot

An elderly schoolmistress who raised the town's daughters on propriety, then scandalized everyone by riding her high hobbyhorse straight into forbidden territory.

## Who they are

Miss Primrose once presided over the education of Lud's most respectable women, drilling them in decorum while privately nursing a mystical devotion to 'true womanliness' and the great privilege of having been born a woooman. Now she sits bolt upright among faded tapestries, glittering with contempt at former pupils who dare question her, and shrieking that she will wear her shame like a flower given by him. Her stubborn, exalted defiance — and the sly, scared flicker in her eyes when certain names are mentioned — makes her the unsettling hinge on which the town's first real scandal turns.

## In the story

### [VI: The Wind in the Crabapple Blossoms](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lud_in_the_mist_se/chapters/vi-the-wind-in-the-crabapple-blossoms)

Head of the Academy, eccentric and sentimental about Duke Aubrey; subject of gossip due to Leer's visits.

### [VII: Master Ambrose Chases a Wild Goose and Has a Vision](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lud_in_the_mist_se/chapters/vii-master-ambrose-chases-a-wild-goose-and-has-a-vision)

Flustered and scared, she tries to conceal something from Master Ambrose at the Academy.

### [IX: Panic and the Silent People](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lud_in_the_mist_se/chapters/ix-panic-and-the-silent-people)

Miss Primrose is found by Endymion Leer on the wharf, sobbing and screaming, and is arrested on a charge of receiving contraband silk.

### [X: Hempie's Song](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lud_in_the_mist_se/chapters/x-hempie-s-song)

Mentioned by Dame Marigold in a bitter remark about wishing she had gone off with the fairies.

### [XII: Dame Marigold Hears the Tap of a Woodpecker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lud_in_the_mist_se/chapters/xii-dame-marigold-hears-the-tap-of-a-woodpecker)

On trial, imprisoned in the Guildhall; in conversation with Dame Marigold, she accidentally reveals knowledge of the great drought from forty years ago, before Leer came to Dorimare.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lud_in_the_mist_se/characters/miss_primrose_crabapple
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lud_in_the_mist_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/lud_in_the_mist_se/characters