Character guide

Mrs. Fisher

major

Also known as Briggs, poor Briggs

Mrs. Fisher arrives at San Salvatore as the eldest and most formidable of the four women, armed with a lifetime of literary connections and an unshakable conviction that her way is the only way. Her refusal to be charmed by Italy, or by her companions, sets her in comic opposition to Lotty's effusiveness and Rose's quiet longing. Yet the castle's beauty works on her imperceptibly, and her gradual thaw — glimpsed in small surrenders — becomes one of the novel's most satisfying transformations.

Mrs. Wilkins

major

Also known as Lotty, Dear Lotty, the leaping Lotty

Lotty Wilkins is the engine of the plot: it is her sudden, rapturous idea to rent San Salvatore that gathers the four women under one roof. Married to the pompous Mellersh, she has learned to read people with startling accuracy and to speak truths others avoid — she tells Mr. Wilkins plainly that Mrs. Fisher 'hasn't got love.' Her openness is both her gift and her vulnerability, and her instinct that Italy can remake a person drives the book's central wager.

Mrs. Arbuthnot

major

Also known as Rose Arbuthnot, Rose, Arbuthnot

Rose Arbuthnot is Lotty's friend and fellow adventurer, a woman of strict conscience and hidden hunger whose Hampstead house is cold and whose husband Frederick is mostly absent. At San Salvatore she is stirred but not consoled: she wants to be 'privately important' to someone, and the ache of that wish makes her restless, vain, and irritable in ways she barely recognizes. Her longing for a telegram from Frederick anchors the novel's meditation on marriage and worth.

Scrap

major

Also known as Lady Caroline Dester, Lady Caroline, Caroline

Lady Caroline Dester — 'Scrap' — is the youngest and most dazzling of the four, accustomed to being stared at and courted and thoroughly bored by both. San Salvatore unsettles her: almost at once she feels accused of being 'tawdry,' and she dreads that Lotty's friendliness will trap her into four weeks of being grabbed at. Her beauty is a shield she is beginning to find unbearable, and her struggle to think honestly about herself gives the middle of the book its sharpest inner drama.

Mr. Wilkins

supporting

Also known as Mellersh, Mellersh - Wilkins, Mr. Mellersh - Wilkins

Mellersh Wilkins is a solicitor whose pomposity Lotty has endured for years, and whose unannounced visit to Italy threatens to reassert the domestic order she fled. He is not a villain so much as a man incapable of seeing anyone but himself, and his habit of buttonholing solitary ladies — Rose, Mrs. Fisher — with his opinions makes him both comic and quietly menacing. His presence forces Lotty, and the reader, to ask whether the transformation Italy promises can survive contact with home.

Frederick

minor

Also known as the original Frederick

A mysterious figure often referenced as a past love or memory.

Mr. Briggs

supporting

Also known as Thomas Briggs, Thomas, the observant Briggs

Thomas Briggs is the young, unmarried proprietor of the castle, lonely enough to have let it out for the spring and domestic enough to feel the absence of a wife and children keenly. Walking with Rose along his own paths, he confesses he is an orphan and an only child, and tells her she is 'exactly my idea of a family.' His gentle, unguarded longing for warmth and beauty makes him a quiet counterweight to the novel's more brittle marriages.

Costanza

minor

The Italian maid at San Salvatore who assists the guests.

Domenico

minor

The gardener and handyman at the villa.

Francesca

minor

A young Italian servant at San Salvatore.

Mr. Ferdinand Arundel

supporting

Also known as Ferdinand Arundel, Mr. Arundel, Arundel, Ferdinand

Everyone in London knows him as Arundel, and he has written under the name so long he almost believes it is his own; he arrives at San Salvatore expressly to see Lady Caroline, only to find himself swept back into the arms of a woman he had forgotten. His fatal gift is arriving everywhere too late and wanting whatever is in front of him at the moment. He matters because his presence turns the villa's serene air into something charged, forcing the women to reckon with love as a force that can be both enchanting and careless.

Kate Lumley

minor

Also known as Kate

A friend or acquaintance of the main characters, mentioned occasionally.

Mr. Fisher

minor

Mrs. Fisher's deceased husband, referenced in conversation.

Beppo

minor

A local Italian boy who runs errands for the villa.

Lady Droitwich

minor

Also known as Droitwich, Lady Droitwich

A titled acquaintance of the characters, mentioned but not on stage.