Character guide

Dr. William Miller

major

Also known as Dr. Miller, William, Miller, Billy, Only Miller

Miller has spent his inheritance founding a hospital and training school in Wellington, choosing to serve his people rather than flee to the freer North. He moves easily among white colleagues like Dr. Burns, who calls him a prized pupil, yet the conductor's pointed question—'This man is with you?'—marks the boundary he cannot cross. His quiet determination to 'leaven that lump' of eight or nine million makes him the moral center of a town determined to keep him in his place.

Sandy Campbell

major

Also known as Sandy, old Sandy, Brother Sandy, Campbell

Sandy's contumacy over a cakewalk scandal has turned his own church into a jury of half-a-dozen preachers who send him to 'spiritual Coventry,' a loss he feels as keenly as any social club exile. Tom Delamere's mocking consolation—liquor and the devil's larger congregation—too often proves irresistible, and Sandy slides into habits he hides from his employer. His fragile standing, caught between church discipline and the Delameres' casual cruelties, makes him the novel's most exposed figure.

Mrs. Carteret

major

Also known as Carteret, XV Mrs. Carteret, The Missing Papers Mrs. Carteret

Mrs. Carteret manages her home with the same severity she applies to servants—discharging a nurse merely for having a sister who works for the Millers. She tends her aging aunt Polly Ochiltree with dutiful patience, though the old woman's rambling memories of dead husbands and lost suitors unsettle her. Her fierce protectiveness of baby Dodie and her horror at any contact with 'negroes' houses' reveal how deeply the town's racial logic has shaped her, even as family secrets press against that composure.

Tom Delamere

major

Also known as Delamere, Tom, Meanwhile Delamere

Tom Delamere is the 'empty husk' of his grandfather's aristocratic line—graceful in parlors, craven before a fractious horse, and suspected of cheating at whist. He owes Ellis four dollars he'd rather forget, courts Clara Pemberton with borrowed smiles, and mocks Sandy's church troubles while pouring him drinks. His rivalry with Ellis and his grandfather's indulgent expectations set him on a downward slant that the novel's early chapters quietly forecast.

Mr. Ellis

supporting

Also known as Ellis, Ellis Mr. Ellis

Ellis arrives early to Clara's gatherings only to watch Delamere monopolize her smiles, and his Scotch thrift keeps exact account of the four dollars his rival owes him. As a newspaper man he sees what others miss—Delamere's cheating, his cowardice, his lies about card games—and records them with a jealousy sharpened by genuine judgment. His unrequited devotion and his refusal to press his advantage after Delamere's fall mark him as the novel's quiet, principled observer.

Old Mr. Delamere

supporting

Also known as Mr. Delamere, Old Mr. Delamere, young Delamere, young Mr. Delamere

Old Mr. Delamere embodies the aristocratic ideal—courage, courtesy, scrupulous honor—that his grandson Tom merely mimics. He watches Tom and Clara at the window with an indulgent smile, musing on living on through his children, unaware of how little substance remains in his heir. His good intentions toward Dr. Miller's hospital and his quiet standing in Wellington make his eventual loss a blow to the very causes the town is learning to betray.

Major Carteret

major

Also known as Carteret, a Carteret, Major, Major Philip Carteret, Phil

Major Philip Carteret edits the Morning Chronicle and moves through Wellington's best circles as a man of standing and influence. He is driven by a cold, paternalistic certainty that the old order must be restored, and he treats politics as both duty and inheritance. His paper and his committee work give the campaign to restrict Black suffrage its voice and its strategy, making him the quiet engine of the novel's central crisis.

Jerry Letlow

supporting

Also known as Jerry, Jerry Letlow

Jerry works in Major Carteret's home and prides himself on being useful, unobtrusive, and on good terms with the white folks he serves. When a crowd sweeps him into the armed standoff at the hospital, his terror and his protests mark him as a man caught between races and unable to choose a side. His helplessness throws the violence of the novel into sharp relief, showing what happens to those who only want to survive.

Polly Ochiltree

supporting

Also known as Polly, Mrs. Ochiltree, old Mrs. Polly Ochiltree, Ochiltree

Mrs. Ochiltree is the aunt who reared Olivia Carteret and whose fortune passes to her niece as a matter of course. In her last months she grows childish and lets slip fragments about a will that might divide the estate with a woman and child no one in the family acknowledges. Her death and the papers she leaves behind plant a doubt that gnaws at the Carterets' peace and touches the novel's deepest questions about blood, race, and what is owed.

Captain George McBane

supporting

Also known as George, Captain McBane, McBane, George McBane

Captain George McBane has money and a rough career behind him, but not the breeding that Wellington society demands. He cultivates Tom Delamere as a way into the Clarendon Club, having already caught Tom cheating at cards and filed the knowledge away. His appetite for recognition and his readiness to use violence make him a dangerous ally to the white-supremacy faction and a menace to anyone who crosses him.

Mammy Jane

supporting

Also known as old Jane, Jane, ole Jane, Old Mammy Jane, Old Jane

Mammy Jane dotes on the Carteret baby and speaks of him with the authority of a woman who nursed his mother and grandmother before him. She distrusts the younger, mission-schooled nurse and clings to the old ways of service and deference. Her pride in the family she serves and her suspicion of the new generation of Black women quietly register the generational rift running through the novel's world.

Josh Green

supporting

Also known as Josh, Green, big Josh Green

Josh Green has a personal score to settle with Captain McBane, who murdered his father and ruined his mother, but he keeps his head and organizes the defense of the hospital with the eye of a born commander. He refuses to fire first and refuses to surrender, telling McBane plainly that Black people have as much right to bear arms as anyone. His stand turns the novel's racial violence into a scene of organized resistance rather than mere victimization.

Janet Miller

supporting

Also known as Janet, VI Janet, Meantime Janet

Janet Miller moves through Wellington as the educated, forgiving wife of a Black doctor, yet carries a lifelong grief she has never confessed even to her husband: she is the unacknowledged daughter of a white man whose legitimate daughter, Olivia Carteret, will not meet her eye. The bar sinister and the color line cut her off from a sister she would have worshiped from afar, and she is ashamed of the very weakness that keeps her heart open. When her husband is summoned to operate on the Carteret baby, her anxious plea for care binds her private sorrow to the public crisis that will test the whole town.

Dr. Alvin Burns

minor

Also known as Dr. Burns, Burns

A white doctor who assists Dr. Miller in a critical operation.

Miss Clara Pemberton

supporting

Also known as Miss Clara, Clara, Clara Pemberton

Clara Pemberton sits at the center of a quiet rivalry between two suitors: the dashing Tom Delamere, whom Ellis judges mercilessly as unfit, and Ellis himself, too honorable to press his own case. Her marriageability is tangled with the Carteret family's pride and the town's rigid social codes, and the major's hope that she is old enough to wed signals how tightly her future is bound to the old order. Her decision will quietly shape the alliances and resentments that drive the novel's middle chapters.

Dr. Price

minor

Also known as Dr. Price, Telephone Dr. Price, A Dr. Price, Price

A white doctor who participates in the operation on Dodie.

Mr. Watson

minor

Also known as Watson, Ef Mr. Watson

A white man who interacts with the black community.

Sister Olivia

minor

Also known as Olivia, Sister, sister Olivia

A religious black woman, possibly related to the Miller family.

Julia Brown

minor

Also known as Julia, Brown, Julia Brown

A black woman who appears in the narrative.

General Belmont

minor

Also known as Belmont

A white political figure involved in the white supremacy campaign.

Little Dodie

minor

Also known as Dodie, Little Dodie

The infant son of Major and Mrs. Carteret.

Mars John

minor

Also known as Mars

A white man referred to by black characters.

Olivia Carteret

minor

Also known as Olivia

Mrs. Carteret's full name, used rarely.

Aunt Jane Letlow

minor

Also known as Aunt Jane, Jane, old Aunt Jane Letlow

An elderly black woman, possibly related to Jerry.

Adam Miller

minor

Also known as sence ole Adam

An older black man, possibly Dr. Miller's father.

Dinah

minor

Also known as Aunt Dinah

A black cook or servant in the Carteret household.

Dr. Evans

minor

Also known as Evans

A white doctor who appears briefly.

Sally

minor

Also known as black Sally

A black woman mentioned in the narrative.

Mr. Merkell

minor

Also known as dear Mr. Merkell

A white man, possibly related to Olivia Merkell.

Lee Ellis

minor

Also known as Ellis

A young white man, possibly related to Mr. Ellis.

Mrs. Miller

minor

Also known as Miller

Dr. Miller's mother, a black woman.

Hugh Poindexter

minor

A white man mentioned in passing.

Barber

minor

A black barber who appears briefly.

Dr. Ashe

minor

Also known as Ashe

A white doctor mentioned in the narrative.

Augustus

minor

Also known as Gus

A black man who appears in the story.

John Delamere

minor

A member of the Delamere family, possibly Tom's father.

Jeff

minor

A black man mentioned in the narrative.

Dr. Yates

minor

Also known as Try Dr. Yates

A white doctor mentioned in the narrative.