# The Way We Live Now — Character guide

> Key figures in The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope.

- [Sir Felix Carbury](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/sir_felix_carbury.md): Sir Felix drifts through London clubs and drawing-rooms with charm enough to be forgiven and no income to justify it, forever calculating what a good marriage might pay off. His pursuit of the Melmotte heiress is less ro
- [Augustus Melmotte](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/augustus_melmotte.md): Melmotte arrives in London with a fortune made abroad, a wife who barely speaks English, and a talent for making money dear or cheap as he pleases; within a year a Royal Prince and the cream of duchesses are dining at hi
- [Marie Melmotte](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/marie_melmotte.md): Marie is small, plain, and overwhelmed by the position her father's wealth has thrust upon her, with no real mother and a papa who beats her when she disobeys. She pours her trust into Felix Carbury with a desperate, ung
- [Hetta Carbury](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/hetta_carbury.md): Hetta moves through the novel as the one Carbury who sees clearly and loves honestly, patient with her mother's ambitions and ashamed of Felix's conduct. She is caught between Roger Carbury's steady, unpoetic devotion an
- [Paul Montague](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/paul_montague.md): Paul is a junior partner in Fisker, Montague, and Montague, sent to England to draw Melmotte into the Great Railway to Vera Cruz, and he carries the taint of that association wherever he goes. He is decent, a little weak
- [Roger Carbury](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/roger_carbury.md): Roger is the head of the Carbury family, a man of small means and stubborn integrity who lives on his own land among his own people and has never learned to dress his feelings in romance. He loves Hetta with an aching, u
- [Lady Carbury](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/lady_carbury.md): Lady Carbury spent fifteen years smiling within five minutes of ill-usage, hiding her husband's drunken brutality from the world, and learning to live by manoeuvres. Released at forty, she has no intention of enduring th
- [Mrs. Hurtle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mrs_hurtle.md): Mrs. Hurtle is a lady, a widow, and one as has seen the world — and she is not afraid to say so in Mrs. Pipkin's lodging-house or anywhere else. She has an unsettling hold on Paul Montague, who cannot quite break with he
- [Ruby Ruggles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/ruby_ruggles.md): Ruby Ruggles is twenty-three, engaged to John Crumb of Bungay, and utterly unimpressed by the prospect of a life in the meal and pollard line. When a letter from Sir Felix Carbury arrives, she slips out to Sheepstone Bir
- [Lord Nidderdale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/lord_nidderdale.md): Lord Nidderdale is a very good fellow whom everybody likes, a Member of Parliament who never does anything there, and the son of a marquis who wants Melmotte's money paid down before any wedding. He is bashful, hard up, 
- [Dolly Longestaffe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/dolly_longestaffe.md): Adolphus Longestaffe, called Dolly, is the heir to the Longestaffe fortune and the despair of his sisters, who note that he does just what he pleases while they are sacrificed to Caversham. He drifts through London socie
- [Georgiana Longestaffe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/georgiana_longestaffe.md): Georgiana Longestaffe has endured tedium for years on the promise of eventual relief, but to be kept at Caversham all summer is as bad as hearing a bishop preach forever. When her father's finances force the family to gi
- [Mr. Broune](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mr_broune.md): Broune edits the Morning Breakfast Table and holds real power over the literary fortunes of Lady Carbury, who cultivates him with calculated charm while angling for better payment and gentler reviews. When a moment of en
- [John Crumb](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/john_crumb.md): Crumb belongs to the rural world of the Squire and Ruby's grandfather, a plain man whose blunt sincerity stands against Sir Felix Carbury's careless charm. He loves Ruby without cleverness, and his coming to London in wr
- [Miles Grendall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/miles_grendall.md): Grendall moves easily through the Beargarden's card rooms and the Melmotte household, a man whose chief currency is knowing things and being owed favours. He takes a secretary's post in the great railway office, where hi
- [Lord Alfred Grendall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/lord_alfred_grendall.md): Lord Alfred is the father of Miles and a fixture of the Beargarden set, a man whose title survives his fortune and whose perennial income depends on buying and selling what he does not own. He is one of hundreds admitted
- [Hamilton K. Fisker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/hamilton_k_fisker.md): Fisker is the emissary of the Mexican railway, the man who brings the prospectus to Melmotte and draws Paul Montague into the firm of Fisker, Montague, and Montague. His mind is not capacious, but it is entirely his own,
- [Mr. Bideawhile](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mr_bideawhile.md): Bideawhile acts for the Longestaffes in the sale of Pickering Park, and his dealings with Melmotte expose the gap between old-fashioned commercial honour and the new finance's casual insolence. When Melmotte proposes to 
- [Squercum](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/squercum.md): Squercum is the sharp little attorney Dolly Longestaffe hires to pry his share of the Pickering purchase money out of his own father's hands, and he is everything the stately Bideawhiles are not: quick, cheap, unkempt, a
- [Lady Monogram](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/lady_monogram.md): Lady Monogram moves through the novel's drawing rooms as a barometer of who currently matters, dispensing and withholding invitations with the precision of a woman who knows that social capital is the only capital she ha
- [Sir Damask Monogram](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/sir_damask_monogram.md): A wealthy baronet and husband of Lady Monogram.
- [Mr. Cohenlupe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mr_cohenlupe.md): Cohenlupe is the shadowy associate whose respectability Melmotte borrows and whose disappearance, when the Mexican Railway and the great house of cards begin to tremble, is the first clear signal that ruin is coming. He 
- [Madame Melmotte](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/madame_melmotte.md): Madame Melmotte presides over the great house in Grosvenor Square with the anxious obedience of a woman who knows her position is borrowed and may be reclaimed at any moment. She is devoted to her daughter Marie in her h
- [Lady Pomona Longestaffe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/lady_pomona_longestaffe.md): Lady Pomona Longestaffe is one of the proudest women in England, a country gentlewoman whose sense of rank is so finely tuned that she can persuade herself the arriviste Melmottes are quite her particular friends when it
- [Adolphus Longestaffe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/adolphus_longestaffe.md): Mr. Longestaffe is an old-fashioned landowner whose estates are encumbered and whose pride is enormous, and he has convinced himself that the great City conjuror Melmotte can boil his ruined fortunes back into freshness.
- [Father Barham](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/father_barham.md): A Catholic priest and friend of Roger Carbury.
- [Mrs. Pipkin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mrs_pipkin.md): Ruby Ruggles's aunt, who provides her lodging in London.
- [Ezekiel Brehgert](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/brehgert.md): Brehgert moves through the City with the wealth and credit that Melmotte only pretends to possess, and when he offers marriage to the impoverished Georgiana, her parents recoil not from his character but from his faith a
- [Lord Grasslough](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/grasslough.md): A young nobleman and member of the Beargarden club.
- [Mr. Ferdinand Alf](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mr_alf.md): A newspaper editor and rival to Mr. Broune.
- [Mr. Booker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mr_booker.md): A literary man and friend of Lady Carbury.
- [Herr Croll](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/croll.md): Melmotte's German clerk and confidant.
- [Joe Mixet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/joe_mixet.md): A radical politician and friend of John Crumb.
- [Elise Didon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/elise_didon.md): Marie Melmotte's French maid and confidante.
- [Daniel Ruggles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mr_ruggles.md): Ruby's stern grandfather, a farmer in Suffolk.
- [Mr. Lupton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mr_lupton.md): A young man about town, member of the Beargarden.
- [Mr. Leadham](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mr_leadham.md): A publisher who works with Lady Carbury.
- [Marquis of Auld Reekie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/marquis_of_auld_reekie.md): An elderly Scottish nobleman and father of Lord Nidderdale.
- [Lord De Griffin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/lord_de_griffin.md): A nobleman mentioned in passing.
- [Mr. Brown](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mr_brown.md): A minor character, possibly a servant or tradesman.
- [Sophia Longestaffe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/sophia_longestaffe.md): The younger Longestaffe sister, who marries well.
- [Mr. Alf Jones](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mr_jones.md): A journalist and associate of Mr. Alf.
- [Beauchamp Beauclerk](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/characters/mr_beauclerk.md): A fashionable young man about town.

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