# Mr. Elver — Those Barren Leaves character guide

> Mr. Elver in Those Barren Leaves by Aldous Huxley.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Hastily Mr. Elver

**First appearance:** 0000-part-i-an-evening-at-mrs-aldwinkle-s

## Snapshot

Grace's brother, a seedy unfrocked cleric whose melancholy and morning-after illness make him a silent rebuke at his own breakfast table.

## Who they are

Philip Elver appears at the villa too broken-down and ill to lift his coffee cup, goaded into a single gulp by his sister's cheerful urging to eat. His collapse — the unfrocked cleric, the man too melancholy to speak — stands as a quiet counterweight to the villa's chatter about art and appetite. Around him Huxley arranges the novel's larger meditation on death and decay, from the smiling Volumni tombs to the mummified she-saint at Assisi.

## In the story

### [VI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/those_barren_leaves_se/chapters/vi)

Tall, stooping, with a yellow face and furtive eyes; he is grudging and gloomy, dressed in a baggy black suit, and seems reluctant to host Cardan.

### [VII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/those_barren_leaves_se/chapters/vii)

Becomes drunk and emotional, confessing his past suffering as an advertisement canvasser, his hatred for his sister, and his failed plan to let her die of fever in Italy.

### [Chapter VIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/those_barren_leaves_se/chapters/viii)

Hostile and silent, he glares at Mr. Cardan with loathing and refuses to engage in conversation. His illness and melancholy are evident during breakfast.

### [IX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/those_barren_leaves_se/chapters/ix)

Mentioned as still asleep when Mr. Cardan and Miss Elver leave.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/those_barren_leaves_se/characters/mr_elver
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/those_barren_leaves_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/those_barren_leaves_se/characters