Characters
- Polly Hampton, the daughter of Lord and Lady Montdore, is renowned for her beauty but not much else
- Lady Montdore, Polly's abrasive, narcissistic and inconsiderate mother
- Lord Montdore, Polly's kindly and rather dull father and the previous Viceroy of India
- Fanny Wincham, the narrator, is a distant cousin of Polly's and a frequent visitor of the family
- Cedric Hampton, the heir to Hampton and a close friend of Fanny's, is flagrantly homosexual and extremely charming. He causes a great deal of gossip and scandal, yet most people are won over by his charm once they meet him. Once he arrives at Hampton, he spends most of his time making over his aunt
- Harvey "Boy" Dougdale, husband of Lord Montdore's sister Patricia and later the husband of Polly Hampton. Boy is bisexual and known for his extremely active sex life
- Lady Patricia Dougdale, whom Polly is said to resemble, is the wife of Boy Dougdale. Patricia pined for Boy for several years before he finally married her, but within six months of the wedding Patricia became aware of her husband's extramarital affairs. She was long afflicted with ill health and her death is a major plot point in the story
- Davey Warbeck, Fanny's uncle and close friend of the Montdores and the Alconleighs
- Jassy Radlett, Fanny's cousin, is a regular visitor who never fails to cheer up Fanny
- Victoria Radlett, Jassy's younger sister, and likewise one of Fanny's most welcome visitors
- Matthew Alconleigh, father of Jassy and Victoria and uncle to Fanny, Matthew is notable for his intense loathing of Cedric Hampton
- Sadie Alconleigh, Fanny's aunt and mother of Jassy and Victoria, is a close friend of the Montdores
- Alfred Wincham, an Oxford don and Fanny's husband. Although Fanny often claims that she and her husband are perfectly suited for one another, Alfred is often dismissive of his wife's behavior and interests
- Norma Boreley, Fanny's neighbor, is one of her closest friends despite their many differences in temperament
- Mrs. Chaddesley Corbett, the most popular and prominent socialite of her day and an important visitor at Hampton
- Fabrice de Sauveterre, a wealthy French duke and a guest at Hampton. Sauveterre is a major character in The Pursuit of Love
Read more about this topic: Love In A Cold Climate
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)