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Journal Entry 3 by goatgrrl from New Westminster, British Columbia Canada on Thursday, June 22, 2006
Cast of Characters: - Nick Jenkins: narrator of the Dance to the Music of Time series, during A Question he is completing his last year at an English boys' public school and preparing to enter university. His father works for the War Office (he was in Paris for "the Conference"), but both Jenkins' father and mother are strangely absent throughout the novel. He spends his summer at La Grenadiere (a private french home run partly as an upscale holiday center for international visitors) where he encounters Widmerpool, who has been sent there to improve his French. Jenkins is the nephew of Captain Giles Jenkins, his father's brother.
- Charles Stringham: Jenkins' public school and university classmate, a tall, dark young man with a wry sense of humour. His mother is a South African heiress who has married a second time to "Buster" Foxe. Moody, eccentric, he departs midway through A Question of Upbringing to visit his father in Kenya, then returns near the end to join Jenkins at university. Stringham hates the college experience, and by the end of A Question has accepted a position working as Magnus Donner's personal secretary. The Stringham family residence is "Glimber", a stately home.
- Peter Templer: has a thin face and light blue eyes, and a possible attraction for boys as well as girls, though he is an impressively accomplished ladies man for a seventeen year old. His uncle "accepted a baronetcy at the hands of Lloyd George", which embarrasses Peter. Has a one-night stand with the much older Lady Gwen McReith during a summer holiday party.
- Kenneth Widmerpool: the first character introduced in A Question (aside from the narrator himself), first encountered jogging in "a sweater once white and a cap at least a size too small". Widmerpool is heavy set with thick lips, metal rimmed spectacles and a high-pitched voice. While at school he goes for a run every afternoon, but has been a kind of scapegoat since wearing the wrong style of overcoat during the first days of term. At once arrogant and pathetically over-grateful when any of the boys speaks with him, Widmerpool shows up unexpectedly at La Grenadiere, where Nick is spending the summer. By that time he is articling for a firm of solicitors in London, where he lives in his mother's flat.
- Le Bas: the unmarried housemaster, tall, clean shaven and bald with large rimless spectacles "like a German priest". Has difficulty with the letter "r".
- Captain Giles Jenkins: Nick's paternal uncle, about 50, who contacts him in A Question of Upbringing to discuss "the Trust".
- Mrs. Foxe: Stringham's mother, a South African gold heiress.
- "Buster" Foxe: Stringham's step-father.
- Jean Templer: Peter's younger sister, who is about sixteen. Peter teases her about her air of existing "remote from everything that went on around her", while Jenkins is quietly in love with her.
- "Tuffy" Weedon: the thirty-something former governess of Stringham's sister, who has stayed on at the Foxe residence to run errands for Stringham's mother.
- Sunderland "Sunny" Farebrother: a friend of Templer's father and a distant relation on Templer's mother's side, thirty to thirty-five years of age, supposed to have "done well in the war" where he earned a "rather good" DSO, and an OBE several years later for his work on the Peace Conference. Notoriously cheap, he wears a "trifle dilapidated" suit and has regular features and an ascetic, serious manner. There's foreshadowing in A Question that Jenkins comes to know Farebrother better later on.
- Jimmy & Babs Stripling: Babs is Peter Templer's older sister, Jimmy is her second husband, a racing motorist who spirited her away from her first husband while the first was on the front during WWI.
- Lady Gwen McReith: formerly married to a partner of Peter Templer's father. A big giggler and party girl, she is the object of Jenkins' first feelings of awakening sexuality. In A Question Lady McReith sleeps with the teenage Peter Templer during a holiday weekend at the Templer residence.
- Commandant and Madame Leroy: Nick's hosts at La Grenadiere, Commandant Leroy knew Nick's father during the war. Several inches shorter than his wife with an enormous moustache and tinted glasses, the Commandant speaks perfect English (he was once an interpreter). The Leroys have three children: Emil, Marcel and Victorine.
- Sillery: a left-leaning don at Jenkins' and Stringham's college, in his mid-fifties with snow white hair and a large moustache, clad in "aged sack-like clothes" and Turkish slippers. "Had been on terms with Asquith". Throws Sunday afternoon tea parties (notorious for the "rock buns" he serves) to consolidate relations with students, which he uses to create a backwater of influence as they graduate and move into more powerful positions. There may or may not be a homoerotic vibe underlying Sillery's relationship with his students: "Sillery, I thought, was like Tiresias: for, although predominantly male ... in outward appearance, he seemed to have the seer's power of assuming female character if required. With Truscott, for example, he would behave like an affectionate aunt; while his perennial quarrel with Brightman ... was often concluded with a mixture of bluntness and self control."
- Short: a "mild second year man" who is a classmate of Jenkins' and a pupil of Sillery's with political interests. Has an ambition to become a Member of Parliament.
- Cheston Honthorst: an American student at Jenkins and Stringham's college who takes tea at Sillery's house.
- Mark Members: another student who takes tea at Sillery's. Made a name for himself by publishing a poem in "Public School Verse" which got noticed by Edmund Gosse.
- Bill Truscott: had "gone down" from Oxbridge two or three years earlier, and now works for Sir Magnus Donners, a would-be MP. Comes to a party at Sillery's house looking for a "good man" to hire as Manus Donner's other personal secretary, and ultimately hires Charles Stringham for the position.
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A Question of Upbringing
