Henry Firmalden was ruled by his wife. “In the city, he was a man who could show great decision and force of will—but at home he was docile, silent and often hungry.”
Lady Burghwallas, one of the minor characters, belonged to the class “who must have their social illusions nourished by the newspapers.”
Lessard belonged to the Bohemian set. Of Huguenot extraction, he was of a defiant mood, accompanied with melancholy characteristic of the sect from which he sprang.
An “aristocratic vagabond,” he was a man of the world with a wayward heart. Spontaneous and unconventional, he was disposed to quarrel with the established order of things.
He was a singer and also a mediocre dramatist, who was admired by certain “long-haired men who should have been born women, and by short-haired women who should have not been born at all.”
Gloriana Twomley is an overdressed woman, but clever after a fashion. She had tact to manage her husband in such a way as to keep him happy, and at the same time make him entirely satisfied with her work. He never realized it, “for the less wit a man has, the less he knows that he wants it.” Her relationship was large. There were many “in-laws” and she was kept busy trying to regulate their affairs.
The most entertaining character in the whole book is Lady Marlesford. Vivacious, tactful and pretty, her highly disciplined mind could bear agitation, pain or anything better than being bored. She and her husband were of a violently different temperament. He, selfish, exacting and unresponsive, could not appreciate her brilliant mind. Her keen sense of humor made him nervous. Whenever he said anything but the obvious, she invariably asked, “Who said that?” In conversation, she always kept him “mentally out of breath.” “The pair having exhausted their dislike, were almost attached to each other by a common bond of suffering.”
It is impossible to read “The Dream and The Business” understandingly and fail to be entertained.
Mark Harwell Pettway.
