Fifth Business

Fifth Business

File:FifthBusiness.png Paperback edition of Fifth Business
Author	Robertson Davies
Translator	Greg Hines
Illustrator	Smmy Jordan
Cover artist	Sandra Dionisi
Language	English
Series	The Deptford Trilogy
Subject	Death
Genre	Drama
Publisher	Penguin Group
Publication date	1970
Publication place	Canada
Media type	Paperback
Pages	273
ISBN	ISBN 0-14-026049-8 (paperback edition)
OCLC	36190121
Followed by	The Manticore

Fifth Business is a 1970 novel by Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor Robertson Davies. It is the first installment of the Deptford Trilogy and is a story of the life of the narrator, Dunstan Ramsay. It is Davies' best-known novel, and considered his finest.

First published by Macmillan of Canada in 1970, Fifth Business was selected 40th on the American Modern Library's "reader's list" of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.

Plot

Ramsay's passion for hagiology and his guilty connection to Mary Dempster provide most of the impetus and background for this novel. He spends much of the book struggling with his image of Mary Dempster as a fool-saint and dealing with issues of guilt that spawned from a childhood accident.

The entire story is told in the form of a letter written by Ramsay on his retirement from teaching at Colborne College, addressed to the school Headmaster.

Epigraph

Fifth business … definition

Those roles which, being neither those of hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were none the less essential to bring about the Recognition or the denouement were called the Fifth Business in drama and Opera companies organized according to the old style; the player who acted these parts was often referred to as Fifth Business. - Tho. Overskou, Den Danske Skueplads

Davies was pressured by his publisher to provide some clear idea of what exactly ‘Fifth Business’ was, and so Davies affixed this opening quotation, which was taken at face value for many years.

Part One - Mrs Dempster

1.The story of Dunstan Ramsay’s life begins on 5:58 o’clock p.m. on 27 December 1908, when Dunstan was just a boy of ten years old, and at the time was called Dunstable. He and his lifelong friend and enemy Percy Boyd Staunton had been sledding together and had quarrelled, and on the way back to town Percy hid a paperweight in a snowball and threw it at Dunstable, but it hit the passing-by Mary Dempster. Mrs. Dempster is the wife of Deptford’s Baptist minister, and she is also very pregnant. The shock of the stone hitting her head causes her to become slightly deranged, and she goes into labour to deliver a premature baby boy, Paul Dempster. Mr. Amasa Dempster is shown to be of no aid to his wife during the delivery as he Christens the child and prays to God to take his wife and spare his child, so it is up to Mrs. Ramsay to help Mrs. Dempster through this ordeal.

2. Dunstan steps back from his narrative to inform us as to the reason we are being treated to his life history. The year is now 1969, and Dunstan is writing to the headmaster of the Colbourne boy’s school he had taught at to protest the tributary send-off he was given upon his retirement. The article summarizes some of the important details of Dunstan’s life, including that (Percy) Boy Staunton has recently died and that Ramsay had a heart attack shortly after this event. Dunstan is referred to by the nickname ‘corky’, in reference to the wooden leg he carries after his debilitating service in WW1. It is also established that Dunstan has been teaching History, in an eccentric fashion, at this institution for 45 years. Dunstan takes insult to his portrayal in this article and the dismissal of his subject of ‘mythic history’, along with the lack of mention of his V.C. and six books. He wants to prove to the headmaster that he has in fact lead a rich and full life, in his own way, which Dunstan describes as being ‘cast by Fate and my own character for the vital though never glorious role of Fifth Business!” (9).

3. Dunstan returns to his description of his childhood to try and give us a sense of his hometown, Deptford, which is located in Southern Ontario, Canada, on the Thames river (in reality: Thamesville). 1900s Deptford contains 500-800 people divided between 5 churches. Dunstan’s father is the owner and editor of the local paper, while Percy’s father is a seldom-practicing doctor who is becoming rich by growing sugar-beets. They value cleanliness and each sects views themselves superior to the others, and they all view themselves as superior people compared to the even smaller and more rustic town down the road.

4. Returning to the infant Paul Dempster and Mrs. Ramsay’s efforts to assist in his survival after having been born 80 days premature, Mrs. Ramsay builds a nest for the baby and scolds the reverend about his counterproductive prayers to God to take his hysterical wife from him. During this time Dunstable is at home suffering terrible fits of agony in the belief that he is responsible for Paul’s birth and Mary’s dementia because he avoided a pain that was clearly intended for him and let someone else suffer in his place. Percy has denied all knowledge of what happened, and threatens Dunstable that he’d better forget to, for his own good. Dunstable denies knowing who threw the snowball when his parents confront him, and for the rest of his life he is haunted by this decision and wishes for death to end his suffering,

5. This section returns to descriptions of Deptford culture as the foolish Mary Dempster attempts to re-enter society after her traumatic experience. There is a general consensus about the town that the girl is not fit for the duty of being a minister’s wife. Dunstable’s mother ordered him over to the Dempster household to help with the chores that Mary is absentmindedly neglecting.

6. As he grows older, Dunstable’s association with the ostracized Mary Dempster comes to hurt his popularity at school, and he discovers that his well-to-do rival Percy is one of the people snickering at him behind his back. But Dunstable has a trick for being able to get off ‘good one’ comebacks in fights, and knows that he can disarm Percy at any moment by telling the boys Mrs. Staunton’s pet name for Percy: “Pidgy Boy-Boy”. Dunstable has a crush on a girl named Leola Cruikshank, but he reflectively realizes that he was also in love with Mrs. Dempster and genuinely enjoyed helping at her house. Dunstable fights another boy in his class who refers to Mrs. Dempster’s house as ‘the bughouse’.

7. At age thirteen Dunstable gets a job at the local library, which suits his introverted interests very well. Dunstable absorbs the encyclopaedia and also explores the world of stage magic as explained by Houdini and Hoffman. But the town does not place much value on knowledge, and even less for devilish conjuring, and this takes Dunstable into a quarrel with his mother. Dunstable comes to understand that there is darkness within the human soul, and that no one, not even his own mother, can be trusted.

8. Dunstable delves further into the realm of magic, and the miracles of the Catholic saints. And he shares these interests with the four year old Paul Dempster, who turns out to be much more proficient with simple slight-of-hand tricks then Dunstable could ever hope to be.

9. Dunstable next describes his feud with the Reverend Amasa Dempster, who believes that his wife is a cross that he must bear through life. Amasa accuses Dunstable of corrupting his son with his devil-magic, as Baptists are not fond of cards and tricks. Worse still is Ramsay's indoctrinating Paul into the Papistry. Amasa forbids the young Dunstable from seeing Mary and Paul any longer.

10. On Friday 24 October 1913 Mary Dempster goes for her last stroll about town. The town gets word that night that she has disappeared and they band together to search for her. Dunstable is allowed to help and he sees this as an affirmation of his manhood. They head for the pit, the ‘local branch of hell’ where kids go to give themselves up to temptation and where railway tramps abound looking for handouts. In that pit it is Dunstable who discovers Mrs. Dempster fornicating with a tramp. The townspeople catch her in the shameful act and the only defence she can offer is that ‘he wanted it so badly’, insinuating that this act of infidelity was sinfully consensual.

11. Amasa Dempster does not press charges against the tramp so he is released and warned never to return to the village. The town is abuzz about what the Reverend will say at his sermon next Sunday, and it turns out that he has chosen to resign from the parsonage and live in poverty. The wives of the community privately prohibit their husbands from expressing any public help for the disgraceful Mary Dempster, who ‘had not been raped, as a decent woman would have been’ (43). One night the townspeople paint their faces black and riot outside of the Dempster home, and Dunstable is disgusted that Amasa does not go out to face them. Amasa becomes a shell of a man and Mary is strapped up in a harness and not allowed to leave the house. Dunstable resumes his visits with Mary and Paul by sneaking in through her window while Amasa is out.

12. Over the next year Dunstable is ostracized at school but finds comfort and company in books. Meanwhile Leola Cruikshank is well understood to be Percy Boyd Staunton’s girl. But Percy is discovered one day in a barn engaging in the sexual act with one Mabel Heighington. Percy’s father pays off her family and Percy is sent away to Colbourne College, the same college that Dunstan would one day come to teach at, while Percy was Chairman of its Board of Governors.

13. In the autumn of 1914 war breaks out across the world, but Dunstable is more concerned with his older brother Willie’s illness. Willie had been working at his father’s paper when one of the rollers fell on him and damaged some internal organs. Dunstable has to stay at his brother’s side while the rest of the town is at the Fall Fair, and during this sitting Willie dies. Dunstable panics but does not go for the doctor, instead he brings Mary Dempster to the scene and she prays by Willie’s bed and restores him to life. Dunstable is convinced that he has seen a miracle, but the doctor dismisses the possibility that Willie was ever dead, and Mrs. Ramsay is upset that the whore Mary Dempster is in her home.

14. Dunstable’s friends come to view him as a ‘credulous ass who thought that a dangerous lunatic could raise the dead’ (56). Even the new Presbyterian Reverend pulls Dunstable aside to warn him against associating with women of loose virtue, and assures him that the age of miracles is past. Mrs. Ramsay will not drop the subject at home, and eventually forces her son to make a choice between her and ‘that woman’, and so Dunstable lies his way into being enlisted into the army. His parents will not shame him by informing the army about his true age, and so Dunstable can wait out the rest of his Deptford days in a romantic fling with Leola, who assures Dunstable that she really loves him over Percy. Dunstable also promises Mary Dempster that he will not be afraid no matter what happens.

Part Two – I Am Born Again

1. Ramsay is reluctant to speak about his involvement in the Great War because he admits that as an infantryman he had little idea what was going on and simply did as he was told.

2. He spends some two or three years at the front before November 5th, 1917 when he is injured during the Third Battle at Ypres, but not before he manages to clear a German machine gun nest by shooting three enemy soldiers in the backs of their heads. Ramsay becomes disoriented and his left leg is torn apart by shrapnel. He crawls through the mud and confusion into the remains of a building as a flare drops before him. The flare illuminates a statue of the Virgin and Child and Ramsay sees Mrs. Dempster’s face in that statue as he denounces her as a fool and loses consciousness.

3. Ramsay is unconscious for some six months while he is being cared for at an English army hospital. He describes his unconsciousness as a blissful paradise, but his return to reality is also rather pleasant, as he is being lovingly cared for by a devoted nurse named Diana Marfleet. Ramsay had been presumed dead as his tags were lost in the battle, and he is shocked to learn that he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, and less affected to learn that his parents died in the influenza pandemic of early 1918 after receiving the news that he and his brother were dead.

4 – 6. Ramsay is awarded his V.C. by his king, George V. Diana entices Ramsay back into life and helps him adjust to his new prosthetic leg; while also initiating him into sexual existence. She intends to marry him but when Ramsay refuses she confers upon him his new name, Dunstan, after the saint who fought off the temptations of the devil. Ramsay says that he will not marry her because doesn’t want another mother-figure in his life after just having been liberated from his biological one, and also he is still receiving letters from Leola of uncertain intent.

7. Dunstan is treated to a hero’s welcome when he returns to Deptford, and a parade is thrown in his and the other war-veterans’ honour. Dunstan is surprised to find out that Percy-Boyd Staunton is a major with a D.S.O.; and very surprised when Percy announces that he and Leola are to be married. Dunstan decides to take this with good-humour and continue his friendship with the pair.

8. Dunstan takes charge of his now emptied household and then acquaints himself with the developments of Deptford over the last four years. Doc Staunton retired from his practice when the flu epidemic struck and became a very rich man. Ramsay also learns that Amasa Dempster was felled by the flu, that Paul ran away with the circus, and that Mary went insane and was taken away by a relative. The section ends with Dunstan leaving Deptford in the flesh, though he muses that he 'never wholly left it in the spirit' (100).

Part Three – My Fool-Saint

1. Ramsay goes to school at the University of Toronto and earns an MA in History. Percy flowers brilliantly and drops his first name to become known as Boy Staunton, and he takes to modelling himself on the pinnacle of aristocratic panache: Edward, Prince of Wales. Boy studies law and plays the stock market, and is well on his way to outstripping even his father’s immense accumulations of fortune. But Boy is generous to take care of his struggling and frugal friend Dunstan by providing him with investment information. They meet every two weeks so that Boy can prattle on about Leola and all the other girls he is enjoying. And Dunstan is very jealous and upset to have to hear about this, but that doesn’t stop him from taking Boy’s money.

2. After college Dunstan takes a job as a schoolmaster that he will keep until the retirement party of the second chapter of this book.

3. Boy and Leola are married and travel to Europe, and Dunstan visits the continent for his own amusements.

4. Dunstan returns to the battlefields of Europe to search for his Madonna statue. Dunstan takes up the challenge of learning the histories of all the Catholic Saints, and becomes something of an expert in the field of hagiology.

5. As Dunstan develops into an eccentric teacher, Boy tries to educate Leola into a higher social standing without much success. When the Prince of Wales visits Canada in 1927, Boy is selected as an aide for the Prince, and the event is possibly the greatest moment in Boy’s life. A year later Boy’s son is born and named Edward David Staunton.

6. Ramsay’s school hears a guest lecture from a man named Joel Surgeoner from the Lifeline Mission to help the needy. Dunstan recognizes the man as the tramp he saw in the pit with Mary Dempster all those years ago, and follows the man to talk to him. Dunstan’s mind is opened up to the possibility of illusions and parables being more real than truths, and that Mary redeemed this tramp and made him into an honest God-fearing man. Joel mentions that he considers a Saint, and Dunstan takes this as being all-too-real, and considers her redemption of Joel to be the first of three miracles she performed (the others being the resurrection of Willie, and appearing to Dunstan at Passchendaele).

7. Dunstan returns to Deptford one last time to gather information on the whereabouts of the insane Mary Dempster. He also stops off at the Catholic priest’s house to inquire about whether or not Mary’s three miracles qualify her to be a Saint. Ramsay is introduced to the concept of the 'Fool-Saint', a person full of holiness and good-will but who nonetheless brings madness.

8. Dunstan finds Mary in Toronto. She is being cared for by her aunt, Bertha Shanklin. The two women are not used to the company of men and Mary is not up to being reminded of the traumas in her past. Bertha allows Dunstan to come back and get to know Mary as a new friend, and not the boy from long ago.

9. In 1929 Boy protects Dunstan from experiencing the great depression by having him invest in Boy’s own company, the Alpha Corportation, which is a sugar-refining business. At the time Dunstan is more preoccupied testing his hypotheses about the Portugese Saint Wilgefortis. He travels to a small village in Tyrolean Austria to investigate a shrine, and finds that a travelling circus, Le grand Cirque de St Vite, is in town. By an astonishing coincidence, the young magician who jumps up on stage turns out to be an older and sleazier Paul Dempster, who has obviously made a living on the trade Dunstan first schooled him in some 15 years earlier. Paul is going by the name Faustus Legrand, and is not pleased to be reminded of his former life in Canada. Dunstan returns to his investigations of Uncumber and later discovers that Paul stole his wallet.

Part Four – Gyges and King Candaules

1. Boy’s dealings with solaces make him rich off of the Depression. Dunstan is only too thrilled to hear about Boy’s successes and how Leola is getting old. It seems that Leola is unable to keep pace with Boy’s rapid rise through the social ranks. Dunstan doesn’t want to intervene as their marriage dissolves into enmity and claims that he feels nothing for Leola know except pity. Dunstan also reveals the strange circumstances that surrounded the night of David’s conception and it seems Dunstan was a rather integral part of that process… which raises certain questions that David will investigate during The Manticore. Dunstan compares the situation between him and Boy to the story of Gyges and King Candaules, as a warning, but Boy is not the type to concern himself with archetypal patterns shaping human lives.

2. Dunstan reminds us that he visited Mary Dempster every fortnight for four years, until her Aunt died and Mary was left to his care. He places her in a public hospital for the insane, in Toronto, where he can keep an eye on her, and he can see that she is not happy to be there.

3. Dunstan achieves a specialized though limited reputation in the realm of hagiography when the Bollandists agree to publish an article of his. Dunstan travels to Europe again to meet with them, and though he knows he can never be a part of their world, he is satisfied to have achieved recognition in his chosen field of study. He makes a friend of the oldest Jesuit in the bunch, Padre Blazon, who is happy to talk at length in exchange for food and liquor. The Padre reveals the earthly lives of the saints, the side that history has repressed because of the human need for examples of excellence and things they cannot explain. Blazon also offers some advice on Dunstan’s fool-saint, advancing the possibility that she saved Dunny from that rock when he was a child for a reason, and that Dunstan should figure out what role she is playing in his personal mythology.

4. Dunstan continues his weekly visits with Mary Dempster, but they are becoming a chore to him. Next he compiles his first book, A Hundred Saints for Travellers, which is intended for simple identification, while his next book explores why people need saints. Dunstan becomes an eccentric friend for Boy to promote at his various social functions. In this chapter Dunstan also covers the early years of David and Caroline Staunton, along with Boy’s rampant philandering. But in 1936 things take a tragic turn in the Staunton household when Boy’s hero finally ascends to the throne, only to abdicate it by the end of the year. That Christmas proves to be the undoing of the Stauntons, and by the time Dunstan arrives for dinner, Boy has stormed off, Leola is crying, and the kids are traumatized for life. Leola tries to seduce Dunstan and remind him of when they were together. When Dunstan decides to leave, she screams out “You don’t love me!” Dunstan flees the scene, only to be called back by one of the Staunton servants, and when Dunstan returns Leola is wrapped up in her bed after having slit her wrists and bled all over the bathroom. She had intended to kill herself but had done a poor job of it. She also left a note confessing her love for Dunstan. Dunstan is sure the nurse has read this note, and possibly told the children, but he has the unfortunate duty of helping Leola return to life as Boy has disappeared on a drinking binge and does not return for many weeks.

Themes

Davies discusses several themes in the novel, perhaps the most important being the difference between materialism and spirituality. Davies asserts religion is not necessarily integral to the idea—demonstrated by the corrupt Reverend Leadbeater who reduces the Bible to mere economic terms.

Davies, then being an avid student of Carl Jung's ideas, deploys them in Fifth Business. Characters are clear examples of Jungian archetypes and events demonstrate Jung's idea of synchronicity. The stone thrown at Ramsay when he was a child reappears decades later in a scandalous suicide or murder. Ramsay's character is a classic introverted personality, contrasted throughout the book with the extroverted sensuality of Boy Staunton. Ramsay dedicates his life to genuine religious feeling as he saw it in his 'fool-saint' Mary Dempster, whose son grows up to be the very archetype of The Magician.

A genuinely learned man, Davies wrote a prose that both poked fun at pretentious scholarship and enjoyed joking allusions, as in the names of Ramsay's girl friends, Agnes Day, Gloria Mundy and Libby Doe. He explained these later as "Agnes, the Sufferer — a type well known to all men; Gloria, the Good Time Girl, and Libby, the energetic go-getter" (letter 11 March, 1982, in For Your Eyes Alone: Letters 1976-1995, ed. Judith Skelton Grant, 1999.)

Religion and morality

There is religious sectarianism in Deptford dividing the frontier townsfolk between five different Christian churches that do not associate with each other under normal circumstances. It takes emergency situations for them to lend aid to each other, but this is conditional aid based on the assumption that certain moral codes will be preserved regardless of faith. For instance, Mary Dempster is a daft-headed girl who habitually flaunts the norms of the society, and so she finds herself ostracized and ridiculed by her society, and no one comes to her aid when her son runs away. But she is the only member of Deptford society that Dunstan views as truly ‘religious’ in her attitude because she lives according to a light that arises from within (which he contrasts with her husband’s ‘deeply religious’ attitude, which ‘meant that he imposed religion as he understood it on everything he knew or encountered’ (46)).

As a boy, Dunstable is raised as a Presbyterian, but he also takes an avid interest in Catholic saints. He grows up to develop a more spiritual mode of life that is not reliant on external structures. For Dunstan Ramsay, religion and morality are immediate certainties in life, and the events of the novel show how moral lapses have a way of ‘snowballing’ and coming back to haunt one.

Myth and History

Davies and Dunstan here are at pains to illustrate to us just how fluid the concept of historical fact really is, and that it is not so distinct from the suppositions of mythic thinking. Dunstan questions the extent that he can provide an accurate of the events of his childhood or his participation in WW1 campaigns, because what he recalls is surely distinct from the ‘consensually accepted reality’.

One aspect of this blurred distinction between myth and history is Ramsay’s lifelong preoccupation with the lives of the Saints. The fantastic nature of their stories were always grounded in actual events, but their miracles were given attention and focus based on the psychosocial attitudes and needs of the day, so that what the public wanted had a large measure of influence over what became the accepted canon.

Sexuality

Dunstable’s experiences as a child give us some insight into his child-like dawning of the realities of sex, as well as the values of this God-fearing frontier community. For instance, Dunstan knows that he is in some way responsible for Paul’s unfortunate birth and therefore somehow implicated in the dirty act that the older kids practice in the gravel pit outside of town. Mrs. Dempster is free and open with her sexuality, but this turns this restrictive Victorian society against her, so that her husband is seen as perfectly justified in confining her to their home with a harness (which is a physical manifestation of psychosocial repression).

Origin of the title

The book's title was explained by the author as a theatrical term, a character essential to the action but not a principal, "called the Fifth Business in drama and opera companies organized according to the old style," quoting Tho. Overskou, Den Danske Skueplads. This is a real if obscure scholarly work in Danish, and the quotation was provided by Davies to satisfy the book's first publisher. Only in 1979, when the book's Norwegian translator failed to find the citation did Davies admit it was his invention.

Comparison of the novel with Davies life

Ramsay's life (wounded war veteran, lifelong bachelor schoolmaster) was wholly unlike Davies' (never in the army, married with a family, a newspaper editor and author) yet some readers thought Fifth Business semi-autobiographic. Davies projects his life experiences (childhood in a small Ontario town, family connections with the social and financial elite) into many of his works and it seems no surprise Davies thought of it as "autobiographical, but not as young men do it; it will be rather as Dickens wrote David Copperfield, a fictional reworking of some things experienced and much re-arranged." Davies allows us to peer through a window into his childhood in Thamesville, Ontario and through his young life into higher education and beyond through the character of Ramsay and throughout the Deptford trilogy. Davies provides us, in Fifth Business, with an autobiography which is "not a sweating account of the first time he backed a girl into a corner", but an account of his spirit, his memories, and his deeper life experiences. Or, as Diane Cole wrote in the New York Times soon after Davies' death, "Davies used his personal myths and archetypes to probe the possibilities of human good and evil, but always with a wickedly humorous wink."

The character of Percy Boyd Staunton is also an important reference to Davies' real life. Some of the elements of Boy's life-story are drawn from Robertson Davies' friend Vincent Massey. Both men became rich from their father's agricultural businesses. Both men were enlisted in WW1, went into politics to hold cabinet positions, and strengthened Canada's ties with the mother country during her time of need. While Vincent Massey becomes the first Canada-born Governor General, Boy is likewise appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario. And the most convincing parallel is that Boy becomes the Chair of the Board of Governors that runs the school Ramsay teaches at, much as Robertson Davies spent his career at the University of Toronto as the head Professor of Massey College. But the character is also fictionalized to a large extent, for instance, Vincent Massey goes into office without taking an ill-suited wife and also manages to overcome the difficulties of the abdicating and dying Kings in England. Davies has stated that aspects of the character are more reflective of his father. The initial snow-ball incident that shapes Boy's life is more neutral and Davies claimed it was developed out of an inspirational dream.

Principal characters in Fifth Business

• Dunstan (Dunstable) Ramsay — The narrator of the novel. Born at the turn of the 20th century, he is maimed in WWI, wins a Victoria Cross, and devotes his life to the study of saints and myths, spending time with Bollandist scholars.

• 'Boy' (Percy Boyd) Staunton — Ramsay's childhood friend who threw a snowball at him which instead hit Mary Dempster, thereby precipitating the premature birth of Paul Dempster and her subsequent slide into madness. Changes his name from Percy to Boy. Through his immense business skills he becomes a billionaire in the sugar-processing business in Canada. He has almost no insight into himself but is a charming man with an immense need for sexual gratification.

• Mary Dempster — Ten years older than the narrator, Dunstan Ramsay, she plays a pivotal role in his life where she assumes saint-like proportions despite being held in an insane asylum.

• Paul Dempster — Son of Mary Dempster. Ten years younger than Dunstan Ramsay, he outshines Ramsay at hand magic and later on, disappears with a travelling circus. Later in life he transforms himself into the magician Magnus Eisengrim and is the subject of World of Wonders.

• Leola Staunton — Ravishing wife of Boy Staunton and first love of Dunstan Ramsay. A sometimes weak, sometimes strong woman who cannot live up to her ambitious husband's expectations.

• Lieselotte Vitzlipützli — Daughter of a millionaire Swiss watchmaker who assists Magnus Eisengrim in his travelling magic show. She is bisexual, and the victim of an early adolescent affliction (never specified but possibly acromegaly) which leaves her unusually tall and with large features. She is Ramsay's confessor and lover and critic and completes him as a man.