The authors of the Congressional papers I'm processing this week have wonderful old Victorian surnames -- Hatfield and Specter, Danforth and Boggs, Oxley and Archer and Horn and Studds. As I'm working, many of them get transcribed onto scraps of paper, which wind up tucked into whatever book I've stuffed into my purse that day. Last night, while I was lying in bed reading Fowles' The Magus, they came whirling out into my lap like a handful of leaves. I gathered them up and read them aloud, and wondered what I would do with them if they were characters in my novel ...

Hatfield, I think, would be small and rotund, with lots of whiskers. He would have two small children, and a jolly wife, and would tumble into sleep in front of the fire every night, a work of fiction splayed face-down on his belly. Hatfield would dream of hounds and hunting, the thrill of the chase, and braces of hare to spill out from his larder.

Specter, on the other hand, would be whey-faced and tall, long-fingered like a spider, some sort of financial adviser for a small firm. He would smell strongly of cigar smoke and dank cellars, and his clothing would fit him very poorly. He would smile crookedly (and not frequently), but be mostly good-natured at heart. His past would be studded with misfortune, several small mishaps around a center of grief he would never speak of again.

Danforth would be Boggs' brother-in-law, a quiet man given to philosophy and the arts. He would disapprove strongly of Boggs (for good reason) and would not allow Boggs' sister or children to have any contact with him. The two would avoid each other for years, then finally cross paths one evening in a seedy backroom in an even seedier pub. It would become known that they shared the same mistress, and a fight would ensue. Both parties would bleed to death on a ragged carpet, clutching one another blindly under the cruel eye of ...

Archer, renown prostitute and muse. A barrister's lonely daughter, Archer would descend from her balcony at night to sate the lusts of the working class and scrub the stench of the upper class from her skin. She would be happiest over a deck of cards and a bottle of whiskey, lap-maid to some drunken merchant -- perhaps Oxley or Studds, both of whom would frequent such establishments.

Last in the tale would be Horn, a fatherless girl of fifteen. Horn would be studious and pale, with a somnolence of expression not unusual in such females. She would be growing her hair as an anticipatory gesture for a husband, brushing it smooth each night in front of a looking glass, her steadfast mind counting the strokes of the comb. She would marry two years later in the tale, and bear a sickly child, and die with it smothered to her chest, her husband Specter dozing peacefully in a chair at her side.