Sweet Caroline...

Remembered

In the following, member Robert Saliba recalls one of the Master's most memorable female characters, Caroline English, wife of ill-fated Julian English:

In From the Terrace, sometime around 1920 Alfred Eaton briefly stops at the Lantenengo Country Club and has a chance meeting on the porch with Julian. "Come on back to the locker-room and I'll give you a shot of whiskey. My name is English. I go to Lafayette."

Several years later, in 1927, just after Alfred meets Natalie Benziger, her father, Ralth Benziger, gives Alfred a guest card to the same Lantenengo Country Club. The golf pro pairs him with Julian, and while the golf pro and Alfred are waiting for Julian to arrive, the golf pro says of Julian, "He plays a nice game when he's on his game, but he can go haywire worse than anybody I ever saw."

Natalie and Caroline are best friends. After Julian's death, Caroline tells Natalie: "What am I now? What shall I ever be? I'm a girl who had good and just cause to walk out on her husband, and now for the rest of my life I can sit here with my good and just cause...He was nice, and God help me he was nice to me."

It was the only time Natalie saw her weep. "I loved him, I loved him."

Caroline never remarries, never has any other relationship that we know about.

In Appointment, when Julian and Caroline have their altercation outside Caroline's mother's house (the Walker mansion on South Main Street), Julian begs her to go home with him and talk things over, but she refuses, and instead she stays with her mother. Later that evening Julian, at home alone and thoroughly drunk, kills himself.