According to the narrative, "at almost any hour of the twenty-four" Negroes "might be seen" entering the house of the "half-crazed white woman" who reputedly sells them "spells" - i.e. magic potions (200-01). Many of them arrive at her house in "a wagon or a buggy," suggesting that they live in the country, not the town.
This "old half-crazed white woman" is one of Jefferson's most eccentric inhabitants (200). The physical description of her is equally striking: her "lank grayish hair" hangs beside "the glittering collapse of her face" (201). She is reported to make her living by "manufactur[ing] spells for negroes" (200), though her house was also once raided by "officers searching for whiskey" (201). Horace arranges for Ruby to stay in the "lean-to shed room" attached to her house. (This woman may recur as "Mrs.
Ed Walker is the county jailer. Apparently he was reluctant to allow Ruby and her child to spend a night in the jail with Lee Goodwin, but his wife, who lives with her husband in the jail and admits them, tells Horace "I dont keer whut Ed says" (181).
While the narrative describes the jailer's wife as "a lank, slattern woman," her insistence on giving Ruby a bed after the Baptists got her thrown out of the hotel, despite her husband's reluctance to do so - "I kin always find a bed fer a woman and child," she says; "I don't keer whut Ed says" - is welcomed by Horace (181).
The proprietor is described as "a tight, iron-gray man" with "a neat paunch" (180). He is very concerned about propriety: when a committee from the Baptist church complains about Ruby's presence in the hotel, he turns her out.
The telephone operator appears in the novel only as "a detached Delsarte-ish voice" that informs Horace his call to Miss Reba, trying to locate Temple, has ended (268). Francois Delsarte was a Frenchman whose instructions for proper pronunciation became famous at the end of the 19th century.
We don't know where "in Kentucky" Belle's father lives (260), nor anything else about his house. But she goes there after Horace leaves her to return to Jefferson at the beginning of Sanctuary.
We don't know where "in Kentucky" Mr. Mitchell - the father of Belle Benbow - lives (260), nor anything else about his house. But we do learn along with her husband that as soon as he left her in his ill-fated attempt to return to his family home in Jefferson at the beginning of Sanctuary, she goes back to her family home in Kentucky.
Almost as soon as Horace leaves his wife and step-daughter to return to Jefferson, Belle herself apparently goes to "her father's in Kentucky" (260). Again apparently, that is where she stays for almost the duration of the novel. No other details about her father are provided.
The prostitutes who work at the less expensive brothel to which Clarence takes Virgil and Fonzo are described by the narrative as "coffee-colored" (199). Their dresses are "bright," their hair is "ornate" and their smiles are "golden" (199).
