Albert Price

Albert Price appears briefly, but his visit after Fanny Price’s suicide gives the aftermath a sharp social and moral focus. As her brother, he comes to Paris only after Philip Carey finds his old letter refusing her request for a five-pound loan; he helps complete the funeral arrangements, yet treats Fanny’s death chiefly as an awkward family matter and recoils from the explanation that poverty drove her to it.

Identity and Family Background

Albert is Fanny’s brother, a rubber-merchant in London with a wife and three children. A letter signed as coming from her loving brother had reached Philip among Fanny’s possessions. It was already two or three weeks old and had been sent from a road in Surbiton. In it, Albert refused to lend her five pounds, explaining that he had his own household to consider, and advised her to return to London and seek work.

That refusal supplies the practical background to his appearance in Paris: Philip has to find Albert’s address by reading the very letter in which he denied Fanny financial help. When Philip wires to say that his presence is necessary, Albert replies that he is deeply distressed but that leaving his business will be inconvenient. He does come the following morning, but the delayed response and his earlier refusal frame his arrival as an obligation reluctantly taken up rather than an act of sustained support.

Arrival in Paris and Response to Fanny’s Death

Albert introduces himself to Philip at the studio door. He is described as a common-looking man dressed in black, with a band around his bowler hat, a stubbly moustache, and a Cockney accent; his awkward appearance recalls Fanny’s own clumsiness. As Philip explains what has happened and what he has done, Albert looks around the studio. He asks whether he must see his sister, saying that his nerves are not strong and that little is needed to upset him.

He speaks readily about his life and Fanny’s choices. She had been a governess, he says, and he cannot understand why she did not remain one instead of coming to Paris. He recalls that he and his wife had warned her that Paris was no place for a girl, and dismisses art as a way of making money. His response places the family’s practical advice and ideas of respectable employment against Fanny’s decision to pursue painting, without showing any renewed effort to understand the circumstances in which she lived.

Conflict with Philip over the Cause

Albert resents Fanny’s suicide as one more injury she has done him. He does not want poverty to be understood as the reason, because that explanation would reflect badly on the family. He instead speculates to Philip that a relationship with a man might have caused her death, a possibility he considers more respectable. Philip reddens, then answers acidly that he believes Fanny was virtuous and that she killed herself because she was starving.

Albert’s claim that Fanny only had to write to him, and that he would not have let her want, collides with the evidence Philip has actually seen: Albert’s refusal of the five-pound loan. Philip does not continue the argument, judging recrimination useless, but he hates Albert and wants the encounter to end. Their disagreement is not simply about what Fanny did; it concerns whether her death should be connected to the material conditions her family had declined to relieve.

Funeral and Aftermath

Philip has to manage the arrangements because Albert knows no French. For three days he deals with the necessary papers, signatures, and officials, while Albert remains dependent on him to navigate the process. They follow the hearse to the cemetery at Montparnasse, where Albert says he wants to do things decently but sees no reason to spend money unnecessarily. His insistence on decency alongside economy echoes the conflict between outward propriety and the neglect Philip believes helped bring Fanny to her end.

Several people from the studio attend the short funeral, including Mrs. Otter, Ruth Chalice, Lawson, Clutton, and Flanagan. Philip finds the ceremony sordid, and his thoughts continue to return to Fanny and the conditions of her death. Albert, by contrast, asks Philip to lunch afterward; both men want the necessary business finished, though for different reasons. Later Albert considers staying another night and suggests spending the evening together. When Philip refuses to take him around Montmartre, Albert accepts the refusal as a matter of propriety. Their final exchange offers no reconciliation: the practical business of mourning is complete, but the moral dispute remains.

Narrative Role

Albert functions as the family representative against whom Philip’s understanding of Fanny’s poverty is tested. The novel gives concrete weight to the contrast: a refused loan, a brother who does not want to see the body, and a sister’s funeral whose arrangements Philip must largely manage. Albert’s stated concern for family respectability and economical decency cannot erase those facts. His visit therefore extends Fanny’s story beyond the studio, exposing how a respectable family explanation can displace responsibility even when the evidence of material need is close at hand.