In "the justice's court" in Absalom!, General Compson sees Charles E. S-V. Bon "handcuffed to an officer" (163); this officer may be "the sheriff" (164), or one of his deputies.
The upper class women in the Tidewater are represented in Absalom! by two who never come completely into view: the carriage that almost runs down one of Sutpen's sisters contains "two parasols," and "two faces beneath the parasols" that "glare down" at the poor white girl (187).
In Mr. Compson's account of the city in Absalom!, Bon's initiation of Henry into the sophisticated world of New Orleans begins with his exposure to the elegant people riding in the city streets: "women, enthroned . . . like painted portraits" and "men in linen a little finer and diamonds a little brighter" than anything Henry had seen before (88).
Looking for a figure of speech to describe Clytemnestra as an old woman in Absalom!, Shreve says that she "shrunk" - "like the Bornese do their captured heads" (175). After Borneo was colonized, the Dayak practice of "headhunting" was widely sensationalized in Europe and the U.S. In Faulkner's short story "Vendee," set during the Civil War, the Sartoris family library includes a "book about Borneo" that describes such practices.
Although Ellen and her aunt "write out a hundred invitations" to the Coldfield-Sutpen wedding in Absalom!, when it happens "there were just ten people in the church, including the wedding party" (39). Two of the witnesses are General and Mrs. Compson. The text does not say who the others were, and why they chose to defy public opinion by being there.
The "overseer" Sutpen hires in Absalom! is credited with helping the plantation "run smoothly" (57). He is identified only as the son of the county sheriff.
In Absalom! this "orderly" tells Henry that "the colonel wants you in his tent" (279). A military 'orderly' is a kind of personal servant to an officer, but the way this one addresses Henry - "Sutpen" (279) - makes it clear that he is white.
Absalom! mentions the (presumably authoritarian) tone of voice in which Sutpen "used to address his orderly or even his house servants" (149). In this context an "orderly" is a soldier who serves a commanding officer as a kind of servant. Sutpen's "house servants," like nearly all the servants in Faulkner's world, are black, and during the Civil War many Confederate officers took slaves with them to the war, but these are called "body servants" in the fictions, and explicitly racialized as black.
In Absalom!, as Sutpen moves across the Square after talking with General Compson, the General sees "old Mr McCaslin and two other old men hobble out and stop him" to talk (221). McCaslin has his own entry. The fact that all three are "old" is an indication of how the Civil War has emptied Jefferson of most of its other male residents.
