The Great Gatsby, "character"

I'd like to know why Fitzgerald put the word "character" in inverted commas in the following excerpt from the chapter Four of The Great Gatsby. Does it mean that this word has a special meaning here, and which one in this case?

“After that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe—Paris, Venice, Rome—collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, painting a little, things for myself only, and trying to forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago.”

With an effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a turbaned “character” leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a tiger through the Bois de Boulogne.

Thank you;