IN PRAISE OF MAIDEN AUNTS
I have received a rebuke from a lady at Cardiff, that, though unmerited, calls for respectful attention. In an article written during the crisis in Anglo-French relations, I said that the visits of English Ministers to M. Poincaré made as little impression on him as a visit from his maiden aunt would do. My correspondent takes the illustration as an affront to maiden aunts. "Is a maiden aunt in your opinion the most contemptible thing on earth?" she demands. "If you would say 'Yes,' please open your eyes and think again. If you would say 'No,' will you kindly help us to scotch this vulgar lie by refraining from using this irrelevant metaphor?"
I offer my correspondent and the whole company of maiden aunts a sincere assurance that in taking their names in vain I had no intention to imply a contempt which I certainly did not feel, and which, if I had felt, would have been dishonouring not to them but to me. I wanted to emphasise the disregard of M. Poincaré for the views of the British Government, and chose an illustration which I thought effective. I assumed that however much M. Poincaré loved his maiden aunt (if he has a maiden aunt) he did not act on her advice in state affairs. I still hold that view. I shall give his maiden aunt the credit of thinking that if he followed her opinion he would act with much more wisdom than he has shown. That, I admit, was not in my mind when I wrote, and I will not advance it now as a means of dodging my correspondent's arrow. But while I confess that I thought that maiden aunts were not the persons that prime ministers usually consulted on high politics, I did not mean that they were contemptible or negligible on that account. Maiden aunts, I rejoice to say, have happier and cleaner affairs to occupy them than politics.
Take the most illustrious of all maiden aunts, the dear, lovable, unforgettable Betsy Trotwood. I have had many affairs of the heart in fiction, from Rosalind to Tess, but I do not think that there is any woman who lives in books who ever won my affection more securely and uninterruptedly than Miss Trotwood. It is a pleasure merely to write her name. It must be nearly fifty years since I made that amazing journey with David Copperfield on the Dover road, but I still remember the first meeting with Aunt Betsy as I remember no other adventure in life. David was at his last gasp and I was at my last gasp with him. We could bear no more. And then, looking over the gate—the best-known gate in literature except that "wicket-gate" of another immortal journey—we saw that radiant woman appear with her handkerchief tied over her cap, her gardening gloves on, and her pruning knife in her hand, and there followed that thrilling welcome, the memory of which sweeps over the mind like a wave of glory.
I am told that the boys of to-day do not make that journey on the Dover road, and do not know what it is to feel Aunt Betsy collar them and take them into the parlour and dose them, and bath them and put their tired limbs to bed. Unhappy boys! What a bare, disinherited life is theirs! I would not sacrifice Betsy Trotwood for any memory I have, or the Dover road that brought me to her for any golden road to Samarkand. But I do not recall that Betsy Trotwood cared twopence about politics, or ever mentioned them. She had more serious interests. There were the donkeys to keep at bay, there was Mr. Dick's great mind, "as sharp as a surgeon's lancet," to inquire into, there was her garden, and there was her nephew.
What would David have done without that sublime woman? What would any nephews and nieces do if there were no maiden aunts? Betsy Trotwood was the perfect type and pattern of all the tribe. "There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage." Listen to the fly-driver of whom David and I inquired the way:
"Trotwood?" said he. "Let me see. I know the name too. Old lady?"
"Yes," I said, "rather."
"Pretty stiff in the back?" said he, making himself upright.
"Yes," I said. "I should think it very likely."
"Carries a bag?" said he, "bag with a good deal of room in it: is gruffish and comes down on you sharp? ... My opinion is, she won't stand anything, so here's a penny for you."
Admirable fly-driver! But you were mistaken. The outside of our maiden aunts is apt to be roughish, but, like Gunga Din, they are "white, clear white inside." They come down on you sharp, but they have hearts of gold. They are not maiden aunts because they could not be anything else, or are inferior to their sisters, or have less of the milk of human kindness. They have had their romances and put them by, suffered their bereavements, and learned to turn a brave, even harsh, face to the world; but where shall we find such a welcome from the Dover roads of life as they give us, where such a wealth of disinterested affection, where such treasured memories of our thoughtless selves? How many of us have had such a maiden aunt as Betsy Trotwood, a little stiff in the back, as the fly-driver said, a little severe in face and manner perhaps, a bit of a martinet about taking our physic, keeping out of mischief, and things like that, but withal a boundless ocean of affection, a person who had no use for her own birthdays but never forgot ours, who took us to our first play and showed us over the Tower, and was ready to fetch and carry for us till she dropped. Compare them with bachelor uncles. Here and there you may find a brilliant exception, like the uncle in The Golden Age, who went away in an auriferous shower, or Macaulay, who must have been the most gorgeous uncle in history; but they are few, and only reveal the general poverty of the tribe, whereas maiden aunts...
No, madam, heaven forbid that I should speak disrespectfully of maiden aunts. By the great name of Betsy Trotwood, I swear I am guiltless of such base ingratitude.
. . . . . .
Do not remind me, dear reader, that Betsy Trotwood was not a maiden aunt. Let us respect her secret which her creator ought never to have disclosed, and remember her as the chief ornament of the goodly company to which she spiritually belonged.