Philosophers tell us that we know nothing but from its opposite; then I
certainly know my two aunts very perfectly, for greater opposites were
never made since the formation of light and darkness; but they were
both good creatures--so are light and darkness both good things in
their place. My two aunts, however, were not so appropriately to be
compared to light and darkness as to crumb and crust--the crumb and
crust of a new loaf; the crumb of which is marvellously soft, and the
crust of which is exceedingly crisp, dry and snappish. The one was my
father's sister, and the other was my mother's; and very curiously it
happened that they were both named Bridget. To distinguish between
them, we young folks used to call the quiet and easy one aunt Bridget,
and the bustling, worrying one, aunt Fidget. You never, in the whole
course of your life, saw such a quiet, easy, comfortable creature as
aunt Bridget--she was not immoderately large, but prodigiously fat. Her
weight did not exceed twenty stone, or two-and-twenty at the
utmost--but she might be called prodigiously fat, because she was all
fat; I don't think there was an ounce of lean in her whole composition.
She was so imperturbably good natured, that I really do not believe
that she was ever in a passion in the whole course of her life. I have
no doubt that she had her troubles: we all have troubles, more or less;
but aunt Bridget did not like to trouble herself to complain. The
greatest trouble that she endured, was the alternation of day and
night: it was a trouble to her to go up stairs to bed, and it was a
trouble to her to come down stairs to breakfast; but, when she was once
in bed, she could sleep ten hours without dreaming; and when she was
once up, and seated in her comfortable arm-chair, by the fireside, with
her knitting apparatus in order, and a nice, fat, flat, comfortable
quarto volume on a small table at her side, the leaves of which volume
she could turn over with her knitting needle, she was happy for the
day: the grief of getting up was forgotten, and the trouble of getting
to bed was not anticipated. Knowing her aversion to moving, I was once
saucy enough to recommend her to make two days into one, that she might
not have the trouble of going up and down stairs so often. Any body but
aunt Bridget would have boxed my ears for my impertinence, and would,
in so doing, have served me rightly; but she, good creature, took it
all in good part, and said, "Yes, my dear, it would save trouble, but I
am afraid it would not be good for my health--I should not have
exercise enough." Aunt Bridget loved quiet, and she lived in the
quietest place in the world. There is not a spot in the deserts of
Arabia, or in the Frozen Ocean, to be for a moment compared for
quietness with Hans-place--
"The very houses seem asleep;"
and when the bawlers of milk, mackerel, dabs, and flounders, enter the
placid precincts of that place, they scream with a subdued violence,
like the hautboy played with a piece of cotton in the bell. You might
almost fancy that oval of building to be some mysterious egg, on which
the genius of silence had sat brooding ever since the creation of the
world, or even before Chaos had combed its head and washed its face.
There is in that place a silence that may be heard, a delicious
stillness which the ear drinks in as greedily as the late Mr. Dando
used to gulp oysters. It is said that, when the inhabitants are all
asleep, they can hear one another snore. Here dwelt my aunt
Bridget--kindest of the kind, and quietest of the quiet. But good
nature is terribly imposed upon in this wicked world of ours; and so it
was with aunt Bridget. Her poulterer, I am sure, used to charge her at
least ten per cent. more than any of the rest of his customers, because
she never found fault. She was particularly fond of ducks, very likely
from a sympathy with their quiet style of locomotion; but she disliked
haggling about the price, and she abhorred the trouble of choosing
them; so she left it to the man's conscience to send what he pleased,
and to charge what he pleased. I declare that I have seen upon her
table such withered, wizened, toad-like villains of half-starved ducks,
that they looked as if they had died of the whooping-cough. And if ever
I happened to say any thing approaching to reproach of the poulterer,
aunt would always make the same reply,--"I don't like to be always
finding fault." It was the same with her wine as it was with her
poultry: she used to fancy that she had Port and Sherry; but she never
had any thing better than Pontac and Cape Madeira. There was one luxury
of female life which my aunt never enjoyed--she never had the pleasure
of scolding the maids. She once made the attempt, but it did not
succeed. She had a splendid set of Sunday crockery, done in blue and
gold; and, by the carelessness of one of her maids, the whole service
was smashed at one fell swoop. "Now, that is too bad," said my aunt; "I
really will tell her of it." So I was in hopes of seeing aunt Bridget
in a passion, which would have been as rare a sight as an American aloe
in blossom. She rang the bell with most heroic vigor, and with an
expression of almost a determination to say something very severe to
Betty, when she should make her appearance. Indeed, if the bell-pull
had been Betty, she might have heard half the first sentence of a
terrible scolding; but before Betty could answer the summons of the
bell, my aunt was as cool as a turbot at a tavern dinner. "Betty," said
she, "are they all broke?" "Yes, ma'am," said Betty. "How came you to
break them?" said my aunt. "They slipped off the tray, ma'am," replied
Betty. "Well, then, be more careful another time," said my aunt. "Yes,
ma'am," said Betty.
Next morning, another set was ordered. This was not the first, second,
or third time that my aunt's crockery had come to an untimely end. My
aunt's maids had a rare place in her service. They had high life below
stairs in perfection; people used to wonder that she did not see how
she was imposed upon: bless her old heart! she never liked to see what
she did not like to see--and so long as she could be quiet she was
happy. She was a living emblem of the Pacific Ocean.
But my aunt Fidget was quite another thing. She only resembled my aunt
Bridget in one particular; that is, she had not an ounce of lean about
her; but then she had no fat neither--she was all skin and bone; I
cannot say for a certainty, but I really believe, that she had no
marrow in her bones: she was as light as a feather, as dry as a stick,
and, had it not been for her pattens, she must have been blown away in
windy weather. As for quiet, she knew not the meaning of the word: she
was flying about from morning till night, like a fagot in fits, and
finding fault with every body and every thing. Her tongue and her toes
had no sinecures. Had she weighed as many pounds as my aunt Bridget
weighed stones, she would have worn out half-a-dozen pair of shoes in a
week. I don't believe that aunt Bridget ever saw the inside of her
kitchen, or that she knew exactly where it was; but aunt Fidget was in
all parts of the house at once--she saw every thing, heard every thing,
remembered every thing, and scolded about every thing. She was not to
be imposed upon, either by servants or trades-people. She kept a sharp
look out upon them all. She knew when and where to go to market. Keen
was her eye for the turn of the scale, and she took pretty good care
that the butcher should not dab his mutton chops too hastily in the
scale, making momentum tell for weight. I cannot think what she wanted
with meat, for she looked as if she ate nothing but raspings, and drank
nothing but vinegar. Her love of justice in the matter of purchasing
was so great, that when her fishmonger sent her home a pennyworth of
sprats, she sent one back to be changed because it had but one eye.
She had such a strict inventory of all her goods and chattels, that, if
any one plundered her of a pin, she was sure to find it out. She would
miss a pea out of a peck; and she once kept her establishment up half
the night to hunt for a bit of cheese that was missing--it was at last
found in the mouse-trap. "You extravagant minx," said she to the maid,
"here is cheese enough to bait three mouse-traps;" and she nearly had
her fingers snapped off in her haste to rescue the cheese from its
prison. I used not to dine with my aunt Fidget so often as with my aunt
Bridget, for my aunt Fidget worried my very life out with the history
of every article that was brought to table. She made me undergo the
narration of all that she had said, and all that the butcher or
poulterer had said, concerning the purchase of the provision; and she
used always to tell me what was the price of mutton when her mother was
a girl--two pence a pound for the common pieces, and twopence-halfpenny
for the prime pieces. Moreover, she always entertained me with an
account of all her troubles, and with the sins and iniquities of her
abominable servants, whom she generally changed once a month. Indeed,
had I been inclined to indulge her with more of my company, I could not
always manage to find her residence; for she was moving about from
place to place, so that it was like playing a game of hunt the slipper
to endeavor to find her. She once actually threatened to leave London
altogether, if she could not find some more agreeable residence than
hitherto it had been her lot to meet with. But there was one evil in my
aunt Fidget's behavior, which disturbed me more than any thing else;
she was always expecting that I should join her in abusing my placid
aunt Bridget. Aunt Bridget's style of house-keeping was not, perhaps,
quite the pink of perfection, but it was not for me to find fault with
it; and if she did sit still all day, she never found fault with those
who did not; she never said any thing evil of any of her neighbors.
Aunt Fidget might be flying about all day like a witch upon a
broomstick; but aunt Bridget made no remarks on it; she let her fly.
The very sight of aunt Fidget was enough to put one out of breath--she
whisked about from place to place at such a rapid rate, always talking
at the rate of nineteen to the dozen. We boys used to say of her that
she never sat long enough in a chair to warm the cover. But she is
gone--_requiescat in pace_;[1] and that is more than ever she did in
her life-time.
[Footnote 1: May she rest in peace.]