A boy's profession is not infrequently chosen for him by his
parents, which perhaps accounts for the curious fact that the shrewd,
business-like member of a family often becomes a painter, while the
artistic, unpractical one becomes a member of the Stock Exchange, in
course of time, naturally.
My profession was forced upon me, to begin with, by my sisters-in-law,
and in the subsequent and natural order of things by their children--my
nephews and nieces.
Zerlina says it is the duty of one woman in every family to be an aunt.
By that she means of course a professional aunt. She says she does not
understand the longing on the part of unattached females--the expression
is hers, not mine--for a larger sphere of usefulness than that which
aunt hood offers. She considers that it affords full scope for the
energies of any reasonably constituted woman; and no doubt, if the
professional aunt was all that Zerlina says she should be, she would
have her time fully occupied in the discharging of her duties.
Zerlina cannot see that it is not exactly a position of a woman's own
choosing, although under strong pressure she has been known to admit
that there have been cases in which women have been made aunts whether
they would or no; and she thinks it is perhaps by way of protest against
such usage that they so shamefully neglect their duties in that walk
of life to which their bothers and sister-in-law have seen fit to call
them.
Of course, when an aunt marries, she loses at once all the perfecting
of the properly constituted aunt; and that is a thing to be seriously
considered. Is she wise in leaving a profession for which all her
sisters-in-law think she is admirably fitted, for one which the most
experienced pronounce a lottery?
This is all of course written from Zerlina's point of view. She requires
of a professional aunt many things. She must, to begin with, remember
the birthdays of all her nephews and nieces, of Zerlina's children
in particular. If she remembers their birthdays, it stand to reason,
Zerlina's reason, that the sequence of thought is--presents.
The really successful aunt knows the particular taste of each nephew and
niece. She knows, moreover, the exact moment at which the taste changes
from a love for woolly rabbits to a passion for steam engines. Instinct
tells her at what age a child maybe promoted, with safety, from wool to
paint, and she knows the critical moment in a boy's life when a Bible
should be bestowed. It usually, or perhaps I should say my experience is
that it usually, follows the first knife, an ordinary two-bladed knife,
and comes the birthday before a knife--"with things in it." The real
boy must have a knife with things in it: a corkscrew,--I wonder why a
corkscrew?--a buttonhook, a thing to take stones out of horses' hoofs,
a thing to mend traces with--I know I am ignorant of the technical
terms--but the hardest-hearted shop-assistant will never fail to help a
professional aunt in the choice of a knife, unless by chance he should
be unhappy enough never to have been a boy, and such cases are rare.
I used often to wonder why boys wanted all these things. Now I know,
because I asked Dick and he said, "You see, Aunt Woggles, I use them for
other things." I am not sure that most of us don't do the same thing
with many of our most cherished possessions in life.
As regards steam-engines Zerlina lays down a distinct law. They must
never burst--that is an injury no sister-in-law would ever forgive--and
paint must never come off. If Zerlina had known and loved the taste of
crimson lake in the days of her youth, she would never draw so hard and
fast a line.
From the earliest moment in a baby's career, the professional aunt takes
upon herself serious responsibilities. She may not, for instance, like
any ordinary aunt, pass the baby in his perambulator, out walking. Any
other aunt may, with perfect propriety, say, "Hullo, duckie, where's
auntie?" and pass on. She knows the danger of stopping, and seeks to
avoid it. Not so the professional aunt. She realizes the danger and
faces it. She knows she will have to wait, for the sake of the child's
character, until he shall choose to say, "Ta-ta."
He will probably, if he is a healthy child, say everything he knows
but that. He will go through his limited vocabulary in a pathetically
obliging manner, making the most beautiful "moo-moos" and
"quack-quacks," but he will not say, "Ta-ta." Why should he? On
persuasion, and more especially if the interview should take place at
a street-corner on a windy March day, he will repeat the "moo-moos" and
"quack-quacks" even more successfully than before, and he will wonder
in what way they fall short of perfection, since he earns no praise. He
likes to be rewarded with, "Kevver boy." We all do, just as a matter of
form, if nothing else. Surely ordinary politeness demands it.
He will not say, "Ta-ta," though. Who knows but what it is innate
politeness on his part and his way of saying, "Oh, don't go! What a
flying visit!"
However, the professional aunt cannot be sure of this, although she can
guess; so she must wait patiently, for the sake of Baby's morals and
nurse's feelings, until he does say, "Ta-ta." We may suppose that he
at last loses his temper and says it, meaning, no doubt, "For goodness
sake, go!" if not something stronger. The nurse is satisfied, the aunt
is released, and the conscientious objector is wheeled away.
Besides ministering to the soul of a baby the aunt must tend to its
bodily needs, and for this reason she must be a good needlewoman.
Before the arrival of the first nephew or niece, when she is very
unprofessional, she will hastily put her work under the sofa or behind
the cushion when any one comes into the room. As she grows older and
more professional, and the nephews and nieces become more numerous, she
will give up hiding her work. People who are intimately connected with
the family will show no surprise, and to inquisitive strangers, unless
she is very religious, she can murmur something about a creche, so long,
of course, as Zerlina is not there.
The really successful aunt, one who is at the top of her profession,
can perfectly well be trusted to take all the children to the Zoo alone;
that is to say, without a nurse, and of course without the mother. The
mother knows how pleased and gratified an aunt feels on being given the
entire charge of the children. The nurse is gratified too; in fact
every one is pleased, with perhaps the exception of the aunt. But it is
against professional etiquette for her to say so. She only wonders why
mothers think a privilege they hold so lightly--taking the children
to the Zoo--should be so esteemed by other women. But as the old
story goes, "Hush, darling, hush, the doctor knows best," so must we
say,--"Mothers know best."
Another qualification in a professional aunt, desirable if not
indispensable, is tact. If she should be possessed of ever so little, it
will save her a considerable amount of bother. She won't, in a moment of
mental aberration, praise dark-eyed children to Zerlina, whose children
have blue eyes. Should she do so, by some unlucky chance, it would take
several expeditions to the Zoo, and probably one to Kew, before things
were as they were. If Zerlina, however, should, by the expedition of
the aunt and children to Kew, be enabled to do something she very much
wanted to do, and couldn't, because the nurse's father was ill, and the
nursery-maid anemic, the little misunderstanding will have disappeared
by the time the aunt returns from Kew, and Zerlina will say, after
carefully counting the children,--it is this mathematical tendency
in mothers that hurts an aunt,--"I do trust you implicitly with the
children, dear. You know that; it isn't every one I could trust; you are
so capable! I wish I were, but one can't be everything. Of course you
don't understand a mother's feelings."
I sometimes wonder why Zerlina always says this to me. I have never
pretended to be anything but an aunt.
But to return to my profession. As the children grow older the duties of
the aunt become more arduous. For the benefit of schoolboy nephews with
exeats, she must have an intimate acquaintance with the Hippodrome, any
exhibition going, every place of instruction, of a kind, or amusement.
She must be thoroughly up in matinees, and know what plays are
frightfully exciting, and she must have a nice taste in sweets. She need
not necessarily eat them; it is perhaps better if she does not. But she
must know where the very best are to be procured. She must never get
tired. She must love driving in hansoms and going on the top of 'buses.
She must know where the white ones go, and where the red ones don't,
although a mistake on her part is readily forgiven, if it prolongs the
drive without curtailing a performance of any kind. This requires great
experience. She must set aside, moreover, a goodly sum every year for
professional expenses.
The foregoing are a few of the qualifications which Zerlina thinks
essential in aunts. There are others, and the greatest of them is love.
Zerlina forgot to mention that.