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.