Aunt Eliza

“ Yet who that has loved either man or bassoon does not know this bitterness?
"He will be gentler hereafter," said Aunt Eliza, encouragingly. "You must always remember that we should be charitable and indulgent with those we love. Who knows why the bassoon was harsh and wayward and imperious to-night? Let us not judge him till we have heard the whys and wherefores. He may have been ill; depend upon it, my dear, he had cause for his conduct."
Aunt Eliza's prudent words were a great solace to Aurora. ”

“ Aunt Eliza is not sensitive about her age, and it is well to look these things fairly in the face. You can't honestly call her handsome, though she is a dear good old soul, but, I fear, too inured to Chicago to assimilate readily with English society. Of course her private means are enormous——"
"Good heavens! Miss Vernon," he exclaimed, "there has been some dreadful mistake! I entertain the highest respect for your aunt, Miss Cogbill, but I don't wish to marry her; I wish to marry—somebody else——"
"Really! Why don't you propose to Miss Somebody Else in person, then?" ”

“ To-day I mean to concentrate on wealth—one of my Professor's theories is that if you concentrate regularly on a thing you are bound in the long run to get what you set your mind upon, and I do find my position of dependence upon Aunt Eliza too unspeakably galling. What a monstrous injustice it seems that I—who if I had been born a boy, must have been Earl of Gaverick, should be at the mercy of an ill-tempered, miserly, old woman who may leave the home of my forefathers to a crossing-sweeper if she pleases. ”

“ As I said to Aunt Eliza, let us leave her alone till Kathleen has gone. Evelyn is obstinate, and if you interfere she will only grow more pig-headed. Let her find things out for herself. Experience, Eliza, will do more than either you or I. Sooner or later, even Evelyn must realise that you can’t run a house, and garden, and stable, in the same way on half the ordinary income. Now that Kathleen is married, she naturally takes with her her own fortune. ”

“ Would this middle-aged lady—an aunt beyond doubt—an aunt who so long had played a double rôle, assume, now that one rôle must be chosen, the part of Aunt Eliza the Terrible or of Aunt Kate the Kind? The aunt was dumb. Kitty was dumb. But the editor had his wits about him, and Kate, though shaken, was not absolutely paralysed.
“It’s almost too good to be true,” he said, “that my Aunt Kate is really your Aunt Eliza. Aunt Kate, Kitty and I have just decided that we can’t do without each other. I am so glad that you are the first to wish us joy.” ”

“ Uncle Daniel's voice shook. He had had a hard day. He was desperately frightened about Albert, and Aunt 'Liza had not made him more comfortable by insisting that it was a punishment for wanting his sister's farm.
"He will know me," answered Sarah with conviction. Then she began to run up the lane toward the house. She could see a light in an upstairs room, and Aunt Eliza's face was already peering anxiously out of the kitchen door.
"Albert is worse," she called. "He is talking all the time." ”

“ Cecily, determined to do her duty even in the face of such fearful odds as Great-aunt Eliza’s deafness, dragged a ponderous, plush-covered album from its corner and proceeded to display and explain the family photographs. She did her brave best but she could not shout like Felicity, and half the time, as she confided to me later on, she felt that Great-aunt Eliza did not hear one word she said, because she didn’t seem to take in who the people were, though, just like all deaf folks, she wouldn’t let on. Great-aunt Eliza certainly didn’t talk much ”

“ Our latest is a frightful row between Aunt Emmie, that’s the one in Calcutta, and Aunt Eliza, the one in Wales. All about some diamonds everybody’d forgotten all about, but some stupid old busybody of a bank-manager must go and turn them up, and Aunt Emmie says grandfather gave them to her, and Aunt Eliza says he gave them to her, and ... well, there you are. ”

“ Grame, Eliza?"
"I did," said Eliza, looking defiance.
"My dear," resumed Mrs. Carradyne with some hesitation, "forgive me if I offer you a word of advice. You have no mother; I pray you to listen to me in her stead. You must change your line of behaviour to Mr. Grame."
Eliza's dark face turned red and haughty. "I do not understand you, Aunt Emma." ”

“ Deceit and ingratitude are the monster vices of the age and they are rolling over our beloved land like the flood. (I got part of that elegant language from the temperance lecturer last week, but I improved it a good deal.)
There is Aunt Eliza. The uncle that belonged to her died two years ago, and she's awfully rich. She comes to see us sometimes with Harry—that's her boy, a little fellow six years old—and you ought to see how mother and Sue wait on her and how pleasant father is when she's in the room. ”

“ You have no son now, and the honour of the family shall not suffer in my hands. I will throw up everything, busy as I am, to make such a rascal bite the dust. And Eliza so proud, and so upright herself!”
“Caryl,” said his uncle, moved more than he liked to show by this fine feeling, “you know more, I see, than you liked to show at first, doubtless through goodwill to us. Your dear aunt wished to keep the matter quiet, for the sake of poor Eliza, and her future chances. But I said—No. Let us have it all out. If there is wrong, we have suffered, not done it. ”

“ All the faint, sweet sounds that break the stillness of a Sunday in the country came to our ears in gentle symphony,—the lisp of the leaves, the chirp of young chickens lost in the mazes of billowy grass, and the rustle of the silver poplar that turned into a mass of molten silver whenever the breeze touched it.
"When you've lived as long as I have, child," said Aunt Jane presently, "you'll feel that you've lived in two worlds. ”

“ To Aunt Jane every flower in the garden was a human thing with a life story, and close to the summer-house grew one historic rose, heroine of an old romance, to which I listened one day as we sat in the arbor, where hundreds of honeysuckle blooms were trumpeting their fragrance on the air. ”

“ This she said to Harold, who was waiting below.
"I don't know."
"Aunt Eliza was giving money to that boy."
"Do you know how much?"
"Fifty dollars."
"Whew! Was it for himself?"
"He came to her with a trumped-up story of an old schoolmate of aunt's who was in need of money."
"Do you think he will keep it himself?"
"I am afraid so."
"What a cheeky young rascal he is, to be sure! I have no doubt you are right."
"Yes; there is too much reason to think he is an unscrupulous adventurer, young as he is."
"Why don't you tell aunt so?" ”

“ No wonder niece Eliza cowered in spirit when she superbly entered that modest dwelling and sat in its most capacious chair. Tea was offered her, without sugar and with only a very little milk according to her stoical custom.
“Thankee, my dear.”
The great lady removed a black kid glove, and coquetted with a delicate slice of bread and butter. If you have lived in palaces most of your days you know that simplicity in all things is the true art of life. Right at the back, as Eliza well knew, Aunt Annie was by no means so simple as she made a point of seeming. ”

“ Eliza came willingly. Her manner was a little defiant at first, but when Louise drew her unobserved to the side entrance and up the staircase she grew gentle and permitted the other girl to take her arm.
Once in her room with the strange maid, Louise locked the door quietly and said to her companion with a cheerful smile:
"Now we are quite alone, and can talk at our ease. Take that low chair, dear, and I'll sit here."
Eliza obeyed, looking wistfully into the fair face of her new friend.
"You are very pretty, Eliza; and I'm sure you are as good as you're pretty," announced Louise. ”

“ LEMORNE VERSUS HUELL
By Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
Harper's New Monthly Magazine 26 (1863) : 537-43.
The two months I spent at Newport with Aunt Eliza Huell, who had been ordered to the sea-side for the benefit of her health, were the months that created all that is dramatic in my destiny. My aunt was troublesome, for she was not only out of health, but in a lawsuit. She wrote to me, for we lived apart, asking me to accompany her—not because she was fond of me, or wished to give me pleasure, but because I was useful in various ways. ”

“ Though Cecilia called her adopted aunt ‘ma’am,’ there existed between them an intimacy due, not only to love, but to the quality of their respective natures. The expectancy of youth which had died so hard in Lady Eliza had been more nearly realized in the loyal and tender devotion of her adopted niece than in any other circumstance in life. ”

“ All the life that I looked back upon seemed muddled and mixed up, like a dream; and I could only think of the little sister I'd said good-bye to, aboard the Ventur'some forty years before. I got round by little and little, and I was able half an hour afterwards to listen to aunt Sarah's talk. She was nigh upon seventy, poor old soul, and she'd always been a good one to talk. She asked me if it wasn't a great thing for the family that Eliza had made such a match; and if I wasn't proud to think that my niece was a young heiress, that spoke all manner of languages, and rode in her own carriage? ”

“ I guess I must obey Aunt Elizabeth because she’s the head of the family.”
“Where do you get such notions?” said Aunt Laura.
“Out of my head. Aunt Laura, Ilse Burnley and I are going to be chums. I like her—I’ve always felt I’d like her if I had a chance. I don’t believe I can ever love any girl again, but I like her.”
“Poor Ilse!” said Aunt Laura, sighing.
“Yes, her father doesn’t like her. Isn’t it dreadful?” said Emily. “Why doesn’t he?”
“He does—really. He only thinks he doesn’t.” ”

“ The mind of Aunt Mary, now more than half a wreck, utterly revolted at the idea of separation from her niece. Eliza could not leave her. Declining an eligible situation as a teacher in a distant village, she rendered her aunt all the assistance in her power in her lowly employment—believing that the path dictated by affection and duty, though it might meet with the neglect and the scorn of men, would not fail to secure the approbation of God. ”

“ F. gathered that in the opinion of Aunt Annie and also in that of Eliza, godmother Harriet was inclined to abuse her position. She was always insisting. No detail of the creature’s upbringing escaped her interference. She must have her say in everything; indeed, she came over from Buntisford regularly once a week for the purpose of having it. At Beaconsfield Villas, and also at Bowley, she took a very high tone, which Eliza and Aunt Annie strongly resented. ”

“ But the very next week she was took away."
"Aunt Luceba," said Isabel suddenly, "was aunt Eliza hard to live with? Did you and aunt Mary Ellen have to toe the mark?"
"Don't you say one word," answered her aunt hastily. "That's all past an' gone. There ain't no way of settlin' old scores but buryin' of 'em. She was older 'n we were, an' on'y a step-sister, arter all. We must think o' that. Well, I must come to the end o' my story, an' then we'll open the chist. ”

“ Tell me who she was and why she put her wedding dress away here."
"Poor Eliza!" said Aunt dreamily. "It is a sorrowful story, Amy, and it seems so long ago now. I must be an old woman. Forty years ago—and I was only twenty then. Eliza Laurance was my cousin, the only daughter of Uncle Henry Laurance. My father—your grandfather, Amy, you don't remember him—had two brothers, each of whom had an only daughter. Both these girls were called Eliza after your great-grandmother. I never saw Uncle George's Eliza but once. ”

“ That was why he always liked Aunt Sarah a deal better than he liked you!"
"You'll find other folk free wi' their hands," Eliza stormed, "if you're that free wi' your impident tongue! Yon fool of an Elliman'll stand no nonsense, for all he looks so new-milk soft! Not that he wants any truck wi' you at all, as far as I can see. It's Mary Phyllis he can't take his eyes off, and no wonder, neither. She was always a sight better-looking than you, and she's younger, by a deal. You're that old and teptious you fair turn the cream sour just by being along wi't in t'house! ”

“ Then Aunt Elizabeth did not approve of much time spent in the kitchen by her niece, and so, with Louis grumpy, Ellen busy, Uncle Justus reading, and Aunt Elizabeth absorbed in her many interests, there were days which seemed very long to the little girl, and once or twice she went to her room at night so homesick that she threw herself, crying, on the bed, with her doll hugged up to her, and fell fast asleep without undressing, to awaken in the middle of the night chilly and uncomfortable, finding herself on the outside of the covers. ”

“ Nobody wears such delicate shades as Aunt Elizabeth. I remember, one day, when she came in an embroidered pongee over Nile-green, father groaned, and grandmother said: “What is it, Cyrus? Have you got a pain?” “Yes,” said father, “the pain I always have when I see sheep dressed lamb fashion.” Grandmother laughed, but mother said: “Sh!” Mother's dear.
This time Aunt Elizabeth had on a great picture-hat with light-blue ostrich plumes; it was almost the shape of her lavender one that Charles Edward said made her look like a coster's bride. ”

“ I couldn't answer fast enough. “Why, Aunt Elizabeth,” I said, “he tells you so. He says he loves you eternally. It's beautiful!”
“You fool!” said Aunt Elizabeth. “You pink-cheeked little fool! You haven't opened the door yet—not any door, not one of them—oh, you happy, happy fool!” She called through the window (mother was arranging flowers there for tea) : “Ada, you must telephone the Banner. My engagement is not to be announced.” Then she turned to me. “Peggy'” said she, in a low voice, as if mother was not to hear, “to-morrow you must drive with me to Whitman.” ”

“ Face and head disappeared in a flash, leaving Miss Brownell staring foolishly at the ceiling.
“You have been behaving disgracefully in school,” said Aunt Elizabeth, who had not seen this by-play. “I am ashamed of you.”
“It was not as bad as that, Aunt Elizabeth,” said Emily steadily. “You see it was this way—”
“I don’t want to hear anything more about it,” said Aunt Elizabeth.
“But you must,” cried Emily. “It isn’t fair to listen only to her side. I was a little bad—but not so bad as she says—”
“Not another word! I have heard the whole story,” said Aunt Elizabeth grimly. ”