Aunt Anne, Volume 1

Aunt Anne, Volume 1 by W.K. Clifford

Aunt Anne opens with the happy young Walter and Florence Hibbert being seized at Brighton by Walter’s long-forgotten Aunt Anne Baines, who carries them off to Rottingdean to meet her husband, the surly Mr. Baines. Though the visit disrupts their plans, Aunt Anne’s affection, imposing dignity, presents, preserves, and old-fashioned hospitality make the day memorable. Walter later explains that she had exhausted her own money, quarrelled with relatives, and unexpectedly married Baines after meeting him at a railway station. Nearly seven years later, Walter and Florence, now parents of Monty and Catty, are managing a comfortable but financially strained London household. Walter is overworked as a journalist on The Centre. He encounters his needy, unhealthy, solemn old schoolfellow Alfred Wimple, who says his solicitor uncle has displaced him from the office and left him with an inadequate allowance. Though Walter distrusts Wimple’s tendency to lie and remembers an unpaid debt, he invites him to dinner and promises to seek work for him. Aunt Anne reappears in deep mourning: Baines has died, leaving her destitute. She has become chaperon to the young Mrs. North, but insists on being treated according to her rank. She portrays herself as abandoned by rich relatives, especially her cousin Sir William Rammage, and appeals emotionally to Florence while resisting all detailed questions. Her lavish presents coexist with requests for necessities, including a black satin sunshade and handkerchiefs. Florence, moved by pity, sacrifices her own small comforts to provide them. At a dinner party with Walter, Wimple, Ethel Dunlop, and Walter’s editor, Mr. Fisher, Aunt Anne arrives magnificently dressed in an expensive gown. She dominates the evening with charm, dignity, memories, flirtation, and music. Wimple becomes strangely attentive to her, especially when she speaks of Sir William Rammage. On the balcony he speaks sentimentally of her enduring youth and asks about the rich cousin. Meanwhile Fisher arranges for Walter to go to India as a correspondent, promising both work and restorative travel. Walter leaves for India, while Aunt Anne increasingly enters Florence’s life. After leaving Mrs. North’s house in a quarrel over servants and propriety, she seeks shelter with the Hibberts. Florence finds Aunt Anne both troublesome and delightful: she is affectionate with the children, skillful at sewing, full of praise and surprises, but extravagant, domineering toward servants, careless of debts, and determined to give presents despite having no money. She grows close to Wimple, meets him privately, gives him gifts, buys him a first-class ticket, and becomes absorbed in his supposed delicacy and poverty. Mr. Fisher rents the Hibberts’ London house and sends Florence, the children, and Aunt Anne to the Surrey cottage near Witley. Aunt Anne eagerly notes that Liphook, where Wimple is staying, lies nearby. In Florence’s absence she entertains Wimple, takes the children on drives with him, spends nearly all the money entrusted to her, and refuses to account for it. Florence learns from Mrs. North that Aunt Anne’s generosity had produced many unpaid bills, including Madame Celestine’s dress bill; Mrs. North secretly pays them because Aunt Anne had once been kind to her. Aunt Anne eventually announces, in tears and triumph, that Alfred Wimple loves her and that she has promised to marry him. Florence is shocked by the great disparity in age, their mutual poverty, and Wimple’s cold character, but Aunt Anne treats every doubt as cruel disbelief in her capacity to be loved. She repeats Wimple’s arguments about famous older women loved by great men and insists that love, not money or age, governs their future. When Florence privately urges Wimple to abandon the plan or at least protect Aunt Anne’s happiness, he remains impassive, says their affairs are private, and declares that he wants to marry Mrs. Baines for his own sake as much as for hers. Hurt by Florence’s lack of approval, Aunt Anne packs to leave and prepares to place herself wholly in Wimple’s hands.

By W.K. Clifford · First published 1882 · Genre: Victorian Social Comedy, Domestic Fiction, Comedy of Manners · 12 chapters · 60,149 words

First lines

Mr. and Mrs. Walter Hibbert had been married just four months when Aunt Anne first appeared on the scene. They were at Brighton, whither they had gone from Friday to Tuesday, so that Mr. Hibbert might get braced up after a hard spell of work. Besides doing his usual journalism, he had been helping a friend with a popular educational weekly, and altogether "had slaved quite wickedly," so his wife said. But he had declared that, though he found matrimony, as far as he had gone, very delightful, it had to be paid for, especially at the beginning of its career, when it ran into furniture, linen, plate, and expensive presents to a dear little wife, though the expensiveness of the last he generously kept to himself. So it resulted in the visit to Brighton. They spent the happiest four days in the world there, and felt quite sad when Tuesday morning arrived. But they wisely did their best to forget that the evening train would take them back to London, and resolved that their last day should pass merrily.

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Victorian fiction · domestic comedy · late Victorian England · Brighton seaside · Rottingdean village · London journalism · Surrey cottage · middle-class marriage · young married couple · family life · eccentric aunt · elderly widow

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