 “AUNTS AND
GREAT-AUNTS”- by Rachel
Maxtone Graham Townsend (1897-1977)
- Added June 2005, courtesy
of Robert
Maxtone Graham
- Images scanned
and adapted from original photographs.
EMILY
(Emily Caroline Kington-Blair-Oliphant of
Ardblair, died 1933)
I was blessed with many spinster aunts, five on
my father's side and one on my mother's. I also had two
great-aunts, and when I was very small, a
great-grand-aunt whom I was once taken to see at
Brighton. I was impressed by her great age, and felt
important. Nobody I knew had a great-grand-aunt nearly a
hundred years old. I never saw her again, but I am
sometimes reminded of her, for I often wear a ring of
dark sapphires which once belonged to her.
My maiden aunt on my mother's side was Emily.
Most families can boast of one eccentric. Em was ours.
Handsome in a classic style, she was vain of her
looks and especially of her white skin. I never saw her
hatless out-of-doors, or without a large parasol on sunny
days. Neither did I ever see her normally dressed, but
always wearing some fantastic and eye-catching frippery,
as unsuitable to the mediaeval castle which was her
Scottish home, as to the little house in London where she
spent her last years.
In the nineties, it was fashionable for sisters
to dress alike, so that Em's peculiar taste in clothes
did not become apparent until her sisters married. As the
one daughter left at home, her wildest fancies could be
indulged, for my grandmother, finding remonstrance
useless, took the line of least resistance. The scraps of
velvet, the ragged lace, the huge paste necklaces
and ear-rings, the high-heeled pale satin shoes, and the
picture hats which Em loved and always wore, were a
mingled source of amusement and humiliation to her
family. She would join the guns at a shooting luncheon
wearing a woollen skirt, a pink satin blouse, a lace
bolero, several pieces of imitation jewellery, and a pair
of diamond-buckled shoes, to the astonishment of the
local sportsmen and the other women guests, in their
conventional sober tweeds and stout brogues; and many a
time have I seen passers-by doing their unsuccessful best
to hide their smiles as Em scurried rapidly by. (Her walk
was almost a run.) It was embarrassing for children
to be seen in public with this extraordinary figure,
and yet we all enjoyed her company. She noticed the
staring strangers, but thought she was merely arousing
admiration, for in her own view, no-one knew how to dress
but herself. One of her loyal nephews, aged fifteen, once
fought a boy whom he had seen laughing at her in a
tea-shop. Em, although surprised by his unexplained
violence, remained serenely unaware of its cause.
She never used cosmetics or dyed her untidy
white hair, but as she grew older the bits and pieces
which covered her gaunt form became even more bizarre,
and she designed a series of terrible outfits, beloved by
her but dreaded by her relations. We had nicknames for
some of them, and before any family wedding we used to
hold sweepstakes on what Em would wear for the occasion.
There was Toreador, a dashing red cloak with
Spanish hat, Baby Mine, high-waisted white muslin
with blue ribbons, Sea Caves, pastel chiffon hung
with iridescent sea shells and sea weed, and several
nameless atrocities in vivid brocade with panels of
contrasting sateen.
Em's ideas for dresses were carried out by a
village dress-maker in Scotland, but heaven knows what
dauntless milliner made her hats. I do know, however,
that they would not fit into any normal hat-box, and that
she had enormous cardboard boxes especially made for
them.
Em's arrival at the railway station on a
country-house visit was (my mother used to say) a
humbling sight. Besides the large trunks and cardboard
boxes, there was a little matter of seven old umbrellas
which always accompanied her, and she usually wore a
tattered black brocade cloak, long since discarded by my
grandmother as being too old for her. Beneath a vast
Gainsborough hat, her happy smiling face looked out, and
all one's sense of outraged convention was lost in a rush
of affection. Even the porters, struggling with her
difficult luggage, were her willing slaves before the end
of the platform was reached.
For everybody loved Em. No picture of her would
be complete which did not make that clear. I never saw
her cross or even ruffled, but always sunny and
warm-hearted, generous to the point of silliness, and
well-bred in the essence of her being. Even in her
amazing appearance, that shone out. Mad, a stranger would
have said, but a mad aristocrat.
Em's chief interest, after clothes, was in
writing. Year after year, she bombarded editors with
jejune essays, sentimental stories, and poems which never
quite scanned. None was ever accepted, but she scribbled
happily on in her large angular handwriting, signing her
works with all five of her names in full. In addition,
she would enter at least one literary competition every
week. Occasionally an extract from her entry would be
mockingly quoted, and then she was enchanted at having
been noticed. She was never cast down, and continued to
the end of her life to think of herself as a writer. 
She also considered herself to be a connoisseur
of female beauty. It was a harmless enough notion, except
that she loyally fancied her nieces to be lovely beyond
compare. This nonsense embarrassed and exasperated us
all, especially as she took the view that no men were
good enough for us, and our perfectly suitable
engagements were greeted by a disappointed sigh. My
mother told me that Em had been even worse in her youth,
holding that nobody was a grand enough match for her
brilliant sisters, and saying so to anyone who would
listen. Her two brothers-in-law had consequently a good
deal to forgive. She forgot her disapproval, however,
when babies came along. Em loved children (though her
affection took the form, so dreaded by nannies, of
over-feeding and over-exciting them) and she gradually
became reconciled to the fact that their fathers were
neither Royal nor even ducal.
After my grandmother's death, Em left Scotland
and went to live in London. At first she found a haven in
an obscure boarding-house (my Zoo, she called it) where
she made friends with a number of elderly oddities.
"It's a shame," I remember her saying,
"there is a dear old lady in my Zoo whose selfish
daughter never takes her out anywhere. I shall take her
to luncheon in a nice restaurant," and she did, but
only once, because in the middle of the meal the excited
old lady suddenly gave an eldritch shriek and tore off
all her clothes. "Still, she enjoyed her
treat," said Em blandly afterwards.
Later Em took a charming little Mews cottage in
Belgravia. She would never allow anyone into her bedroom,
which was piled to the ceiling with old newspapers,
hatboxes, manuscripts, and dust, but the rest of the
house was perfunctorily cleaned by a series of
disreputable women who were experts at getting money out
of her. Here she lived in the way she really enjoyed,
turning night into day. She stayed in bed through most of
the daylight hours, and, getting up in the evenings, she
would trot off to a restaurant and then to a late cinema,
returning to read or write till dawn. It was
disconcerting to have a daytime engagement with Em, for
she almost always fell asleep, and one hostess, I
remember, after Em had dozed and nodded throughout a
tea-party, bade her farewell with a grim smile and the
words: "Goodbye, Emily, I do hope you'll have
a good night."
Most film actors were grist to Em's romantic
mill, but one star outshone all the rest. It was Rudolph
Valentino. We all felt that the adoration of this ageing
woman for the young actor was too pathetic to be amusing,
but when after his death Em somehow acquired his Cossack
hat and wore it all over London, our mortification
overcame our sense of pity. We would have preferred the
Gainsborough creations, but there was no holding Em; she
worshipped him, she worshipped his hat, and we had to put
up with it. After all, we had been used all our lives to
seeing Em in Fancy Dress.
One of her favourite occupations in London was
attending the weddings of perfect strangers and
afterwards denigrating the dresses, but her happiest
outings were to watch Royal processions. She would
somehow manage to keep awake for these, and would always
contrive to have an excellent view. One of her nephews, a
young officer in the Guards, said that he never took part
in any ceremony without wondering if he would see Em on
the top of a lamp-post. What with weddings, processions,
and cinemas, her life in London was full of interest, and
I am certain that it completely satisfied her.
Em had a comfortable fortune, but no money sense
at all, and as the years went on, her capital dwindled in
a way that would have alarmed anyone less blithe than
she. Her sisters found that giving her money was useless
(my mother discovered that Em was supporting, among other
beggars, the lover of her last charwoman but two) and
that the only way to ensure her comfort was to pay the
landlord and the grocer direct. For years her little
house had become a magnet for spongers and idlers, and
when she died she was very nearly penniless. She was ill
for months, but she never complained, and with incredible
pluck and spirit she went gamely to her end.
I never knew what became of the Cossack hat.
THE MAXTONE GRAHAMS OF CULTOQUHEY
MOLLY
(Mary Scott Maxtone, 1822-1909)
My unmarried aunts on my father's side, Zina,
Madge, Carrie, Bessie and Georgie, were not picturesque
like Em. They were amusing and original, but not
eccentrics. There was a wide contrast between their home
life and the gay confident happiness of my mother's
background. The shadow of their intolerant and
intolerable Papa fell heavily across their youth; what
they did have in common with Em and her sisters was
humour, good spirits, and warm hearts .
They were a Victorian family of eight brothers
and sisters, living in a Scottish country-house where we
spent much of our early childhood. Their devotion to
their nieces and nephews is a happy and lasting memory
for us.
There was also another spinster living in the
house, my grand-father's sister Mary. 
Molly, my aunts called her. She was a good deal
of a trial to these nieces of hers, who would not have
chosen her as an intimate of their home; but, having been
invited by my grand-mother for a fortnight's stay, she
calmly remained for sixteen years till, with the death of
my grandfather, the old life came to an end.
He never spoke to her during this time. "I
gave up my sister Mary," he said, "the day she
borrowed the cook's bonnet to go to church because it was
raining."
But Molly was quite unmoved by the surly
disapproval of her host. She was a great hand at
economising, to put it mildly, and it was naturally a
considerable saving to be housed and fed at his expense,
quite worth any snubs she might be called upon to endure.
Molly was very deaf, and extremely touchy. If
she had not heard some family joke, she would insist on
its being repeated again and again till she grasped it,
when she would look unamused and affronted. Reading a
letter one morning, one of my aunts smiled. "What
are you smiling at?" asked Molly sharply.
"Well, Molly, it’s only that Mrs 0 (a
country neighbour) writes that she sent the carriage to
represent her at Lord R's funeral, 'and sent the footman
too, to lend dignity to the occasion,' and I thought that
was rather funny."
"Lendignity? What's lendignity?"
"LEND DIGNITY, Molly."
"Lendignity? I never heard the word before.
What can you possible mean by lendignity?"
At this my aunt smiled, and Molly said
furiously: "The Bible says, Curse not the
deaf!"
Another day, when the famous Tranby Croft baccarat
scandal was being discussed, Molly asked, "What's
all this barrow cat?"
"It's a game, Molly.”
"I want to play it. Why can we not play
barrow cat?" She went on beseeching my aunts to play
it with her, till finally one of them said: "Well,
Molly, you see you have got to get a barrow and a cat
before you can begin." This satisfied her. She quite
saw that it was going to be a difficult game for the
drawing-room, and she reluctantly abandoned the idea.
Molly was always on the look-out for slights,
and nothing annoyed her more than to hear of plans for an
expedition in which she had not been included. She would
fret and look injured and make herself such a nuisance
that my aunts would eventually weaken and take her with
them, which as she was rather lame and very demanding,
often spoiled the day. She did not always enjoy these
occasions and had no scruples about voicing her
complaints. But sometimes she was quite cheerful and was
not above making a ribald joke or two, most surprising,
coming from her. When she was in a good mood, she enjoyed
shocking my aunts, who always played up and pretended to
be appalled by her levity.
One summer Molly took a determined fancy to
drive in the public wagonette to a local beauty-spot
called Amulree. Nobody wanted to go with her, but she
wouldn't go alone, and she nagged and made everyone's
life miserable, so that eventually my aunt Carrie
good-naturedly consented to accompany her. "But,
Molly," she said, "I won't go unless you
promise to reserve the box seats in the wagonette. I
can't face driving all those miles stuffed in with a lot
of hot people at the back."
Molly promised, and when Carrie enquired later,
merely said with dignity: "Everything is
satisfactorily arranged, Carrie," and would say no
more.
The day of the excursion was hot and sultry, and
when aunt and niece reached the wagonette the box seats
were already occupied. Not till then did Molly confess
that she had only been able to reserve two seats at the
back. It is the measure of Carrie’s kindness that
she did not then and there march home. Instead, she
followed Molly into the overcrowded vehicle among the
perspiring passengers, and somehow endured the long
drive, mostly uphill, to Amulree. Arrived there, the
thunder broke, the rain poured in torrents, and every
conceivable mishap and annoyance followed. It was late
before the weary travellers reached home, and Molly, who
had been looking huffy for several hours, summed up the
day by saying crossly: "Well, Carrie, I'm cured of
Amulree."
Molly could never see her nieces starting for a
walk without insisting on going too. As they were
vigorous walkers and she was lame, they would try every
method of politely circumventing her, and on one occasion
were pushed into playing a slightly unkind trick on her.
After pottering along for half a mile, my aunt Bessie
suddenly said: "We're going to have a game now,
Molly, do you want to play?"
"Certainly I want to play,“ said
Molly.
"Very well, then. You see the oak tree at
the bottom of that field? We will all be blindfolded and
turn round three times, and then all try to reach the
tree, and whoever touches it first has won the
game." Her sisters listened open-mouthed, but Molly
trustfully submitted to being blindfolded, was turned
round three times, and told to start. Off she wandered,
groping her way towards the tree, while her nieces, led
by Bessie, went for a brisk five-mile walk in the
opposite direction. It was quite a long time before Molly
discovered that she was alone. Oddly enough, she took it
quite nicely. One could never tell, with Molly. Once when
Carrie and Bessie were small children, they raided
Molly's laundry-basket and ran all over the house dressed
in her tatty old combinations. Molly was enraged and said
severely: "I like fun, but I don't like
impiddence." (My great-aunt belonged to the
last generation of Highland gentry who spoke with a
distinct Scottish accent). It was hard to tell where fun
ended and impudence began, where Molly was concerned; she
was unpredictable.
The next time Molly was left alone it was not
done for a joke. One night the family was at dinner when
a raw young footman burst into the dining-room and
spluttered: "The mansion-hoose is on fire!"
With one accord all the diners rushed out of the room and
upstairs, where they passed buckets of water from hand to
hand till the fire was under control. All, that is to
say, except Molly. She had not heard the footman's
announcement, and her head being happily bent over her
food, she didn't at first notice that everyone else had
left the room. When she looked up she naturally supposed
that some trick was being played on her, and her
indignation knew no bounds. Even when she learned the
truth, she still seemed bitterly offended.
It would be unfair to give the impression that
my aunts teased Molly unduly. On the contrary, they were
extremely kind, patient and unselfish to her, only now
and then her exigence became a little too much for them.
She was an incensing guest, and it says much for my aunts
and for my sweet-tempered grand-mother that Molly was not
firmly ejected from their home.
Molly had an old lady friend who once invited
her for a fortnight's holiday, anywhere that Molly chose.
"How lovely for you, Molly!" cried my
aunts. "And where will you go? Paris? Switzerland?
The Italian Lakes?" But Molly would only say that
she hadn't decided.
At last she announced that the plans were fixed.
She and her friend had taken lodgings in Crieff, about
three miles away. The advantage of this idea became
apparent when on every day of the holiday, Molly and her
friend appeared for luncheon, a decided financial gain
for them.
However, one day hospitality was returned, and
my aunts were invited to tea at the lodgings. "We
cursed," Carrie told me, "but we went."
Tea was ready, with scones and bread, and several pots of
jam, which my aunts, with secret delight, recognised as
having come from home. (It transpired later that the two
old ladies on their daily visits had raided the stillroom
and taken back anything they fancied to their lodgings.)
As tea went on and the scones began to disappear, Molly
was heard to whisper hoarsely to the maid: "Get the
buns! The buns on approval I They're under my bed."
Molly was not one to risk an outright expenditure if it
could be safeguarded.
The holiday over, she returned home. It had not
been much of a rest for her nieces.
Molly's thrift was a constant amusement. When
she lost her gold watch, she was persuaded to advertise
for it, but she described it as "a watch with a
yellow face'', fearing that if the word gold were
mentioned, a more generous reward would be expected.
Once, however, she did become conscious that parsimony
could be overdone. A great friend of the family was to be married,
and Molly's gift to the bride was a particularly cheap
and nasty little pepperpot. When she saw it, her card
beside it, among all the handsome presents at the wedding
reception, it dawned on her that this time she had really
gone too far. Beneath a masterly sweep of her cloak she
abstracted her meagre contribution and her card, and took
them away in her pocket. No doubt she later returned the
pepperpot to the shop and was reimbursed for it, but
honour had been saved at the wedding.
When the family broke up, Molly bought a house
in the suburbs of Edinburgh, and retired there with Zina,
her oldest niece. ''You're none of you nice enough to
poor Zina," she would scold the younger ones.
"Zina's pure gold." Perhaps she had never taken
a thoughtful look at Zina's protruding chin and the gleam
of power-mania behind the pince-nez. But alas,
when she and Zina set up house together, she soon
discovered that Zina, freed from her autocratic father,
was a dictator herself; and so Molly's last years,
smothered in shawls and harried perpetually "for her
own good", were not very happy ones. She struggled
forlornly against the tyranny of over-kindness, but old
Molly had met her Waterloo at last.
Her chief consolation was her tame bullfinch,
Bully, whom she taught, to our fascinated disgust, to
take hempseed off her tongue. One night Bully died and
was secretly replaced next morning by another bullfinch.
Molly didn't realise this, and said in surprise,
"Bully's rather wild this morning," as the
unfortunate newcomer fluttered away from her in terror.
Eventually he, too, was tamed, and so with others, for an
excess of hempseed produced a fairly regular mortality --
though we of course said it was caused by having to eat
off Molly's tongue. She never knew the difference, and
merely thought Bully had unaccountable moods of being
“rather wild."
I hardly remember Molly in her uppish days. I
think of her as a crippled old lady in a wheel-chair,
helplessly subservient to the domination of her niece.
But I have been told that just before she died, Molly's
arthritic old hand was with difficulty raised, and in a
last gesture of defiance she cocked a snook at "pure
gold" Zina.
ZINA
(Alexina Mary Maxtone Graham, 1852-1912)
Zina was the eldest of the children. In her
early years she had been spoiled by her parents (my
grandfather must have been less disagreeable in those
days), and as she grew older she developed a domineering
tendency which drove her sisters to open rebellion. It
was all in the guise of loving-kindness, and thus
particularly difficult to combat, and one of its worst
forms was a constant worry about their health. Unlike
most Scots, Zina had a dread of fresh air, and when she
was not shutting windows, she was running after her
sisters with extra coats and wraps. There was a window at
the end of a passage which all the other members of the
family automatically flung open as they went by, because
it was a fetish with Zina to keep it shut.
She could work herself into a state of senseless
alarm at the slightest provocation. One evening she was
going up the back stairs, which she seldom used, when she
happened to touch the wall. The big kitchen flue went up
there, and the wall was warm. Zina's ill-divining soul
rushed to the conclusion that the house would shortly go
up in flames. She hurried to get a flannel petticoat,
dipped it in cold water, and was found an hour later
still holding it against the wall, convinced that by this
means she was saving the house. In the same way, she
thought that by excluding air and forcing unwanted
garments on her relations, she was saving them from
certain death from pneumonia. In those days, hip-baths
were almost universal, but my grandfather took his bath
in the one bathroom. Every morning Zina would scuttle in
ahead of time and turn on the hot water till the room was
full of steam, so that Papa should not feel cold when he
made his majestic entry. Naturally the bathroom ceiling,
weakened by years of this treatment, eventually fell
down, but unfortunately my grandfather was absent at the
time.
Zina's interference in matters of health was
equalled by her religious nagging. All her sisters were
Christians in the very best sense of the word, but Zina
roused the devil in them, as she did in the servants, and
in us as small children. We were never naughty with our
other aunts, and we didn't consciously resent Zina's
incessant fussing, taking, as children do, our relations
very much for granted; but we were noticeably fiendish in
her company.
Church attendance, Sunday strictness, and Family
Prayers were some of the scourges she used on her
sisters. They thought they had quite enough of this sort
of thing from Papa already, and, added to Zina's
ceaseless goading about their health, it was more than
they were prepared to stand. There were almost no lengths
to which they would not go in order to thwart her.
Years after her death I was talking to the old
butler, long since retired. He loved to recall the old
days, but he told me he could never live through them
again. "It was the 8.40 train," he said
solemnly. "I could face everything else, but not
that." It appears that guests from the south always
arrived at 8.40 in the evening, and there being no dining
car, they had to be given dinner on arrival. Millar's
desire that they should be properly welcomed clashed with
Zina's implacable determination that the footmen should
attend family prayers at nine-thirty, and a battle royal
took place on each and every occasion. Millar always won,
but it wore him out, he said.
My clearest recollections of Zina are in
Edinburgh when she and her aunt Molly set up house there.
We lived in Edinburgh in the winters, and used often to
go and see them. Their house was airless and smelt of hot
shawls and birdseed, and to play in the small dull garden
entailed a frightful argument with Zina on the subject of
extra scarves and woolly gloves.
One day the children of a neighbouring clergyman
were invited to play in the garden with us. When tea
arrived they were given theirs in the chilly greenhouse,
while we had ours cosily in the house. Zina thought that
they might have been in contact with some disease or
other, and that the danger of infecting us would be less
if we didn't meet them indoors. Naturally this gave dire
offence to their parents, since the children were neither
lepers nor in quarantine; and Zina's stock in church
circles hit an all-time low, to her great surprise.
With all her fret about physical health, Zina
had very little sense of psychological welfare. Taking us
home on a tram one day, she fell foul of the conductor.
She wouldn't take us on the top because it might be cold.
She wouldn't take us inside because it might be stuffy.
No, she would only stand with us on the platform where
passengers were not allowed, and an acrimonious dispute
with the conductor followed. My sister and I, who were
small children at the time, watched their angry faces
with growing apprehension till at last the worst
happened. The tram was stopped, a policeman was summoned,
and we were ejected. For years after that I suffered a
secret terror of policemen and expected instant arrest
whenever I saw one. But I was saved from catching cold or
feeling stuffy on the tram.
When our parents were abroad, Zina was in her
element, and I have never known how our nurses and
governesses endured her interference. Perhaps my mother
had imbued them with some of her own amused tolerance,
though even this wore thin at times. Once Zina overheard
our French governess ejaculate: “Mon Dieu".
Zina rushed to my mother in a frenzy of holy horror, but
she was met with firmness, and Mademoiselle remained
with us for years. Zina would hang about outside our
dancing-class, and pounce when we emerged with offers of
a drive home in a cab. Here again, my mother eventually
put her foot down. "Much better for them to walk
home in the nice cold air after getting thoroughly
overheated at their dancing,'' she said mischievously,
and Zina despite a torrent of dismayed protests had to
give in.
But my sister and I used sometimes to stay with
her and Molly when they went to the country in the
summer, and then there would be an orgy of shutting
windows, wrapping up warmly, and religious determinism.
It never did any good. One night, I remember, we got out
of bed, stripped ourselves to the skin, and rushed naked
round and round the garden, vainly pursued by our aghast
hostess. Later, when we confessed this misdemeanour to
our other aunts, they all pealed with delighted laughter.
That was the effect poor Zina had. Nobody ever wanted her
to win.
After Molly's death, Zina took up volunteer work
in a Soldiers' Home. I cannot believe she was well-fitted
for this job. The Home was in England, and we saw very
little of her in her later years. Her sister Madge became
fatally ill in 1912, and the efforts of the entire family
were concentrated on keeping Zina away from the bedside,
knowing that her agitated presence would be the last
straw for Madge. Shortly after Madge died, Georgie had a
sudden and alarming illness when Zina unfortunately
happened to be with her. Zina's worrying then reached
heroic proportions, and in a very short time proved too
much for her heart.
I once asked my mother what Zina had died of.
"Fuss" was the unvarnished reply.
MADGE
(Margaret Graeme Maxtone Graham, 1858-1912)
Madge was the aunt I knew least, although she
was always good to us and we were fond of her. She was
unique among the sisters because she was the only one who
ever had the faintest shadow of a love-affair. Years
afterwards, she told my mother about it. It was a most
innocent story. The attraction was mutual, but the man
was married, and so as a matter of course the romance
came to an immediate end. I am sure that not even a kiss
passed between them, but Madge never forgot.
Perhaps it was this experience that gave her the
courage to break away from home. She went on a visit to
friends in England, and from there wrote to her father
that she had accepted a position as a paid companion and
was not coming back. Everyone thought the skies would
fall, but Papa took it quite calmly, and instead of
exploding with rage or going into one of his famous fits
of sulks, he merely said he was glad that one of his
daughters could earn her own living.
So Madge began an independent life. She
developed many interests, made a host of new friends,
became a Christian Scientist, and when she inherited some
money took a pretty flat in London, where we loved to go
and stay.
Visits to her were an exciting treat. She was
generous and imaginative with children, though perhaps it
was a mistake to take me to see '"The Only
Way", for I cried so much at Sidney
Carton's sacrifice that I couldn't see, and had
to be led out of the theatre at the end. But she was also
responsible for introducing me to the Ballet, a lasting
joy for which I shall always bless her.
Madge was in a sense less real to us than the
aunts who remained in Scotland, but we missed her when
she died. Even her appearance is rather a dim memory,
though I recall that she was taller than her sisters and
that she had the sandy hair and blue eyes so
characteristic of the family. I believe that her life in
London was very happy. Her sisters had to wait for Papa's
death before they could escape from domestic despotism.,
but Madge struck her blow for freedom when she still had
some youth left, and I am sure she never regretted it.
We wore black for her and Zina. Owing to our
youth we had only been allowed to wear mauve for King
Edward VII, two years before, so this was an important
advance for us.
I wish I had known Madge better: the only aunt
who flung Victorian tradition to the winds, changed her
religion, earned her living, and got away from Papa.
BESSIE 
(Elizabeth Christina Maxtone Graham,
1861-1924)
Carrie and Bessie were a separate unit when I
was small. They were born within a year of each other,
and I never knew sisters so devoted.
Bessie was the sister everybody wanted, and the
nearest they ever came to family disputes was -- to her
distress -- about her. Brothers and sisters alike adored
her, and each wanted to be the centre of Bessie's world.
Bessie herself only wanted peace. She had the
sunniest nature of all of them, together with an
impishness which was our greatest delight as children.
Her jokes were unexpected, her flashes of humour sudden
and irreverent, and it was impossible for anyone to be
cross or moody in her presence. She could sometimes even
get round her father, so irresistible was her charm. When
they were all young, my grandfather would suddenly break
the gloomy meal-time silence with a disconcerting attempt
at social training.
"Bessie," he commanded one day,
"Make a remark." The terrified child, her eyes
fixed on Papa's stern countenance, stammered at random,
"I s-s-see a d-donkey.” But because it was
Bessie, my grandfather only laughed.
Bessie's was the eye which we always caught when
anything ludicrous happened, and it was always Bessie who
on solemn occasions reduced us to uncontrollable laughter
with some frivolous whisper. Once she was staying with an
old friend whose husband had just died, and I was taken
by Georgie to pay a visit of condolence on the widow. The
atmosphere was one of total gloom, I was young and
embarrassed, and I sat in awe-struck silence till Bessie
turned to me, winked, and murmured: "The very minute
you and Georgie have gone, we're going upstairs to count
his pants." I became scarlet with suppressed
giggles, but Bessie remained perfectly grave, and my poor
hostess must have thought I had suddenly gone mad. Bessie
was unable to resist this sort of teasing.
A great deal of joy went out of the family when
Bessie died. She was buried in the little hill-side
cemetery at Fowlis Wester where her ancestors have lain
for nearly six centuries. It was a day of deep sadness
for us all, unrelieved until my father asked the ancient
grave-digger where he had prepared the grave.
"Och," he answered matter-of-factly;
"Ah've jist pit her in on the top o' John'' --
Great-Uncle John having been buried so long before that
his coffin had conveniently sunk. Bessie would have loved
that.
I can still see her mischievous face and hear
across the years the echo of her irrepressible laughter.
After she went, nothing was ever quite such fun
again. She was in her middle sixties, but whatever her
age, one would always have felt that Bessie had died
young.
GEORGIE 
(Marjory Georgina Ramsay Maxtone Graham,
1871-1935)
Georgie's advent must have been a shock to my
grandmother, who was fifty-two when the new baby arrived,
eight years after the previous one, but Georgie benefited
greatly by this circumstance. She was spoilt by them all,
and there being no sisters of schoolroom age, she was
even sent to school, instead of being educated by
governesses at home. 
Georgie's ambition was to be like a man. She
loved outdoor life, fishing and gardening, and she was a
keen carpenter. My father also taught her to shoot, but
my grandfather found out and forbade it at once. Her
sisters, however, managed to persuade Papa to allow her a
few other pleasures, and friends took her to balls and
parties now and then. None of the sisters except Madge
had any real freedom, for they were dependent on their
father for every penny, but Georgie had a more normal
youth and was perhaps less afraid of him in consequence.
After his death, Carrie, Bessie and Georgie set
up house together, and their little home in the country
became a delightful centre for friends and young
relations. Georgie, in spite of a brusque manner, was
just as kindly as the others, and, like them, she loved
and understood children. She was tweedy and hearty, and
used to take us out fishing and driving, and to explore
the neighbouring farms; and she could be excellent
company.
All her life, Georgie had resented her sister
Zina's attempts to manage her, and was especially
critical of the way in which old Molly was kept under her
niece's thumb. One of my uncles, Robert, had emigrated to
California (and oh, how his eldest sister fussed over him
from six thousand miles away), and a time came when Zina
and Bessie took the adventurous step of going out to see
him, while Georgie volunteered to take care of Molly in
the Edinburgh house.
Molly's battle-cry for years had been: "Oh
if I could just get a tea-spoonful of fresh air!" So
Georgie's first act was to remove some of the superfluous
shawls and open a window. The result was that the old
lady immediately developed pleurisy and nearly died.
Georgie had been hearty once too often.
After some years of sharing a home, Carrie went
away to devote herself to good works in Perth. Bessie and
Georgie remained in the country, where their comfortable
little house with its charming garden continued to be a
much-loved haven for us. This was quite certainly the
happiest period of Georgie's life. After Bessie's death
she lived there alone, but with absolutely no wish to
survive. Bessie had been her whole life, emotionally
speaking, and although she filled her days with friends
and occupations, and was interested in our marriages and
fond of our children, we realised that she was only
marking time. After about eleven years, she developed an
incurable disease. She knew it, and we knew it too. I
went to say goodbye to her before going abroad with my
husband, and found her at the top of a high ladder,
vigorously hammering at a loose slate on the roof. She
climbed down, gave me some tea, joked, laughed, told
stories, criticised, argued and interrupted in her
characteristic way. She didn't mention her illness except
to say briefly that the treatment prescribed for her was
"a lot of rot-tot" (a favourite expression of
hers), and she then changed the subject.
I am sure that as soon as I had gone, she
climbed up the ladder again; there was nothing of the chaise-longue
invalid about the indomitable Georgie.
Soon afterwards her condition deteriorated and
she thankfully departed, saying with almost her last
breath: "I shall see Bessie tomorrow."
CARRIE
(Caroline Leonora Maxtone Graham, 1860-1941)
Carrie survived all her brothers and sisters.
She lived until 1941, when she was over eighty, and
became to our eleven children much what she had been to
us -- the aunt who was utterly to be trusted, an
inexhaustible fund of patience and affection, and the
best teller of tales in a family noted for good
story-telling. When we were little, these took the form
of serial stories which went on for years; later she
would tell us true stories, mostly about the family, and
it is because she never wrote them down that I am trying
to put some on paper now, before they are all forgotten.
It was from Carrie that we got a description of
our great-aunt Alexina who lived in a villa in Crieff. I
can dimly remember sitting on her knee while she sang
"There was a Froggy Lived in a Well", and
"Friskin was a Soldier"; and my sister
remembers how Aunt Alexina's cook used to make a vast
rice pudding every Monday which lasted for the whole week
-- a dreadful fact which would naturally impress itself
upon a child -- but it is to Carrie that we owe some
other glimpses of Aunt Alexina. She seems to have been a
lively old lady, much gayer than her sister Molly, and in
spite of bad health never plaintive or discontented.
Conventions do not appear to have troubled her, and our
favourite story was how Aunt Alexina, armed with a large
black silk bag, used to pursue horses through the streets
of Crieff to collect manure for her garden, till her
horrified brother somehow put a stop to this thrifty
proceeding. Altogether, I think Aunt Alexina must have
been great fun, and she was a never-failing amusement to
my aunts. She died in 1903, aged about 77,
unmarried like her sister Molly.
It was difficult for Carrie to give a true
picture of the life at home. She would talk freely of my
grandmother, whose children all greatly loved her, but
Carrie's family loyalty was such that she could not bring
herself to be candid about her father. My mother being
only a daughter-in-law had fewer scruples, and it was
chiefly from her that we got our later impressions of the
old gentleman. To us as children he was merely kind old
Grandpapa, of whom we stood in no awe whatever, but to
his wife and his own children he was the Man of Wrath
personified. He stands out first and foremost as a
killjoy, though he could be genial enough when he liked,
and he was an excellent host and a devoted grandfather.
Though always severe, he was rather less unkind to his
children when they were small, and on one occasion went
so far as to buy new hats for the little girls. But he
insisted that the eldest girl should have the largest
hat, the second daughter the next size, and so down the
line. It happened that Zina had a small head, Madge a
large one, but Zina was forced to extinguish her face in
the biggest hat, while Madge's was perched depressingly
on the top of her head. The younger children fared no
better, for all the sizes were wrong, but neither my
grandmother's timid protests nor the deplorable
appearance of the children induced him to allow any
exchange. Eldest child, largest hat, and so on. Papa had
so decreed. It was the sort of petty tyranny that so
signally failed to endear him to his family, and it
continued all his life.
When Papa was in one of his frequent black
moods, everyone lived under a cloud of apprehension,
tip-toeing past his sitting room and talking in whispers,
but nothing could permanently dampen the cheerful spirits
of my aunts, who were always adepts at making the best of
things.
Almost the worst feature of their youth, to
modern eyes, was the total lack of vital occupation. Each
daughter in turn took on the household management for two
months at a time, but as there were sixteen indoor
servants and an excellent housekeeper, this could not be
called arduous. Each daughter took turns to arrange the
flowers. Each daughter took turns to visit the tenants in
the farms and villages, striving with complete
non-success to reform the local drunkards by means of
gentle talks, religious pamphlets, and strong
peppermints. (Once my mother felt it her duty to have a
try. She presented a tipsy beldame called Mrs. Spens with
a bottle of ginger wine, mistakenly supposing it to be
non-alcoholic, and extracted a promise that Mrs. Spens
would substitute it for whisky when "the
craving" came on. The ginger wine being largely
composed of brandy, Mrs. Spens was shortly to be seen
reeling down the village street, waving an empty bottle
and yelling that Mrs. Maxtone Graham had given it to her.
My aunts loved teasing my mother with this story.)
Of creative or intellectual occupation there was
none. The house was isolated, there were few near
neighbours, and although visitors came and went and my
aunts occasionally went away to stay with friends, there
were long periods of utter dullness. My grandfather sold
the horses (on the grounds that he had over-spent himself
in building larger stables), and all expeditions had to
be on foot. He never went anywhere himself, so that it
made no difference to him, but for my grandmother and
aunts it was a very real -- and quite unnecessary --
deprivation. They could go nowhere beyond walking
distance. On their return from a walk, my grandmother
would ask her daughters: "Did you meet anyone you
know? No? Or did you see anyone? Not a soul?... Any
carts?" For even meeting a farm cart made a break in
the monotony. In spite of all this, the home was somehow
never dreary, thanks to my aunts’ lively spirits and
humour. My mother, who was devoted to her sisters-in-law,
told me that even in the most difficult times they never
grumbled, self-pity was unknown to them; and they could
even make Papa's vagaries seem funny. They were not only
good-tempered, but good.
When my grandmother died, in 1898, she left all
her money to her daughters. This caused my grandfather
intense annoyance, and he stopped their miserable
allowances at once; but even so, they were better off
than before, and had certainly gained a small measure of
independence. The first thing they did with their own
money was to buy bicycles. Middle-aged women though they
were, they felt obliged to get Papa's permission to do
so. Coaxed by Bessie, he consented, not realising that to
his daughters, bicycles would be as wings. Life was never
so impossible after that, for they pedalled their way to
comparative freedom.
When Carrie used to tell us about the old days,
she only recounted the amusing side. I believe it was all
she would allow herself to remember. But Bessie was
completely frank, and it is owing to her as well as to my
mother that we have a more complete picture of the family
life.
Most of Carrie's later years were dedicated to
good works, and for a long time she lived in a
mission-house in Perth. Her gifts of sympathy made her
beloved among those she tried to help, and on the whole
she had the happiest and certainly the most useful life
of the five sisters. Though she was in constant contact
with the roughest of the slum element, she never lost a
sort of starry innocence which we loved, although it made
us laugh.
There was, for instance, the story of Thompson.
By this time Carrie had acquired a small house
of her own in Perth, and it was here that her cook, in
spiteful triumph, informed her that Thompson, her
lady's-maid, was eight months advanced in pregnancy, a
fact which had escaped her employer's notice.
One of Carrie's weaknesses was an almost
pathological shrinking from matters of sex, and her
dismay was not lessened by the fact that Thompson was a
great lump of over forty, who ought to have known better.
Carrie immediately made suitable arrangements
for Thompson's care, but she could hardly bear to look at
her. However, Thompson knew her lady, and she played for
sympathy most successfully, as my sister and I discovered
that afternoon when we answered Carrie's agitated
summons. Her round face was pale and her voice shaky as
she told us: "It was a case of assault. Poor
Thompson!"
Assault? We gave each other a cynical glance,
''What did she tell you, Aunt Car?"
"I questioned her,“ said our aunt,
''and she said it happened one evening as she was walking
down Balhousie Avenue."
"Balhousie Avenue?“ we repeated.
''Brightly lit, houses all the way, a few yards from home
-- why, all Thompson had to do was to give one scream,
and twenty heads would have been out of windows. So what
else did she say?"
“I asked her," said Aunt Car,
"what she did after the assault took place, and she
said: 'Please, M'm, I went to the pictures'."
"Now, Aunt Car,'" we said firmly,
"we are married women, and we assure you that if
Thompson, a virtuous female, had just been forcibly
attacked and criminally assaulted in the street, she
would not have spent the rest of the evening at the
cinema. So go on, what then?”
"I asked her," said Aunt Car, ''if she
knew who the man was, and she said yes, she did, and I
asked her if she had ever seen him since, and she said
yes, she had sometimes met him by chance, 'but we never
speak, we just bow'.“
At this, my sister and I were dissolved in
helpless laughter, and pretty soon we had beloved Aunt
Car laughing too. Later we often used to make her tell
the story of Thompson's rape, and it became a favourite
tale in the family.
It was sad for Carrie to be the last survivor of
the eight brothers and sisters, but her life being
entirely devoted to helping other people, her private
sorrows never overwhelmed her.
There was always somebody who needed her, whose
troubles were worse than her own, who craved and received
her friendship and understanding. She took a great
interest in the new generation, and it was happiness for
us to see the pattern repeating itself -- our children
listening entranced to Aunt Car's serial stories, and her
tenderness enfolding them.
Watching my aunts Carrie, Bessie and Georgie
with young creatures made me wonder over and over again
why love and marriage had so completely passed them by.
They were not pretty, but they were delightful company,
and possessed of quick wits and loving hearts. Bessie
would have made an ideal wife, Carrie a wonderful mother,
and Georgie a loyal and devoted companion. They always
said that they were quite content as they were, but when
our engagements were announced, their pleasure was
touching. I think they felt they had missed something
important in life, and because they loved us, they didn't
want us to miss it too.
Carrie, so gentle and unaggressive, so remote
from violence in every way, nevertheless met a violent
end. She had been getting increasingly blind, and one
evening during the war when she was on her way to church,
she was knocked down by an Army lorry. She never
recovered consciousness, and died that night. We miss her
still.
To our spinster aunts and great-aunts we owe the
memory of interest that never flagged, of affection that
never failed, and of an infinity of jokes and fun. One
way and another, they greatly enriched our lives. I like
to think that we contributed something to theirs.
Lately my sister and I were playing with our
great-nieces when she suddenly said: "Do you realise
that we are, so to speak, Molly and Alexina to these
children?"
But I am afraid that we shall never become so
funny and dear a legend, for everyone is standardised
nowadays, and we never fed bullfinches off our tongues,
ordered buns on approval, or chased horses through the
streets for their droppings.
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