Octavia Franklinia Bennet

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

I CAN as easily imagine the Indian River valley and the granite shoulders of Stony Mountain rolled out into level prairie land as think of the Bennet homestead without great-aunt Octavia’s dominating personality. For she has in her something of the eternal, immemorial quality of river and mountain. Her massive body making nothing of the weight of seventy-seven years, her unwinking black eyes, tight shut lips, masterful nose and chin, all testify to her descent from the old stock, who were Puritans, not through enervation but through discipline; and from the same inflexible source she has drawn the somewhat austere mentality, which is the key-note of her character.

When I climb two miles straight up from the village and knock at the low unpainted door, she greets me without effusion — not to say grimly. I know she must be glad to see me, for life on the hillside has few breaks and the bond of kinship is an article of her faith; but she does not tell me so. She continues pottering about the kitchen leaning on her cane, oblivious of my existence until I venture an opinion. Then, whatever it may be, she contradicts it and the battle begins. Debate is her grand passion. I have never seen her matched in whole-hearted fervor of argument. There is nothing cold or fine-spun about her logic; it shakes with energy, like an express locomotive. She plunges into the subject, rolls up a mountain of citations, and buries the enemy in his own trenches. She is a match for every style: she can parry and riposte or, if her opponent is too thick-skinned for her rapier, she can fillip him with a three-man-beetle. She says what she thinks, without mincing, in downright Saxon: she calls a spade a ‘spud.’ Her talk is like one of Hazlitt’s essays, —all fire and gusto. Often I have seen her on the wrong side of a question, but I have never seen her beaten.

After she has silenced opposition she falls into a monologue which, no matter how it begins, swings eventually round to the degeneracy of modern society. Great-aunt Octavia puts everything to the test of logic, — Reason, she calls it. Caprice she holds to be the cardinal sin: treason against an orderly universe. It is diverting to observe the ingenious sophistry with which she attempts to harmonize into one cosmic system all her favorite prejudices; it is less diverting to listen to her pronounce judgment on the failings of the community. She cannot forgive her neighbors their frail humanity: she asks them to perform rational acts as a machine turns out clothespins.

‘ I’ve been lookin’ down on the chimneys in the village for nigh on eightyyears,’ she is wont to observe, ‘and I hope I have a little Charity left, but what I’ve seen has sort o’ used up my Faith and Hope. There’s Jed Baldwin’s wife now, she that was Lucy Hopkins. She’s tryin’ to bake bread with green popple! If I was his wife, he’d cut some wood! ’ Great-aunt Octavia’s cane makes a minatory flourish toward the smoke-blackened beams; she scowls; pouts out her lips; and forgets to limp as she stamps around the kitchen. Presently she breaks out again: ’Jed is that lazy an’ slack! One of his grandfathers was a Meade: “what’s bred in the bone!” — an’ his mother’s folks are from York State!’

There is nothing sour or envious in her critical survey of the Baldwin family tree: she has a conscientious desire to be thorough; ‘Justice is her plea,’ and she is certain that in the course of Justice none of her neighbors shall see salvation. Her psychological observations are very keen and shrewd, but there is a flavor of the hanging judge about them. I like it better when she changes the theme to her other great topic of interest, — the world of books. There she is in her element — in her glory! She is no scholar: she left the district school to cook for the harvest hands; but she has lived, observed, talked first and last with seven generations, and over twenty thousand lamp-lit evenings have familiarized her with more than the mile-stones of comparative criticism. She reads no language except her own, but that she knows. You cannot put her down by referring to Goethe or Aristotle, or any one who has been translated. Above all, she cares about literature. I remember quoting once in the course of conversation, ‘There’s nothing either good or bad, but custom makes it so.’ Great-aunt Octavia was in bed with the lumbago, but the words were hardly out of my mouth when I heard her heavy step in the next room. A night-capped head was thrust violently through the curtains. ‘Thinking, child, thinking!' she corrected, ‘ “ but thinking makes it so.” ’

Wonderful great-aunt Octavia!

Many an evening have I sat toasting my feet by the stove while she scalded the milk-pans and talked to me of books, of the people who wrote them, of the people who criticized them, of the people in them, swinging from Chaucer to Chesterton, from Bunyan to Burns. Her variety of interest is marvelous. She can discuss Man and Superman and keep her temper; she read, as they came out, pirated editions of the great Victorian novels; she remembers, still with a thrill, the year Maud was published; and the schoolmaster-uncle who formed her childish taste taught her to revere Dryden, Pope, Young, Beattie, and to deliver heroic couplets with proper intonation. In her heart of hearts I believe she still considers the Essay on Man the finest thing in literature. Passion and word-harmony may be all very well, but here is a poem with real meat in it.

She mouths out the couplet rhymes as if they were clashing cymbals.

Indeed, she has a cult for the Eighteenth Century. When I was a bumptious undergraduate I once depreciated its ‘sterile classicism.’ Great-aunt Octavia caught me up in a minute. It was bed-time when we joined issue; by midnight we were at it hot and heavy; at one o’clock we had shifted ground to the great question of the Gothic spirit versus the Hellenic. As the small hours passed I began to grow weary, but with each chime of the clock the bright black eyes of my opponent sparkled with fresher fire and her attack grew livelier, more compelling. I tried desperately to stick to my guns, but she beat me back from position after position. My order of battle lost shape. I was driven to the forlornest of hopes, to impossible Balaklavas; and at last, after I know not how many hours, I found myself claiming for Dickens the moderation of Addison, the polish of Shaftesbury. This was such palpable nonsense that I capitulated and apologized. Great-aunt Octavia passed a hand over her white hair, ruffled with the energy of the debate. ‘Well,’ she cried, ‘ I’m real glad to hear you willing to listen to sense. Now you come into the pantry and have a piece of pie; afterward we’ll go over back of the barn and see the sun rise,’ — and we did.

She led the way through the bars into the pasture and turned to watch the east, looking, with her shawl flung over her large powerful shoulders, like a Michael Angelo Sibyl, as old and as unconquerable as the boulder against which she leaned. It needed only a touch of fancy to see in her the embodiment of the old New England spirit, with its stubbornness and integrity; its stinginess and thrift; its pride and self-reliance; its lack of charity; its respect, for law; its dour unsociability, its devotion to ideals. All at once the sun rising through the mists added a final note to the comparison as it struck full on her wrinkled face, — strong, hard, intellectual, with very little sweetness, but blazing with light.