Auntie Mame Read online

  I’ve never seen so many Southerners before or since. It seemed impossible that they were all part of the same family—or even the same county—but they were. Beau’s sisters, Willie Mae, Sally Randolph, and Georgia Lee arrived first with their husbands. The sisters had each managed to have six children under the age of five and there was a lot of introducing and kissing and you-alling. Although they weren’t very attractive people, Auntie Mame began to exude charm, but Mrs. Burnside didn’t. Her digestive tract voiced an eloquent protest with each new face.

  The relatives kept coming. They all had two first names and some of them even had two last names. There were about six men named Moultrie, four named Calhoun, eight called Randolph, and almost everybody had a Lee tucked somewhere into his or her name. To make things even more confusing, about half the women had men’s names. There were ladies called Sarah John, Liza William, Susie Carter, Lizzie Beaufort—pronounced Byew-fert—Mary Arnold, Annie Bryan, Lois Dwight.

  By one o’clock there were more than a hundred and twenty relatives milling around Peckerwood, all talking, and all talking loud. Mrs. Burnside indicated her disapproval of all this with a fanfaronade of flatulence.

  Still the relatives came. Beau was the kind of man who’d be popular anywhere, and since almost all of the guests were directly or indirectly supported by him, it was safe to predict a full turnout. Auntie Mame was in her element, and above Mrs. Burnside’s steady barrage of gas attacks I could hear her talking vivaciously.

  At quarter-past one the Clay-Picketts, or horsy branch of the family, started piling in. They were all in riding clothes, and they were accompanied by a spotted hound who immediately jumped into Mrs. Burnside’s lap, thus causing an explosion of wind which I felt sure she’d been saving for the climax of the party. I sniggered helplessly.

  “Down, sir! Down, I say,” Van Buren Clay-Pickett roared, and smacked the hound across the hocks, thereby eliciting a soft, moist hiccough from Mrs. Burnside. “Sorry we’ah all so late, Aunt Euphemia, but Sally Cato McDougall got unseated goin’ ovah the five-bah an’ we think she broke her collah bone. Heel, sir!” he bellowed at the dog, who’d managed to knock over three children and was now lifting his leg at the base of one of Peckerwood’s six Ionic columns. “Had to shoot her mare. Cousin Clytie and Alice-Richard thought they bettah take Sally Cato to the doctah’s, but they’ll be along directly. When Sally Cato come to she said to tell you she was awful sorry she couldn’t make the shin-dig. Down, sir, goddamn it—pardon me, Aunt Euphemia—down, I say.” The dog had leaped again into Mrs. Burnside’s lap and burrowed his snout diligently into the folds of her black silk skirt. Again the big horseman’s hand smacked the hound and a piteous eructation of outraged virtue was clearly heard from Mrs. Burnside. I had to go indoors for a minute to regain control of myself. “Down, sir. Heel, Ah tell ya!”

  When I came back outdoors the rest of the Clay-Picketts had arrived—nine of them, all in riding clothes; athletic to the end. The bourbon and branch water was flowing faster and faster and Auntie Mame had gathered a rapt circle of admiring new relatives around her. Mrs. Burnside shook her head dyspeptically and popped another soda mint into her mouth.

  All at once the air was split by the blare of a horn and a dark green Packard roadster slithered up the drive. The top was down and a colored boy in dark green stable livery was driving. Sitting on the folded-back roof was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life. She was wearing riding clothes and her left arm was in a sling hastily improvised from a silk scarf.

  “Hello, everybody, hello, you-all,” she called in a throaty voice. “Sorry I’m late, but my horse had a run-in with a five-bar gate.”

  There was a silence and then a lot of whispering among the relatives. “Land a goshen,” an old uncle with an ear trumpet cackled, “ain’t that Sally Cato McDougall, the gal used to be engaged to young Beau?”

  “You hush, Uncle Moultrie,” Willie Mae screamed. “Yes, it sure enough is, but what Ah’d like to know is who in the wuld evah invited her.”

  She wasn’t long in finding out. Broken wing and all, the beautiful lady jumped gracefully down from the car and ran up to Mrs. Burnside. “Mrs. Burnside,” she said in her lovely voice, “I’m so sorry to be late when you went to all that trouble to invite me especially. Doctor wanted me to go straight to bed, but I told him I wouldn’t miss your party for a million dollars.”

  The old lady burst into a big smile. “Welcome to Peckahwood, Sally Cato, it jus wouldn’t be a pahty without you.”

  Uncle Beau looked kind of mystified.

  “Beau Burnside, congratulations!” the beautiful lady said. “Now, let me see this New York bride you’ve gone out and got yourself.” She gave Auntie Mame a lovely smile and stretched out her elegant right hand. “How do you do, Mrs. Beau. I’m Sally Cato McDougall. You got yourself a mighty wild stallion, but I reckon any woman as good looking as you can train him just fine.”

  Auntie Mame’s face glowed with delight. “Why, Beau, why didn’t you tell me about Miss McDougall? She’s perfectly gorgeous!” They smiled beatifically, and then the rest of the party began gabbling with the noisy release and relief that comes over a crowd when a serious accident has been narrowly averted.

  Lunch was announced, followed by an ominous belch from Mrs. Burnside, and then the barbecue began in earnest.

  Auntie Mame had scored a social victory among the relatives. They all thought she was the most chowmin’ Yankee lady they’d ever met and were so ardent in their praise that Mrs. Burnside was confined to her bed for the next three days. Auntie Mame was pleased to be such a success and was kept pretty busy accepting all the invitations she’d received from various cousins. But of all the people in Richmond County, she found Sally Cato McDougall the most attractive. And, of course, she was. The fact that Sally Cato had been Uncle Beau’s former fiancée and was left holding the bag and a five-carat square-cut diamond when Mame and Beau eloped didn’t bother her very much. Auntie Mame had been engaged a lot of times herself, and she understood that such things Just Happened. She’d never even known of Sally Cato’s existence until the day of the big barbecue, so she hardly felt that she’d connived to steal the prize.

  Sally Cato had been awfully friendly with Auntie Mame, too, and in a week’s time the pair of them were inseparable. Sally Cato had gone North to school and learned how to speak English, she’d been to Europe a couple of times, and she was really the most cultivated girl of twenty-five Auntie Mame had ever met. She also had a straight-from-the-shoulder, honest quality that captivated everybody. She was expert at everything she did, swimming, dancing, driving, golf, tennis, and bridge—but riding and hunting were her greatest loves.

  The morning after the barbecue, the green Packard roadster screeched to a stop in front of the Bride’s Cottage and Sally Cato, looking crisp and lovely, skipped up to the terrace where Auntie Mame and I were having our Little Morning Chat. “Good morning, you-all,” she called. “Sorry to barge in this way, but with this old sprained arm, I can’t ride, can’t swim, can’t do anything but sit and mope. I’m so bored I could scream!”

  Auntie Mame, who was also a little bored at Peckerwood when Uncle Beau wasn’t around, greeted her warmly. The two ladies had quite a friendly chat and it soon appeared that they had a lot more in common than Uncle Beau. “Well, honey, the best woman won,” Sally Cato said generously. Then she said, “Look, you and this youngster here must find it pretty tiresome with Beau out all day long, and I’m so lonesome at home I’d like to die. So why don’t you-all come over to Foxglove for lunch. I have a younger brother just about your age, Patrick. He’s a mean little devil, but at least he’ll be something gayer for you than Mrs. Burnside and silly old Fanny.” Auntie Mame jumped at the opportunity for a little intellectual companionship, and twenty minutes later the two women were intimately swigging bourbon on the verandah at Foxglove.

  The McDougall plantation was every bit as grand as Peckerwood and
the food was a lot more digestible. At lunchtime one of the strangest-looking kids I’ve ever seen came slinking around the boxwood hedge and eyed me coldly.

  “Oh!” Sally Cato jumped, “it’s you. I wish you’d stop sneaking around. It always gives me such a start. Patrick, this is my brother, Emory Oglethorpe. I hope you two can keep each other out of mischief this summer.”

  If you didn’t know that the blood in his veins ran as blue as the Confederate flag, you’d have sworn that Emory Oglethorpe McDougall was the changeling child of some ill-starred Georgia cracker girl. He was small and wiry, with an incredible head of russet-colored hair and the biggest, greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. Although he was only six months my elder, Emory Oglethorpe was a century ahead of me when it came to a firsthand knowledge of evil.

  Sally Cato refused to let Emory Oglethorpe have any brandy after lunch and told us to run along and play.

  “I think your sister is very nice,” I told him in a conversational way.

  “Well, yo’ah plumb crazy, if ya do. She’s an A numbah one bitch!” Then he said, “Wanta come down to mah shack? If ya pay me a little somethin’ maybe Ah’ll show ya mah pictchas.” Emory Oglethorpe had constructed a one-room snuggery concealed by vines along the banks of the Savannah River. The place contained some tallow candles, a couple of orange-crate chairs, and a sagging army cot—Confederate Army, I believe—on which he had allegedly seduced quite a number of young colored girls.

  “Get you a nice, tawny pickaninny girl,” he croaked malevolently, “if ya give me fifty cents. Best kinda poontang there is. Ah like a good piece of dahk meat.”

  Upon payment of a dime he showed me an exhaustive collection of pornographic photographs, vintage of about 1900. The ladies and gentlemen in the pictures looked kind of old-fashioned, but they were indulging in very modern things. Since biology limits sex—and its variations—to about a dozen pastimes, I got a little bored with the pictures until suddenly I came upon one of Uncle Beau and Sally Cato McDougall in a most intimate position. I jumped in astonishment.

  “Fooled ya, didn’t Ah?” Emory Oglethorpe croaked wickedly. “Ah jest pasted pictchas of theah heads onto that photo. But Ah bet they did it, jest the same. Gawdlmighty, you shoulda seen ole Sally Cato when she hud that Beau’d got married up No’th. She like to busted. Went goddin’ and damnin’ all ovah the house and swo’ she’d have the hide of the duhty damnyankee who got Beau. Ah nevah see such cay’ins-on in all mah bone days. Ah was glad. Ah hate huh! Heah, have a cig-arette.”

  I was horrified, but it was a bit of gratuitous information I was interested to get and I tucked it away among an odd collection of Little-Known Facts About Well-Known People.

  When Emory Oglethorpe and I went back to the house, Auntie Mame, under the influence of both alcoholic and intellectual stimulation, had grown animated and expansive with Sally Cato. “… Oh, but my dear,” she was saying, “I simply adore riding. I was practically born on horseback. Why, back in New York hardly a day goes by that I don’t get a little workout. Up with the birds every morning for a brisk canter through Central Park!” My mouth dropped open. I suppose that Auntie Mame had taken a few riding lessons at some dim finishing school in her Northern past, but she’d never so much as looked at a horse in all the years I’d known her.

  “Why, that’s splendid, Mame,” Sally Cato said. “Most interesting. I’ll have to get hold of your cousin, Van Buren Clay-Pickett—he’s Master of the Hounds down here—and organize a big hunt in your honor.”

  “Oh, what a pity,” Auntie Mame said quickly. “I’ve left all my riding togs up North.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that. I have dozens of things you could wear. What size shoe do you take?”

  “Uh, five-B,” Auntie Mame said, tucking her feet under her.

  “Marvelous,” Sally Cato said. “Same as I do. I can even fit you out with boots.”

  Auntie Mame went pale beneath her tan.

  “You do ride astride, Mame dear?”

  A hopeful gleam came into Auntie Mame’s eyes. “Oh, never! Sidesaddle—always. Daddy, the colonel, insisted that I learn it. He said it was the only way for a lady to ride—so graceful. It was silly of him, of course, because now nobody rides sidesaddle, but it’s the only way I know how.” She finished with a sigh of relief, but her joy was short-lived.

  “Now, isn’t that grand!” Sally Cato said. “I just happen to have an old Champion and Wilton saddle that’ll do you fine, and a lovely broadcloth habit. You are in luck. I used to ride sidesaddle myself, but now I always sit astride; it’s a deal safer. Now, I’m going right in and call Van Buren Clay-Pickett over at the Stud. We never hunt in this hot weather, but I’m sure we’ll all be happy to make an exception for you.”

  Having made her bed, Auntie Mame was eventually forced to lie in it. News of her equestrian prowess spread far and fast over the countryside, and at almost every family get-together the conversation was switched to quarters and withers, heaves and spavins as a concession to Auntie Mame.

  The whole county buzzed with talk of Auntie Mame’s forthcoming debut on the field and Uncle Beau went around with his chest puffed up like a pouter pigeon’s. Van Buren Clay-Pickett quickly rounded up a flea-bitten old fox and the big hunt was scheduled for the next Sunday. I didn’t know what Auntie Mame was going to do, but I hadn’t reckoned with her inventive powers. Two days before the big hunt, she powdered herself dead white, put on an unbecoming shade of green, and whispered modestly to Sally Cato McDougall of a delicate and mythical female complaint. The hunt was postponed for a week.

  Given a reprieve, Auntie Mame tried desperately for a new and interesting malady, but she remained in the most robust health. Fortunately she sustained a very genuine accident under the gaze of the whole family and Sally Cato on the Friday preceding the fateful hunt. Auntie Mame slipped on the highly waxed parquetry in the dining room at Peckerwood and sprained her ankle. Uncle Beau and Sally Cato rushed her to the local doctor, who taped her up and told her to keep off it for a day or two. “Then that means I won’t be able to ride Sunday?” she asked.

  “Absolutely out of the question, Mrs. Beau,” the doctor said. “But of co’se you could follow the hunt in a cah.”

  Auntie Mame sighed blissfully and closed her eyes.

  The next day Sally Cato joined Auntie Mame and Beau and me for lunch in the Bride’s Cottage. Sally Cato was very solicitous of Auntie Mame’s sprained ankle. Having caught Auntie Mame practicing an intricate tango step, I knew that she was feeling a lot better, but she put on a very convincing show of gallantry over pain. After dessert, Sally Cato unrolled a large and elaborate hand-drawn map of the surrounding countryside. “Mame, honey, I’m just sick that you can’t ride Sunday. Everybody’s just dying to see you on a horse, dear, me especially.” I didn’t like her tone. “But, anyhow, Mame, I knew you’d want to follow the hunt, and Doc says it’s all right for you to drive, so I stayed up ’til all hours working on this map. Now, here’s where the chase starts, and then the fox usually runs down this way …” Sally Cato had done a masterful and detailed scale drawing of the Richmond County hunting territory, and she explained everything beautifully.

  Uncle Beau’s eyes were moist with admiration. “Gosh, Sally Cato, is there anything you can’t do? That’s one of the finest pieces of cartography I’ve ever seen. Of course,” he said to Auntie Mame, “Sally Cato knows the field so well she could ride it blindfold. Sally Cato, you’re a real brick. I never woulda thought that anyone would dream of taking all that trouble just to make a little new bride feel at home down here.”

  The next morning there was a lot of clomping and yelling and Hi, you-alling out in the driveway of Peckerwood. Uncle Beau was very handsome in his pink coat astride a big horse, and six different members of the hunt said, “Haa’s it feel to git back on a hawse aftah gallyvantin’ aroun’ Noo Yoke, Boragod?” The genial horsemen sounded exactly like a minstrel show, but they all looked fine i
n their hunting jackets.

  There was a general murmur of disappointment when Auntie Mame appeared in a natty plaid suit hobbling delicately on an ebony cane, but Sally Cato stood up on the mounting block and said, “Members of the hunt, I’m afraid I have a piece of bad news for you-all. Mrs. Beau sprained her ankle here at Peckerwood the other night and Doc won’t let her ride. But she’s such a devoted rider and such an ardent huntswoman that she’s going to follow the hunt in her car, so she’ll be in on the kill.” There was a ripple of applause.

  Emory Oglethorpe McDougall, who looked like a crooked jockey in his riding clothes, sidled up to me. “Ah’d rathah follow a map o’ hades than that one ole Sally Cato drew up. If yo’al smaht, you’ll tell yoah Auntie Mame to jes git lost.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said, “drive on, fool, hell’s only half full.”

  Auntie Mame hopped into Beau’s open Dusenberg with surprising agility. I went along with her to open and close the thousands of gates that blocked off the hundreds of dirt and clay roads snaking over the countryside. Auntie Mame had never fully mastered the automobile, but after startling several horses, we lurched off in a cloud of blue monoxide gas. Rolling out to the field behind the pack, Auntie Mame squeezed my knee affectionately and said, “Oh, darling, I’m so thankful for this sprain. Maybe now they’ll get over this horse craze. It was sweet, though, of Sally Cato to make this wonderful map. I just hope I won’t be sick when they kill that poor little fox.”

  With a great deal of trouble, Auntie Mame got the car headed in the right direction and the hunt was on. We jogged over red clay roads for nearly an hour, turning into this lane and then that one. Occasionally we’d lose sight of the pack and then they’d appear again. I hopped out about a million times to open slack, splintery old gates and then shut them after the car had jogged through. It was a remarkable map, because we were always just a little ahead of the hunt. Sally Cato had been almost clairvoyant in her knowledge of where and when the fox would be. The roads were terrible, powdery with red dust and deeply rutted. Auntie Mame drove like a startled hare and my liver got a thorough shaking up. She looked a little scared, but once or twice she shouted, “Yoicks, there they go.” Another time she called, “Tallyho!” Just why, I wasn’t sure.