Aunt Alicia

How the book draws them

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

• Seventy, and pretending to be frailA piece of black Chantilly lace on her white hair means a headache is in progress and the visit is over. She arrives at her sister's in a hired brougham, in black lace and dull silk with a tea rose pinned near her shoulder, and goes up the stairs breathing like an invalid. Colette says plainly that the health is robust and the fragility is an affectation, and has her play the part of a marquise in a stage comedy.
• The lesson in stonesShe opens the jewel case and holds pieces up. Gigi gets the name of the navette cut wrong, then calls a canary diamond a topaz, which Alicia treats as the worst humiliation of a long life. The emerald she puts on her own thin finger and holds still, so that Gigi can see the barely-blue fire at the bottom of the green light. Her rule: never wear second-rate jewels, wait for the first-rate ones, and if they never come, wear a five-franc ring and tell people it is a keepsake you never take off, day or night.
• The jewellery she forbidsNothing artistic, by which she means a gold mermaid with chrysoprase eyes, an Egyptian scarab, a big engraved amethyst, a lyre or a star made up into a brooch, an inlaid tortoise, a bracelet said to be chased by a master hand. No baroque pearls, not even as hatpins. Be wary of family jewels. And there is no such thing as a beautiful cameo, whatever Gigi's grandmother may think of her own.
• Who hands out the best stonesShy men, she says, and vain men, and boors who think that giving a monstrous jewel proves they were well brought up. Sometimes a woman, to humiliate a man. Not great kings, because in her experience great kings do not care for jewellery — and, she adds, between the two of them, neither do small ones.
• Table manners as a trade skillOrtolans are cut in half with one clean stroke that does not scrape the knife on the plate, and then each half is crunched, bones included. Lobster à l'américaine, boiled eggs and asparagus are the three stumbling blocks of an education, and inelegant eating, she maintains, has broken up plenty of households. Gigi is to answer questions without stopping eating and without speaking with her mouth full: Alicia manages it, so Gigi can manage it. Pouring coffee, no flick of the wrist to catch the drip — she would rather have a footbath in the saucer than a waiter's tricks at her table.
• Believe in the evil eyeShe forbids opals, and when Gigi asks whether she really thinks they bring bad luck, says that what matters is appearing to think so. Believe in opals, in turquoises that die, in the evil eye. Nine men in ten are superstitious, nineteen in twenty believe in the evil eye and ninety-eight in a hundred are afraid of spiders; men forgive a woman a great deal, but not being free of the things that frighten them. When Gigi despairs of remembering it all, Alicia tells her it does not matter whether she remembers, as long as Alicia knows it.
• The inspectionShe goes over the girl's face with a sharp fingernail, lifts a lip to check the enamel on the teeth and says that with teeth like those she would have eaten Paris and the foreign countries too, and that she did in fact eat a decent piece of it. A spot near the nose and a squeezed blackhead are both forbidden and get her a bottle of astringent lotion. No cured meat except cooked ham. No almonds, which make the breasts heavy. She cups her hands over Gigi's chest, calls it a project, and allows that it is a pretty one and well attached.
• Her verdict on Gigi's faceThe little nose is impossible, the mouth has no style, the cheekbones are somewhat peasant-Russian. Against that: the eyes, the lashes, the teeth and the hair, which she says are enough to get the girl through, provided she is not a complete idiot. The whole assessment is delivered to Gigi's face with her hands on the girl's shoulders.
• Why she will teach her to choose cigarsBecause when a woman knows a man's preferences, cigars included, and a man knows what pleases a woman, the two of them are well armed against each other. Gigi's conclusion is that they then fight. Alicia looks at her with dismay and tells her she is clearly not the one who invented the three-panelled mirror.
• Ordinary peopleGigi is not to accept invitations, because only ordinary people would invite her, and ordinary people are useless: weak heads, loose bodies, and married into the bargain. Boredom at home is no bad thing, since boredom helps people make decisions. On the family's position she is exact — « Le mariage ne nous est pas interdit », meaning that marriage is not forbidden to them; instead of marrying at the start of a life, she says, one sometimes marries at the end of it.
• When the plan collapsesShe calls Gigi a little bedbug in front of her grandmother, then switches manner completely and tries to sell the girl what she thinks her sister failed to sell: the sea glowing on the far side of the world, hummingbirds in the flowers, making love under the gardenias beside a fountain. Gigi answers that when the eternal spring is over the gentleman leaves with another lady. Alicia gives up, tells her she deserves to end up with a small hat shop and had better go and marry a shipping clerk, and says flatly that what has been botched is botched and they will not discuss it for the rest of their lives.