David S. Reynolds’ NYRB review (February 22, 2024; archived) of Sensationalism and the Jew in Antebellum American Literature by David Anthony provides repellent instances of “hostile portraits of Jews in various realms of US culture during the two decades before the Civil War,” but I’m bringing it here for this passage:
It has been said that nineteenth-century America was mawkishly sentimental—a culture of pap and prudery against which serious authors like Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walt Whitman rebelled. To some extent this was true, as evidenced by the era’s didactic novels, religious tracts, and codes of proper decorum. It was an age when Evangeline St. Clare, the angelic heroine of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best seller Uncle Tom’s Cabin, inspired millions, and when, in polite circles, undergarments were called “unmentionables,” legs “limbs,” men’s trousers “continuations,” and a trip to the bathroom “visiting Aunt Jones.”
We all know about “unmentionables” and “limbs,” and the OED confirms that use of “continuations” (though it doesn’t sound much like a euphemism: “Gaiters continuous with ‘shorts’ or knee-breeches, as worn by bishops, deans, etc. Hence in later slang, trousers, as a continuation of the waistcoat”; 1883 citation “For fear of spilling it over what a tailor would call my continuations”), but I can find nothing to back up the claim about “visiting Aunt Jones” except the footnoted source for the assertion, R.W. Holder’s How Not to Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms (Oxford University Press, 2007). The relevant entry in that volume reads
aunt² a lavatory
To whom many women say they are paying a
visit. In Victorian days it was their Aunt Jones.
Which sounds more like the notoriously chatty and unreliable Eric Partridge than a dependable reference work, and I can find no examples of this alleged usage in Google Books. Is anyone familiar with it?
If you will but consult the 1874 “New Edition”* of _The Slang Dictionary, Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal_,” you will find an entry for “My aunt, AUNT JONES, or MRS. JONES**” glossed as “the closet of decency, or house of office.” Maybe no more reliable than Partridge, but certainly more contemporaneous.
*A posthumous update of the 1859 slang dictionary of John Camden Hotten, who had died in 1873.
**I’m using ALLCAPS because I can’t be bothered to figure out how to format the “small caps” font of the original.
Ah, an excellent trouvaille — many thanks! (I use this for all my small caps needs.)
I knew about Aunt Flo coming to visit, but I imagine it’s a later and independent development. Something about aunts being present, but relatively in the margins.
OK, “My Aunt, Aᴜɴᴛ Jᴏɴᴇꜱ, or Mʀꜱ. Jᴏɴᴇꜱ.” Not using the small caps for the first item in the list seems odd, but apparently that’s how they rolled typographically back in 1874.
Aunt Jones
A poor (Welsh?) relation of Cousin John and Jakes?
Nice citations in Wiktionary entries for Cousin John and jakes ! The (English) Wiktionary is really improving nicely.
(Short comment because I am on the road.)
Wiktionary is really improving nicely. — I guess, but in Ireland jacks is now far more common than jakes, and listing “outhouse” before “lavatory” in the definition of each might be taken as an insult to our plumbing standards.
Old OED entry for jakes here. I wonder, has this been updated? I can’t log on to the OED at the moment.
Yes, it was revised in 2016. First cite:
Etymology:
Thanks for that, Hat.
I wonder, could it originally have been Aunt Joan’s ? (Sc. house or the like.)
Searching for “Mrs. Jones” in the OED got this quotation, under crapping, n. (revised 2019):
But this and Hotten are British sources; the book reviewer sounds like he assumed “Aunt Jones” was also in American use, but that has yet to be documented.