This much is as clear as a New Yorker cartoon. The scene is Manhattan, 8:30 am, Madison and 32cnd. The Mysterious Aunt to the left, Tutor to the right, Audrey age 6, in a skirt, which she only agreed to wear because she is allowed to wear her blue jeans underneath, and in one of those chest harnesses with a leash that kids have in NYC. Traffic is piling up, horns are blaring, taxi cab drivers are gesticulating. Why? Because Audrey, like a husky in her harness, has powered her way, against the light, into the intersection. Her left hand is raised in a commanding gesture, to signal stop. Aunt and Tutor are pulled along behind her. The caption reads, “I’m Audrey!” Which should be sufficient explanation for any NYC cabbie.
As for the Aunt herself, I am pretty sure she works near this intersection. Maybe a compliance attorney for New York Life, Met, Axa (in the old Equitable Building) or in a nearby law firm. I have a sense that she is involved in Advanced Markets, Estate Planning, Private Family Services, Family Governance, or the like. She is educated but not a philosopher. She may not have read Laplace, Leibnitz, or any other theodicy. She has not read Virgil's paean to Augustus. She has not read Pope’s "Essay on Man," but she has heard of Candide, having read it in high school. Still, she has a confused sense that virtue, wisdom, wealth, power, and spirituality, and maybe good taste and good sense, go together somehow. She feels that the richest, being the most wise and virtuous, the strongest and most noble, form a natural hierarchy, with the richest and most virtuous subordinating, dominating, buying out and ultimately bankrupting the lesser nobility, until all wealth and all wisdom and all virtue culminate in one person. That person's heir, if properly mentored, will rule us all; and all will be well with the world, and all things in it, as long as the dynastic chain remains unbroken. “I’m Audrey!”
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