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John Lennon and his aunt, Mimi Smith, had a complicated relationship, but his ex-wife Cynthia said people don’t have an accurate sense of how complicated their dynamic was. Cynthia believed that his aunt’s behavior took a toll on Lennon’s self-esteem. She also thought that the former Beatle’s aunt painted a very different picture of herself in the media than how she really was.

John Lennon's Aunt Mimi leans on a fence overlooking the water. John Lennon leans on a fireplace.
Aunt Mimi and John Lennon | Frank Loughlin/Mirrorpix/Getty Images; John Downing/Getty Images

John Lennon’s Aunt Mimi raised him

Smith complained to Social Services about Lennon’s mother, Julia, twice. Because of this, Julia gave her custody of Lennon. According to Paul McCartney, Lennon’s future bandmate, his life with Smith and her husband, George, was more posh than the rest of The Beatles’ upbringings.

“He was in Menlove Avenue and I was off an avenue called Madison Avenue,” McCartney told Lennon’s son Sean in a BBC Radio 2 broadcast called John Lennon at 80 (via Express). “Compared to the rest of us in The Beatles, he was the posh one.”

John Lennon’s ex-wife said people don’t have an accurate depiction of his aunt

Though Lennon had a “posh” upbringing, he had a complicated relationship with his aunt. 

“Mimi wanted and expected John’s devotion, and if you got in her way you were not popular,” Cynthia wrote in her book John. “She constantly hounded and oppressed him. He constantly complained that she never left him alone and found fault with everything he did.”

Cynthia said that Smith built up her own reputation through interviews. In Cynthia’s eyes, Smith’s description of herself wasn’t truthful to how she really was with Lennon.

“Most descriptions of Mimi that have appeared in print were based on interviews with her — she outlived John by 11 years,” she wrote. “She loved to fuel the image of the stern but loving aunt who provided the secure backdrop to John’s success. But that wasn’t the Mimi I knew. She battered away at John’s self-confidence and left him angry and hurt. No doubt the impossibility of pleasing her was at least part of John’s drive towards success. But, as his girlfriend, I found it hard to forgive her carping, when a little kindness or encouragement would have meant so much to him.”

Cynthia Lennon went to Aunt Mimi’s funeral

Years after Cynthia and Lennon divorced and over a decade after his death, Cynthia attended Smith’s funeral. She said that while she felt bad for Smith, she still hadn’t fully forgiven her.

“When she died I went to the funeral, with John’s sisters and cousins,” she wrote. “Mimi had been the eldest of the five Stanley sisters but was the last to die, having reached the ripe old age of eighty-nine. Her nurse told Julia that Mimi’s last words had been, ‘I’m afraid of dying. I’ve been a wicked woman.’ When I heard this it sent a chill through me. I felt sorry for Mimi, who had obviously suffered, but her self-assessment had been true.”

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