Hortense McDuck

Hortense McDuck
INDUCKS	Hortense McDuck DD's mother from S 75182
Character Information
Aliases	Hortense Duck Mama Mother Mrs. Duck Grandma Duck
Species	Anthropomorphic Duck
Biography	Biography of Hortense McDuck
Birth	1876
Death	Before 1955
Residence	Glasgow, Scotland (formerly) Duckburg, Calisota, U.S.A. (formerly?)
Family
Parents	Fergus McDuck Downy McDuck
Siblings	Scrooge McDuck Cheeryble McDuck Gideon McDuck Matilda McDuck Rumpus McFowl (paternal half-brother) Evelyn McDuck (possibly)
Romantic Partner(s)	Quackmore Duck
Children	Donald Duck Della Duck Seppi Deppi Duck (?)
Behind the Scenes
First seen	Circa 1935 (mentioned only) June the 20th, 1941 (first physical appearance)
In	Episode Two of Meet Mickey Mouse (mentioned only) The Reluctant Dragon (first physical appearance)

Hortense Duck, (nee McDuck) was a female anthropomorphic duck.

Description

Hortense was Scrooge McDuck's sister and the mother of Della and Donald Duck, the daughter-in-law of Humperdink Duck and Elvira Duck, the mother-in-law of Della's unnamed husband, and the maternal grandmother of Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck. She was born in Glasgow, Scotland and immigrated to the United States around 1902 with Scrooge and their sister, Matilda. She met her husband Quackmore Duck in America and married him some time after 1902. She, Matilda, and Quackmore helped manage Scrooge's financial empire in the early 20th century while he traveled the world. In the 1930's, when Scrooge returned to Duckburg after many years of traveling, he behaved absolutely horribly toward Hortense, Quackmore, Matilda, Donald, and Della; this set off the greatest tantrums Hortense had ever had, with her swearing never to see her brother again. Although Scrooge eventually apologized to Matilda, Hortense wasn't there at the time, and likely hasn't forgiven Scrooge yet, if she's even still alive (a fact which some people dispute).

Hortense's most dominant trait was her short and nasty temper, one which rivaled that of her brother Scrooge, her husband Quackmore, and her son Donald. Indeed, Quackmore, despite his own fits of rage, was sometimes the one who kept Hortense from becoming too violent, and he has been seen staying calm while she throws a tantrum. This dynamic between the two could be seen when he peeled her off of a Rough Rider she was beating and when he sat peacefully and happily while she berated him for suggesting naming their son "Donald". Hortense was also somewhat superstitious, notably taking ghost stories more seriously than Matilda. She was also quite lustful in her youth. Finally, it should be noted that, despite being from the ever-thrifty Clan McDuck, Hortense is not nearly as greedy as her brother Scrooge, showing disappointment as she watches him bathe in cash, complaining about him becoming too greedy, and becoming ashamed of him when he purchased a diamond mine for just a quarter.

Behind the scenes

The name "Hortense McDuck" was first used in the 1950's by Donald Duck comics author Carl Barks to serve as the name of Donald Duck's mother and Scrooge McDuck's sister in his first draft of a Duck family tree. However, though this was the first time that she had been named, the character of "Donald's mother" had both been mentioned in and appeared in previous works for well over a decade.

Around 1935, the second episode of the Meet Mickey Mouse radio show aired. It included Donald, still a relatively new character at the time, reciting a poem in which he mentioned his "mother" and his "father". According to the poem, Donald's father committed adultery and abandoned Donald's mother, whose maiden name was Duck. This is the first known reference of Donald's mother.

The first physical depiction of Donald's mother, in 1941's The Reluctant Dragon.

About six years later, Donald's mother made her first physical appearance in a brief cameo in The Reluctant Dragon. The film featured a sequence in which parodies of famous paintings are seen, with all of the faces of these painting having been replaced with Donald's face. One of the paintings parodied is Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, or Whistler's Mother. This painting is said to Whistler's Mother parody is described as instead depicting Donald's mother, therefore constituting Hortense's first physical appearance in animation. Hortense's second animated appearance came fourteen years later in 1955's No Hunting. Here she was once again simply referred to as "[Donald's] mother" and depicted as an anthropomorphic duck version of Whistler's mother — who, in reference to Whistler's name, appears to be literally whistling herself.

In comics, her first known physical appearance was in July 1977 in Donald Duck Writes a Book, a story featuring art by Franco Lostaffa. Both she and her husband appear in a brief flashback and are mentioned by their son, Donald. The name "Hortense" is not used in this story, with her once again only being known as Donald's mother. Though this is her first confirmed physical appearance in comics, she was referred to earlier in 1955's Paperino e l'eredità indiana by Guido Martina, which reveals little about her other than the fact that she and Donald's father are both deceased by the events of the story. Furthermore, a reference to "Huey, Dewey and Louie's grandma" in Carl Barks's 1947 story Volcano Valley has sometimes been taken as referring to Donald's mother, i.e., Hortense, and some fan theories revolve around Hortense being the Grandma that appears in Barks's 1945 story Best Christmas.

The name "Hortense McDuck" would not be used to refer to Donald's mother in published comics until Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck was released in 1994. This saga gave Hortense a more defined personality, giving her a hot temper and, as a young woman, an unquenchable thirst for cowboys. Following the genealogy outlined by Barks in his earlier family tree, Rosa depicts Hortense as a McDuck by birth, the younger sister of Scrooge McDuck, who marries into the Duck family by wedding Quackmore Duck, the drake who becomes the father of both Donald and Della Duck. Since then, Hortense has made more appearances in comics and has even been adapted into the 2017 Continuum (see Hortense McDuck [2017 Continuum]).