CHAPTER XX: RELATIONS-IN-LAW
Since I have had a son and daughter-in-law, I have begun to think that it is absurd to reflect on the nature of this or that class of individual, because members of the same class are of opposite sexes. I often thought I had found a theory about such and such a class of people, such as servants, cousins, relations-in-law, &c., until one day, when I was being quite truthful with myself, I understood that a great many of my theories were reversible according to sex. This was most strikingly apparent with regard to my children-in-law. I decided that it is very objectionable for strange people to marry into a family and then idealise the being they have married, without reference to the lifelong knowledge of that being’s character possessed by the other members of the family. It seemed to me that my son-in-law made himself ridiculous about Anne;he really sickened me sometimes. He said that she was so delicate and sensitive he was sometimes afraid of crushing her with his blundering, thoughtless criticisms when she appeared to differ from him. That was nonsense, and I told him to go ahead fearlessly, and say what he thought; even if she was my own daughter, I was not blind to her faults. Therefore, logically, according to this theory, my daughter-in-law, Constance, would be not only wise in pointing out his faults to Tom, but she would be neglecting a duty were she not to speak out. Then I saw the reversible nature of my feeling. To be blinded by love is undoubtedly a fault, but in the case of married people both are not equally to blame. As in this diagram, taking A as the mother-in-law, those with a cross representing children of the male sex. The children-in-law are D and E.
Criticism that is right in my child-in-law D (male) is reprehensible and altogether out of the question in my other child-in-law E (female). The blame for idiotic partiality is transferred from my child-in-law D to C (one of the family). In fact, to put it still more simply, I don’t mind my son-in-law criticising my daughter up to a certain point, but if my daughter-in-law begins to criticise my son, I shall probably wring her neck. Constance has no idea how sensitive Tom is, and the way he idealises her is ridiculous. He told me how impossible it was to get her to spare herself at all, she was always thinking of others. Just what Robert said about Anne, but I had different methods of dealing with them. “Stuff and nonsense,” I said to my son-in-law, “Anne is not so delicate as you think, she won’t mind what you say in the least; it is not shrinking that makes her silent, it is because she has not made up her mind what she intends to do. If you do not want to go to the South of France while your partner is ill, don’t go. Anne travelled aboutalone for three years before you knew her.” I did not mind if he thought me a heartless pig; he was not mine to lose, and Anne, of course, belonged to herself as she always had. But Tom was mine and Constance’s, and the only way in which I could keep my share in him was to make her also mine. We could not pull him in two, and she would pull strongest, so I must change my metaphor and regard her as a growth upon Tom. I could not operate on her, so she must just come with him. Therefore, when he made the same remark about her as Robert made about Anne, I assured him that all really good women worked too hard, and that I had been thinking perhaps a little motor would save her running about so much; would she like one as a Christmas present? Of course, Constance felt that Tom could be safely trusted for week-ends with such a parent. Besides, I never asked him questions about her (to be truthful I wasn’t interested), and I always sent back fowls, and asparagus, and hats, and other useful articles, accordingto the length of time she let me have him.
I know that Robert would have liked me to show a little more nice feeling about Anne; indeed, once, I was obliged to be quite frank about it. “Anne and I understand each other very well,” I told him, “and you cannot have everything. If I showed nice feeling she would not like it, and although you would be the gainer by her annoyance——”
“I don’t see that,” he interrupted. “How could I be the gainer by Anne’s annoyance?”
“Because you would be the dearer by contrast. You would say, ‘Never mind, darling, you have me.’ But please let me go on. I was going to dwell on your mercies which you do not seem to be counting. Suppose, now, that I sat about in your drawing-room with fancy-work and asked how you were going to manage about the spring cleaning. That would mean telling you at great length how I always did it and how excellent my dear husband thought thearrangement. I should add that, of course, it was for you and Anne to decide.”
“Well, I suppose it would be, wouldn’t it?” he asked foolishly.
“Not if I said it was for you to decide. That would mean that unless you allowed me to arrange it in my own way I should say that no doubt you were right; everything was so altered since my day that I could not attempt to judge. And then I should be ill for a fortnight in your house and have all my meals carried upstairs, and the servants would give notice.”
“Good Lord!” remarked Robert.
“Exactly, then do not complain about my not showing nice feeling, because I don’t make myself a nuisance to Anne.”
Another day I told him just to look, for instance, at Constance’s mother. He said he thought she seemed a very nice old lady. “All right,” I said, “Tom is outside, and he is likely to be open with us to-day, because his mother-in-law is staying for the week-end with Constance—come along.” Idragged him out under the trees where Tom was lying in a hammock, reading. When we had got chairs and explained that we had ordered tea outside to save him the trouble of coming in, I said: “I suppose you can’t stay to dinner if Constance’s mother is with you?”
“Poor girl!” said Tom, “I suppose I had better go and give her a hand.”
“But she is a very nice old lady, isn’t she?” I asked.
“Oh, very,” he agreed flabbily. Then he saw my face, and noticed also Robert’s intelligent, inquiring expression. “What’s the matter with you two?” he asked.
“The fact is, darling,” I explained, “that Robert was a little dissatisfied with me because he thinks I do not take enough part in his household arrangements, so we came out, less to save you the trouble of coming to tea than that you should save me the trouble of explaining to him.”
Tom flung down his book. “I will tell you all about it from beginning to end,” hepromised us. “People talk about the mind being a storehouse, but hers is the bottomless pit. And the only things that will go into it are details; if you give her the sort of things that are in most people’s minds they lie about outside the pit and make her uncomfortable. But I get so done up filling her with the stuff, and so does Con. She wants to know every detail of our lives, from the kind of shaving soap I use to whether I put the lights out myself or leave it to the servants. Constance has to tell all hers too. The old lady starves if she doesn’t get it, and no amount of it seems to satisfy her.”
“But, surely, she must know your day pretty well by now,” suggested Robert, taking my hand affectionately.
“You would think so,” said Tom, “but you see you are wrong, because there is just a shade of difference sometimes in what I do every day. For instance, when I go home to-night I shall have to tell her where we all sat this afternoon, and when you came out, and why.” (He tore his hair.) “And whatthe devil shall I say when she asks what we talked about? I get so giddy with it, you know, that I just keep the scene in my mind and give it her all faithfully. I dare not invent or I should contradict myself.”
Robert apologised to me, and, of course, I said it was nothing; there was no pleasure like setting matters of opinion right. But I returned to Tom for confirmation of my theories of sex.
“What about your father-in-law? He asks a good many questions, too, so far as I remember.”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Tom, “his are quite harmless questions. I like telling him what he wants to know; it is generally quite interesting, about my job and things of that sort.”
I turned to Robert and asked: “You never thought my husband wanting in nice feeling towards Anne did you?”
“Oh dear, no,” he said, “of course not. One doesn’t expect a man to take much interest in a house.”
There are two great rocks on which relationships by marriage often split. The first, which is also the chief source of danger to blood-relationships, is the presumption that because we are relations we must love one another; the second is the presumption that because we are relations-in-law we must loathe one another. The only safe line is to avoid any mention of the connection, even to oneself. If, in spite of this absence of prejudice, there is still great natural antipathy, it is possible to think of ourselves as fellow-guests at a boarding-house, obliged to meet pretty constantly at the same table. For the sake of the mistress of the house, who so rashly brought us together, we may as well try to find some redeeming interest in each other’s vices. I never suggested to Constance that we should learn to love one another. It was impossible for me to love anyone because she was Tom’s wife, I could only loathe her for it; so I shut my eyes tight and said the alphabet backwards to myself when the idea of our relationship came into my head.Instead, I thought—or tried to: “This is a person whom Tom has brought with him to the house. I expect she will stay a long time. She must enjoy her visit, and it is horrid to stay in a house where one is entertained. She shall have the best we can give her; we will try not to be rude or dull, and she shall do as she likes.” When she returned my hospitality, I tried to be a good guest and not leave my umbrella and sponge behind me when I went away, and I always remembered her birthday. So we got on all right. I behaved to Robert in the same way. If I allowed myself a little more freedom in advising him about his colds, and so on, that is because any man staying in the house likes to be given ammoniated quinine when he needs it. But I never kissed him unless I wanted to, nor allowed myself to dwell on the involuntary tie between us.