SHUNTED DOWAGERS.
The typical mother-in-law is, as we all know, fair game for every one's satire; and according to the odd notions which prevail on certain points, a man is assumed to show his love for his wife by systematic disrespect to her mother, and to think that her new affections will be knit all the closer the more loosely he can induce her to hold her old ones. The mother-in-law, according to this view of things, has every fault. She interferes, and always at the wrong time and on the wrong side; she makes a tiff into a quarrel and widens a coolness into a breach; she is self-opinionated and does not go with the times; she treats her daughter like a child and her son-in-law like an appendage; she spoils the elder children and feeds the baby with injudicious generosity; she spends too much on her dress, wears too many rings, trumps her partner's best card and does not attend to the 'call;'—and she is fat. But even the well abused mother-in-law—the portly old dowager who has had her day and is no longer pleasing in the eyes of men—even she has her wrongs like most of us; and if she sometimes asserts her rights more aggressively than patiently, she has to put up with many disagreeable rubs for her own part; and female tempers over fifty are not notorious for humility.
Take the case of a widow with means, whose family is settled. Not a daughter to chaperone, not a son to marry; all are so far happily off her hands, and she is left alone. But what does her loneliness mean? In the first place, while her grief for her husband is yet new—and we will assume that she does grieve for him—she has to turn out of the house where she has been queen and mistress for the best years of her life; to abdicate state and style in favour of her son and her son's wife whom she is sure not to like; and, however good her jointure may be, she must necessarily find her new home one of second-rate importance. Perhaps however, the family objects to her having a home of her own. Dear mamma must give up housekeeping and divide her time among them all; but specially among her daughters, being more likely to get on well with their husbands than with her sons' wives.
Dear mamma has means, be it remembered. Perhaps she is a good natured soul, a trifle weak and vain in proportion; who knows what evil-disposed person may not get influence over her and exercise it to the detriment of all concerned? She has the power of making her will, and, granting that she is proof against the fascinations of some fortune-hunting scamp twenty years at the least her junior—may be forty, who knows? do not men continually marry their grandmothers if they are well paid for it?—and though every daughter's mamma is of course normally superior to weakness of this kind, yet accidents will happen where least expected. And even if there is no possible fear of the fascinating scamp on the look-out for a widow with a jointure, there are artful companions and intriguing maids who worm themselves into confidence and ultimate power; sly professors of faiths dependent on filthy lucre for their proof of divinity; and on the whole, all things considered, dear mamma's purse and person are safest in the custody of her children. So the poor lady, who was once the head of a place, gives up all title to a home of her own, and spends her time among her married daughters, in whose houses she is neither guest nor mistress. She is only mamma; one of the family without a voice in the family arrangements; a member of a community without a recognized status; shunted; set aside; and yet with dangers of the most delicate kind besetting her path in all directions. Nothing can be much more unsatisfactory than such a position; and none much more difficult to steer through, without renouncing the natural right of self-assertion on the one hand, or certainly rasping the exaggerated susceptibilities of touchy people on the other.
In general the shunted dowager has as little indirect influence as direct power; and her opinion is never asked nor desired as a matter of graceful acknowledgment of her maturer judgment. If she is appealed to, it is in some family dispute between her son and daughter, where her partizanship is sought only as a makeweight for one or other of the belligerents. But, so far as she individually is concerned, she is given to understand that she is rococo, out of date, absurd; that, since she was young and active, things have entered on a new phase where she is nowhere, and that her past experience is not of the slightest use as things are nowadays. If she has still energy enough left, so that she likes to have her say and do her will, she has to pass under a continual fire of opposition. If she is timid, phlegmatic, indolent, or peaceable, and with no fight in her, she is quietly sat upon and extinguished.
Dear mamma is the best creature in the world so long as she is the mere pawn on the young folks' domestic chess-board, to be placed without an opposing will or sentiment of her own. She is the 'greatest comfort' to her daughter; and even her son-in-law assents to her presence, so long as she takes the children when required to do so, does her share of the tending and more than her share of the giving, but never presuming to administer nor to correct; so long as she is placidly ready to take off all the bores; listen to the interminable story-tellers; play propriety for the young people; make conversation for the helplessly stupid or nervous; so long in fact as she will make herself generally useful to others, demand nothing on her own account, and be content to stand on the siding while the younger world whisks up and down at express speed at its pleasure. Let her do more than this—let her sometimes attempt to manage and sometimes object to be managed—let her have a will of her own and seek to impose it—and then 'dear mamma is so trying, so fond of interfering, so unable to understand things;' and nothing but mysterious 'considerations' induce either daughter or son-in-law to keep her.
No one seems to understand the heartache it must have cost her, and that it must be continually costing her, to see herself so suddenly and completely shunted. Only a year ago and she had pretensions of all kinds. Time had dealt with her leniently, and no moment had come when she had suddenly leaped a gulf and passed from one age to another without gradations. She had drifted almost imperceptibly through the various stages into a long term of mature sirenhood, remaining always young and pretty to her husband. But now her widow's cap marks an era in her life, and the loss of her old home a new and descending step in her career. She is plainly held to have done with the world and all individual happiness—all personal importance; plainly told that she is now only an interposing cushion to soften the shock or ease the strain for others. But she does not quite see it for her own part, and after having been so long first—first in her society, in her home, with her husband, with her children—it is a little hard on her that she should have to sink down all at once into a mere rootless waif, a kind of family possession belonging to every one in turn and the common property of all, but possessing nothing of herself.
Of course dear mamma can make herself bitterly disagreeable if she likes. She can taunt instead of letting herself be snubbed. She can interfere where she is not wanted; give unpalatable advice; make unpleasant remarks; tell stinging truths; and in all ways act up to the reputation of the typical mother-in-law. But in general that is only when she has kept her life in her own hands; has still her place and her own home; remains the centre of the family and its recognized head; with the dreadful power of making innumerable codicils and leaving munificent bequests. If she has gone into the Learism of living about among her daughters, it is scarce likely that she has character enough to be actively disagreeable or aggressive.
On a first visit to a country-house it is sometimes difficult to rightly localize the old lady on the sofa who goes in and out of the room apparently without purpose, and who seems to have privileges but no rights. Whose property is she? What is she doing here? She is dear mamma certainly; but is she a personage or a dependent? Is she on a visit like the rest of us? Is she the maternal lodger whose income helps not unhandsomely? or, has she no private fortune, and so lives with her son-in-law because she cannot afford to keep house on her own account? She is evidently shunted, whatever her circumstances, and has no locus standi save that given by sufferance, convenience, or affection. Naturally she is the last of the dowagers visiting at the house. She may come before the younger women, from the respect due to age; but her place is at the rear of all her own contemporaries; not for the graceful fiction of hospitality, but because she is one of the family and therefore must give precedence to strangers.
She is the movable circumstance of the home life. The young wife, of course, has her fixed place and settled duties; the master is the master; the guests have their graduated rights; but the shunted dowager is peripatetic and elastic as well as shunted, and to be used according to general convenience. If a place is vacant, which there is no one else to fill, dear mamma must please to take it; if the party is larger than there are places, dear mamma must please stay away. She is assumed to have got over the age when pleasure means pleasure, and to know no more of disappointment than of skipping. In fact, she is assumed to have got over all individuality of every kind, and to be able to sacrifice or to restrain as she may be required by the rest.