Suppose the mother-in-law does sometimes suggest or advise, is this to be considered an unpardonable offence? In point of fact, her error is often on the other side, and through a dread of seeming to interfere, she refrains from speaking the wise word in due season. Carlyle says somewhere that ‘experience teaches like no other,’ but takes terribly high ‘school-wages’ in the process. Most of us can remember occasions when we might have been spared some of the ‘school-wages,’ if we would have accepted, as a loving gift to profit by, the experience of our elders. How often in illness does the mother-in-law aid in nursing her grandchildren; how often, in some inevitable absence of the parents, does she prove their most trustworthy guardian!
We are afraid, however, that it is mainly when she is a widow and poor, that the mother-in-law becomes the butt of inconsiderate satirists, who fail to see the pathetic side of her position. Yet, to the honour of human nature, it may be said that there are multitudes of households in which the wife or husband’s mother, wholly dependent on her children, is treated with the respect and affection proper to the circumstances, and without any associations that can recall the paltry witticisms of the comic writers. We wonder if young mothers, with their children still around them, speculate on the swiftly passing years which will change the scene! In a single decade, what alterations may there not be in the domestic circle, and how naturally may it come to pass that the daughter-in-law of to-day shall become the mother-in-law of the future.
There is another unpopular personage for whom we desire to say a good word; not that, as a rule, she is immaculate, or even as nearly so as we should like to see her—we mean the Lodging-house Keeper. She, too, has long been a favourite theme of the caricaturist, and no doubt her vocation leads up to many humorous incidents. What a life it is, if we think of it seriously for a moment! Homely but shrewd women who let lodgings often acquire a surprising knowledge of character; and indeed, if they do not, they are likely to be wofully deceived. It is as great a mistake to suppose that all tenants are true and just in their dealings, as that all landladies are grasping and untrustworthy. Imagine a small furnished house being let to a middle-aged couple for three years at a low rent, mainly because there were no children to add to the wear and tear of furniture. But events proved that there were little grandchildren who paid lengthened visits, on which occasions a perambulator was ruthlessly wheeled about the new dining-room carpet, and similar reckless destruction of property went on in many other ways. This is a true story, and we do not much wonder that the landlady lost temper, and not being able to turn out her tenants, tried to recoup herself by all legitimate methods—especially as she was wholly dependent on her house for the means of existence.
It ought to be remembered that people do not let lodgings for pleasure; receiving inmates is always more or less a matter of business, and there should be justice and the doing as you would be done by on both sides. Sometimes the lodging-house keeper is a decayed gentlewoman, but more generally she belongs to a class socially inferior to that of her tenants. In either case, a little kindly consideration for the feelings and interests of the householder will often be amply requited. The decayed gentlewoman will keenly appreciate a manner of speaking and bargaining which seems to recognise her true position; and the ordinary lodging-house keeper is quick to distinguish ‘real gentlefolks’ from ‘stuck-up people,’ by signs which the latter rarely comprehend.
People of position resorting to the seaside for a few weeks never expect the luxuries and elegances they enjoy at home; but as they generally pay liberally for the accommodation they receive, they do require ordinary comforts. It would be greatly to the interest of all parties if lodging-house keepers would bear this in mind. Not only should bedding be faultless in point of purity, but as men do exist of six feet high and upwards, provision should be made to receive a tall inmate who could sleep without doubling himself up like a carpenter’s rule. White curtains are decidedly countrified and clean-looking; but unless there are also shutters to the bedroom windows, woe betide the light sleeper who is wakened by the early dawn. Lodging-house pillows should be more ample, and blankets more numerous than they generally are; easy-chairs should deserve their name; footstools should be discoverable; and windows and blinds should be easily manageable. The lodging-house cooking is also often capable of improvement, though, if people are content with what is called ‘good plain cooking,’ they frequently have little reason to complain; especially is this the case when the lodging-house keepers are retired servants who have lived in good families.
In return for the essential comforts described, the tenant would generally be willing to dispense with the ancestral portraits which so often decorate the walls of furnished lodgings. Staring likenesses, no doubt they are, of departed worthies; but they always seem to stare at the tenant with something like reproach at his presence; and if, as is often the case, they are veritable daubs, they become at last absolutely irritating. Also most people would rather have space for their own odds and ends, than see tables and shelves occupied by heirlooms in the shape of cracked vases incapable of holding water for flowers, but filled with dusty feathers, paper roses, or dried seaweed. Not that we despise simple ornaments; happily, many very common things are very pretty, and quite capable of pleasing the most artistic eye; it is incongruity which really offends.
But with all their shortcomings, we do not believe that, as a class, lodging-house keepers deserve the hard things which comic writers, for the sake of a joke, have said of them. Many a lodging-house keeper has a pathetic past, and a present that is a severe struggle for existence; and sometimes their worth is so appreciated that they make influential friends of their tenants. It is pleasant to hear a landlady say that she has little need to advertise; she lets her rooms on the recommendation of people who have occupied them, and often has the same family over and over again. Where this is the case, we may be pretty sure that at parting there are none of the mean squabbles about cracked china or a chipped chair-back which leave a sting of ill-feeling behind. On the contrary, there is perhaps the recollection of kind assiduity in illness, or of little services beyond the bond on one side; and on the other a pleasant consciousness that such services have been recognised.
It is possible that the tenant sometimes forgets his duties as well as the landlady hers. It is as grasping to overreach on one side as on the other. Not long ago an inquiry for lodgings was made in a popular district—they were to be perfect in a sanitary point of view, and with householders where valuable property would be safe—but because the would-be tenant would often be away, the fair applicant hoped to obtain them for an ‘infinitesimal’ rent. We believe she has not yet quite succeeded in her search. There are certainly unprincipled as well as inconsiderate lodgers, besides untrustworthy landladies. We fear there are quite as many people who, convalescent after infectious diseases, take apartments in the country or at the seaside without apprising the householders of their condition; as there are lodging-house keepers who receive fresh tenants after having housed fever patients without having taken due precautions against the propagation of disease. In short, lodgers and tenants belong to the same human nature that is corrupted by evil influences, and falls but too often, each individual under his own special temptations.