But both would be the same person: the gravest thing on earth, it might be, in every other respect--even sad and dignified--but ludicrous because her daughter happened to have found a husband.
To inquire why the bare mention of the mother of a man's wife should excite merriment is to find oneself instantly deep in sociology--and in some of its seamiest strata too. While exploring them one would make the odd discovery that, whereas the humour that surrounds and saturates the idea of a wife possessing a maternal relative is inexhaustible, there is nothing laughable about the mother of a husband. A wife can talk of her husband's mother all day and never have the reputation of a wit, whereas her husband has but to mention her mother and he is the rival of the Robeys.
As for fathers-in-law, low comedians would starve if they had to depend on the help that fathers-in-law give them. Fathers-in-law do not exist. Nor do brothers-in-law or sisters-in-law, except as facts; but the joke is that they can be far more interfering (interference being at the root of the matter, I take it) than anyone in the world. It is the brother-in-law who knows of absolutely safe gilt-edged investments (which rarely succeed), and has to be helped while waiting for something to turn up; it is the sister-in-law who is so firmly convinced that dear Clara (her brother's wife) is spoiling the children. But both escape; while many really charming old ladies, to whom their sons-in-law are devoted, continue to be riddled by the world's satirical bullets.
What is to be done about it? Nothing. Only the destruction of the institution of marriage could affect it.
(_Lines accidentally omitted from a notorious volume of Memoirs._)
If life is dull and day by day I see that wittier, wiser England where I was wont to play (Being as bold as I was gay) Keep passing rapidly away All through the German KAISER;
If "Souls" are not the things they were, If caste declines and Vandals Go practically everywhere From Cavendish to Berkeley Square, And dowdy frumps without the "air" Monopolise the scandals;
There is but one thing left to do-- And what's a sporting flutter worth Unless one takes a risk or two?-- "I'll shock the world," I thought, "anew," And (ultimately) did so through The firm of THORNTON BUTTERWORTH.