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A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY 61
solitude. He was a different man after this; his pipe was as a
limb of his body. Having on Tuesday conquered the pipe, Mrs,
Swigby on Thursday did battle with her husband's rum-and-water,
a drink of an odious smell, as she very properly observed ; and the
smell was doubly odious, now that the tobacco smoke no longer
perfumed the parlour breeze, and counteracted the odours of the
juice of West India sugar-canes. On Thursday, then, Mr. Swigby
and rum held out pretty bravely. Mrs. S. attacked the punch
with some sharp-shooting, and fierce charges of vulgarity ; to which
S. replied, by opening the battery of oaths (chiefly directed to his
own eyes, however), and loud protestations that he would never
surrender. In three days more, however, the rum-and-water was
gone. Mr. Swigby, defeated and prostrate, had given up that
stronghold ; his young wife and sister were triumphant ; and his
poor mother, who occupied her son's house, and had till now taken
her place at the head of his table, saw that her empire was for
ever lost, and was preparing suddenly to succumb to the imperious
claims of the mistress of the mansion.
All this, I say, I wish I had the liberty to describe at large,
as also to narrate the arrival of majestic Mrs. Gann; and a battleroyal
which speedily took place between the two worthy mothersin-law.
Noble is the hatred of ladies who stand in this relation
to each other ; each sees what injury the other is inflicting upon
her darling child; each mistrusts, detests, and to her offspring
privily abuses the arts and crimes of the other. A house with a
wife is often warm enough ; a house with a wife and her mother
is rather warmer than any spot on the known globe ; a house with
two mothers-in-law is so excessively hot, that it can be likened to
no place on earth at all, but one must go lower for a simile. Think
of a wife who despises her husband, and teaches him manners ;
of an elegant sister, who joins in rallying him (this was almost the
only point of union between Bella and Linda now,—for since the
marriage, Linda hated her sister consumedly). Think, I say, of
two mothers-in-law,—one large, pompous, and atrociously genteel,
—another coarse and shrill, determined not to have her son put
upon,—and you may see what a happy fellow Joe Swigby was,
and into what a piece of good luck he had fallen.
What would have become of him without his father-in-law?
Indeed one shudders to think ; but the consequence of that gentleman's
arrival and intervention was speedily this :—About four
o'clock, when the dinner was removed, and the quarrelling used
commonly to set in, the two gents took their hats, and sallied out ;
and as one has found when the body is inflamed that the application
of a stringent medicine may cause the ill to disappear for a while,