CHAPTER XXXVI

MAMMIES AND GRANNIES

Cupboard love--Every kind of love is more or less selfish except maternal love--Maternal love over-rated--If you never had a grannie, do get one--Reminiscences of grannies--A sacrifice-- Grannies are not at all prejudiced in favour of their grandchildren.

Every kind of love is more or less cupboard love. I mean to say that love, whatever form it may assume, requires, or, at any rate, expects, some equivalent for it in return in the shape of affection, happiness, or pleasure. I only make one exception in favour of maternal love. The most loving sweetheart, husband, wife, or child expects to be loved, almost demands it. The loving mother expects nothing, demands nothing.

A mother will love her child, however bad that child may be, however unloving and ungrateful, whatever unhappiness and even sorrow he or she may cause to her. A mother will love and bless a child whom the whole world has condemned. A mother's love and forgiveness will follow a child to the scaffold. There is no limit to it. It is infinite.

Maternal love, far above others, is the very sentiment that keeps us in touch with heaven. It is the only holy love.

And that love is so inborn in woman that you see it already written on the face of the little girl who plays with her doll. It is so inborn in woman that I find something incongruous in such a remark as, 'She was a good and loving mother!' All mothers are good and loving. All rules have exceptions, but this one has none.

Therefore it is no extraordinary testimonial for a woman to be fond of her children, because all mothers are fond of their children and good to them, even the fiercest and cruellest of animals. The feeling is given to them by Nature. We all profit by it, we are all happier for it. For being able to dispense maternal love, woman is to be admired and blessed, but not congratulated. A child is part and parcel of a mother. In loving her child, a woman loves part of herself. It is not selfishness, but, somehow, a little self-love. In her love for her child, whether returned or not, she finds happiness.

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But for disinterestedness, never mind mammie: give me grannie's love. God ought to spare grandmammas; they never ought to die, the dear, lovely grannies!

'Haven't you a grandma?' once asked a little boy of another. 'No? Well, you should get one!' True, no child should be without one.

Victor Hugo said he submitted to one tyranny only, that of children. The author of 'The Art of being Grandfather' was right: that tyranny ought not only to be submitted to, but proclaimed. And who better than a grandmother will submit to the tyranny of a child? The sacrifices they will be capable of are superhuman, epic. I know one who charms away the last days of her life by a dainty little supper of biscuit and cream-cheese brought to her every day. She never now comes down in the evening, and that frugal repast is taken up to her when dinner is about over.

Her little granddaughter once came up to her room crying bitterly. She was in disgrace, and had been sent away from table before the appearance of the pudding.

'Grannie,' she said, 'I am not to have any pudding; you ought not to have your cream-cheese.'

'But, darling,' pleaded grandmamma, throwing a loving glance at the little dish of her predilection, 'I haven't been naughty.'

'Never mind; you ought not to have any when your little girl cannot have any pudding.' And the little tyrant cried more bitterly than ever.

Grannie rang the bell, ordered the favourite cream-cheese to be taken away, and, drying the little girl's tears, supped that night off a bit of bread-and-butter.

Antiquity has not recorded anything like it.

People say that mothers are prejudiced in favour of their children. Of course they are. We are all of us prejudiced in favour of what belongs to us, especially if it is of our own manufacture. But for the opinion held of a child, give me grannie's--that is sublime.

Once a lady of my acquaintance, on a visit to her mother, was in the drawing-room with her own little girl on her knees. Grandmamma, in ecstasy, was worshipping baby, challenging the world to produce such another. A lady called, took some notice of the child, and talked a great deal about her own baby, a great deal too much to please grandmamma, at any rate. When the visitor had gone, the dear old lady gave expression to her feelings:

'How silly women are, to be sure! Did you hear that woman talk and talk about her child? Good heavens! one would imagine, to hear her praise her baby, that there was no such a one in the world.'

And she laughed heartily at the presumption of that silly, conceited young mother.

'But, grandmamma,' quickly said my lady friend, 'you must forgive her. I have heard you many times declare that this, our baby, was by far the best and finest the world has ever seen.'

'Ah, my dear,' replied grannie, not in the least disconcerted and in absolute earnestness, 'that's _quite_ different. In our case it's the truth, and no one could deny it.'

Certainly not! Who would dare?

The love of a grandmother, with its delightful weaknesses, with that complete collapse of all power of resistance to a child, is no sign of senility; it is only the love of a mother multiplied by two.