Mother-in-Law's Scathing E-mail Goes Viral

[V.C. Brunswick]

I came across this piece while surfing the web just now. All in all it must have been quite a weekend.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/30/mother-in-law_n_887915.html

Just about every woman in the world right now is thankful that Carolyn Bourne isn't her mother-in-law.

Bourne, 60, may soon be "the world's most famous monster-in-law," after the viciously worded email instructing her son's fiancee to mind her manners has gone viral, reports TIME.

The email was sent to bride-to-be Heidi Withers, 29, after she spent a weekend at the Bourne family home in Devon this past April. In the email, Bourne wrote, "It is high time someone explained to you about good manners. Yours are obvious by their absence and I feel sorry for you," reports the Daily Mail.

Bourne went on to say that it was unfortunate that her son Freddie had fallen for Withers, but that if Withers wanted to be accepted by the Bourne family, she should run to the nearest finishing school.

The email goes on to suggest that Withers, who works as a personal assistant at a London recruitment agency, is a gold digger. "I understand your parents are unable to contribute very much towards the cost of your wedding. (There is nothing wrong with that except that convention is such that one might presume they would have saved over the years for their daughters' marriages.) If this is the case, it would be most ladylike and gracious to lower your sights and have a modest wedding as befits both your incomes."

Bourne also complained: "No one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity style behaviour."

Not an email you want to get from the mother of the man you are about to marry. But Withers may have the last laugh. She forwarded the brutal email to a group of girlfriends, who in turn passed it along to their friends, and like any good viral meme, it's now appeared in most of England's national newspapers and is being posted online everywhere.

Full text of e-mail

It is high time someone explained to you about good manners. Yours are obvious by their absence and I feel sorry for you. Unfortunately for Freddie, he has fallen in love with you and Freddie being Freddie, I gather it is not easy to reason with him or yet encourage him to consider how he might be able to help you. It may just be possible to get through to you though. I do hope so.

Your behaviour on your visit to Devon during April was staggering in its uncouthness and lack of grace. Unfortunately, this was not the first example of bad manners I have experienced from you. If you want to be accepted by the wider Bourne family I suggest you take some guidance from experts with utmost haste. There are plenty of finishing schools around. You would be an ideal candidate for the Ladette to Lady television series. Please, for your own good, for Freddie's sake and for your future involvement with the Bourne family, do something as soon as possible. Here are a few examples of your lack of manners:

When you are a guest in another's house, you do not declare what you will and will not eat - unless you are positively allergic to something.

You do not remark that you do not have enough food.

You do not start before everyone else.

You do not take additional helpings without being invited to by your host.

When a guest in another's house, you do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early - you fall in line with house norms.

You should never ever insult the family you are about to join at any time and most definitely not in public. I gather you passed this off as a joke but the reaction in the pub was one of shock, not laughter.

I have no idea whether you wrote to thank [your future sister-in-law] for the weekend but you should have hand-written a card to her. You should have hand-written a card to me. You have never written to thank me when you have stayed at Houndspool. [Your future sister-in-law] has quite the most exquisite manners of anyone I have ever come across. You would do well to follow her example.

You regularly draw attention to yourself. Perhaps you should ask yourself why. It is tragic that you have diabetes. However, you aren't the only young person in the world who is a diabetic. I know quite a few young people who have this condition, one of whom is getting married in June. I have never heard her discuss her condition. She quietly gets on with it. She doesn't like being diabetic. Who would? You do not need to regale everyone with the details of your condition or use it as an excuse to draw attention to yourself. It is vulgar. As a diabetic of long standing you must be acutely aware of the need to prepare yourself for extraordinary eventualities, the walk to Mothecombe beach being an example. You are experienced enough to have prepared yourself appropriately.

No-one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity style behaviour. I understand your parents are unable to contribute very much towards the cost of your wedding. (There is nothing wrong with that except that convention is such that one might presume they would have saved over the years for their daughters' marriages.) If this is the case, it would be most ladylike and gracious to lower your sights and have a modest wedding as befits both your incomes. One could be accused of thinking that Heidi Withers must be patting herself on the back for having caught a most eligible young man. I pity Freddie.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

One can but hope that this email serves as a warning to the woman in question and that she either calls the wedding off, or cuts herself off from the in-laws immediately following the wedding. The woman (mother-in-law), and by extension "the wider Bourne family" (what staggeringly self-important way to say it), sounds insufferable.

bk

 

[RadioWave]

It's seems that Freddie's in the worst position of all - stuck between choosing the girl or his family. This isn't going to end well for him either way.

 

[angeljenny]

I think that, if it had been approached in a different and friendlier way, it could have been a beneficial thing to happen as there is some good advice in there.

Hand written thank you notes are just common sense after staying with someone!

 

[Viola]

I don't think a grown woman should have to be told not to go "ewww" at what's for dinner in somebody else's house, nor to not dig in before others eat.

Or not to smart-off about her mother-in-law in her mother-in-law's local pub, for that matter.

I think she's lost her temper, and it's not terribly ladylike or flattering. but I think the mother-in-law was more in the right than the daughter-in-law. And I say that as someone who's only a daughter-in-law.

Finishing school? What about highschool? I think I outgrew most of those behaviors at fifteen. Well, as far as in someone else's home. If I wanna stand half-dressed in my own kitchen eating a pint of ice cream out of the freezer, them's the breaks. But I don't inflict my laziest sleep-till-one excesses on innocent bystanders.

 

[dr greg]

I'm with the Mum-in-law on this one, Heidi sounds like a bit of a pain quite frankly, but this is just a classic example of the pitfalls of modern social communication: even 20 years ago such a letter would have been private, kept in the family, and only would have surfaced after someone's death, to be chewed over by researchers if the people happened to be famous, and you'll see some stern missals in various biographies...the fact that these people are nobody really and it's news all over the world is just a symptom of current concepts of news and celebrity.

 

[Pompidou]

I was guilty of one of those points - the sleeping late one. One year, I invited an English girl out to visit for a few weeks, staying at my place, and, like a good host, got up when she did - several hours earlier than usual. I figured, the host accommodates. She reciprocated by inviting me to England, and I went. I followed my own rules. I slept in late if we didn't have plans. Nothing was said this time. We alternated vacations a year or two later and being the host, I got up early. Swapped positions the following and by the end of the vacation, discovered I was rude for sleeping in late. Didn't care, really, since I would've been apparently justified in sleeping in when she was visiting me by their rules, so it all balanced out. Just goes to show you shouldn't worry too much about the more trivial rules. You'll never please everyone, especially inlaws, apparently. Might as well please yourself and be pleased if doing so pleases anyone.

EDIT: Public opinion seems pointedly turned against the evil in-law. I think exposing the email to the world was just desserts. In writing a scathing email to school the bride to be on the manners of a generation or two ago, she got schooled on the manners of this generation. Now she must wonder, was it worth it? Sure, the bride-to-be might not shoot for second helpings, but the in-law is now the devil incarnate world wide. Who came out looking ruder in the end? I'm with the bride on this one. If I got a suitably scathing letter, I'd pass it around Facebook at the very least.

 

[Miss Moonlight]

The letter drips with so much acid I cannot for one moment assume any of it is even an accurate accusation.

I've been the target of an unhappy father-in-law to be, who in the end declared I had control of his son's mind. He said a lot about me that had no basis in reality. But had he done it ten years later when email was in regular use, I wouldn't have spread it around. Then again... perhaps if I'd forwarded it to one friend thinking only her eyes would see it... well we all know how that can go.

 

[Mojito]

The problem is, we don't know both sides to the story. Heidi's side of the story isn't told...there may be a reason, for example, that she is so food centric in her thinking and comments if she's a diabetic. She might also be commenting extensively on her condition as she's anxious about it and wants the family to understand. We're seeing things through the eyes of the mother-in-law, who might be set on fault-finding given she thinks her son is making a mistake.

There are some points which, if objectively stated, would constitute poor manners. Starting eating before others, for example. Others are more difficult to establish - the whole "drawing attention to yourself" and drawing attention to her diabetic condition. Who knows - the girl might be nervous or self conscious. I'm sure I've made poor impressions on people like that, and it seems this future MiL might inspire such a response. And then there is the future MiL's own poor behaviour...implying that the girl is a gold digger - "One could be accused of thinking that Heidi Withers must be patting herself on the back for having caught a most eligible young man. I pity Freddie."

If the couple are paying for the wedding (and by the implications of the email it seems they are, as she suggests they plan something "befitting their income"), then her comments on the her parents' financial situation are in poor taste - particularly as the girl's father has come out and indicated that one reason they weren't able to contribute more is that they had both lost their jobs and were struggling at the time. The comment about the castle wedding is rude - castles are perfectly acceptable venues now, as are stately homes, and host many such functions.

The entire tone is unfortunately pompous ("accepted by the wider Bourne family"), and full of rather nasty little digs such as the comment about the girl being a candidate for "Ladette to Lady." It's a shame that any helpful or constructive criticisms she might have had are conveyed in such a way - it's hardly likely that opinions and observations expressed like this can be taken as anything rather than an attack, particularly when you're telling your future daughter in law that it's unfortunate your son has fallen for her and that you pity him.

She obviously really felt she needed to convey all this to Heidi - I think it should have been done either face to face or in a much more polite, constructive letter. As for forwarding the email...I actually don't blame Heidi for sending it on to her friends (whoever let it go viral was doing her a disservice), as I can well understand being so shocked and taken aback that I'd want to turn to my friends for advice and for a shoulder to cry on. The girl was, according to her father, quite devestated as the letter was sent three times in one day just as she and her fiance had put a deposit on a house.

Telling someone you would appreciate them showing nice table manners and offering some constructive suggestions on what to do is one thing. Telling the woman your son loves that you pity your son and that it is "unfortunate" he's marrying you is another.

But, again, we don't know the full story. Caroline might be a pompous, priggish, judgemental cow and Heidi a sweet, spontaneous girl who is nervous around her, or Heidi might be a lazy little gold digger only interested in social climbing and Caroline a delightful woman who has been driven to desperation. Or, more likely, the truth is somewhere in between.

 

[scotrace]

Mrs. Bourne appears to have taken leave of her tiny mind.

 

[adouglasmhor]

Mrs Bourne became "dear Freddie's" mother in law 8 years ago when dear Freddie was 21, hardly riased him, perhaps she should be a little less clingy to him.
As for the point about complaining about not enough food, I would be shocked if a guest left my table wanting and i know my mother and GF would feel the same. Also saying you need more food is preferable to hypoglycemia, how do we know the old bat did not just serve up a green salad and half a tomato to the girl? the same with the coment about the walk to the beach, was the guest informed this would be an expedition lasing several hours, one persons walk is someone else's route march.

 

[Shangas]

The Bourne Insanity...

Reading that email was very interesting. I'm not sure who I support, although I don't think much of MiL's tone. It seems extremely snobby and stuck up and that would turn me off at once. In looking at the list of faux-pas, I began to think about what or what might not be excusable...

When you are a guest in another's house, you do not declare what you will and will not eat - unless you are positively allergic to something

The girl is a diabetic. There are some things that they just CAN NOT EAT. I think it's perfectly acceptable, therefore, to tell (or, in her hoity-toity way that MiL says, "DECLARE") this information to the family or assembled company at large. This stuff is important to know.

You do not remark that you do not have enough food.

Why not? Or on the other hand, in what manner was this remark made? "GIVE ME MORE FOOD. NOW!" / "Can I please have some more *name of food*?"

You do not start before everyone else.

Okay that one's a given.

You do not take additional helpings without being invited to by your host.

I have NEVER heard of this rule. Maybe it exists in England, but not around here. If everyone waited for permission to get additional food, the whole party would grind to a halt.

When a guest in another's house, you do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early - you fall in line with house norms.

I'm not sure about this one. Personally I think it's rude to dictate to someone how long they can sleep. Whenever we have guests around, we never tell them that. We give them a map, a set of keys and let them do what they want. The only time we would insist they wake up at a certain time is if they want to go somewhere or do something the next day, and time is of the essence.

You should never ever insult the family you are about to join at any time and most definitely not in public. I gather you passed this off as a joke but the reaction in the pub was one of shock, not laughter.

Again, I'm not sure of the context with this one, so I won't comment.

Personally I think the MiL sounds like a control-freak. "THOU WILT OBEY THE COMMANDMENTS OF THE LORD BOURNE OR BE STRUCK OFF FROM OUR HOUSE!"

 

[Puzzicato]

There are some points which, if objectively stated, would constitute poor manners. Starting eating before others, for example. Others are more difficult to establish - the whole "drawing attention to yourself" and drawing attention to her diabetic condition.

Quite. "When you are a guest in another's house, you do not declare what you will and will not eat - unless you are positively allergic to something." and "You do not remark that you do not have enough food." may be seen differently in the light of diabetes. "I'm sorry, I don't eat dessert" is quite a reasonable statement to make under those circumstances!

 

[Shangas]

I agree with Puzzicato.

An uncle of mine is diabetic. Whenever we have my uncle and my cousins and aunt over for dinner, he almost invariably never eats dessert. Or at most, only has a small slice of cake or whatever happens to be on the table. We don't question it. We don't complain. We understand and we leave it at that. If this girl is diabetic, then that's probably the exact same reason as my uncle, because she legitimately can't eat certain foods. Drawing this out as a fault or a weakness or a show of bad manners is nothing short of disgusting in my mind. That's like complaining that someone always takes too long to get dressed in the morning because he's missing three fingers on his right hand...

 

[LizzieMaine]

But seriously, *who gets married in a castle???*

 

[Shangas]

Maybe not a jumping castle, but if it was Windsor, I reckon that'd be appropriate...

 

[LizzieMaine]

If she's always hungry, maybe she should get married in a White Castle.

 

[Shangas]

It's been a while since I studied diabetes in detail, but isn't a constant need for calories (ie - snacks) an important part of a diabetic remaining healthy?

 

[Feraud]

If she's always hungry, maybe she should get married in a White Castle.

And this comment is why Lizzie is my favorite Lounger!!

Who is the sillier goose, the horrible excuse of a mother who couldn't have a decent conversation with her son about any issues or the woman who has no problem sending a scathing, one-sided review of her character out to friends in an email.
This reads like a case of dumb and dumber.

 

[LaMedicine]

It's been a while since I studied diabetes in detail, but isn't a constant need for calories (ie - snacks) an important part of a diabetic remaining healthy?

Diabetic control is acheived by a set caloric/nutrient balanced daily intake plus medication if necessary. If good blood glucose control can't be acheived by diet and exercise and weight control menu, then various types of medications are added. If the diabetic is a type 1 diabetic --which is likely due to the young age of the bride to be -- then the patient needs insulin from the start on. Instructions for meals are 3 meals per day, plus one or two small snacks if you have a tendency to become hypoglycemic between meals. The daily caloric intake are usually divided into 3-4-5 ratio for the three meals, and if you need two snack per day, it usually is changed to 3-0.5-3.5-0.5-4.5 ratio.
Constant eating that is close to grazing is not recommended.
If the patient is on medication, then the point of medication is to have it's peak effect coincide with the peak post-meal glucose level, so the the glucose level is reduced, plus the difference between lowest and highest glucose level is not large, and is as close as possible to the ranges of non-diabetics.

Incidentally, gnawing hunger in diabetics on insulin often is an indication of hypoglycemia--dangerously low blood glucose.