It is complete error to suppose that because a thing is vulgar

therefore it is not refined; that is, subtle and hard to define
It is complete error to suppose that because a thing is vulgar
therefore it is not refined; that is, subtle and hard to define.
A drawing-room song of my youth which began 'In the gloaming,
O, my darling,' was vulgar enough as a song; but the connection
between human passion and the twilight is none the less an exquisite
and even inscrutable thing. Or to take another obvious instance:
the jokes about a mother-in-law are scarcely delicate,
but the problem of a mother-in-law is extremely delicate.
A mother-in-law is subtle because she is a thing like the twilight.
She is a mystical blend of two inconsistent things--
law and a mother. The caricatures misrepresent her;
but they arise out of a real human enigma. 'Comic Cuts'
deals with the difficulty wrongly, but it would need
George Meredith at his best to deal with the difficulty rightly.
The nearest statement of the problem perhaps is this:
it is not that a mother-in-law must be nasty, but that she must
be very nice.