Most families, perhaps all families, have within them and/or within their circles of friends and acquaintances, tensions and differences and actions taken and words said, which, viewed in the cold light of day, are not comfortable subjects to discuss, and generally do not find their way into any written history of the family. Time, as I have said above on the home page of this site, needs to pass, at a minimum, before such subjects can comfortably be discussed or set down in any way.
Examples include the most mundane and commonplace subjects such as partings of ways between marriage or partnership partners, and the causes which led to such partings, Other examples include feuds or disagreements within families about all and sundry, including differences on quite mundane subjects which, in context and at the time in question, can lead to irreparable breaches, even though, later or viewed in a different way, might seem quite trivial.
Our family is no more immune from the above than any other. Of course, it is difficult or impossible to dig up records of such facts in the publicly-available documentation accessible online, such as censuses and the like. So, in the absence of any relevant diary records or other such sources, I can only allude to such subjects as have become known to me during my liftetime.
So, if you’re not going to mention who said or did what, then what is the point of mentioning these things at all? Answer: point taken, you could just leave them out altogether, but that means that a large chunk of what actually matters in life is just ignored because it is ‘difficult’, which seems not a good answer to me. So I am going to try to grapple with the problem as best I can. Life is full of difficult subjects. Sometimes the difficulties can be overcome.
And sometimes these difficult subjects are more important in the sense that they affect people’s lives more, than the subjects which are available for open discussion because they are on open record. Of course it depends on what you consider important. Many a time, these kinds of factors ‘disappear’ in due course when a blighted life comes to an end with no record made of the misery inflicted by the selfishness or thoughtlessness of others. Thus is the way of the world. In former times, such as Victorian times, the values of society permitted behaviour now seen to be totally unacceptable, particularly towards women. Thank goodness that times have changed, though not as thoroughly as I would wish.
Known examples, without mentioning names; etc