There is something irresistibly comic as well as sad about the reported Holly Ramsay In-laws Fallout. For those like me who never heard of the girl until now, she is the pretty daughter of the very good chef and one-time footballer, Gordon Ramsay. She is an example of that most baneful group in contemporary society, an influencer. That is to say she has a social media presence for no very good reason apart from sounding off about mental health but has no very evident claim on the basis of skills or expertise to influence anyone.
Her father was an outstanding example of upward mobility on the basis of merit. He came from a family shadowed by his father’s alcoholism and violence, but he rose above his circumstances on the back of discipline and application in a demanding professions, cooking, where skill is evident in action, though his earlier career as a footballer was cut short. In a dispiriting contemporary example of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, whereby a family loses contact with its origins in four generations, the Ramsays have managed it in one.
So there is something curious as well as funny about the airs Holly is said to have adopted since her engagement with the swimmer Adam Peaty towards her prospective husband’s family, in particular, her future mother-in-law, Caroline. It would seem she didn’t much care for her style, or at least, not to the point that she invited her to what sounds like the hen party from hell, in Soho House Cotswolds. The event was enlivened by guests including Victoria Beckham and her own mother, but pointedly omitted Caroline. If I’d been in her position, I should have thanked God for being spared this ghastly girl-fest, but Caroline was hurt and, this being the age we’re in, hastened to share her feelings of sadness with umpteen thousand other people on social media.
You have to wonder at the way every tiff, every snub, every hurt feeling is amplified online to become something unforgiveable, because it’s become a public rather than private matter.
Caroline son’s Adam has, it would seem, very much taken Holly’s side in all this. He has, it is said, uninvited his mother, and presumably also his father Mark, from the wedding. He has also allegedly – and horribly – told her that she will have no further contact with his little boy George or any future grandchildren either. That, if true, is downright cruel. What’s more, note to Adam: the child is not just his but that of his former girlfriend Eiri. She may not wish her son to be deprived of affectionate grandparents.
The obvious reason why Holly Ramsay didn’t take to her fiance’s family would seem to be class
The obvious reason why Holly Ramsay didn’t take to her fiance’s family would seem to be class; she seems to think the Peatys are a bit infra the Ramsays’ dig, a bit common. In which case she is making the most fundamental mistake anyone can make when they marry, which is to assume that you’re marrying an individual, not an individual in a family.
The British are less familial in their way of thinking than almost any other culture (a friend who married an Armenian remarked that he married a mountain’s worth of people) but it’s true here as elsewhere that you can’t curate your in-laws. When you take on a prospective spouse you must do so in the knowledge that he or she comes with parents and siblings and aunts and uncles; lots of people whose views, background and habits may not coincide with yours.
At the wedding it will be very evident what everyone’s origins are. Someone who is terrifically grand may turn out to come from an uncultured family with no conversation; a leftie radical may turn out to have an uncle who’s a bigwig in the Reform party. But that’s the thing about families; you can emerge from them but if you’re a decent human being you can’t deny them, though lots of people do.
Part of Jane Austen’s genius was that she nailed those shameful feelings of embarrassment at your own family. It was Elizabeth Bennet’s misfortune that her mother was an embarrassment in every possible way. Mrs Bennet is immortal precisely because she was the kind of person you wouldn’t want to introduce to anyone and it was part of her daughter’s merit that she didn’t try to exclude her – though in her situation, she really couldn’t anyway. What she could do was take pride in her kind and nice aunt and uncle whom she could introduce to Mr Darcy without shame.
But what Jane Austen identified in Pride and Prejudice is common to humanity; in many marriages there will be a disparity of background which makes relations between families tricky. And all you can do is go with the differences. It may mean that at the wedding party there will be two distinct groups belonging to bride and groom; well, it’s your job as a married couple to try and see that people get on. If your friends are any good, they won’t mind.
Gordon Ramsay wasn’t born into lots of money. He may be able to make his daughter see sense
The one hope for Holly Ramsay is that there is one person in her family with sense, namely her father, Gordon Ramsay. He isn’t grand; he wasn’t born into lots of money; he will be accustomed to getting on with people from different backgrounds. He may be able to remind his daughter and son in law that you can never really escape your family; you can only make the best of them. And by recalling his own troubled family, he may help his snobbish and unattractive child see that she really isn’t that grand herself.
