I am hearing from a lot of people how fond they were of my mother. She certainly was charming and generous with nearly everyone including my father whom she treated nicely when he was present, and talked terribly about him and how she wanted to divorce him behind his back. I literally spent hundreds of hours listen to her badmouth everyone under the sun, yet not too many people got to see this side of her. I feel that her children were really the only people that knew her and saw sides of her that would have alienated nearly everyone else.
I had the same experience with my mother. My childhood friends thought she was incredibly wonderful. Of course they never saw the side of her that my father and I experienced.
