II. ON LUXURY.
An eminent lawyer of my acquaintance had a Socratic habit of interrupting the conversation by saying, “Let us understand one another: when you say so-and-so, do you mean so-and-so, or something quite different?” Now, although it is intolerable that the natural flow of social intercourse should be thus impeded, yet in writing a paper to be laid before a learned and fastidious society one is bound to let one’s hearers a little into the secret, and to state fairly what the subject of the essay really is. I suppose we shall all admit that bad luxury is bad, and good luxury is good, unless the phrase good luxury is a contradiction in terms. We must try to avoid disputing about words. The word luxury, according to its derivation, signifies an extravagant and outrageous indulgence of the appetites or desires. If we take this as the meaning of the word, we shall agree that luxury is bad; but if we take luxury to be only another name for the refinements of civilization, we shall all approve of it. But the real and substantial question is not what the word means, but, what is that thing which we all agree is bad or good; where does the bad begin and the good end; how are we to discern the difference; and how are we to avoid the one and embrace the other. In this essay, therefore, I intend to use the word luxury to denote that indulgence
which interferes with the full and proper exercise of all the faculties, powers, tastes, and whatever is good and worthy in a man. Enjoyments, relaxations, delights, indulgences which are beneficial, I do not denominate “luxury.” All indulgences which fit us for our duties are good; all which tend to unfit us for them are bad; and these latter I call luxuries. Some one will say, perhaps, that some indulgences are merely indifferent, and produce no appreciable effect upon body or mind; and it might be enough to dismiss such things with the maxim, “de minimis non curat lex.” But the doctrine is dangerous, and I doubt if anything in this world is absolutely immaterial. De Quincey mentions the case of a man who committed a murder, which at the time he thought little about, but he was led on from that to gambling and Sabbath breaking. Probably in this weary world any indulgence or pleasure which is not bad is not indifferent, but absolutely good. The world is not so bright, so comfortable, so pleasant, that we can afford to scorn the good the gods provide us. In Mr. Reade’s book on Study and Stimulants, Matthew Arnold says, a moderate use of wine adds to the agreeableness of life, and whatever adds to the agreeableness of life, adds to its resources and powers. There cannot be a doubt that the bodily frame is capable of being wearied, and that it needs repose and refreshment, and this is a law which a man trifles with at his peril. The same is true of the intellectual and moral faculties. They claim rest and refreshment; they must have comfort and pleasure or they will begin to flag. It must also be always remembered that in the every-day work of this world the body and the mind have to go through a great deal which is
depressing and taxing to the energy, and a certain amount of “set off” is required to keep the balance even. We must remember this especially with respect to the poor. Pipes and cigars may be a luxury to the idle and rich, but we ought not to grudge a pipe to a poor man who is overworked and miserable. Some degree of comfort we all feel to be at times essential when we have a comfortless task to perform. With good food and sleep, for instance, we can get through the roughest work; with the relaxation of pleasant society we can do the most tedious daily work. If, on the other hand, we are worried and uncomfortable, we become unfitted for our business. We all have our troubles to contend against, and we require comfort, relaxation, stimulation of some sort to help us in the battle. There are certain duties which most of us have to perform, and which, to use a common expression, “take it out of us.” Thus most of us are compelled to travel more or less. An old gentleman travelling by coach on a long journey wished to sleep off the tediousness of the night, but his travelling companion woke him up every ten minutes with the inquiry, “Well, sir, how are you by this.” At last the old gentleman’s patience was fairly tired out. “I was very well when I got into the coach, and I’m very well now, and if any change takes place I’ll let you know.” I was coming from London to Beckenham, and in the carriage with me was a gentleman quietly and attentively reading the newspaper. A lady opposite to him, whenever we came to a station, cried out, “Oh, what station’s this, what station’s this?” Being told, she subsided, more or less, till the next station. The gentleman’s patience was at last exhausted. “If there is any
particular station at which you wish to alight I will inform you when we arrive.”
Such are some of the annoying circumstances of travel. Then, at the end of the journey, are we sure of a comfortable night’s rest? It was a rule upon circuit that the barristers arriving at an inn had the choice of bedrooms according to seniority, and woe betide the junior who dared to infringe the rule and endeavour to secure by force or fraud the best bedroom. The leaders, who had the hardest work to do, required the best night’s rest. A party of barristers arrived late one night at their accustomed inn, a half-way house to the next assize town, and found one of the best bedrooms already occupied. They were told by some wag that it was occupied by a young man just joined the circuit. There was a rush to the bedroom. The culprit was dragged out of bed and deposited on the floor. A venerable old gentleman in a nightcap and gown addressed the ringleader of his assailants, Serjeant Golbourne, “Brother Golbourne, brother Golbourne, is this the way to treat a Christian judge?” I should not have liked to have been one of those who had to conduct a cause before him next day. Who can be generous, benevolent, kindly, and even-tempered if one is to be subjected to such harassing details as I have above narrated? and I have no doubt that a fair amount of comfort is necessary to the exercise of the Christian virtues. I am not at all sure that pilgrims prayed any better because they had peas in their shoes, and it is well known that soldiers fight best when they are well fed. A certain amount of comfort and pleasure is good for us, and is refreshing to body and spirit. Such things, for instance, as the bath
in the morning; the cup of warm tea or coffee for breakfast; the glass of beer or wine and variety of food at dinner; the rest or nap in the arm-chair or sofa; an occasional novel; the pipe before going to bed; the change of dress; music or light reading in the evening; even the night-cap recommended by Mr. Banting; games of chance or skill; dancing;—surely such things may renovate, soothe, and render more elastic and vigorous both body and mind.
While, therefore, I have admitted fully that we all require “sweetness and light,” that some indulgence is necessary for the renovation of our wearied souls and bodies; yet it very often will happen that the thing in which we desire to indulge does not tend at all in this direction, or it may be that, although a moderate indulgence does so tend, an immoderate use has precisely the reverse effect. My subject, therefore, divides itself, firstly, into a consideration of those luxuries which are per se deleterious, and those which are so only by excessive use.
I suppose you will not be surprised to hear that I think we are in danger, in the upper and middle classes at all events, of going far beyond the point where pleasures and indulgences tend to the improvement of body and mind. Surely there are many of us who can remember when the habits of our fathers were less luxurious than they are now. In a leading article in a newspaper not long ago the writer said, “All classes without exception spend too much on what may be called luxuries. A very marked change in this respect has been noticed by every one who studies the movements of society. Among people
whose fathers regarded champagne as a devout Aryan might have regarded the Soma juice—viz., as a beverage reserved for the gods and for millionaires—the foaming grape of Eastern France is now habitually consumed. . . .” He goes on, “The luxuries of the poor are few, and chiefly consist of too much beer, and of little occasional dainties. What pleasures but the grossest does the State provide for the artisan’s leisure?” “It does not do,” says the writer, “to be hard upon them, but it is undeniable that this excess of expenditure on what in no sense profits them is enormous in the mass.”
Not long ago a great outcry was heard about the extravagance and luxury of the working man. It was stated often, and certainly not without foundation, that the best of everything in the markets in the way of food was bought at the highest prices by workmen or their wives; and although the champagne was not perhaps so very freely indulged in, nor so pure as might be wished, yet, that the working men indulged themselves in more drink than was good for their stomachs, and in more expensive drinks than was good for their purses, no man can doubt.
If this increase of luxury is observable in the lower classes, how much more easily can it be discerned in the middle classes. Take for instance the pleasures of the table. I do not speak of great entertainments or life in palaces or great houses, which do not so much vary from one age to another, but of the ordinary life of people like ourselves. Spenser says:—
“The antique world excess and pryde did hate,
Such proud luxurious pomp is swollen up of late.”
How many more dishes and how many more wines do
we put on the table than our ancestors afforded. Pope writes of Balaam’s housekeeping:—
“A single dish the week day meal affords,
An added pudding solemnized the Lord’s.”
Then when he became rich:—
“Live like yourself was soon my lady’s word,
And lo, two puddings smoked upon the board!”
Then his description of his own table is worth noting:—
“Content with little, I can manage here
On brocoli and mutton round the year,
’Tis true no turbots dignify my boards,
But gudgeons, flounders, what my Thames affords.To Hounslow Heath I point, and Banstead Down;
Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own,
From yon old walnut tree a show’r shall fall,
And grapes, long lingering on my only wall,
And figs from standard and espalier join—
The deuce is in you if you cannot dine.”
Now, however, the whole world is put under contribution to supply our daily meals, and the palate is being constantly stimulated, and in some degree impaired by a variety of food and wine. And I am sure that the effect of this is to produce a distaste for wholesome food. I daresay we have all heard of the Scotchman who had drunk too much whisky. He said, “I can’t drink water; it turns sae acid on the stomach.” This increase of the luxuries of the table, beyond what was the habit of our fathers, is shown chiefly, I think, when we are at home and alone; but if one is visiting or entertaining others, how often is one perfectly bored by the quantity of food and drink which is handed round. Things in season and out of season, perhaps ill
assorted, ill cooked, cold, and calculated to make one extremely ill, but no doubt costing a great deal of money, time, and anxiety to the givers of the feast. Then we fall to grumbling, and are discontented with having too much, but having acquired a habit of expecting it we grumble still more if there is not as much as usual provided.
“He knows to live, who keeps the middle state,
And neither leans on this side or on that;
Nor stops, for one bad cork, his butler’s pay;
Swears, like Albutius, a good cook away;
Nor lets, like Nevius, every error pass—
The musty wine, foul cloth, or greasy glass.”
But what is the modern idea of a dinner?—
“After oysters Sauterne; then sherry, champagne,
E’er one bottle goes comes another again;
Fly up, thou bold cork, to the ceiling above,
And tell to our ears in the sounds that they love,
How pleasant it is to have money,
Heigh ho;
How pleasant it is to have money!Your Chablis is acid, away with the hock;
Give me the pure juice of the purple Medoc;
St. Peray is exquisite; but, if you please,
Some Burgundy just before tasting the cheese.
So pleasant it is to have money,
Heigh ho;
So pleasant it is to have money!Fish and soup and omelette and all that—but the deuce—
There were to be woodcocks and not Charlotte Russe,
And so suppose now, while the things go away,
By way of a grace, we all stand up and say—
How pleasant it is to have money,
Heigh ho;
How pleasant it is to have money!
This, of course, is meant to be satirical; but no doubt many persons regard the question of “good living” as much more important than “high thinking.” “My dear fellow,” said Thackeray, when a dish was served at the Rocher de Cancalle, “don’t let us speak a word till we have finished this dish.”
“‘Mercy!’ cries Helluo. ‘Mercy on my soul!
Is there no hope? Alas!—then bring the jowl.’”
A great peer, who had expended a large fortune, summoned his heir to his death-bed, and told him that he had a secret of great importance to impart to him, which might be some compensation for the injury he had done him. The secret was that crab sauce was better than lobster sauce.
“Persicos odi,” “I hate all your Frenchified fuss.”
“But a nice leg of mutton, my Lucy,
I prithee get ready by three;
Have it smoking, and tender, and juicy,
And, what better meat can there be?
And when it has served for the master,
’Twill amply suffice for the maid;
Meanwhile I will smoke my canaster,
And tipple my ale in the shade.”
Can anything be more awful than a public dinner—the waste, the extravagance, the outrageous superfluity of everything, the enormous waste of time, the solemn gorging, as if the whole end and aim of life were turtle and venison. I do not know whether to dignify such proceedings by the name of luxury. But what shall I say of gentlemen’s clubs. They are the very hotbed of luxury. By merely asking for it you obtain almost anything you require in the way of luxury. I am aware that
many men at clubs live more carefully and frugally, but I am aware also that a great many acquire habits of self-indulgence which produce idleness and selfish indifference to the wants of others. In a still more pernicious fashion, I think that refreshment bars at railway stations minister to luxury; at least I am sure they foster a habit of drinking more than is necessary, or desirable; and that is one form of luxury, and a very bad one. The fellows of a Camford college are reported to have met on one occasion and voted that we do sell our chapel organ; and the next motion, carried nem. con., was that we do have a dinner. As to ornaments for the dinner table what affectation and expense do we see. But in the days of Walpole it was not amiss. “The last branch of our fashion into which the close observation of nature has been introduced is our desserts. Jellies, biscuits, sugar plums, and creams have long since given way to harlequins, gondoliers, Turks, Chinese, and shepherdesses of Saxon china. Meadows of cattle spread themselves over the table. Cottages in sugar, and temples in barley sugar, pigmy Neptunes in cars of cockle shells trampling over oceans of looking glass or seas of silver tissue. Gigantic figures succeed to pigmies; and it is known that a celebrated confectioner complained that, after having prepared a middle dish of gods and goddesses eighteen feet high, his lord would not cause the ceiling of his parlour to be demolished to facilitate their entrée. “Imaginez-vous,” said he, “que milord n’a pas vouler faire ôter le plafond!”
To show how much luxurious living has increased during the present century I propose to quote a portion of that wonderfully brilliant third chapter of Macaulay’s
England which we all know. Speaking of the squire of former days, he says, “His chief serious employment was the care of his property. He examined samples of grain, handled pigs, and, on market days, made bargains over a tankard with drovers and hop merchants. His chief pleasures were commonly derived from field sports and from an unrefined sensuality. His language and pronunciation were such as we should now expect to hear only from the most ignorant clowns. His oaths, coarse jests, and scurrilous terms of abuse were uttered with the broadest accent of his province. It was easy to discern from the first words which he spoke whether he came from Somersetshire or Yorkshire. He troubled himself little about decorating his abode, and, if he attempted decoration, seldom produced anything but deformity. The litter of a farm-yard gathered under the windows of his bed-chamber, and the cabbages and gooseberry bushes grew close to his hall door. His table was loaded with coarse plenty; and guests were cordially welcomed to it. But as the habit of drinking to excess was general in the class to which he belonged, and as his fortune did not enable him to intoxicate large assemblies daily with claret or canary, strong beer was the ordinary beverage. The quantity of beer consumed in those days was indeed enormous. For beer was then to the middle and lower classes not only what beer is now, but all that wine, tea, and ardent spirits now are. It was only at great houses or on great occasions that foreign drink was placed on the board. The ladies of the house, whose business it had commonly been to cook the repast, retired as soon as the dishes were devoured, and left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco. The
coarse jollity of the afternoon was often prolonged till the revellers were laid under the table.”
I quote again from another portion of the same chapter in Macaulay:—“Slate has succeeded to thatch, and brick to timber. The pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth in the principal shops, and the luxurious neatness of the dwellings occupied by the gentry, would, in the seventeenth century, have seemed miraculous.” Speaking of watering-places he says:—“The gentry of Derbyshire and of the neighbouring counties repaired to Buxton, where they were crowded into low wooden sheds and regaled with oatcake, and with a viand which the hosts called mutton, but which the guests strongly suspected to be dog.” Of Tunbridge Wells he says—“At present we see there a town which would, a hundred and sixty years ago, have ranked in population fourth or fifth among the towns in England. The brilliancy of the shops and the luxury of the private dwellings far surpasses anything that England could then show.” At Bath “the poor patients to whom the waters had been recommended, lay on straw in a place which, to use the language of a contemporary physician, was a covert rather than a lodging. As to the comforts and luxuries to be found in the interior of the houses at Bath by the fashionable visitors who resorted thither in search of health and amusement, we possess information more complete and minute than generally can be obtained on such subjects. A writer assures us that in his younger days the gentlemen who visited the springs slept in rooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see occupied by footmen. The floors of the dining-room were uncarpeted, and were coloured brown with a wash made of soot and small beer
in order to hide the dirt. Not a wainscot was painted. Not a hearth or chimney piece was of marble. A slab of common freestone, and fire-irons which had cost from three to four shillings, were thought sufficient for any fireplace. The best apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuff, and were furnished with rush-bottomed chairs.”
Of London Macaulay says:—“The town did not, as now, fade by imperceptible degrees into the country. No long avenues of villas, embowered in lilacs and laburnum, extended from the great source of wealth and civilization almost to the boundaries of Middlesex, and far into the heart of Kent and Surrey.” In short, there was nothing like the Avenue and the Fox Grove, Beckenham, in old times, and we who live there ought to be immensely grateful for our undeserved blessings. “At present,” he says, “the bankers, the merchants, and the chief shopkeepers repair to the city on six mornings of every week for the transaction of business; but they reside in other quarters of the metropolis or suburban country seats, surrounded by shrubberies and flower gardens.” Again, “If the most fashionable parts of the capital could be placed before us, such as they then were, we should be disgusted by their squalid appearance, and poisoned by their noisome atmosphere. In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to the dwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbage stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Durham.”
Well, you will say, all this proves what a vast improvement we have achieved. Yes; but we must remember
that Macaulay was writing on that side of the question. Are we not more self-indulgent, more fond of our flowers, villas, carriages, etc., than we need be; less hard working and industrious; more desirous of getting the means of indulgence by some short and ready way—by speculation, gambling, and shady, if not dishonest dealing—than our fathers were? I need not follow at further length Macaulay’s description of these earlier times—of the black rivulets roaring down Ludgate Hill, filled with the animal and vegetable filth from the stalls of butchers and greengrocers, profusely thrown to right and left upon the foot-passengers upon the narrow pavements; the garret windows opened and pails emptied upon the heads below; thieves prowling about the dark streets at night, amid constant rioting and drunkenness; the difficulties and discomforts of travelling, when the carriages stuck fast in the quagmires; the travellers attacked by highwaymen. He narrates how it took Prince George of Denmark, who visited Petworth in wet weather, six hours to go nine miles. Compare this to a journey in a first-class carriage or Pullman car upon the Midland Railway, and think of the luxuries demanded by the traveller on his journey if he is going to travel for more than two or three hours: the dinner, the coffee, the cigar, the newspaper and magazine, etc., etc.
There is a passage in the beginning of Tom Brown’s School Days in which the author ridicules the quantity of great coats, wrappers, and rugs which a modern schoolboy takes with him, though he is going to travel first class, with foot-warmers. Then, in our houses, what stoves and hot-water pipes and baths do we not require! How many soaps and powders, rough towels and soft
towels! Sir Charles Napier, I think, said that all an officer wanted to take with him on a campaign was a towel, a tooth-brush, and a piece of yellow soap. The great excuse for the bath is that if it is warm it is cleansing; if it is cold, it is invigorating; but what shall we say to Turkish Baths? Surely there is more time wasted than enough, and, unless as a medical cure, it may become an idle habit. I have seen private Turkish Baths in private houses. What are we coming to? We used to be proud of our ordinary wash-hand basins, and make fun of the little saucers that we found provided for our ablutions upon the Continent. At the time of the great Exhibition of 1851 Punch had a picture of two very grimy Frenchmen regarding with wonder an ordinary English wash-stand. “Comment appelle-t’on cette machine là,” says one; to which the other replies, “Je ne sais pas, mais c’est drôle.” A great advance has been made in the furniture of our houses. We fill our rooms, especially our drawing-rooms or boudoirs, with endless arm-chairs and sofas of various shapes—all designed to give repose to the limbs; but I am sure they tend towards lazy habits, and very often interfere with work. Surely there has lately risen a custom of overdoing the embellishment and ornamentation of our houses. We fill our rooms too full of all sorts of knick-knacks, so much so that we can hardly move about for fear of upsetting something. “I have a fire [in my bedroom] all day,” writes Carlyle. “The bed seems to be about eight feet wide. Of my paces the room measures fifteen from end to end, forty-five feet long, height and width proportionate, with ancient, dead-looking portraits of queens, kings, Straffords and principalities, etc., really the uncomfortablest
acme of luxurious comfort that any Diogenes was set into in these late years.” Thoreau’s furniture at Walden consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs, a kettle, a frying-pan, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. There were no ornaments. He writes, “I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, and I threw them out of the window in disgust.”
“Our cottage is quite large enough for us, though very small,” wrote Miss Wordsworth, “and we have made it neat and comfortable within doors; and it looks very nice on the outside, for though the roses and honeysuckle which we have planted against it are only of this year’s growth, yet it is covered all over with green leaves and scarlet flowers, for we have trained scarlet beans upon threads, which are not only exceedingly beautiful, but very useful, as their produce is immense. We have made a lodging room of the parlour below stairs, which has a stone floor, therefore we have covered it all over with matting. We sit in a room above stairs, and we have one lodging room with two single beds, a sort of lumber room, and a small, low, unceiled room, which I have papered with newspapers, and in which we have put a small bed. Our servant is an old woman of 60 years of age, whom we took partly out of charity.” Here Miss Wordsworth and her brother, the great poet, lived on the simplest fare and drank cold water, and hence issued those noble poems which more than any others teach us the higher life.
“Blush, grandeur, blush; proud courts, withdraw your blaze;
Ye little stars, hide your diminished rays.”
“I turned schoolmaster,” says Sydney Smith, “to educate my son, as I could not afford to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress to educate my girls as I could not afford a governess. I turned farmer as I could not let my land. A man servant was too expensive, so I caught up a little garden girl, made like a milestone, christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler. The girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals. Bunch became the best butler in the country. I had little furniture, so I bought a cartload of deals; took a carpenter (who came to me for parish relief) called Jack Robinson, with a face like a full moon, into my service, established him in a barn, and said, ‘Jack, furnish my house.’ You see the result.”
Then what shall I say of the luxury of endless daily papers, leading articles, short paragraphs, reviews, illustrated papers,—are not these luxuries? Are they not inventions for making thought easy, or rather for the purpose of relieving us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves. May I also, without raising a religious controversy, observe that in religious worship we are prone to relieve ourselves from the trouble of deep and consecutive thought by surrounding our minds with a sort of mist of feeling and sentiment; by providing beautiful music, pictures, and ornaments, and so resting satisfied in a somewhat indolent feeling of goodness, and not troubling ourselves with too much effort of reason. A love of the beautiful undoubtedly tends to elevate and refine the mind, but the follies of the false
love and the dangers of an inordinate love are numerous and deadly. It is absurd that a man should either be or pretend to be absolutely absorbed in the worship of a dado or a China tea cup so as to care for nothing else, and to be unable to do anything else but stare at it with his head on one side. With most people the whole thing is the mere affectation of affected people, who, if they were not affected in one way, would be so in another. Boswell was a very affected man. He says, “I remember it distressed me to think of going into another world where Shakespeare’s poetry did not exist; but a lady relieved me by saying, ‘The first thing you will meet in the other world will be an elegant copy of Shakespeare’s works presented to you.’” Boswell says he felt much comforted, but I suspect the lady was laughing at him. I like the “elegant copy” very much. It is certain that in this world there is a deal of rough work to be done, and I feel that, attractive and beautiful as so many things are, too much absorption of them has a weakening and enervating effect.
I have spoken of the luxuries of the table, of the house, of travel, and of a love of ease and beautiful surroundings. There are, however, some people who are very luxurious without caring much for any of these things. Their main desire appears to be to live a long time, and to preserve their youth and beauty to the last. For this purpose they surround themselves with comfort, they decline to see or hear of anything which they don’t like for fear it should make their hair grey and their faces wrinkled, and their whole talk is of ailments and German waters. Swift somewhere or other expresses his contempt for this sort of person. “A well preserved man
is,” he says, “a man with no heart and who has done nothing all his life.” Old ruins look beautiful by reason of the rain and the wind, the heat of August and the frost of January, and I am sure I have often seen in men—aye, and in women too—far more beauty where the tempests have passed over the face and brow, than where the life has been more sheltered and less interesting.
But I must notice before I conclude this part of my subject one of the principal causes of a fatal indulgence in luxury, and that is a despairing sense of the futility of attempting to do anything worth doing, and of inability to strive against what is going on wrong. This is the meaning of that rather vulgar phrase, “Anything for a quiet life”; and this is the reason why with many people everything and everybody is always a “bore.” Here, too, is the secret of that suave, polished, soft-voiced manner so much affected nowadays by highly-educated young men, and that somewhat chilly reserve in which they wrap themselves up. “Pray don’t ask us to give an opinion, or show an interest, or discuss any serious view of things.”
“For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it, were more
Than to walk all day, like the Sultan of old, in a garden of spice.”
“Let us surround ourselves with every luxury; let us cease to strive or fret; let us be elegant, refined, gentle, harmless, and, above all, undisturbed in mind and body.” “We have had enough of motion and of action we.” “Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil.” “Let us get through life the best way we can, and though there is not much that can delight us, let us achieve as much amelioration of our lot as is possible for us.”
These, then, are some of the forms which luxury takes in the present century, and these are some of the outcomes of an advanced, and still rapidly advancing, civilization. These, too, seem to be the invariable accompaniments of such an advance. A very similar picture of Rome in the days of Cicero and Cæsar is drawn by Mr. Froude in his Cæsar. He says: “With such vividness, with such transparent clearness, the age stands before us of Cato and Pompey, of Cicero and Julius Cæsar; the more distinctly because it was an age in so many ways the counterpart of our own, the blossoming period of the old civilization. It was an age of material progress and material civilization; an age of civil liberty and intellectual culture; an age of pamphlets and epigrams, of salons and of dinner parties, of sensational majorities and electoral corruption. The rich were extravagant, for life had ceased to have practical interest, except for its material pleasures; the occupation of the higher classes was to obtain money without labour, and to spend it in idle enjoyment. Patriotism survived on the lips, but patriotism meant the ascendancy of the party which would maintain the existing order of things, or would overthrow it for a more equal distribution of the good things, which alone were valued. Religion, once the foundation of the laws and rule of personal conduct, had subsided into opinion. The educated, in their hearts, disbelieved it. Temples were still built with increasing splendour; the established forms were scrupulously observed. Public men spoke conventionally of Providence, that they might throw on their opponents the odium of impiety; but of genuine belief that life had any serious meaning, there was none remaining beyond
the circle of the silent, patient, ignorant multitude. The whole spiritual atmosphere was saturated with cant—cant moral, cant political, cant religious; an affectation of high principle which had ceased to touch the conduct and flowed on in an increasing volume of insincere and unreal speech. The truest thinkers were those who, like Lucretius, spoke frankly out their real convictions, declared that Providence was a dream, and that man and the world he lived in were material phenomena, generated by natural forces out of cosmic atoms, and into atoms to be again resolved.”
Next I am going, as I promised, to consider those indulgences which become luxuries by excessive use, and in this I shall be led also to consider the effects of luxury. It has become a very trite saying that riches do not bring happiness; and certainly luxury, which riches can command, does not bring content, which is the greatest of all pleasures. On the contrary, the moment the body or mind is over-indulged in any way, it immediately demands more of the same indulgence, and even in stronger doses. Who does not know that too much wine makes one desire more? Who, after reading a novel, does not feel a longing for another?
The rich and poor dog, as we all know, meet and discourse of these things in Burns’s poem—
“Frae morn to e’en it’s naught but toiling
At baking, roasting, frying, boiling,
An’, tho’ the gentry first are stechin,
Yet e’en the hall folk fill their pechan
With sauce, ragouts, and sic like trashtrie,
That’s little short of downright wastrie.
An’ what poor cot-folk pit their painch in
I own it’s past my comprehension.”
To which Luath replies—
“They’re maistly wonderful contented.”
Cæsar afterwards describes the weariness and ennui which pursue the luxurious—
“But human bodies are sic fools,
For all their colleges and schools,
That, when nae real ills perplex ’em,
They make enow themselves to vex ’em.
They loiter, lounging lank and lazy,
Though nothing ails them, yet uneasy.
Their days insipid, dull, and tasteless;
Their nights unquiet, lang, and restless,
An’ e’en their sports, their balls and races,
Their gallopin’ through public places,
There’s sic parade, sic pomp, an’ art,
The joy can scarcely reach the heart.”
After this description the two friends
“Rejoiced they were not men, but dogs.”
An Italian wit has defined man to be “an animal which troubles himself with things which don’t concern him”; and, when one thinks of the indefatigable way in which people pursue pleasure, all the while deriving no pleasure from it, one is filled with amazement. “Life would be very tolerable if it were not for its pleasures,” said Sir Cornewall Lewis, and I am satisfied that half the weariness of life comes from the vain attempts which are made to satisfy a jaded appetite.
There are many things which are not luxuries per se, but become so if indulged in to excess. Take, for instance, smoking and drinking. One pipe a day and one glass of wine a day are not luxuries, but a great many
a day are luxuries. So lying in bed five minutes after you wake is not a luxury, but so lying for an hour is. The man who is fond precociously of stirring may be a spoon, but the man who lies in bed half the day is something worse. Then it must be remembered that a single indulgence in one luxury produces scarcely any effect on the mind or body, but a habit of indulging in that luxury has a great effect.
“The sins which practice burns into the blood,
And not the one dark hour which brings remorse
Will brand us after of whose fold we be.”
I am surely right in noticing that the rich man is said to have fared sumptuously every day, as though faring sumptuously might have no significance, but the constantly faring sumptuously was what had degraded and debased the man below the level of the beggar at his gate. I feel that to be luxurious occasionally is no bad thing, if we can keep our self-control, and return constantly to simple habits. There is something very natural in the prayer which a little child was overheard to make—“God, make me a good little girl, but”—after a pause—“naughty sometimes.” It is the habit of being naughty which is pernicious. Can anyone doubt that the man who, on the whole, leads a hardy and not over-indulgent life will be more capable of performing any duty which may devolve upon him than a man who “had but fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life.”
Sydney Smith, in his sketches of Moral Philosophy, notices that habits of indulgence grow on us so much that we go through the act of indulgence without noticing it or feeling the pleasure of it; yet, if some
accident occurs to rob us of our accustomed pleasure, we feel the want of it most keenly. Speaking of Hobbes, the philosopher, he says that he had twelve pipes of tobacco laid by him every night before he began to write. Without this luxury “he could have done nothing; all his speculations would have been at an end, and without his twelve pipes he might have been a friend to devotion or to freedom, which in the customary tenour of his thoughts he certainly was not.”
In Fielding’s Life of Jonathan Wild Mr. Wild plays at cards with the Count. “Such was the power of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons that Mr. Wild could not keep his hands out of the Count’s pockets though he knew they were empty, nor could the Count abstain from palming a card though he was well aware Mr. Wild had no money to pay him.”
If we are curious to know who is the most degraded and most wretched of human beings, look for the man who has practised a vice so long that he curses it and clings to it. Say everything for vice which you can say, magnify any pleasure as much as you please; but don’t believe you can keep it, don’t believe you have any secret for sending on quicker the sluggish blood and for refreshing the faded nerve.
There is no doubt that habits of luxury produce discontent, the more we have the more we want. The sin of covetousness is not (curiously enough) the sin of the poor, but of the rich. It is the rich man who covets Naboth’s vineyard. I knew an old lady who had a beautiful house facing Hyde Park, and lived by herself with a companion, and certainly had room enough and to spare. Her house was one of a row, and the next
house being an end house projected, so that all the front rooms were about a foot longer than those of the old lady. “Ah,” she used to sigh, “he’s a dear good man, the old colonel, but I should like to have his house—please God to take him!” This showed a submission to the will of Providence, and a desire for the everlasting welfare of her neighbour which was truly edifying; but covetousness was at the root of it, and a longing to indulge herself.
The effect of habits of luxury upon the brute creation is easily seen. How dreadfully the harmless necessary cat deteriorates when it is over-fed and over-warmed. It may, for all I know, become more humane, but it becomes absolutely unfit to get its own living. What is more despicable than a lady’s lap-dog, grown fat and good for nothing, and only able to eat macaroons! Even worms, according to Darwin, when constantly fed on delicacies, become indolent and lose all their cunning.
I will note next that habits of self-indulgence render us careless of the misfortunes of others. Nero was fiddling when Rome was burning. And upon the other hand privations make us regardful of others. In Bulwer’s Parisians two luxurious bachelors in the siege of Paris, one of whom has just missed his favourite dog, sit down to a meagre repast, on what might be fowl or rabbit; and the master of the lost dog, after finishing his meal, says with a sigh, “Ah, poor Dido, how she would have enjoyed those bones!” Probably she would have done so, in case they had not been her own. Of course we all know Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, and that it is all about luxury. It is, however, very poetical poetry (if I may say so), and I don’t know that it gives much assistance to a sober, prosaic view of the subject like the
present. “O Luxury, thou curst by heaven’s decree,” sounds very grand; but I have not the least idea what it means. The pictures drawn in the poem of simple rural pleasures, and of gaudy city delights, are very pleasing; and the moral drawn from it all, viz., that nations sunk in luxury are hastening to decay, may be true enough; but what strikes one most is that, if Goldsmith thought that England was hastening to decay when he wrote, what would he think if he were alive now.
Well then, if the pleasures of luxury bring nothing but pain and trouble in the pursuit of them, to what end do they lead?
“Behold what blessings wealth to life can lend,
And see what comfort it affords our end.
In the worst inn’s worst room, with mat half hung,
The floors of plaister, and the walls of dung;
On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw,
With tape-ty’d curtains never meant to draw;
The George and Garter dangling from that bed,
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red;—
Great Villers lies—alas, how changed from him,
That life of pleasure and that soul of whim.
Gallant and gay in Clieveden’s proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
No wit to flatter, left of all his store;
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more;
There victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame; this lord of useless thousands ends.”
If these be the effects of luxuries, why is it that we continue to strive to increase them with all our might? I have already insisted that I am not speaking of such things as are beneficial to body and soul, but such as are detrimental. But it will be said, you
are spending money, and to gratify your longings labourers of different sorts have been employed, and the wealth of the world is thereby increased. But we must consider the loss to the man who is indulging himself, and therefore the loss to the community; and further, that his money might have gone in producing something necessary, and not noxious, something in its turn reproductive. In Boswell’s Life of Johnson is this passage, “Johnson as usual defended luxury. You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury; you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it you keep them idle. I own indeed there may be more virtue in giving it immediately in charity, than in spending it in luxury.” He was then asked if this was not Mandeville’s doctrine of “private vices are public benefits.” Of course this did not suit him, and he demolished it. He said, “Mandeville puts the case of a man who gets drunk at an alehouse, and says it is a public benefit, because so much money is got by it to the public. But it must be considered that all the good gained by this through the gradation of alehouse-keeper, brewer, maltster, and farmer, is overbalanced by the evil caused to the man and his family by his getting drunk.”
Perhaps you will say, what is a man to do with his money, if he may not spend it in luxury? If, as Dr. Johnson says, and as we all of us find out occasionally, it is worse spent if given in charity, are we to hoard it? No, surely this is more contemptible still. “What is the use of all your money,” said one distinguished barrister to another, “you can’t live many more years, and you can’t take it with you when you go? Besides, if
you could, it would all melt where you’re going.” This hoarding of wealth, this craving for it, is only another form of luxury, the luxury of growing rich. Some like to be thought rich, and called rich, and treated with a fawning respect on account of their riches; others love to hide their riches, but to hug their money in secret, and seem to enjoy the prospect of dying rich. I was engaged in a singular case some time ago, in which an old lady who had starved herself to death, and lived in the greatest squalor, had secreted £250 in a stocking under the mattress of her bed. It was stolen by one nephew, who was sued for it by another, and all the money went in law expenses. If then we are not to spend our money upon luxuries, and if we are not to hoard it, what are we to do with it if we have more than we can lay out in what is useful. I have not time (nor is the question a part of my subject) to discuss what should be done with the money hitherto spent in idle luxury. We know, however, that we have the poor always with us, and that we can always learn the luxury of doing good. In one way or another we ought to see that our superfluous wealth should drain from the high lands into the valleys; not indeed to make the poor luxurious, but to provide them with comfort, to give them health, strength, and enjoyment. I think then that if we are wise men, seeing that we are placed in a world of care, trouble, and hard work, from which no man can escape; and seeing that, upon the other hand, we are living in a country and in an age when we are surrounded with all that makes life pleasant and enjoyable, we shall endeavour to find out some mode of harmonizing these different chords. It need hardly be said how far removed luxury is from the
spirit of Christianity, and from the life of its Founder; yet it may reverently be remembered that on more than one occasion He showed His tender regard for the weakness of human nature by stamping with His approval the pleasures of convivial festivity.
What then is the remedy against luxury? I would say shortly,—in work. A busy man has no time for luxury, and there is no reason why every man should not have enough to do, if he will only do it. And I am sure the same rule applies to the ladies, although a very busy man once wrote of his wife—
“In work, work, work, in work alway
My every day is past;
I very slowly make the coin—
She spends it very fast.”
But speaking seriously, I am sure that in some sort of work lies the antidote to luxury. When Orpheus sailed past the beautiful islands “lying in dark purple spheres of sea,” and heard the songs of the idle and luxurious syrens floating languidly over the waters, he drowned their singing in a pæan to the gods. Religion often affords a great incentive to work for the good of others; and, in working for others, we have neither the time, nor the inclination, to be over indulgent of ourselves. So, the desire to obtain fame and renown has often produced men of the austere and non-indulgent type, as the Duke of Wellington and many others:—
“Fame is the spur which the clear spirit doth raise,
That last infirmity of noble mind,
To scorn delights and live laborious days.”
Nay, even the desire to obtain riches, and the strife after
them, will leave a man little room for luxury. To be honest, to be brave, to be kind and generous, to seek to know what is right, and to do it; to be loving and tender to others, and to care little for our comfort and ease, and even for our very lives, is perhaps to be somewhat old-fashioned and behind the age; but these are, after all, the things which distinguish us from the brute beasts which perish, and which justify our aspirations towards eternity.