THE VULGARITY OF WEALTH
There are certain periods in the lives of nations when the balance of things in general would seem to be faultily adjusted; when one side of the scale almost breaks and falls to the ground through excess of weight, and the other tips crazily upward, well-nigh to overturning, through an equally undue excess of lightness. The inequality can be traced with mathematical precision as occurring at regular intervals throughout the world’s history. It is as though the clock of human affairs had been set correctly for a certain limited time only, and was then foredoomed to fall out of gear in such a manner as to need cleansing and winding up afresh. A good many people, including some of the wisest of our few wise men, have openly expressed the opinion that we, of the proudest and greatest Empire at present under the sun, have almost reached that particularly fatal figure on the Eternal Dial,
When all the wheels run down,
and when the scales of Justice are becoming so dangerously worn out and uneven, as to suggest an incapacity for holding social and political weights and measures much longer. One of the symptoms of this overstrained condition of our latter-day civilization is precisely the same danger-signal which has in all ages accompanied national disaster—a pernicious influence, like that of the planet “Algol,” which, when in the ascendant, is said to betoken mischief and ruin to all who see it rise on the horizon. Our evil Star, the evil star of all Empires, has long ago soared above the eastern edge; fully declared, it floods our heaven with such lurid brilliancy that we can scarce perceive any other luminary. And its name is Mammon. The present era in which we are permitted by Divine law to run through our brief existence and make our mark or miss it, as we choose, is principally distinguished by an insane worship of Wealth. Wealth in excess—wealth in chunks—wealth in great awkward, unbecoming dabs, is plastered, as it were, by the merest hap-hazard toss of fortune’s dice, on the backs of uncultured and illiterate persons, who, bowed down like asses beneath the golden burden, are asininely ignorant of its highest uses. The making of millions would seem to be like a malignant fever, which must run its course, ending in either the death or the mental and physical wreck of the patient. He who has much money seems always to find it insufficient, and straightway proceeds to make more; while he who has not only much, but superabundance of the dross, scatters it in every direction broadcast, wherever it can best serve as an aid to his own self-advertisement, vanity and ostentation. Once upon a time wealth could not purchase an entrance into society; now it is the only pass-key. Men of high repute for learning, bravery, and distinctive merit, are “shunted” as it were off the line to make way for the motor-car traffic of plutocrats, who, by dint of “push,” effrontery, and brazen impudence, manage to shout their income figures persistently in the ears of those whose high privilege it is to “give the lead” in social affairs. And to the shame of such exalted individuals be it said, that they listen, with ears stretched wide, to the yell of the huckster in stocks and shares; and setting aside every thought for the future of Great Britain and the highest honour of her sons and daughters, they sell their good word, their influence, and their favour easily, for so much cash down. Men and women who have the privilege of personally knowing, and frequently associating with the Royal Family, are known to accept payment for bringing such and such otherwise obscure persons under the immediate notice of the King; and it is a most unfortunate and regrettable fact that throughout the realm the word goes that no such obscure persons ever dine with their Sovereign without having paid the “middle man” for the privilege. It would be an easy matter for the present writer to name at least a dozen well-known society women, assuming to be “loyal,” who make a very good thing out of their “loyalty” by accepting huge payments in exchange for their recommendation or introduction to Royal personages, and who add considerably to their incomes by such means, bringing the names of the King and Queen down to their own sordid level of bargain and sale, with a reckless disregard of the damaging results of such contemptible conduct. These are some of the very ladies who are most frequently favoured by notice at Court, and who occupy the position of being in the “swagger set.” Whereas, the men and women who are faithful, who hold the honour of their King dearer than their own lives, who refuse to truckle to the spirit of money-worship, and who presume to denounce the sickening hypocrisy of modern society life and its shameless prostitution of high ideals, are “hounded” by those portions of the Press which are governed by Jew syndicates, and slandered by every dirty cad that makes his cheap living by putting his hand secretly in his neighbour’s pocket. Never, in all the ages of the world, have truth-tellers been welcome; from Socrates to Christ the same persecution has followed every human being who has had enough of God in him or her to denounce shams; and the Christian religion itself is founded on the crucifixion of Honesty by the priests of Hypocrisy. It is a lesson that can hardly be too deeply dwelt upon at the present notable time of day, which seems, for many students of national affairs, the crucial point of a coming complete change in British history.
On every side, look where we may, we see an almost brutal dominance of wealth. We see the Yankee Trade-octopus, stretching out greedy tentacles in every direction, striving to grasp British shipping, British industries, and British interests everywhere, in that devouring and deadly grip, which, if permitted to hold, would mean mischief and loss of prestige to our country, though, no doubt, it might create rejoicing in America. For America is by no means so fond of us as certain interested parties would have us suppose. She would dearly like to “patronise” us, but she does not love us, though at present she hides her hand. In a case of struggle, she would not support the “old country” for mere sentimental love of it. She would naturally serve only her own best interests. As a nation of bombast and swagger, she is a kind of “raree-show” in the world’s progress; but her strength is chiefly centred in dollars, and her influence on the social world teaches that “dollars are the only wear.” English society has been sadly vulgarized by this American taint. Nevertheless, it is, as it has always been, a fatal mistake for any nation to rely on the extent of its cash power alone. Without the real spirit which makes for greatness—without truth, without honour, without sincere patriotism and regard for the real well-being and honest government of the majority—any national system, whether monarchical or republican, must inevitably decay and perish from the face of the earth.
Unblemished honesty is the best policy for statesmen; but that such has been their rule of conduct in these latter years may perhaps be open to question. The late Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, whose broad-minded, impartial views of life, commend themselves forcibly to every literary student, writing of Cecil Rhodes, whose funeral service was celebrated with such almost royal pomp in St. Paul’s Cathedral, gives us a sketch which should make the most casual “man in the street” pause and reflect as to whether those solemn public rites and tributary honours from both the King and Queen were not somewhat out of place on such an occasion.
“What Mr. Rhodes did,” wrote Mr. Lecky, in his strong, trenchant way, “has been very clearly established. When holding the highly confidential position of Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, and being at the same time a Privy Councillor of the Queen, he engaged in a conspiracy for the overthrow of the Government of a neighbouring and friendly State. In order to carry out this design, he deceived the High Commissioner whose Prime Minister he was. He deceived his own colleagues in the Ministry. He collected under false pretences a force which was intended to co-operate with an insurrection in Johannesburg. Being a Director of the Chartered Company, he made use of that position without the knowledge of his colleagues to further the conspiracy. He took an active and secret part in smuggling great quantities of arms into the Transvaal, which were intended to be used in the rebellion; and at a time when his organs in the Press were representing Johannesburg as seething with spontaneous indignation against an oppressive Government, he, with another millionaire, was secretly expending many thousands of pounds in that town in stimulating and subsidizing the rising. He was also directly connected with the shabbiest incident in the whole affair, the concoction of a letter from the Johannesburg conspirators absurdly representing English women and children at Johannesburg as in danger of being shot down by the Boers, and urging the British to come at once and save them. It was a letter drawn up with the sanction of Mr. Rhodes many weeks before the raid, and before any disturbance had arisen; and kept in reserve to be dated and used in the last moment for the purpose of inducing the young soldiers in South Africa to join in the raid, and of subsequently justifying their conduct before the War Office, and also for the purpose of being published in the English Press at the same time as the first news of the raid in order to work upon English opinion, and persuade the English people that the raid, though technically wrong was morally justifiable.... No reasonable judge can question that in these transactions he was more blamable than those who were actually punished by the law for taking part in the raid, far more blamable than those young officers who were, in truth, the most severely punished and who had been induced to take part in it under false representation of the wishes of the Government at home, and a grossly false representation of the state of things at Johannesburg. The failure of the raid, and his undoubted complicity with its design, obliged Mr. Rhodes to resign the post of Prime Minister, and his directorship of the Chartered Company.... But what can be thought of the language of a Minister who volunteered to assure the House of Commons that in all the transactions I have described, Mr. Rhodes, though he had made ‘a gigantic mistake,’ a mistake perhaps as great as a statesman could make, had done nothing affecting his personal honour?”
What has been thought, and what is thought of the matter, has been largely suppressed by party politicians. The War Enquiry was conducted with secrecy; Cabinet Ministers held their Councils, as it were, with locked doors. An eager desire to conceal the real state of affairs in the country, and an unfortunate tendency to “hush up” such matters as are the plain right of ratepayers to know, are the betraying signs of many of our statesmen’s inward disquiet. Because, as many people instinctively feel, the trail of finance is likely to be openly traced to an unlawful, and in some cases, dishonourable extent, over much recent political work. Honour, however, is due to those Ministers who valiantly endeavour to screen greater names than their own behind their skilful diplomacy; and one naturally admires the zeal and courage with which they fight for this cause, even as M. Maurepas and M. Necker fought a similar campaign long ago in the dark days of France, when, as Carlyle writes, it was “clearly a difficult point for Government, that of the dealing with the masses—if indeed it be not rather the sole point and problem of Government, and all other points were incidental crotchets, superficialities, and beatings of the wind! For let Charter-chests, Use and Wont, Law, common and special, say what they will, the masses count to so many millions of units, made to all appearance by God, whose earth this is declared to be. Besides, the people are not without ferocity; they have sinews and indignation.”
At the immediate moment, the masses in our country are, rightly or wrongly, vaguely conscious of two things which they view as forms of injustice, namely, that they are asked to pay rates for an educational system which a large bulk of them do not approve, and that they are taxed for the expenses of a war, the conduct of which was discussed “secretly,” as though its methods implied some dishonour to those concerned in it. Moreover, they understand, with more or less bewilderment, that though the King is now “Supreme Lord of the Transvaal” there is no chance whatever for British subjects to make fortune there, the trades being swamped by Germans, and the mines controlled by Jews. Therefore, in their inability to follow the devious paths of reasoning by which politicians explain away what they term “ignorant and illiterate” conclusions, some of them begin to think that the blood of their sons has been shed in hard battle, not so much for the glory and good of the many, as for the private greed of the few. They are no doubt wrong; but it will take something more than “secret” enquiries to set them right.
Meanwhile, the passing of the social pageant interests them more deeply than is apparent on the frothy surface of social things. Their contempt is aroused and kept sullenly alive by daily contemplation of the flagrant assertion of money-dominance over every other good. They hear of one Andrew Carnegie strewing Free Libraries over the surface of the country, as if these institutions were so many lollipops thrown out of a schoolboy’s satchel; they follow the accounts of his doings with a mingling of wonder and derision, some of them up in Scotland openly and forcibly regretting the mischief done to the famed “grit and grip” of Scottish students, who are not now, as of yore, forced by hard necessity to work for their University education themselves, and win it, as it were, by the very skin of their teeth. Hard necessity is a fine taskmaster, and turns out splendid scholars and useful men. But when educational advantages are thrown headlong at aspiring students, and Universities are opened freely, as though they were a species of pauper-refuge, the delights of learning are apt to be proportionately cheapened and lessened. Lads with real ability naturally and invariably seek to do something that shall prove their own capabilities of pluck and endurance; and a truly independent spirit not only chafes at, but absolutely resents, assistance. Thus it has come to pass that Mr. Carnegie’s Free Libraries are looked upon by hosts of people as so many brick and mortar advertisements of his own great wealth and unfailing liberality. A labour leader of some repute among his own class, remarked the other day that “the Carnegie libraries were like ‘So-and-So’s Pills,’ posted up everywhere lest the inventor’s name should be forgotten!” This was an unkind, and perhaps an ungrateful observation, but we have to recollect that a People, taken as a People, do not want to be grateful for anything. They want to work for all they get, and to feel that they have honestly deserved their earnings. It is only the drones of the hive that seek to be taken care of. The able citizen strenuously objects to be helped in obtaining sustenance for either his soul or his body. What is necessary for him, that he will fight for, and, having won the battle, he enjoys the victory. There is no pleasure in conquering an enemy, if a policeman has helped you to knock him down.
Thus, with many of the more independently-thinking class, millionaire Carnegie’s money, pitched at the public, savours of “patronage” which they resent, and ostentation which they curtly call “swagger.” Free Libraries are by no means essential to perfect happiness, while they may be called extremely detrimental to the prosperity of authors. A popular author would have good reason to rejoice if his works were excluded from Free Libraries, inasmuch as his sales would be twice, perhaps three times as large. If a Free Library takes a dozen copies of a book, that dozen copies has probably to serve for five or six hundred people, who get it in turn individually. But if the book could not possibly be obtained for gratuitous reading in this fashion, and could only be secured by purchase, then it follows that five or six hundred copies would be sold instead of twelve. This applies only to authors whose works the public clamour for, and insist on reading; with the more select “unpopular” geniuses the plan, of course, would not meet with approval. In any case, a Free Library is neither to an author, nor to the reading public, an unmitigated boon. One has to wait for months sometimes for the book specially wanted; sometimes one’s name is 1,000 on the list, though certain volumes known as “heavy stock” can always be obtained immediately on application, but are seldom applied for. Real book-lovers buy their books and keep them. Reading which is merely haphazard and casual is purely pernicious, and does far more harm than good. However, Carnegie, being the possessor of millions, probably does not know what else to do with the cash except in the way of Libraries. To burden a human biped with tons of gold, and then set him adrift to get rid of it as best he may, is one of the scurviest tricks of Fortune. Inasmuch as ostentation is the trade mark of vulgarity, and a rich man cannot spend his money without at least appearing ostentatious. The revival of the spinning and silk-weaving industries in England would be a far nobler and more beneficial help to the country and to the many thousands of people, than any number of Free Libraries, yet no millionaire comes forward to offer the needful assistance towards this deserving end. But perhaps a hundred looms set going, with their workers all properly supported, would not be so prominently noticed in the general landscape as a hundred Free Libraries.
Apart from the manner in which certain rich men spend their wealth, there is something in an overplus of riches which is distinctly “out of drawing,” and lop-sided. It is a false note in the musical scale. Just as a woman, by wearing too great a number of jewels, vulgarizes whatever personal beauty she may possess by the flagrant exhibition of valuables and bad taste together, so does a man who has no other claim upon society than that of mere wealth, appear as a kind of monstrosity and deformity in the general equality and equilibrium of Nature. When such a man’s career is daily seen to be nothing more than a constant pursuit of his own selfish ends, regardless of truth, honour, high principle, and consideration for his fellow-men, he becomes even more than a man-camel with a golden hump—he is an offence and a danger to the community. If, by mere dint of cash, he is allowed to force his way everywhere—if no ruling sovereign on the face of the earth has sufficient wisdom or strength of character to draw a line against the entrance into society and politics of Money, for mere Money’s sake, then the close of our circle of civilisation is nearly reached, and the old story of Tyre and Sidon and Babylon will be re-told again for us with the same fatal conclusion to which Volney, in his Ruins of Empires impressively calls attention, in the following passage:
“Cupidity, the daughter and companion of ignorance, has produced all the mischiefs that have desolated the globe. Ignorance and the love of accumulation, these are the two sources of all the plagues that infest the life of man. They have inspired him with false ideas of his happiness, and prompted him to misconstrue and infringe the laws of nature, as they related to the connection between him and exterior objects. Through them his conduct has been injurious to his own existence, and he has thus violated the duty he owes to himself; they have fortified his heart against compassion, and his mind against the dictates of justice, and he has thus violated the duty he owes to others. By ignorant and inordinate desire, man has armed himself against man, family against family, tribe against tribe, and the earth is converted into a bloody theatre of discord and robbery. They have sown the seeds of secret war in the bosom of every state, divided the citizens from each other, and the same society is constituted of oppressors and oppressed, of masters and slaves. They have taught the heads of nations, with audacious insolence, to turn the arms of society against itself, and to build upon mercenary avidity the fabric of political despotism, or they have a more hypocritical and deep-laid project, that imposes, as the dictate of heaven, lying sanctions and a sacrilegious yoke, thus rendering avarice the source of credulity. In fine, they have corrupted every idea of good and evil, just and unjust, virtue and vice; they have misled nations in a labyrinth of calamity and mistake. Ignorance and the love of accumulation! These are the malevolent beings that have laid waste the earth; these are the decrees of fate that have overturned empires; these are the celestial maledictions that have struck these walls, once so glorious, and converted the splendour of populous cities into a sad spectacle of ruins!”
Laughable, yet grievous, is the childish conduct of many American plutocrats who are never tired of announcing in the daily Press that they are spending Three Thousand Pounds on roses for one afternoon’s “At Home,” or Five Thousand Pounds on one single banquet! After this, why should we call the Roman Heliogabalus a sensualist and voluptuary? His orgies were less ostentatious than many social functions of to-day. It is not, we believe, recorded that he paid any “fashion-papers” (if there were any such in the Roman Empire) to describe his “Feasts of Flowers,” though a lively American lady, giving out her “social experiences” recently at an “Afternoon tea” said gaily: “I always send an account of my dinners, my dresses, and the dresses of my friends to ‘The ——’ with a cheque. Otherwise, you know, I should never get myself or my parties mentioned at all!” One is bound to entertain the gravest doubts as to the truth of her assertion, knowing, of course, that of all institutions in the world, the Press, in Great Britain at any rate, is the last to be swayed by financial considerations. One has never heard (in England at least) of any “Company” paying several thousand pounds to the Press for “floating it.” Though such things may be done in America, they are never tolerated here. But, the Press apart, which in its unblemished rectitude “shines like a good deed in a naughty world,” most things in modern politics and society are swayed by money considerations, and the sudden acquisition of wealth does not in many cases improve the morality of the person so favoured, or persuade him to discharge such debts as he may have incurred in his days of limited means. On the contrary, he frequently ignores these, and proceeds to incur fresh liabilities, as in the striking case of a lady “leader of society” at the present day, who, having owed large sums to certain harmless and confiding tradesmen for the past seven or eight years, ignores these debts or “shunts them,” and spends six thousand pounds recklessly on the adornment of rooms for the entertainment of Royalty—which fact most notably proclaims her vulgarity, singularly allied to her social distinction. The payment of her debts first, and the entertainment of great personages afterwards, would seem to be a nobler and more becoming thing.
But show and vanity, pride and “bounce,” appear to have taken the place of such old-fashioned virtues as simplicity, sincerity, and that genuine hospitality which asserts nothing, but gives all.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.
In very few cases does immense wealth seem to go hand in hand with refinement, reserve and dignity. Millionaires are for the most part ill-mannered and illiterate, and singularly uninteresting in their conversation. A certain millionaire, occupying during some seasons one of the fine old Scottish Castles whose owners still take pride in the fact that its walls once sheltered “bonnie Prince Charlie,” can find little to do with himself and his “house-party,” but fill the grand old drawing-room with tobacco-smoke and whisky-fumes of an evening, and play “Bridge” for ruinous stakes on Sundays, of all days in the week. During other hours and days he goes out shooting, or drives a motor-car. Intellectually speaking, the man is less of a real personality than the great Newfoundland dog he owns. But measured by gold he is a person of enormous importance—a human El Dorado. And his banking-account is the latchkey with which he opens the houses of the great and intrudes his coarse presence through the doors of royal palaces; whereas if by some capricious stroke of ill-luck he had not a penny left in the world, those same doors would be shut in his face with a bang.
The vulgarity of wealth is daily and hourly so broadly evidenced and apparent, that one can well credit a strange rumour prevalent in certain highly exclusive circles, far removed from the “swagger set,” to the effect that with one more turn of blind Fortune’s wheel, the grace of Poverty will become a rare social distinction. The Poor Gentleman, it is said, will be eagerly sought after, and to be seen in his company will entitle one to respect. The man of money will stand outside the ring of this Society, which is in process of formation for the revival of the Art of Intelligent Conversation and the Cultivation of Good Manners. Ladies who dress with a becoming simplicity, and who are not liable to the accusation of walking about with clothes unpaid for, will be eligible for membership,—and young men who are not ashamed to emphatically decline playing cards on Sunday will be equally welcome in the select coterie. Limited means will be considered more of a recommendation than a drawback, and visits will be interchanged among the members on the lines of unaffected hospitality, offered with unassuming friendship and sincerity. Kindness towards each other, punctilious attention to the smallest courtesies of life, unfailing chivalry towards women, and honour to men, will be the prevailing “rules” of the community, and every attempt at “show,” either in manners or entertainment, will be rigorously forbidden and excluded. The aim of the Society will be to prove the truth of the adage that “Manners makyth the man,” as opposed to the modern reading, “Money makyth the nobleman.” Bearing in mind that the greatest reformers and teachers of the world were seldom destitute of the grace of Poverty, it will be deemed good and necessary to make a stand for this ancient and becoming Virtue, which as a learned writer says, “doth sit on a wise man more becomingly than royal robes on a king.” Many who entertain this view are prepared to unite their forces in making well-born and well-bred Poverty the fashion. For in such a scheme, singular as it may appear, there is just a faint chance of putting up a barrier against boorish Plutocracy (which is a more unwieldy and offensive power than Democracy), and also of asserting the existence of grander national qualities than greed, avarice, and self-indulgence, which humours, if allowed to generate and grow in the minds of a people, result in the ravaging sickness of such a pestilence of evil as cannot be easily stayed or remedied. There has been enough, and too much of the Idolatry of Money-bags—it is time the fever of such insanity should abate and cool down. To conclude with another admirable quotation from Mr. Lecky: “Of colossal fortunes only a very small fraction can be truly said to minister to the personal enjoyment of the owner. The disproportion in the world between pleasure and cost is indeed almost ludicrous. The two or three shillings that gave us our first Shakespeare would go but a small way towards providing one of the perhaps untasted dishes on the dessert table. The choicest masterpieces of the human mind—the works of human genius that through the long course of centuries have done most to ennoble, console, brighten, and direct the lives of men, might all be purchased—I do not say by the cost of a lady’s necklace, but by that of one or two of the little stones of which it is composed. Compare the relish with which the tired pedestrian eats his bread and cheese with the appetites with which men sit down to some stately banquet; compare the level of spirits at the village dance with that of the great city ball whose lavish splendour fills the society papers with admiration; compare the charms of conversation in the college common room with the weary faces that may be often seen around the millionaire’s dinner table, and we may gain a good lesson of the vanity of riches.”
And, we may add, of the vulgarity of those who advertise their wealth by ostentation, as well as of those who honour Purses more than Principles.