Chapter VII
The deceptive process of the growth of riches—The relaxation of effort—The love of ease—The power of convention—The disadvantages of abundance—Surfeit—Difficulties in a rich man’s life—Waste of talent and capacity—England as a nation deeply infected with the belief in money.
There is no more misleading and deceptive process than the gradual growth of riches. As a man’s income increases, fresh obligations arise which have all the appearance of necessities, and in satisfying these a still further crop springs up, demands his attention, and occupies more of his time. Little by little his standard changes; stage by stage, almost imperceptibly, what he once regarded as a pure luxury becomes to him an imperative necessity, and all unconscious, he spends his energy in the struggle to keep himself on a level with those among whom he desires to be classed.
This is all very well with people whose means range above the limit, but when we reach those who are on the border line, when we come to the ranks of those whose existence is overshadowed by the constant and wearing anxiety as to whether their small incomes will go far enough, there is an element of profound tragedy in their efforts to keep up appearances and to maintain an outward show of having money while necessities, unseen but very pressing, are sacrificed—the service of doctors and nurses in illness very likely denied, and all the small accessories that go to make life in the home pleasanter cut off. We are not aware of the large number of people thus situated, because their brave attempts to delude us are often successful. Those we know of have perhaps seen better days, being through no fault of their own thrown into penury, and they may be making pathetic and painful endeavours to keep up a show not, indeed, of affluence, but, anyhow, of respectability. As a writer[15] recently said with great truth: “There is little sympathy felt in the world of rhetoric for the silent sufferings of the genteel poor, yet there is no class that deserves a more charitable commiseration.” Their incomes may not be in themselves excessively small, but the expense of conforming to the various little conventions to which they have been accustomed and the strain of trying to keep up to a level slightly above their natural standard eat away too much of their meagre store. Their gentility has softened them, or their middle-class respectability prevents them from openly ranking themselves among the poor. They know, too, that a change in circumstances may deprive them of their former “friends.”
The miseries of debt and bankruptcy may often be the outcome of an extravagant or profligate disposition, and need not be directly connected with an excess or deficiency of means. But this solicitude to obey the rigid, conventional, and universally accepted measure for classing the community according to their incomes, this horror of dropping in the scale, is responsible for much suffering and secret despair, especially among women who have not been trained to work and find themselves turned adrift on the world with a bare pittance.
Higher in the scale, where there is an ample competence, the amount spent on appearances is frequently unreasonably excessive. The craving to associate with people who are richer and the fear of being thought badly off, knowing that that is the equivalent of becoming socially a pariah, produces a serious deficiency in the more important needs of life, bitterness at the hardness of fate, stinting, useless saving, and sometimes eventual impoverishment and ruin.
But without having actually to face catastrophe, these people, simply by the injudicious and ill-managed administration of what they have got, cannot live the full and decent lives their circumstances allow them. This is true of a very large well-to-do class who cry out for more money while they are spending too large a portion of what they have in things which, for them, are unnecessary extravagances, but which they cling to as indispensable.
They are probably slackening their exertions in directions where they would be all the better for a little extra stimulant in the shape of trouble and effort. The constant easy satisfaction of their small requirements has an enervating and weakening effect on their character, and there is neither charm nor adventure in their lives, for there is a point when satisfaction almost suffocates. Human nature is so constituted that energy increases in proportion as it is used. The more a man has to do, the more he wants to do, the more he can do. All kinds of insignificant little daily efforts keep the machine perpetually in motion and in order, ready and alert for more work, and the spirit of disinclination is shut out. Relax those efforts, augment sensuous comforts, and the machine will require starting and restarting, with a continual extra spurt and additional exertion. The spirit of disinclination insinuates itself, and indolence and apathy creep in. It has been shown in the animal world that the spoilt and carefully combed and washed pet is far less intelligent than the animal who has to look after himself, scratch his own fleas, and lick the dirt off his paws. We are under the impression that if we can get rid of the various irritations of daily life, which are our fleas, the time spent in scratching will be devoted to work of a higher order more in conformity with our powers. But, given the time, somehow we do not manage to do the extra work. The ambition of every man who acquires more money is not to increase the field of personal activity, but, on the contrary, to restrict it. The natural tendency is towards ease rather than action. But as soon as men find out that ease begets indifference and indolence amounting to atrophy, and leading at last to a cessation of the ordinary powers of enjoyment, and that action is a spur to the faculties, making them more alive, more sensitive, and more susceptible to enthusiasm and appreciation, they will be on their guard against the snares and wiles that beset the path of everyone who makes a special business of smoothing away all the roughness in his domestic and social surroundings.
Spending money to save oneself trouble often produces trouble and worry of a different and very likely more vexatious kind, and at the same time reduces by that much the good effects on the character produced by a certain amount of bracing discipline and general tightening of the reins of conduct. Precisely in the same way as reducing hygienic or physical exercise diminishes muscular efficiency. The recurring sense of accomplishment, however trivial and apparently insignificant that accomplishment may be, is invigorating to the nature and of enduring value. As Carlyle says in one of his letters to his future wife: “Let us not despond in the life of honourable toil which lies before us. Do you not think that when you on one side of our household shall have faithfully gone through your housewife’s duties, and I on the other shall have written my allotted pages, we shall meet over our frugal meal with far happier and prouder hearts than thousands that are not blessed with any duty and whose agony is the bitterest of all, ‘the agony of a too easy bed’?”