If this need is lively and profound in the minds of the people, how much stronger must it be in the richer classes, those with great resources at their disposal! A man who possesses ten millions and another who possesses one hundred cannot eat ten and a hundred times as much respectively as the modest lord of only one million, live in a house ten or a hundred times as vast, or buy himself ten or a hundred hats where the other buys only one. If they used their wealth in that way, they would be considered mad, and with good reason. They must then strive to procure for themselves, with their superior wealth, things of superior beauty or quality, to translate their wealth into beauty and merit, quantity into quality. There are, it is true, men who desire wealth only for the pleasure of creating it, and who are indifferent to the other pleasures which it brings. At no time, perhaps, were these men so numerous as at present among the great bankers, merchants, and manufacturers who now rule the economic destinies of the modern world. But even to-day, these men, who love money as the artist loves his art, in itself and not for the pleasures which it can give, are in a minority. And so they will always be, because even if—impossible hypothesis—anybody in the upper classes developed such a fervid enthusiasm for banking, industry, and commerce, as to arrive at considering wealth only as an end in itself, a means of displaying his own ability, there would still be the women. Unless it be wished that even in the wealthy classes, women should engage in business and work, women will be bound always to consider wealth as an instrument for the advancement of life, procuring for its possessor joys more select and articles of superior quality.
In fact, this and no other is the origin of snobbery. Snobbery is, I know, an obvious target for sarcasm at the present day. And it is easy to laugh at the nouveau riche who is determined at all costs, even at the price of sacrifice and snubs, to frequent houses and circles which formerly were closed to him; who is glad to go for trips in a motor-car, even if they cause him suffering, or to go to the opera even if he falls asleep there, because he thinks that by doing so, he is living up to the standard of the highest elegance. But if he were not under this delusion, what would be the use of his wealth to him? What compensation would he have for the fatigues and perils he had incurred in its acquisition? Snobbery is simply an effort to translate quantity into quality to which man is impelled by the very increase of wealth. There never was so much snobbery as there is at the present time, because there never was so much wealth.
Without a doubt, modern snobbery is full of grotesque deceptions. The world never contained so many nouveaux riches, unprepared to enjoy the real refinements of life, and destined to be the victims of every sort of fraud. How often and in how many instances do we not see the tragi-comedy of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Molière’s immortal comedy, acted over again at the present day? But one can also find, in America perhaps more abundantly than in Europe, families whose wealth dates back several generations, in which families the mania for the accumulation of riches has died down, and which have time, inclination, and culture enough to employ their wealth on behalf of the most lofty activities of the mind. These are the American families who ransack Europe for works of art, who found schools and museums, who give work to architects, painters, and sculptors, who directly or indirectly stimulate an ever-increasing number of the rising generation not to concentrate on the making of money, but to devote themselves to those intellectual labours of which, till a short while ago, Europe had the monopoly. And it is the existence of this portion of American society and its tendencies that entitle us to say that America is being Europeanised.
Europe, then, wishing to live a larger life, after centuries of penury and stint, is becoming Americanised, and is sacrificing a part of her splendid traditions of lofty culture to her desire to learn from America the art of producing new wealth rapidly. America, on the other hand, having accumulated immense wealth by the intensive exploitation of her territory, is becoming Europeanised; she is turning, that is to say, to the arts, sciences, and most lofty forms of higher culture, to perfect which Europe has laboured for centuries. Yet at this point I think I hear the reader cry:
“Is not this all to the good? Does it not establish a marvellous balance between the two worlds? Does it not prove that our civilisation is the richest, most powerful, best balanced, and most perfect which has ever existed? Ought Europe to have gone on living for ever in misery, intent only on the perfecting of culture, and America to have had never a thought for anything but the multiplication of wealth?”
To be sure, if this exchange of wealth and culture between the two continents could be effected as well and easily as it can be described, our epoch would be in very truth an epoch of fabulous felicity. We might claim to be, in comparison with preceding generations, a generation of supermen. Unfortunately, the difficulties are greater than they seem at first sight to be. What they are will be seen in the next chapter; we shall then see that it has become much easier to produce new wealth than to employ it in the creation of a lofty and refined civilisation; and that this is the secret torment which afflicts Europe and America.
IV
THE LOST PARADISE OF BEAUTY
The bewildering growth in the wealth of America has affected in many different ways the whole world. Economists are studying its effects with much zeal. One, and not the least curious, of them, is the rise in the value of antiques. From Etruscan ceramics to French furniture of the eighteenth century, from Greek statues to Italian pictures of every epoch, from Tanagra statuettes to the lace, embroideries, tapestries, manuscripts, glass, and filigree from every part of the world, all the artistic furniture of Europe, Asia, and Africa which has survived the ravages of time has trebled and quadrupled its value. Few financial speculations proved more successful in Europe than the collection about fifty years ago of antiques.
Many instances could be quoted to prove this. Everybody, even in America, I suppose, has heard recently of the great Paris tailor who set to work thirty years ago to collect statues, pictures, and French objets d’art of the eighteenth century. He spent about three millions on his collection; and he put it up for auction last year and cleared fourteen millions! An occurrence which made less noise, because it was on a smaller scale, but analogous to the foregoing, is the following: A journalist, a man of taste and a great admirer of beautiful antiques, came to Rome. Everybody called him a maniac, because, though he had a family, he spent all his savings in buying from the small antique dealers and in the Campo di Fiori lamps, books, stuffs, and every other bit of antique he could lay hands on. Well, he died ten years ago, and left his family nothing but a houseful of fine antiques. The family, which did not share his mania, sold them, and realised a fortune, the income of which was, and is, enough to support them in comfort. If the journalist had been discreet and had invested his savings in shares and bonds, probably his family would now be living in a very much humbler way.