Uses of the Unsuccessful.
The influence of ancient philosophies, and also that of Christianity (so far as it has been taken seriously), have both been hostile to money-making; but the influence of all visible realities is so constantly in its favour that the word “success” in the middle classes both of France and England means money and nothing else. The phrases “Il a réussi, il est arrivé,” and the expressions “He has done well, he has risen in the world,” do not mean that one has attained any ideal excellence, but simply that he has netted money, and in certain classes a man is considered a poor creature if he has not realised a fortune. This view of success has led, especially in France, to increased gambling in all kinds of speculations, because there is hardly any kind of real work that a man or woman can do which brings in more than a pittance. The increased cost of living, both in necessary expenditure and in the useless expenditure that is imposed by the foolish customs of society, has made the payment for honest work seem even smaller than it really is. The desire for a little money is an incentive to work; the desire for much is an incentive to speculation, except in the few cases where there is capital enough for one to become a leader of industry on a large scale. The same cause has led to the success of lotteries in France, and it is this spirit which of late years has so much increased the amount of private gambling. These tendencies are not likely to diminish, since professional incomes, instead of increasing, have gone down as a result of competition. Physicians tell me that the facilities of cheap general and professional education are now overcrowding their professions by an immense influx of young men who settle anywhere, as birds do where they are likely to find food. An old physician who formerly had a good rural practice in a part of the country very little known, told me that he was now surrounded by active young doctors in the adjacent parishes, and saw his income reduced to £160 a year. Yes, that is about the figure to which competition is bringing down the gains in the liberal professions. The fine arts, both in England and France, offer a few very valuable prizes; and as a few artists live very luxuriously and with considerable ostentation in their showy houses, they give a false idea of the prosperity of their profession. As a matter of fact, the majority of artists form a peculiarly and especially anxious class, whose gains are so precarious that next year’s income is like the hope of a prize in a lottery. Nothing is more curious in the history of the nineteenth century than the prodigious increase in the number of artists both in England and France. A well-known French painter told me there were twenty thousand of his profession in Paris, working, of course, chiefly for exportation, as France produces painting to sell rather than to keep. The number of sculptors, though not nearly so great, is even more remarkable, because sculpture is so little bought. An English academician has an interesting theory about the intentions of Nature with regard to the fine arts; he says that pictures are produced now as coal was in prehistoric times, to serve long afterwards for fuel. Seriously, it appears that Nature follows in this matter her usual principle of “a thousand seeds for one to bear.” She produces a thousand workmen in the fine arts that there may be found amongst them a single artist of genius whose work is truly precious to the world. In France the great number of semi-artists has had the effect of infusing an artistic element into several of the handicrafts, and of disseminating artistic ideas, chiefly amongst the population of Paris. Artists who have failed as makers of pictures or statues fall back upon decorative painting or sculpture, upon designing for manufactures, and upon teaching elementary drawing in public schools. Painters often have recourse to another of the graphic arts when painting fails. There is hardly one of the French etchers who has not desired to be a painter.
Small Worldly Success of the French Clergy.
Presents given to Priests.
French Canons.
Prelates.
Poverty of the Catholic Priesthood.
Importance of the Pope.
From the point of view which regards worldly success, and which we are considering for the present, the French clergy is very inferior to the English. The highest pay of a parish priest is sixty pounds a year, the lowest thirty-six. There are some extras for wedding and funeral fees. There is also a priest’s house, and these dwellings have been much improved of late. When the parishioners are rich and generous the priest receives many presents of eatables, and in some parishes his cellar is kept well supplied with wine; but when the population is stingy he has to live strictly on his income, or even on less if he is of a charitable disposition. In towns, a favourite priest is often embarrassed with gifts for the comfort and elegance of his rooms; in rural parishes his rooms are likely to be bare. Each priest keeps one woman servant, usually plain, and, of course, invariably of mature age—his “rancid virgin,” as one curé wittily called her. It has always been an insoluble problem for me how the two manage to live so decently on so little money. A canon has sixty pounds a year, a bishop four hundred, and an archbishop six hundred, but in the case of prelates there is the casuel (different fees), which may increase their means considerably. In England the lowest ecclesiastical incomes are twice what they are in France, and the highest more than ten times as much. There are no prizes in the French Catholic Church answering to the richer English livings; even a bishopric (from the pecuniary point of view) is not so good as many an English rectory. We hear of the wealth and splendour of the Church; she is, no doubt, magnificent in display, but her priests are poor officials, and their celibacy is not a matter of choice but of necessity, which (from a sense of prudence) has been converted into a rule. It is only after fully realising the poverty of the Catholic priesthood that we can estimate the overwhelming importance of the Pope with his unlimited command of money. The difference between him and his prelates is not at all that between an English king and his great nobles, but rather that between the Emperor Napoleon and ordinary regimental officers, whilst the priests are relatively in the position of private soldiers and no more.
Ecclesiastical Incomes in England.