Human Intercourse

by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

The superiority given by title depends on the intensity of title-worship amongst the public. In England that religion is in a very healthy and flourishing state, so that titles are very valuable there; in France the sense of a social hierarchy is so much weakened that titles are of infinitely less value. False ones are assumed and borne with impunity on account of the general indifference, whilst true and authentic titles are often dropped as an encumbrance. The blundering ignorance of the French about our titles, which so astonishes Englishmen, is due to a carelessness about the whole subject that no inhabitant of the British Islands can imagine.[8] In those islands title is of very great importance because the people have such a strong consciousness of its existence. In England, if there is a lord in the room every body is aware of it.

Superiority of family, without title, is merely local; it is not understood far from the ancestral home. Superiority of title is national; it is imperfectly appreciated in foreign countries. But superiority of wealth has the immense advantage over these that it is respected everywhere and can display itself everywhere with the utmost ostentation under pretext of custom and pleasure. It commands the homage of foolish and frivolous people by possibilities of vain display, and at the same time it appears desirable to the wise because it makes the gathering of experience easy and human intercourse convenient.

The rich man has access to an immense range of varied situations; and if he has energy to profit by this facility and put himself in those situations where he may learn the most, he may become far more experienced at thirty-five than a poor man can be at seventy. A poor man has a taste for boating, so he builds a little boat with his own hands, and paints it green and white, with its name, the “Cock-Robin,” in yellow. Meanwhile his good wife, in spite of all the work she has to do, has a kindly indulgence for her poor Tom’s hobby, thinks he deserves a little amusement, and stitches the sail for him in the evenings. He sails five or six miles up and down the river. Sir Thomas Brassey has exactly the same tastes: he builds the “Sunbeam;” and whilst the “Cock-Robin” has been doing its little trips, the “Sunbeam” has gone round the world; and instead of stitching the sails, the kind wife has accompanied the mariner, and written the story of his voyage. If after that you talk with the owners of the two vessels you may be interested for a few minutes—deeply interested and touched if you have the divine gift of sympathy—with the poor man’s account of his doings; but his experience is small and soon told, whilst the owner of the “Sunbeam” has traversed all the oceans and could tell you a thousand things. So it naturally follows in most cases, though the rule has exceptions, that rich men are more interesting people to know than poor men of equal ability.

I remember being forcibly reminded of the narrow experience of the poor on one of those occasions that often happen to those who live in the country and know their poorer neighbors. A friend of mine, with his children, had come to stay with me; and there was a poor woman, living in a very out-of-the-way hamlet on a hill, who had made me promise that I would take my friend and his children to see her, because she had known their mother, who was dead, and had felt for her one of those strong and constant affections that often dwell in humble and faithful hearts. We have a great respect for this poor woman, who is in all ways a thoroughly dutiful person, and she has borne severe trials with great patience. Well, she was delighted to see my friend and his children, delighted to see how well they looked, how much they had grown, and so on; and then she spoke of her own little ones, and showed us the books they were learning in, and described their dispositions, and said that her husband was in full work and went every day to the schist mine, and was much steadier than he used to be, and made her much happier. After that she began again, saying exactly the same things all over again, and she said them a third time, and a fourth time. When we had left, we noticed this repetition, and we agreed that the poor woman, instead of being deficient in intelligence, was naturally above the average, but that the extreme narrowness of her experience, the total want of variety in her life, made it impossible for her mind to get out of that little domestic groove. She had about half-a-dozen ideas, and she lived in them, as a person in a small house lives in a very few rooms.

Now, however much esteem, respect, and affection you may have for a person of that kind, you will find it impossible to enjoy such society because conversation has no aliment. This is the one great reason why cultivated people seem to avoid the poor, even when they do not despise them in the least.

The greater experience of the rich is united to an incomparably greater power of pleasant reception, because in their homes conversation is not interfered with by the multitude of petty domestic difficulties and inconveniences. I go to spend the day with a very poor friend, and this is what is likely to happen. He and I can only talk without interruption when we are out of the house. Inside it his children break in upon us constantly. His wife finds me in the way, and wishes I had not come, because she has not been able to provide things exactly as she desired. At dinner her mind is not in the conversation; she is really occupied with petty household cares. I, on my part, have the uncomfortable feeling that I am creating inconvenience; and it requires incessant attention to soothe the watchful sensitiveness of a hostess who is so painfully alive to the deficiencies of her small establishment. If I have a robust appetite, it is well; but woe to me if my appetite is small, and I must overeat to prove that the cookery is good! If I accept a bed the sacrifice of a room will cause crowding elsewhere, besides which I shall be a nuisance in the early morning hours when nothing in the ménage is fit for the public eye. Whilst creating all this inconvenience to others, I suffer the great one of being stopped in my usual pursuits. If I want a few quiet hours for reading and writing there is only one way: I must go privately to some hotel and hire a sitting-room for myself.

Now consider the difference when I go to visit a rich friend! The first delightful feeling is that I do not occasion the very slightest inconvenience. His arrangements for the reception of guests are permanent and perfect. My arrival will scarcely cost his wife a thought; she has simply given orders in the morning for a room to be got ready and a cover to be laid at table. Her mind is free to think about any subject that suggests itself. Her conversation, from long practice, is as easy as the style of a good writer. All causes of interruption are carefully kept in the background. The household details are attended to by a regiment of domestics under their own officers. The children are in rooms of their own with their governesses and servants, and we see just enough of them to be agreeable. If I desire privacy, nothing is more easily obtained. On the slightest hint a room is placed at my disposal. I remember one house where that room used to be a splendid library, full of the books which at that time I most wanted to consult; and the only interruption in the mornings was the noiseless entrance of the dear lady of the house, always at eleven o’clock precisely, with a glass of wine and a biscuit on a little silver tray. It is not the material luxury of rich men’s houses that a wise man would desire; but he must thoroughly appreciate their convenience and the varied food for the mind that they afford,—the books, the pictures, the curiosities. In one there is a museum of antiquities that a large town might envy, in another a collection of drawings, in a third a magnificent armory. In one private house in Paris[9] there used to be fourteen noble saloons containing the arts of two hundred years. You go to stay in ten rich houses and find them all different; you enjoy the difference, and in a certain sense you possess the different things. The houses of the poor are all alike, or if they differ it is not by variety of artistic or intellectual interest. By the habit of staying in each other’s houses the rich multiply their riches to infinity. In a certain way of their own (it is not exactly the way of the early Christians) they have their goods in common.

There are, no doubt, many guests in the houses of the rich who care little for the people they visit, but much for the variety and accommodation,—guests who visit the place rather than the owner; guests who enjoy the cookery, the wines, the shooting, and who would go to the house if the owner were changed, exactly as they continue to patronize some pleasantly situated and well-managed hotel, after a change of masters. I hardly know how to describe these people in a word, but it is easy to characterize their entertainers. They are unpaid innkeepers.

There are also people, apparently hospitable, who care little for the persons they invite,—so very little, indeed, that we do not easily discover what motive they have for inviting them. The answer may be that they dislike solitude so much that any guest is acceptable, or else that they want admirers for the beautiful arrangements and furniture of their houses; for what is the use of having beautiful things if there is nobody to appreciate them? Hosts of this class are amateur exhibitors, or they are like amateur actors who want an audience, and who will invite people to come and listen, not because they care for the people, but because it is discouraging to play to empty benches.

These two classes of guests and hosts cannot exist without riches. The desire to be entertained ceases at once when it is known that the entertainment will be of a poor quality; and the desire to exhibit the internal arrangements of our houses ceases when we are too poor to do justice to the refinement of our taste.