What an admirable manager of money was Mrs Carlyle! ‘There was,’ writes Mr Froude, ‘a discussion some years ago in the newspapers whether two people with the habits of a lady and a gentleman could live together in London on three hundred pounds a year. Mrs Carlyle, who often laughed about it while it was going on, will answer the question. No one who visited the Carlyles could tell whether they were poor or rich. There were no signs of extravagance, but also none of poverty. The drawing-room arrangements were exceptionally elegant. The furniture was simple, but solid and handsome; everything was scrupulously clean; everything good of its kind; and there was an air of ease, as of a household living within its means. Mrs Carlyle was well dressed always. Her admirable taste would make the most of inexpensive materials; but the materials themselves were of the very best. Carlyle himself generally kept a horse. They travelled, they visited, they were always generous and open-handed.’ All this was done on an income of not quite four hundred pounds. Of course Carlyle, as well as his wife, was imbued with Scotch thrift, showing itself in hatred of waste. If he saw a crust of bread on the roadway, he would stop to pick it up, and put it on a step or a railing. ‘Some poor creature might be glad of it, or at worst a dog or a sparrow. To destroy wholesome food is a sin.’
The thrifty wife of Benjamin Franklin felt it a gala day indeed when, by long accumulated small savings, she was able to surprise her husband one morning with a china cup and a silver spoon from which to take his breakfast. Franklin was shocked. ‘You see how luxury creeps into families in spite of principles,’ he said. When his meal was over, he went to the store and rolled home a wheelbarrow full of papers through the streets with his own hands, lest folk should get wind of the china cup and say he was above his business.
It is a great blessing to have been trained hardily. Those who have few wants are rich. Hundreds of middle-class people are heavily handicapped in the race of life because they find it hard to do without luxuries which they can ill afford to buy, but which they would never have missed if they had not been accustomed to them in childhood. This must become every year more apparent, because the classes that have hitherto had the monopoly of education have now to compete with the working-classes trained to privation for generations.
But although the creeping-in of luxury should be guarded against at the commencement of married life, people should learn how to grow rich gracefully. It is no part of wisdom to depreciate the little elegances and social enjoyment of our homes. These things refine manners and enlarge the heart. A gentleman told Dr Johnson that he had bought a suit of lace for his wife. The Doctor said: ‘Well, sir, you have done a good thing and a wise thing.’ ‘I have done a good thing,’ said the gentleman; ‘but I do not know that I have done a wise thing.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ continued the Doctor; ‘no money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people; and a wife is pleased that she is so dressed.’
We should be particular about money, but not penurious. The mistress of a well-ordered house takes broad and liberal views of things, and while cutting her coat according to her cloth, and as much as possible shielding her husband from the constant demand for money, which few masculine tempers can stand, she refrains from the wearying, petty economies which often enough are not worth the trouble and discomfort they entail. Economy is altogether different from penuriousness; for it is economy that can always best afford to be generous. Those who are careless about personal expenditure are often driven in the end to do very shabby things. Burns tells us that, ‘for the glorious privilege of being independent,’ we should ‘gather gear by every wile that’s justified by honour.’
‘Do not accustom yourself,’ said Dr Johnson, ‘to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.’ Only the other day the writer was speaking to an officer in the army who was so far from considering the debt which he owed to his tailor as either an inconvenience or a calamity, that he seemed to be quite proud of it. ‘My tailor,’ said he, ‘never duns me for the money. When I have a pound or two which I don’t want, I send it to him, just as other people put it in a bank.’ It was no use telling him that five or ten per cent. on the amount of his bill was being charged every year, and that on a day when he least expected it, payment would be demanded. Had this officer never heard of the General Order which was issued by Sir Charles Napier, in taking leave of his command in India? Sir Charles strongly urged in that famous document that ‘honesty is inseparable from the character of a thorough-bred gentleman;’ and that ‘to drink unpaid-for champagne and unpaid-for beer, and to ride unpaid-for horses, is to be a cheat, and not a gentleman.’
Men who lived beyond their means might be officers by virtue of their commissions, but they were not gentlemen. The habit of being constantly in debt, the general held, made men grow callous to the proper feelings of a gentleman. It was not enough that an officer should be able to fight; that, any bulldog could do. But did he hold his word inviolate? Did he pay his debts? He should be as ready to utter his valiant ‘No,’ or ‘I can’t afford it,’ to the invitations of pleasure and self-enjoyment, as to mount a breach amidst belching fire and the iron hail of machine-guns.
The Duke of Wellington kept an accurate detailed account of all the moneys received and expended by him. ‘I make a point,’ said he, ‘of paying my own bills, and I advise every one to do the same. Formerly, I used to trust a confidential servant to pay them; but I was cured of that folly by receiving one morning, to my great surprise, duns of a year or two’s standing. The fellow had speculated with my money and left my bills unpaid.’ Talking of debt, his remark was: ‘It makes a slave of a man. I have often known what it was to be in want of money, but I never got into debt.’ Washington was as particular as Wellington in matters of business detail, and he did not disdain to scrutinise the smallest outgoings of his household—determined as he was to live honestly within his means—even while holding the high office of President of the American Union.
To provide for others and for our own comfort and independence in old age, is honourable, and greatly to be commended; but to hoard for mere wealth’s sake is the characteristic of the narrow-souled and the miserly. ‘We must carry money in the head, not in the heart;’ that is to say, we must not make an idol of it, but regard it as a useful agent.
Some of the finest qualities of human nature are intimately related to the right use of money, such as generosity, honesty, justice, and self-sacrifice, as well as the practical virtues of economy and providence. On the other hand, there are their counterparts of avarice, fraud, injustice, and selfishness, as displayed by the inordinate lovers of gain; and the vices of thriftlessness, extravagance, and improvidence, on the part of those who misuse and abuse the means intrusted to them. ‘So that,’ as it has been well said, ‘a right measure and manner in getting, saving, spending, giving, taking, lending, borrowing, and bequeathing, would almost argue a perfect man.’