Thrift Part 20

It is easy to understand how the partners in the Loan Club made money.

Suppose that they advanced ten pounds for three months at five per cent.

It is repayable in weekly instalments at ten shillings a week,--the repayments commencing the very first week after the advance has been made. But though ten shillings are repaid weekly until the debt is wiped off, interest at five per cent, is charged upon the whole amount until the last instalment is paid off. So that, though the nominal interest is five per cent., it goes on increasing until, during the last week, it reaches the enormous rate of one hundred per cent.! This is what is called "eating the calf in the cow's belly."

Men of genius are equally facile in running into debt. Genius has no necessary connection with prudence or self-restraint, nor does it exercise any influence over the common rules of arithmetic, which are rigid and inflexible. Men of genius are often superior to what Bacon calls "the wisdom of business." Yet Bacon himself did not follow his own advice, but was ruined by his improvidence. He was in straits and difficulties when a youth, and in still greater straits and difficulties when a man. His life was splendid; but his excessive expenditure involved him in debts which created a perpetual craving for money. One day, in pa.s.sing out to his antechambers, where his followers waited for his appearance, he said, "Be seated, my masters; your rise has been my fall." To supply his wants, Bacon took bribes, and was thereupon beset by his enemies, convicted, degraded, and ruined.

Even men with a special genius for finance on a grand scale, may completely break down in the management of their own private affairs.

Pitt managed the national finances during a period of unexampled difficulty, yet was himself always plunged in debt. Lord Carrington, the ex-banker, once or twice, at Mr. Pitt's request, examined his household accounts, and found the quant.i.ty of butcher's meat charged in the bills was one hundredweight a week. The charge for servants' wages, board wages, living, and household bills, exceeded 2,300 a year. At Pitt's death, the nation voted 40,000 to satisfy the demands of his creditors; yet his income had never been less than 6,000 a year; and at one time, with the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports, it was nearly 4,000 a year more. Macaulay truly says that "the character of Pitt would have stood higher if, with the disinterestedness of Pericles and De Witt, he had united their dignified frugality."

But Pitt by no means stood alone. Lord Melville was as unthrifty in the management of his own affairs, as he was of the money of the public. Fox was an enormous ower, his financial maxim being that a man need never want money if he was willing to pay enough for it. Fox called the outer room at Almack's, where he borrowed on occasions from Jew lenders at exorbitant premiums, his "Jerusalem Chamber." Pa.s.sion for play was his great vice, and at a very early age it involved him in debt to an enormous amount. It is stated by Gibbon that on one occasion Fox sat playing at hazard for twenty hours in succession, losing 11,000. But deep play was the vice of high life in those days, and cheating was not unknown. Selwyn, alluding to Fox's losses at play, called him Charles the Martyr.

Sheridan was the hero of debt. He lived on it. Though he received large sums of money in one way or another, no one knew what became of it, for he paid n.o.body. It seemed to melt away in his hands like snow in summer.

He spent his first wife's fortune of 1,600 in a six weeks' jaunt to Bath. Necessity drove him to literature, and perhaps to the stimulus of poverty we owe "The Rivals," and the dramas which succeeded it. With his second wife he obtained a fortune of 5,000, and with 15,000 which he realized by the sale of Drury Lane shares, he bought an estate in Surrey, from which he was driven by debt and duns. The remainder of his life was a series of shifts, sometimes brilliant, but oftener degrading, to raise money and evade creditors. Taylor, of the Opera-house, used to say that if he took off his hat to Sheridan in the street, it would cost him fifty pounds; but if he stopped to speak to him, it would cost a hundred.

One of Sheridan's creditors came for his money on horseback." That is a nice mare," said Sheridan. "Do you think so?" "Yes, indeed;--how does she trot?" The creditor, flattered, told him he should see, and immediately put the mare at full trotting pace, on which Sheridan took the opportunity of trotting round the nearest corner. His duns would come in numbers each morning, to catch him before he went out. They were shown into the rooms on each side of the entrance hall. When Sheridan had breakfasted, he would come down, and ask, "Are those doors all shut, John?" and on being a.s.sured that they were, he marched out deliberately between them.

He was in debt all round--to his milkman, his grocer, his baker, and his butcher. Sometimes Mrs. Sheridan would be kept waiting for an hour or more while the servants were beating up the neighbourhood for coffee, b.u.t.ter, eggs, and rolls. While Sheridan was Paymaster of the Navy, a butcher one day brought a leg of mutton to the kitchen. The cook took it and clapped it in the pot to boil, and went upstairs for the money; but not returning, the butcher coolly removed the pot lid, took out the mutton, and walked away with it in his tray.[1] Yet, while living in these straits, Sheridan, when invited with his son into the country, usually went in two chaises and four--he in one, and his son Tom following in the other.

[Footnote 1: Haydon--_Autobiography_, vol. ii., p. 104.]

The end of all was very sad. For some weeks before his death he was nearly dest.i.tute of the means of subsistence. His n.o.ble and royal friends had entirely deserted him. Executions for debt were in his house, and he pa.s.sed his last days in the custody of sheriffs' officers, who abstained from conveying him to prison merely because they were a.s.sured that to remove him would cause his immediate death.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Memoirs of the Life of Sir S. Romilly,_ vol. iii., p.

262.]

The Cardinal de Retz sold off everything to pay his debts, but he did not recover his liberty. He described the perpetual anguish of the debtor. He even preferred confinement in the Castle of Vincennes, to being exposed to the annoyances of his creditors. Mirabeau's life was one of perpetual debt; for he was a dreadful spendthrift. The only mode by which his father could keep him out of sc.r.a.pes, was by obtaining a _lettre de cachet,_ and having him-safely imprisoned. Though Mirabeau wielded the powers of the State, when he died he was so poor, or had been so extravagant, that he was still indebted to the tailor for his wedding suit.

Lamartine ran through half-a-dozen fortunes, and at the end of his life was "sending round the hat." Lamartine boldly proclaimed that he hated arithmetic, "that negative of every n.o.ble thought." He was accordingly driven to very shabby shifts to live. The _Cours de Litterature_ alone brought him in 200,000 francs a year, yet 'the money ran through his hands like quicksilver. His debts are said to have amounted to three millions of francs; yet his style of living remained unchanged. One of his enthusiastic admirers, having stinted himself in subscribing towards the repurchase of the Lamartine estates, went into a fishmonger's one day to purchase a piece of turbot. It was too dear for his means. A distinguished-looking personage entered, paused for a moment before the turbot, and without questioning the price, ordered the fish to be sent to his house. It was M. de Lamartine.

Webster, the American statesman, was afflicted with impecuniosity, arising from his carelessness about money matters, as well as from his extravagance. If we are to believe Theodore Parker, Webster, like Bacon, took bribes. "He contracted debts and did not settle, borrowed and yielded not again. Private money sometimes clove to his hands.... A senator of the United States, he was pensioned by the manufacturers of Boston. His later speeches smell of bribes." Monroe and Jefferson were always in want of money, and often in debt; though they were both honest men.

The life which public men lead nowadays, is often an incentive to excessive expenditure. They may be men of moderate means; they may even be poor; but not many of them moving in general society have the moral courage to _seem_ to be so. To maintain their social position, they think it necessary to live as others do. They are thus drawn into the vortex of debt, and into all the troubles, annoyances, shabby shifts, and dishonesties, which debt involves.

Men of science are for the most part exempt from the necessity of shining in society; and hence they furnish but a small number of instances of ill.u.s.trious debtors. Many of them have been poor, but they have usually lived within their means. Kepler's life was indeed a struggle with poverty and debt; arising princ.i.p.ally from the circ.u.mstance of his salary, as princ.i.p.al mathematician to the Emperor of Germany, having been always in arrear. This drove him to casting nativities in order to earn a living. "I pa.s.s my time," he once wrote, "in begging at the doors of crown treasurers." At his death he left only twenty-two crowns, the dress he wore, two shirts, a few books, and many ma.n.u.scripts. Leibnitz left behind him a large amount of debt; but this may have been caused by the fact that he was a politician as well as a philosopher, and had frequent occasion to visit foreign courts, and to mix on equal terms with the society of the great.

Spinoza was poor in means; yet inasmuch as what he earned by polishing gla.s.ses for the opticians was enough to supply his wants, he incurred no debts. He refused a professorship, and refused a pension, preferring to live and die independent. Dalton had a philosophical disregard for money. When his fellow-townsmen at Manchester once proposed to provide him with an independence, that he might devote the rest of his life to scientific investigation, he declined the offer, saying that "teaching was a kind of recreation to him, and that if richer he would probably not spend more time in his investigations than he was accustomed to do."

Faraday's was another instance of moderate means and n.o.ble independence.

Lagrange was accustomed to attribute his fame and happiness to the poverty of his father, the astronomer royal of Turin. "Had I been rich,"

he said, "probably I should not have become a mathematician."

The greatest debtor connected with science was John Hunter, who expended all his available means--and they were wholly earned by himself--in acc.u.mulating the splendid collection now known as the Hunterian Museum.

All that he could collect in fees went to purchase new objects for preparation and dissection, or upon carpenters' and bricklayers' work for the erection of his gallery. Though his family were left in straitened circ.u.mstances at his death, the sale of the collection to the nation for 15,000 enabled all his debts to be paid, and at the same time left an enduring monument to his fame.

Great artists have nearly all struggled into celebrity through poverty, and some have never entirely emerged from it. This, however, has been mainly because of their improvidence. Jan Steen was always in distress, arising princ.i.p.ally from the habit he had acquired of drinking his own beer; for he was first a brewer, and afterwards a tavern-keeper. He drank and painted alternately, sometimes transferring the drinking scenes of which he had been a witness to the canvas, even while himself in a state of intoxication. He died in debt, after which his pictures rose in value, until now they are worth their weight in gold.

Notwithstanding the large income of Vandyck, his style of living was so splendid and costly as to involve him in heavy debt. To repair his fortunes, he studied alchemy for a time, in the hope of discovering the philosopher's stone. But towards the end of his life he was enabled to retrieve his position, and to leave a comfortable competency to his widow. Rembrandt, on the other hand, involved himself in debt through his love of art. He was an insatiable collector of drawings, armour, and articles of _vertu_, and thus became involved in such difficulties that he was declared a bankrupt. His property remained under legal control for thirteen years, until his death.

The great Italian artists were for the most part temperate and moderate men, and lived within their means. Haydon, in his Autobiography, says, "Rafaelle, Michael Angelo, Zeuxis, Apelles, Rubens, Reynolds, t.i.tian, were rich and happy. Why? Because with their genius they combined practical prudence." Haydon himself was an instance of the contrary practice. His life was a prolonged struggle with difficulty and debt. He was no sooner free from one obligation, than he was involved in another.

His "Mock Election" was painted in the King's Bench prison, while he lay there for debt. There is a strange entry in his Journal: "I borrowed 10 to-day of my b.u.t.terman, Webb, an old pupil of mine, recommended to me by Sir George Beaumont twenty-four years ago, but who wisely, after drawing hands, set up _a b.u.t.ter shop_, and was enabled to send his old master 10 in his necessity." Haydon's Autobiography is full of his contests with lawyers and sheriffs' officers. Creditors dogged and dunned him at every step. "Lazarus's head," he writes, "was painted just after an arrest; Eucles was finished from a man in possession; the beautiful face in Xenophon in the afternoon, after a morning spent in begging mercy of lawyers; and Ca.s.sandra's head was finished in agony not to be described, and her hand completed after a broker's man in possession, in an execution put in for taxes."[1]

[Footnote 1: Haydon--_Autobiography_, vol. ii., p. 400.]

Cowper used to say that he never knew a poet who was not thriftless; and he included himself. Notwithstanding his quiet, retired life, he was constantly outrunning the constable. "By the help of good management,"

he once wrote, "and a clear notion of economical matters, I contrived in three months to spend the income of a twelvemonth." But though the number of thriftless poets may be great, it must not be forgotten that Shakespeare, who stands at the head of the list, was a prudent man. He economized his means, and left his family in comfort. His contemporaries were, however, for the most part indebted men. Ben Jonson was often embarra.s.sed, and always poor, borrowing twenty shillings at a time from Henslowe; though he rarely denied himself another jolly night at the "Mermaid." Ma.s.singer was often so reduced in circ.u.mstances as not to be able to pay his score at the same tavern.

Greene, Peele, and Marlowe lived lives of dissipation, and died in poverty. Marlowe was killed in a drunken brawl. When Greene was on his deathbed, dying of the disease which his excesses had caused, he was haunted by the debt of ten pounds which he owed to the shoemaker who had lodged him. He then warned his friend Peele to amend his ways; but Peele, like him, died in distress and debt, one of the last letters he wrote being an imploring letter to Burleigh asking for relief,--"Long sickness," said he, "having so enfeebled me as maketh bashfulness almost impudency." Spenser died forsaken, and in want. Ben Jonson says of him that "he died for lack of bread in King Street, and refused twenty broad pieces sent to him by my lord of Ess.e.x," adding, "he was sorrie he had no time to spend them."

Of later poets and literary men, Milton died in obscurity, though not in debt. Lovelace died in a cellar. Butler, the author of "Hudibras," died of starvation in Rose Alley, the same place in which Dryden was beaten by hired ruffians. Otway was hunted by bailiffs to his last hiding-place on Tower Hill. His last act was to beg a shilling of a gentleman, who gave him a guinea; and buying a loaf to appease his hunger, he choked at the first mouthful. Wycherley lay seven years in gaol for debt, but lived to die in his bed at nearly eighty. Fielding's extravagance and dissipation in early life involved him in difficulties which he never entirely shook off, and his death was embittered by the poverty in which he left his widow and child in a foreign land.

Savage had a pension of fifty pounds a year, which he usually spent in a few days. It was then fashionable to wear scarlet cloaks trimmed with gold lace; and Johnson one day met him, just after he had got his pension, with one of these cloaks upon his back, while, at the same time, his naked toes were sticking through his shoes. After living a life of recklessness and dissipation, he died in prison, where he had lain six months for debt. In concluding his "Life of Savage," Johnson says: "This relation will not be wholly without its use, if those who, in confidence of superior capacities or attainments, disregard the common maxims of life, shall be reminded that nothing will supply the want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity, long continued, will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible."

Sterne died poor, if he did not die insolvent. At his death, a subscription was got up for the support of his wife and daughter.

Churchill was imprisoned for debt, occasioned by his dissoluteness and extravagance,--Cowper characterizing him as "spendthrift alike of money and of wit." Chatterton, reduced to a state of starvation and despair, poisoned himself in his eighteenth year. Sir Richard Steele was rarely out of debt. In many respects he resembled Sheridan in temperament and character. He was full of speculation, and was always on the point of some grand stroke of luck, which was to make his fortune. He was perpetually haunted by duns and bailiffs; yet he did not stint himself of luxuries so long as he obtained credit. When appointed to the office of Commissioner of Stamps, with a moderate income, he set up a carriage with two and sometimes four horses; and he maintained two houses, one in London, the other at Hampton. His means being altogether inadequate to this style of living, he soon became drowned in greater debt than before. He was repeatedly impounded by lawyers, and locked up in sponging-houses. Executions were put into his houses; his furniture was sold off; his wife wanted the commonest necessaries of life; and still the pleasure-loving Steele maintained his equanimity and good temper.

Something great was always on the point of turning up in his favour. One of his grandest schemes was that for bringing fish alive to the London market; "and then," said he to his wife, "you will be better provided for than any lady in England." But the good turn never came to Sir Richard; and he died out at elbows on his wife's little property in Wales.

Goldsmith was another of the happy-go-lucky debtors. He swam in debt. He was no sooner out of it, than he was plunged into it again, deeper than before. The first money he earned as a tutor--it was all the money he had--was spent in buying a horse. His relations raised 50, and sent him to the Temple to study law, but he got no farther than Dublin, where he spent or gambled away all the money. Then he went to Edinburgh to study medicine, and was forced to fly from it, having become surety for a friend. He started on the tour of Europe without any money in his pocket--with nothing but his flute; and he begged and played, until he came back to England, as poor as he went. He himself used afterwards to say that there was hardly a kingdom in Europe in which he was not a debtor.[1]

[Footnote 1: FORSTER--_Life of Goldsmith_, ed. 1863, p. 41.]

Even when Goldsmith began to earn money freely, he was still in debt. He gave away with one hand what he earned with the other. He was dunned for his milk-score, arrested for rent, threatened by lawyers, but never learnt the wisdom of economy. In the same month in which the second edition of his "Vicar of Wakefield" was published, his bill of fifteen guineas, drawn on Newbery, was returned dishonoured. When he was figuring at Boswell's dinner in Old Bond Street in the "ratteen suit lined with satin, and bloom-coloured silk breeches," the clothes belonged to his tailor, and remained unpaid till his death.

Prosperity increased his difficulties rather than diminished them; the more money he had, the more thoughtless and lavish was his expenditure.

He could refuse no indulgence, either to himself or others. He would borrow a guinea and give it to a beggar. He would give the clothes off his back, and the blankets off his bed. He could refuse n.o.body. To meet his thoughtless expenditure, he raised money by promising to write books which he never began. He was perpetually discounting to-morrow, and mortgaging an estate already overburthened. Thus he died, as he had begun, poor, embarra.s.sed, and in debt. At his death he owed over two thousand pounds: "Was ever poet," says Johnson, "so trusted before?"

The case of Goldsmith and others has been cited as instances of the harsh treatment of genius by the world, and in proof of the social disabilities of literary men and artists. It has been held that society should be more indulgent to its men of genius, and that Government should do something more for them than it now does. But nothing that society or Government could do for men of genius would be likely to prove of any service to them, unless they will do what other and less gifted men do,--exhibit self-respect and practise ordinary economy. We may pity poor Goldsmith, but we cannot fail to see that he was throughout his own enemy. His gains were large, amounting to about 8,000 in fourteen years; representing a much larger sum of money at the present day. For his "History of the Earth and Animated Nature" he received 850,--and the book was, at best, but a clever compilation.

Johnson said of him that "if he can tell a horse from a cow, that is the extent of his knowledge of zoology." The representation of his "Good-natured Man" produced him 500. And so on with his other works. He was as successful as Johnson was; but then he had not Johnson's sobriety, self-restraint, and self-respect.

Yet Goldsmith, in his thoughtful moments, knew the right path, though he had not the courage to pursue it. In a letter to his brother Henry respecting the career of his son, Goldsmith wrote: "Teach, my dear sir, to your son, thrift and economy. Let his poor wandering uncle's example be placed before his eyes. I had learned from books to be disinterested and generous before I was taught from experience the necessity of being prudent. I had contracted the habits and notions of a philosopher, while I was exposing myself to the insidious approaches of cunning; and often by being, even with my narrow finances, charitable to excess, I forgot the rules of justice, and placed myself in the very situation of the wretch who thanked me for my bounty."

Byron had scarcely reached manhood when he became involved in debt.

Writing to Mr. Becher, in his twentieth year, he said, "_Entre nous_, I am cursedly dipped; my debts, everything inclusive, will be nine or ten thousand before I am twenty-one." On his coming of age, the festivities at Newstead were celebrated by means supplied by money-lenders at enormously usurious rates of interest. His difficulties did not diminish, but only increased with time. It is said that his mother's death was occasioned by a fit of rage, brought on by reading the upholsterer's bills.[1] When the first canto of "Childe Harold" was published, Byron presented the copyright to Mr. Dallas, declaring that he would never receive money for his writings,--a resolution which he afterwards wisely abandoned. But his earnings by literature at that time could not have lightened the heavy load of debt under which he staggered. Newstead was sold, and still the load acc.u.mulated. Then he married, probably in the expectation that his wife's fortune would release him; but her money was locked up, and the step, instead of relieving him, brought only an accession of misery. Every one knows the sad result of the union; which was aggravated by the increasing a.s.saults of duns and sheriffs' officers.

[Footnote 1: MOORE--_Life of Byron_, ed. 1860. p. 127.]

Byron was almost driven to sell the copyright of his books, but he was prevented from doing so by his publisher, who pressed upon him a sum of money to meet his temporary wants. During the first year of his marriage, his house was nine times in the possession of bailiffs, his door was almost daily beset by duns, and he was only saved from gaol by the privileges of his rank. All this, to a sensitive nature such as his, must have been gall and bitterness; while his wife's separation from him, which shortly followed, could not fail to push him almost to the point of frenzy. Although he had declined to receive money for his first poems, Byron altered his views, and even learnt to drive a pretty hard bargain with his publisher.[1] But Moore does not, in his biography of the poet, inform us whether he ever got rid, except by death, of his grievous turmoil of debt.

[Footnote 1: "You offer 1,500 guineas for the new Canto [the fourth of 'Childe Harold']: I won't take it. I ask two thousand five hundred guineas for it, which you will either give or not as you think proper.... If Mr. Eustace was to have two thousand for a poem on Education; if Mr. Moore is to have three thousand for Lalla; if Mr.

Campbell is to have three thousand for his prose or poetry.--I don't mean to disparage these gentlemen or their labours.--but I ask the aforesaid price for mine."--_Lord Byron to Mr. Murray_, Sept. 4th, 1817.]

There is the greatest difference in the manner in which men bear the burden of debt. Some feel it to be no burden at all; others bear it very lightly; whilst others look upon creditors in the light of persecutors, and themselves in the light of martyrs. But where the moral sense is a little more keen,--where men use the goods of others, without rendering the due equivalent of money--where they wear unpaid clothes, eat unpaid meat, drink unpaid wines, and entertain guests at the expense of the butcher, grocer, wine-merchant, and greengrocer,--they must necessarily feel that their conduct is of the essence, not only of shabbiness, but of dishonesty, and the burden must then bear very heavily indeed.

Of light-hearted debtors, the proportion is considerable. Thus Theophilus Cibber, when drowned in debt, begged the loan of a guinea, and spent it on a dish of ortolans. Thus Foote when his mother wrote to him--"Dear Sam, I am in prison for debt--come and help your loving mother,"--replied, "Dear Mother, so am I, which prevents his duty being paid to his loving mother by her affectionate son." Steele and Sheridan both bore the load lightly. When entertaining company, they put the bailiffs who were in possession in livery, and made them wait at table, pa.s.sing them off as servants. Nothing disturbed Steele's equanimity; and when driven from London by debt, he carried his generosity into the country, giving prizes to the lads and la.s.ses a.s.sembled at rural games and country dances. Sheridan also made very light of his debts, and had many a good joke over them. Some one asked him how it was that the O'

was not prefixed to his name, when he replied that he was sure no family had a better right to it, "for in truth, we _owe_ everybody." And when a creditor once apologized for the soiled and tattered state of a bill, which had been much worn by being so often presented, Sheridan advised him "as a friend, to take it home and write it _upon parchment_."

Very different was it in the case of poor Burns, who was almost driven distracted because he owed a debt of 7 4_s_. for a volunteer's uniform, which he could not pay. He sent to his friend Thomson, the publisher of his songs, imploring the loan of 5, promising full value in "song-genius."[1] His last poem was a "love song," in part payment of the loan, which he composed only a few days before his death.

[Footnote 1: "After all my boasted independence," he said, "curst necessity compels me to implore you for five pounds. A cruel scoundrel of a haberdasher, to whom I owe an account, taking it into his head that I am dying, has commenced a process, and will infallibly put me in jail.

Do, for G.o.d's sake, send me that sum, and by return of post. Forgive me this earnestness; but the horrors of a jail have made me half distracted. I do not ask all this gratuitously: for upon returning health I promise and engage to furnish you with five pounds' worth of the neatest song-genius you have seen."--_Burns to Thomson_. 12th July, 1796. Burns died on the 21st of the same month.]