ENGLISH EXTRAVAGANCE.
IT is hardly fair, or at least it is a little inartistic, to speak as we did last week of English "nearness," without a word on the opposite quality which is so distinctly marked in the national character. Continental observers accuse all Englishmen of wild extravagance, declare that we waste money without motive, and complain as our own forefathers did of the Anglo-Indians, that wherever we visit we raise the price of everything that makes life pleasant. As regards the wilder forms of extravagance the accusation is untrue. The lads who waste fortunes before they are thirty, flinging away estates at the gaming-table, or on the turf, who squander thousands on mistresses bred in the gutter a-nd incapable of grammar, or who ruin themselves in the effort to live lives marked rather by the magnificence of Sir Gorgius Midas than the magnificence of the Medici, are more often found on the Continent than in England, so often found that their mania has been anticipated by a whole body of legislation. The Russian nobles are the greatest offenders, the Slav wilfulness being often gratified by splendid though sterile experiments in living, but the Germans for all their self-restraint are as frequently guilty, and the French perpetually invoke against spend- thrift relatives that strange survival of purely aristocratic ideas, the commit de famille. French annals are full of nobles like the late Lord Ailesbury and commoners like Mr. Abingdon, and their extravagance is usually of an even wilder and more
destructive kind, the women who share their riot robbing them more scientifically and with a more single eye to plunder.
The extravagance which destroys a house or even endangers a throne is by no means a specially British quality, has, indeed, been displayed in all countries and in all ages, from Sar- danapalus downwards to the days of Victor Emanuel and the late King of Holland. It is probably a form of insanity, and arises from that exaltation of the ego which the experts
in lunacy regard as the sign of all others which indicates that there will be no cure. We fancy, however, that the impression of the Continent has some justification, that what we may call moderate extravagance is singularly common among Englishmen, and that, in one way at least, the whole people is specially tainted with the foible or the habit. In the first place, we are, of all people, the one which, caring most for social position, has made it most dependent upon expendi- ture. Birth carries with it little respect, and ability, except in politics, confers no social rank. A certain sustained ex- penditure, often of a very foolish kind—an expenditure on servants and dinners and stables—is nearly essential to English social position, and those who desire it yield to the unuttered demand as if under fascination. Thousands among us—literally thousands—wreck their chances of per- manent content, and spoil the future of their families, by steady overspending continued for years, and often not sus- pected until death reveals the secret, and forces families bred in luxury to live on pittances, or work like the children of the poor. The men of this kind do not "go muckers," or destroy themselves by any single act of wild or magnificent pro- digality. They steadily, and usually silently, spend a little more than they should, overhouse themselves, overhorse them- selves, oversupply their sons, or " entertain " in a style their incomes or the decreasing bulk of their solid fortunes does not warrant. They cannot bear to be outdone by neighbours, or to give up any visible sign of prosperity they may have possessed, or to govern those around them less leniently, and they therefore cease to save, or let capital go, or drown them- selves in debts of which, till the explosion comes, the world hears nothing. The passion for "keeping up appearances," which invariably means waste of money, is irresistible, and is not, we think, felt so strongly in countries where birth still means much, where debt is considered morally discreditable, and where, owing mainly, we suppose, to hereditary want of means, meanness is considered an element in character almost essential to its strength. The English are always preaching thrift, but they rather despise the thrifty. There are whole classes among us, though we confess to an improvement of late years, who will never confess to declining means, who cannot bear to live without carriages, who would feel if they seriously reduced their household expenditure, that their self-respect was gone. Their motive is, of course, ultimately vanity, and vanity of a rather low kind, but it is vanity bred by an entire social system, and not inconsistent with much private and social virtue. We have known men who were ruining their families by overspending, give with generosity and without ostentation, and surrender to the public time and energy which, used more wisely, would have averted all the effects of their continued extravagance. There must be in such men a want of imagination which forbids them to realise the fate they are bringing upon others, and usually also a kind of courage about money which Continentals taught by generations of bitter experience almost invariably lack If our people were as timid as they are, our middle-class families would last like aristocrats, remaining always at a fixed level, whereas they come and go like the small traders in a great street, and rarely remain in the same position for three generations. It may be said that this is the result of the dis- persion of money at death, and that is partly true; but our middle-class works and earns, and, if it would not overspend itself, would speedily repair, as the business houses on the Continent do, all the effects of dispersion.
The struggle to gain or to preserve what they think position, and what no doubt in the eyes of their inferiors is position, is, we are satisfied, the first cause of English extravagance; but there are two others, one the love of comfort on which we need say nothing because it is universally acknowledged, and another which is much stronger, and is really worthy of observation because it seems to be at variance with the bulk of the national character. This is the incurable English indolence. Our people are the most energetic in the world, and—we speak of the middle-classes—are not deficient in industry ; but at heart they are indolent, and they show it in their repugnance to all the detailed trouble by which money is saved. The secret of economy is trouble taking, and immense classes among us, indeed the whole of us when not pressed by necessity or other strong impulse, will take no trouble to avoid expense. They will not bargain, they will not study comparative values in the things they purchase, they will not go steadily and patiently into small accounts— above all, they will not do battle with others in order to save shillings. That is to say, the men will not,—for, fortunately for them, the women having much time, being as a body trustees for money, and having a love of detail, will in all matters of housekeeping go through the necessary labour. If they would not, we should all be ruined. The men, how- ever, clergymen excepted, will not spend time and energy to avoid expense, will buy anything they want without visiting a dozen shops, will submit to any overcharge even in taxes— vide the entire history of the Income-tax—and will waste everything they buy rather than take the troublesome pre- cautions which would preserve portable property intact. The waste which goes on in establishments managed by men is incredible, and strikes clever women as indicating positive and rather contemptible want of brains. It is not due, however, to want of brains, the man who offends con- stantly knowing that he is offending, but to an incapacity for taking minute trouble. He had rather bear the loss. To take an instance which everybody knows. The English all over the Continent are charged for everything, and particu- larly for hotel accommodation, about double what Con- tinentals pay, obtaining, be it observed, precisely the same things. That is, it is said, because the English are rich ; but it is nothing of the kind. If the English would bargain, and insist, and worry generally, as the French and Germans think it right to do, they would gradually whittle down all charges to the French and German level. Indeed, when they are forced to do it, they succeed, and the thousands of single women who now travel abroad, travel at rates which strike their male friends as incredibly small. The men, however, will not do it, and they carry the same spirit into the whole of the transactions of life, paying, we should say, on a rough calculation, about 25 per cent, more than they need for the gratification of an unacknowledged but all-pervading thirst for ease. We do not say they are altogether wrong. The friction of life wears out vitality, and one main cause of friction is the desire for economy, but still they are bound • to see and recognise the truth. It is not a desire to save time, or a spirit of liberality, or a contempt for money, -which prompts the habitual extravagance of Englishmen, but pure and simple laziness, and nothing else. Very often it is a chequered laziness, that is to say, there is some one point on which the Englishman chooses to take trouble in order to avoid expense. It may be his expenditure on locomotion, or on rent, or on his holiday, or on his tailor's bills; but on some one subject be is as economical as a Continental, he takes the Continental trouble, and of course with great friction and great obloquy from his dependents he saves his money. We have personally known a rich man keep his stable as cheaply as any jobmaster could have done, while allowing his butcher's bill to run to a figure which, if he had chosen to give an hour a week to it, would have convinced him that he was the subject of plunder to three times the amount be saved by driving his coachman frantic with annoyance. He would not take the trouble to fight his butcher and the steward.
Is there no remedy for extravagance ? Practically, we suspect there is none, except poverty, for the habit of spending has its root rather in character than in circumstances or in training; but there are two or three correctives which, if a man suspects himself of the foible, be may possibly induce 'himself to adopt. One is never to spend anything fresh without considering quietly whether he really desires the thing the expenditure is to buy. Will he care about it the day after the purchase ? He will find nine times out of ten
-that if he can resist his impulse for twenty-four hours he can resist it altogether ; that the value of the money will grow in
his eyes and not the value of the thing he thinks so indispen- sable. Another is, never to be betrayed into new recurrent expenditure. Money gone is money gone ; but it is the com- pulsion to let it go many times over which rains so many otherwise sensible men. To a professional man who is just succeeding, an expenditure of £300 on a whim both seems and
is large, but to set up a carriage and pair means in ten years a deduction of £3,000, besides the interest, from the sum which is to maintain him when out of work, and give his children the chance in life which he probably desires. A shilling for a cigar is not a great extravagance ; but three shilling cigars a day is equivalent to a total loss, without any return, of £500 every ten years. And the third corrective is to buy nothing of any sort without paying for it at once. It is the bills which come in twice a year that cripple a man, who will find that if he pays at once, the money assumes a new importance in his eyes. Clever tradesmen know this so well that they would rather stand out of their cash than accept ready money, and even dislike to be paid by cheque at too short intervals of time. Beyond these precautions, there are, we believe, none which men who are extravagant by habit can take, unless indeed they are of a reflective turn, and can compel themselves to remember that all extravagance entails a diminution of power. They have no more moral right to deplete their purses foolishly than to avoid profitable work which they can do, or deliberately place their savings in investments which they know to be bad. They would think it sinful to throw half-crowns at sparrows ; but a great many forms of extravagance are not a bit better than that.
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