MARRIED PEOPLE'S MONEY.
"Never treat money affairs with levity--money is character."--_Sir E.
Bulwer Lytton._
A Scotch minister, preaching against the love of money, had frequently
repeated that it was "the root of all evil." Walking home from the
church one old person said to another, "An wasna the minister strang
upon the money?" "Nae doubt," said the other, and added, "Ay, but it's
grand to hae the wee bit siller in your hand when ye gang an errand." So
too, in spite of all that love-in-a-cottage theorists may say, "it's
grand to hae the wee bit siller" when marrying; unless, indeed, we
believe that mortality is one of the effects of matrimony as did the
girl, who, on meeting a lady whose service she had lately left, and
being asked, "Well, Mary, where do you live now?" answered, "Please,
ma'am, I don't live now--I'm married." To marry for love and work for
silver is quite right, but there should be a reasonable chance of
getting work to do and some provision for a rainy day. It is only the
stupidity which is without anxiety, that complacently marries on
"nothing a week; and that uncertain--very!" And yet such flying in the
face of Providence is often spoken of as being disinterested and heroic,
and the quiverfuls of children resulting from it are supposed to be
blessed. As if it were a blessing to give children appetites of hunger
and thirst, and nothing to satisfy them.
On the other hand, there is some truth in the saying that "what will
keep one will keep two." There are bachelors who are so ultra-prudent,
and who hold such absurd opinions as to the expense of matrimony that,
although they have enough money they have not enough courage to enter
the state. Pitt used to say that he could not afford to marry, yet his
butcher's bill was so enormous that some one has calculated it as
affording his servants about fourteen pounds of meat a day, each man and
woman! For the more economical regulation of his household, if for no
other reason, he should have taken to himself a wife.
Newly-married people should be careful not to pitch their rate of
expenditure higher than they can hope to continue it; and they should
remember that, as Lord Bacon said, "it is less dishonourable to abridge
petty charges (expenses) than to stoop to petty gettings." That was
excellent advice which Dr. Johnson gave to Boswell when the latter
inherited his paternal estate: "You, dear sir, have now a new station,
and have, therefore, new cares and new employments. Life, as Cowley
seems to say, ought to resemble a well-ordered poem; of which one rule
generally received is, that the exordium should be simple, and should
promise little. Begin your new course of life with the least show, and
the least expense possible; you may at pleasure increase both, but you
cannot easily diminish them. Do not think your estate your own, while
any man can call upon you for money which you cannot pay; therefore
begin with timorous parsimony. Let it be your first care not to be in
any man's debt."
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 folks should get wind of the china
cup, and say he was above his business.
Although the creeping in of luxury is to be guarded against at the
commencement of married life, people should learn to grow rich
gracefully. It is no part of wisdom to depreciate the little elegances
and social enjoyments of our homes. Those who can afford it act wisely
when they furnish their houses with handsome furniture, cover the walls
with suggestive paintings, and collect expensive books, for these things
afford refined enjoyment. One day a gentleman told Dr. Johnson that he
had bought a suit of lace for his wife. _Johnson_: "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."
_Johnson_: "Yes, sir, 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 dressed."
We should be particular about money matters, but not penurious. The
penny soul never, it is said, came to twopence. There is that
withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. People are
often saving at the wrong place, and spoil the ship for a halfpenny
worth of tar. They spare at the spigot, and let all run away at the
bunghole.
She is the wise wife who can steer between penuriousness and such
recklessness as is described in the following cutting from an American
periodical. "My dear fellow," said Lavender, "it's all very nice to talk
about economizing and keeping a rigid account of expenses, and that sort
of thing, but I've tried it. Two weeks ago I stepped in on my way home
Saturday night, and I bought just the gayest little Russian leather,
cream-laid account-book you ever saw, and a silver pencil to match it. I
said to my wife after supper: 'My dear, it seems to me it costs a lot of
money to keep house.' She sighed and said: 'I know it does, Lavvy; but
I'm sure I can't help it. I'm just as economical as I can be. I don't
spend half as much for candy as you do for cigars.' I never take any
notice of personalities, so I sailed right ahead. 'I believe, my dear,
that if we were to keep a strict account of everything we spend we could
tell just where to cut down. I've bought you a little account-book, and
every Monday morning I'll give you some money, and you can set it down
on one side; and then, during the week, you can set down on the other
side everything you spend. And then on Saturday night we can go over it
and see just where the money goes, and how we can boil things down a
little.' Well, sir, she was just delighted--thought it was a first-rate
plan, and the pocket account-book was lovely--regular David Copperfield
and Dora business. Well, sir, the next Saturday night we got through
supper, and she brought out that account-book as proud as possible, and
handed it over for inspection. On one side was, 'Received from Lavvy, 50
dols.' That's all right! Then I looked on the other page, and what do
you think was there? '_Spent it all!_' Then I laughed, and of course she
cried; and we gave up the account-book racket on the spot by mutual
consent. Yes, sir, I've been there, and I know what domestic economy
means, I tell you. Let's have a cigar."
It is the fear of this sort of thing, and especially of extravagance in
reference to dress, that confirms many men in bachelorship. A society
paper tells us that at a recent dance given at the West-end, a married
lady of extravagant habits impertinently asked a wealthy old bachelor if
he remained single because he could not afford to keep a wife. "My
innocent young friend," was the reply, "I could afford to keep three;
but I'm not rich enough to pay the milliner's bills of one."
A wife who puts conscience into the management of her husband's money
should not be obliged to account to him for the exact manner in which
she lays out each penny in the pound. An undue interference on his part
will cause much domestic irritation, and may have a bad influence on
social morals.
In "Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson," his wife says, "So
liberal was he to her, and of so generous a temper, that he hated the
mention of severed purses; his estate being so much at her disposal
that he never would receive an account of anything she expended."
No one can feel dignified, free, and happy without the control of a
certain amount of money for the graces, the elegant adornments, and,
above all, for the charities of life. The hard-drawn line of simply
paying the bills closes a thousand avenues to gentle joys and pleasures
in a woman's daily life.
We would advise all wives to strike the iron when hot, so to speak, by
getting their husbands, before the ardour of the honeymoon cools, to
give them an annual allowance. The little unavoidable demands on a
husband's purse, to which a wife is so frequently compelled to have
recourse, are very apt to create bickering and discord; and when once
good-humour is put out of the way, it is not such an easy matter to
bring it back again.
A Chicago young lady, on being asked the usual question in which the
words "love, honour, and obey" occur, made the straightforward reply:
"Yes, I will, if he does what he promises me financially." The conduct
of some husbands almost justified this answer.
As regards the important subject of Life Insurance there are few
husbands and fathers who can afford to be indifferent to the possibility
of making adequate and immediate provision for those dependent upon
them, in case of their sudden removal.
This matter of Life Insurance should be settled before marriage, as well
as all other monetary and legal arrangements that have to be made either
with the wife that is to be, or with her relations, because
post-matrimonial business details may introduce notes of discord into
what might have been a harmonious home. "When I courted her, I took
lawyer's advice, and signed every letter to my love--'Yours, without
prejudice!'" It may not be necessary to be quite so cautious as the
lover who tells us this; but he was certainly right in transacting his
legal business before marriage rather than afterwards.
"Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you
will find it a calamity." Douglas Jerrold says that "the shirt of Nessus
was a shirt not paid for." Those who would be happy though married must
pitch their scale of living a degree below their means, rather than up
to them; but this can only be done by keeping a careful account of
income and expenditure. John Locke strongly advised this course:
"Nothing," he said, "is likelier to keep a man within compass than
having constantly before his eyes, the state of his affairs in a regular
course of account." The Duke of Wellington kept an accurate detailed
account of all the moneys received and expended by him. "I make a
point," he said, "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, dues 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." Washington was as particular as
Wellington was in matters of business detail. He did not disdain to
scrutinize the smallest outgoings of his household, even when holding
the office of President of the American Union.
When Maginn, always drowned in debt, was asked what he paid for his
wine, he replied that he did not know; but he believed they "put
something down in a book." This "putting down in a book" has proved the
ruin of a great many people. The regular weekly payment of tradesmen is
not only more honest, but far more economical. I know a wife who says
that she cannot afford to get into the books of tradesmen, and who
prides herself upon the fact that she will never haunt her husband after
her death in the shape of an unpaid bill. These principles will induce
married people to always try to have a fund reserved for sickness, the
necessity of a change of abode, and other contingencies.
Perfect confidence as regards money matters should exist between married
people. In a letter to a young lady upon her marriage, Swift says, "I
think you ought to be well informed how much your husband's revenue
amounts to, and be so good a computer as to keep within it that part of
the management which falls to your share, and not to put yourself in the
number of those polite ladies who think they gain a great point when
they have teased their husbands to buy them a new equipage, a laced
head, or a fine petticoat, without once considering what long score
remained unpaid to the butcher."
With regard to keeping up appearances it must be remembered that few
people can afford to disregard them entirely. A shabby hat that in a
rich man would pass for perhaps an amiable eccentricity, might
conceivably cause the tailor to send in his bill to a poorer customer.
In this matter, as in so many others, we may act from a right or from a
wrong motive. Nowhere is the attempt to keep up appearances more
praiseworthy than in the case of those who have to housekeep upon very
small incomes. The cotter's wife in Burns's poem who--
"Wi' her needle and her sheers,
Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new"--
deserves the title of heroine for her efforts to keep up appearances.
But the senseless competition that consists in giving large
entertainments, the huge "meat-shows" which got under the name of
dinner-parties, have no tendency to promote true happiness. Homes are
made sweet by simplicity and freedom from affectation, and these are
also the qualities that put guests at their ease, and make them feel at
home. A Dublin lady took a world of trouble to provide a variety of
dishes, and have all cooked with great skill, for an entertainment she
was to give in honour of Dean Swift. But from the first bit that was
tasted she did not cease to undervalue the courses, and to beg
indulgence for the shortcomings of the cook. "Hang it," said Swift,
after the annoyance had gone on a little, "if everything is as bad as
you say, I'll go home and get a herring dressed for myself."
I once heard of a lady, who, not being prepared for the unexpected
visitors, sent to the confectioner's for some tarts to help out the
dinner. All would have gone off well, but that the lady, wishing to keep
up appearances, said to the servant: "Ah! what are those tarts?"
"Fourpence apiece, ma'am," was the reply.
There are thousands of women in these islands who cannot marry. But why
can they not marry? Because they have false notions about
respectability. And so long as this is the case, young men will do well
to decline the famous advice, "Marry early--yes, marry early, and marry
often."
"Why," asked a Sussex labourer, "should I give a woman half my victuals
for cooking the other half?" Imagine the horror of this anti-matrimonial
reasoner if it were proposed that he should give half his victuals for
not cooking at all, or doing anything except keeping up appearances. "He
was reputed," says Bacon, "one of the wise men that made answer to the
question, when a man should marry? _A young man not yet, an elder man
not at all._" This answer would not appear so wise, if we had less
erroneous notions on the subject of keeping up appearances.