GREAT DEBTORS.
"What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors? You are
going to Boulogne, the city of debts, peopled by men who never
understood arithmetic."--_Sydney Smith._
"Quand on doit et qu'on ne paye pas, c'est comme si on ne devait
pas."--_Araene Houssaye._
"Of what a hideous progeny is debt the father! What lies, what meanness,
what invasions on self-respect, what cares, what double-dealing! How in
due season it will carve the frank, open face into wrinkles: how like a
knife, it will stab the houeat heart."--_Douglas Jerrold_.
"The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is
composed of two distinct races, _the men who borrow and the men who
lend_. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those
impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men,
black men, red men, and such-like."--_Charles Lamb_.
People do not know what troubles they are brewing for themselves when
they run into debt. It does not matter for what the debt is incurred. It
hangs like a millstone round a man's neck until he is relieved of it. It
presses like a nightmare upon him. It hinders the well-being of his
family. It destroys the happiness of his household.
Even those who are in the regular receipt of large incomes, feel
crippled, often for years, by the incubus of debt. Weighed down by this,
what can a man do to save--to economise with a view to the future of his
wife and children? A man in debt is disabled from insuring his life,
from insuring his house and goods, from putting money in the bank, from
buying a house or a freehold. All his surplus gains must go towards the
payment of his debt.
Even men of enormous property, great lords with vast landed estates,
often feel themselves oppressed and made miserable by loads of debt.
They or their forefathers having contracted extravagant habits--a taste
for gambling, horseracing, or expensive living,--borrow money on their
estates, and the burden of debt remains. Not, perhaps, in the case of
strictly entailed estates--for the aristocracy have contrived so that
their debts shall be wiped out at their death, and they can thus gratify
their spendthrift tastes at the expense of the public--the estates going
comparatively unburdened to the entailed heir. But comparatively few are
in the position of the privileged classes. In the case of the majority,
the debts are inherited with the estates, and often the debts are more
than the estates are worth. Thus it happens that a large part of the
lands of England are at this moment the property of mortgagees and
money-lenders.
The greatest men have been in debt. It has even been alleged that
greatness and debt have a certain relation to each other. Great men have
great debts; they are trusted. So have great nations; they are
respectable, and have credit. Spiritless men have no debts, neither have
spiritless nations; nobody will trust them. Men as well as nations in
debt secure a widely extended interest. Their names are written in many
books; and many are the conjectures formed as to whether they will
pay--or not. The man who has no debts slips through the world
comparatively unnoticed; while he who is in everybody's books has all
eyes fixed upon him. His health is enquired after with interest; and if
he goes into foreign countries, his return is anxiously looked for.
The creditor is usually depicted as a severe man, with a hard visage;
while the debtor is an open-handed generous man, ready to help and
entertain everybody. He is the object of general sympathy. When
Goldsmith was dunned for his milk-score and arrested for the rent of his
apartments, who would think of pitying the milk-woman or the landlady?
It is the man in debt who is the prominent feature of the piece, and all
our sympathy is reserved for him. "What were you," asked Pantagruel of
Panurge, "without your debts? God preserve me from ever being without
them! Do you think there is anything divine in lending or in crediting
others? No! To owe is the true heroic virtue!"
Yet, whatever may be said in praise of Debt, it has unquestionably a
very seedy side. The man in debt is driven to resort to many sorry
expedients to live. He is the victim of duns and sheriff's officers. Few
can treat them with the indifference that Sheridan did, who put them
into livery to wait upon his guests. The debtor starts and grows pale at
every knock at his door. His friends grow cool, and his relatives shun
him. He is ashamed to go abroad, and has no comfort at home. He becomes
crabbed, morose, and querulous, losing all pleasure in life. He wants
the passport to enjoyment and respect--money; he has only his debts, and
these make him suspected, despised, and snubbed. He lives in the slough
of despond. He feels degraded in others' eyes as well as in his own. He
must submit to impertinent demands, which he can only put off by sham
excuses. He has ceased to be his own master, and has lost the
independent bearing of a man. He seeks to excite pity, and pleads for
time. A sharp attorney pounces on him, and suddenly he feels himself in
the vulture's gripe. He tries a friend or a relative, but all that he
obtains is a civil leer, and a cool repulse. He tries a money-lender;
and, if he succeeds, he is only out of the frying-pan into the fire. It
is easy to see what the end will be,--a life of mean shifts and
expedients, perhaps ending in the gaol or the workhouse.
Can a man keep out of debt? Is there a possibility of avoiding the moral
degradation which accompanies it? Could not debt be dispensed with
altogether, and man's independence preserved secure? There is only one
way of doing this; by "living within the means." Unhappily, this is too
little the practice in modern times. We incur debt, trusting to the
future for the opportunity of defraying it. We cannot resist the
temptation to spend money. One will have fine furniture and live in a
high-rented house; another will have wines and a box at the opera; a
third must give dinners and music-parties:--all good things in their
way, but not to be indulged in if they cannot be paid for. Is it not a
shabby thing to pretend to give dinners, if the real parties who provide
them are the butcher, the poulterer, and the wine-merchant, whom you are
in debt to, and cannot pay?
A man has no business to live in a style which his income cannot
support, or to mortgage his earnings of next week or of next year, in
order to live luxuriously to-day. The whole system of Debt, by means of
which we forestall and anticipate the future, is wrong. They are almost
as much to blame who give credit, and encourage customers to take
credit, as those are who incur debts. A man knows what his actual
position is, if he pays his way as he goes. He can keep within his
means, and so apportion his expenditure as to reserve a fund of savings
against a time of need. He is always balanced up; and if he buys nothing
but what he pays for in cash, he cannot fail to be on the credit side of
his household accounts at the year's end.
But once let him commence the practice of running up bills--one at the
tailor's, another at the dressmaker's and milliner's, another at the
butcher's, another at the grocer's, and so on,--and he never knows how
he stands. He is deceived into debt; the road is made smooth and
pleasant for him; things flow into the house, for which he does not seem
to pay. But they are all set down against him; and at the year's end,
when the bills come in, he is ready to lift up his hands in dismay. Then
he finds that the sweet of the honey will not repay for the smart of the
sting.
It is the same as respects the poorer classes. Not many years since,
Parliament passed a law facilitating the establishment of Small Loan
Societies, for the purpose of helping small tradesmen and poor people
generally to raise money on an emergency. The law was at once pounced
upon by the numerous race of Graballs, as a means of putting money in
their purse. They gave the working classes facilities for running into
debt, and for mortgaging their future industry. A few men, desirous of
making money, would form themselves into a Loan Club, and offer sums of
money ostensibly at five per cent, interest, repayable in weekly
instalments. The labouring people eagerly availed themselves of the
facility for getting into debt. One wanted money for a "spree," another
wanted money for a suit of clothes, a third for an eight-day clock, and
so on; and instead of saving the money beforehand, they preferred
getting the money from the Club, keeping themselves in difficulties and
poverty until the debt was paid off. Such a practice is worse than
living from hand to mouth: it is living upon one's own vitals.
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 passing 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 quantity 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." Passion 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 nobody. 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 assured 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,
butter, 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 destitute of the means of subsistence. His noble and royal
friends had entirely deserted him. Executions for debt were in his
house, and he passed his last days in the custody of sheriffs' officers,
who abstained from conveying him to prison merely because they were
assured 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 scrapes, 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 noble 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 illustrious 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 principally from the
circumstance of his salary, as principal mathematician to the Emperor of
Germany, having been always in arrear. This drove him to casting
nativities in order to earn a living. "I pass 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
manuscripts. 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
glasses 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 noble 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
accumulating 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 circumstances 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 principally 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, Titian,
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 butterman, 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 butter 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 Cassandra'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
embarrassed, and always poor, borrowing twenty shillings at a time from
Henslowe; though he rarely denied himself another jolly night at the
"Mermaid." Massinger was often so reduced in circumstances 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 Essex," 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 nobody. 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, embarrassed, 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 accumulated. 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 assaults
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,
passing 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 lasses assembled 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 God'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.]
Sydney Smith had a severe struggle with poverty in the early part of his
life. He had a poor living, a wide parish, and a large family. His
daughter says that his debts occasioned him many sleepless nights, and
that she has seen him in an evening, when bill after bill has poured in
(carefully examining them, and gradually paying them off), quite
overcome by the feeling of the debt hanging over him, cover his face
with his hands, and exclaim, "Ah! I see I shall end my old age in a
gaol."[1] But he bore up bravely under the burden, labouring onward with
a cheerful heart, eking out his slender means by writing articles for
the _Edinburgh_, until at length promotion reached him, and he reaped
the reward of his perseverance, his industry, and his independence.
[Footnote 1: LADY HOLLAND--_Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith_, vol. i, p.
206.]
De Foe's life was a long battle with difficulty and debt. He was
constantly involved in broils, mostly of his own stirring up. He was a
fierce pamphleteer from his youth up; and was never for a moment at
rest, He was by turns a soldier with the Duke of Monmouth, a pantile
maker, a projector, a poet, a political agent, a novelist, an essayist,
a historian. He was familiar with the pillory, and spent much of his
time in gaol. When reproached by one of his adversaries with
mercenariness, he piteously declared how he had, "in the pursuit of
peace, brought himself into innumerable broils;" how he had been "sued
for other men's debts, and stripped naked by public opinion, of what
should have enabled him to pay his own;" how, "with a numerous family,
and with no helps but his own industry, he had forced his way, with
undiscouraged diligence, through a sea of debt and misfortune," and "in
gaols, in retreats, and in all manner of extremities, supported himself
without the assistance of friends and relations." Surely, there never
was such a life of struggle and of difficulty as that of the
indefatigable De Foe. Yet all his literary labours, and they were
enormous, did not suffice to keep him clear of debt, for it is believed
that he died insolvent.[2]
[Footnote 2: George Chalmers--_Life of De Foe,_ p. 92.]
Southey was, in his own line, almost as laborious a writer as De Foe;
though his was the closet life of the student, and not the aggressive
life of the polemic. Though he knew debt, it never became his master;
and from an early period in his career, he determined not to contract a
debt that he was not able to discharge. He was not only enabled to do
this, but to help his friends liberally--maintaining for a time the
families of his brothers-in-law, Coleridge and Lovell--by simply not
allowing himself any indulgences beyond his actual means, though these
were often very straitened. The burthen he carried would have borne down
a man less brave and resolute; but he worked, and studied, and wrote,
and earned money enough for all his own wants, as well as the wants of
those who had become dependent upon him. He held on his noble way
without a murmur or complaint. He not only liberally helped his
relatives, but his old schoolfellows, in distress. He took Coleridge's
wife and family to live with him, at a time when Coleridge had abandoned
himself to opium-drinking. To meet the numerous claims upon him, Southey
merely imposed upon himself so much extra labour. He was always ready
with good advice to young men who sought his help. Thus he encouraged
Kirke White, Herbert Knowles, and Dusantoy, all of whom died young and
full of promise. He not only helped them with advice and encouragement,
but with money; and his timely assistance rescued the sister of
Chatterton from absolute want. And thus he worked on nobly and
unselfishly to the last--finding happiness and joy in the pursuit of
letters--"not so learned as poor, not so poor as proud, not so proud as
happy." These were his own words.
The most touching story in Sir Walter Scott's life, is the manner in
which he conducted himself after the failure of the publishing house of
Constable and Co., with which he had become deeply involved. He had
built Abbotsford, become a laird, was sheriff of his county, and thought
himself a rich man; when suddenly the Constable firm broke down, and he
found himself indebted to the world more than a hundred thousand pounds.
"It is very hard," he said, when the untoward news reached him, "thus to
lose all the labour of a lifetime, and to be made a poor man at last.
But if God grant me health and strength for a few years longer, I have
no doubt that I shall redeem it all." Everybody thought him a ruined
man, and he almost felt himself to be so. But his courage never gave
way. When his creditors proposed to him a composition, his sense of
honour forbade his listening to them. "No, gentlemen," he replied; "Time
and I against any two." Though the debts had been contracted by others,
he had made himself legally responsible for them; and, strong in his
principle of integrity, he determined, if he could, to pay them off to
the last farthing. And he set himself to do it: but it cost him his
life.
He parted with his town house and furniture, delivered over his personal
effects to be held in trust for his creditors, and bound himself to
discharge a certain amount of his liabilities annually. This he did by
undertaking new literary works, some of them of great magnitude, the
execution of which, though they enabled him to discharge a large portion
of his debt, added but little to his reputation. One of his first tasks
was his "Life of Napoleon Buonaparte," in nine volumes, which he wrote,
in the midst of pain, sorrow, and ruin, in about thirteen
months,--receiving for it about fourteen thousand pounds. Even though
struck by paralysis, he went on writing until in about four years he had
discharged about two-thirds of the debt for which he was
responsible,--an achievement probably unparalleled in the history of
letters.
The sacrifices and efforts which he made during the last few years of
his life, even while paralyzed and scarcely able to hold his pen,
exhibit Scott in a truly heroic light. He bore up with unconquerable
spirit to the last. When his doctor expostulated with him against his
excessive brain-work, he replied, "If I were to be idle, I should go
mad: in comparison to this, death is no risk to shrink from." Shortly
before his last fatal attack, when sitting dozing in his chair on the
grass in front of the house at Abbotsford, he suddenly roused himself,
threw off the plaids which covered him, and exclaimed, "This is sad
idleness. Take me to my own room, and fetch the keys of my desk." They
wheeled him into his study, and put pens and paper before him. But he
could not grasp the pen; he could not write; and the tears rolled down
his cheeks. His spirit was not conquered, but his bodily powers were
exhausted and shattered; and when at length he died, he fell
asleep--like a child.
Scott felt, what every sensitive nature must feel, that poverty is a
much lighter burden to bear than debt. There is nothing ignominious
about poverty. It may even serve as a healthy stimulus to great spirits.
"Under gold mountains and thrones," said Jean Paul, "lie buried many
spiritual giants." Richter even held that poverty was to be welcomed, so
that it came not too late in life. And doubtless Scott's burden was all
the heavier to bear, because it came upon him in his declining years.
Shakespeare was originally a poor man: "It is a question," says Carlyle,
"whether, had not want, discomfort, and distress warrants been busy at
Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare had not lived killing calves or combing
wool! "To Milton's and Dryden's narrow means we probably owe the best
part of their works.
Johnson was a very poor man, and a very brave one. He never knew what
wealth was. His mind was always greater than his fortune; and it is the
mind that makes the man rich or poor, happy or miserable. Johnson's
gruff and bluff exterior covered a manly and noble nature. He had early
known poverty and debt, and wished himself clear of both. When at
college, his feet appeared through his shoes, but he was too poor to buy
new ones. His head was full of learning, but his pockets were empty. How
he struggled through distress and difficulty during his first years in
London the reader can learn from his "Life." He bedded and boarded for
fourpence-halfpenny a day, and when too poor to pay for a bed, he
wandered with Savage whole nights in the streets.[1] He struggled on
manfully, never whining at his lot, but trying to make the best of it.
[Footnote 1: "He said a man might live in a garret at eighteen-pence a
week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was
easy to say, 'Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending
threepence in a coffee house, he might be for some hours every day in
very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and
milk for a penny, and do without supper. On _clean-shirt day_ he went
abroad and paid visits." BOSWELL--_Life of Johnson_.]
These early sorrows and struggles of Johnson left their scars upon his
nature; but they also enlarged and enriched his experience, as well as
widened his range of human sympathy. Even when in his greatest distress
he had room in his heart for others whose necessities were greater than
his own; and he was never wanting in his help to those who needed it, or
were poorer than himself.
From his sad experience, no one could speak with greater authority on
the subject of debt than Johnson. "Do not accustom yourself," he wrote
to Boswell, "to consider debt only an inconvenience; you will find it a
calamity. Let it be your first care not to be in any man's debt.
Whatever you have, spend less. Frugality is not only the basis of quiet,
but of beneficence." To Simpson, the barrister, he wrote, "Small debts
are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely
be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon, of loud noise,
but little danger. You must therefore be enabled to discharge petty
debts, that you may have leisure, with security to struggle with the
rest." "Sir," said he to the patient and receptive Boswell, "get as much
peace of mind as you can, and keep within your income, and you won't go
far wrong."
Men who live by their wits, their talents, or their genius, have,
somehow or other, acquired the character of being improvident. Charles
Nodier, writing about a distinguished genius, said of him--"In the life
of intelligence and art, he was an angel; in the common practical life
of every day, he was a child." The same might be said of many great
writers and artists. The greatest of them have been so devoted--heart
and soul--to their special work, that they have not cared to think how
the efforts of their genius might be converted into pounds, shillings,
and pence. Had they placed the money consideration first, probably the
world would not have inherited the products of their genius. Milton
would not have laboured for so many years at his "Paradise Lost," merely
for the sake of the five pounds for which he sold the first edition to
the publisher. Nor would Schiller have gone on toiling for twenty years
up to the topmost pinnacles of thought, merely for the sake of the bare
means of living which he earned by his work.
At the same time, men of genius should not disregard the common rules of
arithmetic. If they spend more than they earn, they will run into debt.
Nor will complaining of the harshness of the world keep them out of it.
They have to stand or fall on their merits as men, and if they are not
provident they will suffer the same consequences as others. Thackeray,
in painting the character of Captain Shandon, in his "Pendennis," gave
considerable offence to the literary profession; yet he only spoke the
truth. "If a lawyer," said he, "or a soldier, or a parson, outruns his
income, and does not pay his bills, he must go to gaol; and an author
must go too."
Literary men are not neglected because they are literary men. But they
have no right to expect that society will overlook their social offences
because they are literary men. It is necessary for the world's sake, as
well as for their own sake, that literary men and artists should take
care to "provide against the evil day" like other people. "Imagination
and art," says Madame de Staël, "have need to look after their own
comfort and happiness in this world." The world ought to help them
generously; all good men ought to help them; but what is better than
all, they ought to help themselves.