The rich man’s children--His sons’ education at school and
university--His daughters--Love and marriage--Refinement of
the aristocracy--Their alliance with the plutocracy--Smart
society--Its general characteristics.
The natural desire of every man is to do the best he can for his
children, and in this respect the rich man feels that his money is
of special advantage to him. But are healthy upbringing and good
education superior in quality if they are expensive? The whole
trouble with regard to these children is comprised in the fact that
they know they are going to have money, so that from the earliest
age they accept their elevation from the common herd as a matter of
course, and assume the easy assurance and authoritative manner which
always characterises them. Their childhood they spend guarded by
servants, nurses, governesses, and tutors, often without coming much
into personal contact with their parents or deriving any benefits
from parental care and affection, the strongest of all the variety
of influences in a man’s life; they also have a more or less general
consciousness that anything they want can be had for the asking. The
boys are sent to public schools, where there are many others in a like
position, and where the expense of education is greater than in other
schools, and its quality rather inferior. Here they are given a vague
notion of ancient Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and of England
in the Middle Ages. But nothing is taught them of contemporary history,
of English literature, or of how their own country is governed to-day,
nor is a moment found during those early years for a preliminary study
of political economy or some elementary exposition of industrial and
social problems, though such exposition would be invaluable, if only
to impress on young and acquisitive minds the fact that such problems
exist. In short, the world they are living in is never explained to
them. And, whatever they may learn, from start to finish they are
assiduously kept in a groove where their own class is represented to
them as the predominating and important section of the community, which
may expect service but need not render it.
To do schoolboys justice, however, they cannot be accused of being
snobs. They care nothing for rank or riches. They have their own
particular standard of judging who is “a good chap” and who is not,
and on the whole their verdict is shrewd and not unfair. They are
apt to be over-severe against breaches of their particular code, and
they are very suspicious of any signs of originality. It is in this
direction that they make many serious mistakes. But that a boy has a
title is a matter of complete indifference to them, or whether or not
he be the son of very rich parents is a matter about which they would
not think it worth while to inquire. No distinctions are made; the
sons of the rich mix with their school-fellows without being conscious
of occupying any special position, and their school-fellows accept
them without even knowing they are the sons of the rich. The harm
they do quite unconsciously is not of an obvious kind, and its very
subtilty prevents it from being recognised. They themselves know what
the future has in store for them, and it necessarily affects their
attitude towards school work and general intellectual training for
after life. They are callous and indifferent as to education, regarding
it not as an essential preparation for their life’s work, but as a
tedious exercise which has to be gone through, and in which they are
assisted by the natural curiosity of youth and an instinctive dislike
of ignorance. If they are popular this view, accompanied by a certain
amount of swagger and a preference for and often a proficiency in games
and sport, gives them a position which is distinctly attractive to the
boy mind, and their influence spreads very rapidly among those who in
after life have got to work for their livelihood. In those schools
where there is no disturbing element emanating from the presence of
rich leisured boys the standard of efficient work--not estimated by the
measure of worldly success which titles and position afford--will be
found to be higher than in the few schools which lay themselves out to
receive this class of boy. It is not to be inferred that the rich man’s
son never has sufficient ability and, indeed, industry to distinguish
himself in the intellectual field. But it is the influence and example
of those who have been brought up from their earliest childhood knowing
that they have not to work in order to live, that creates an atmosphere
which must be unfavourable to the training of boys for whom life is not
to be one prolonged holiday.
At the university the superiority of the position of richer boys is
first acknowledged. They are free to spend their money and make the
display, in one direction or another, which is to distinguish them
from their fellows for the rest of their lives, and recruits for their
band of toadies and tuft-hunters begin to enlist. Should they not be
completely independent the question of the choice of a profession has
to be discussed, and is almost invariably regarded purely from the
monetary point of view of pay and salary. Many either enter professions
which they allow to occupy very little of their time or have no
profession at all, and their incomes preclude them from deriving any of
the unquestionable advantages of professional training and discipline,
without which no man can be expected to cultivate the talents he may
possess, or acquire knowledge and experience which might make him a
useful associate in the general activity of the community he lives
in. We will not enlarge on the sort of life they lead--the unrelieved
pursuit of enjoyment, the London season, the country house parties, the
race meetings, the shooting and hunting, the visit to the Continental
watering-place to recover from the fatigues before starting again,
and so on and so on. It is sufficient to know that they contribute as
little as possible to and extract as much as they can from the general
fund of national wealth.
The girls meanwhile receive hardly any real education at all, except
in the knowledge of the little world which they are taught to believe
is the whole world, and within the walls of which they are probably
destined to spend the remainder of their days. The moment of “coming
out” is held before them as the one thing to look forward to. And when
the longed-for day arrives, it is only the signal for the commencement
of an exhausting round of pleasures sanctioned by their society and
represented to them as being the one absorbing business of life. It is
only charitable to accuse them of being uneducated, otherwise it would
be hard to explain psychologically the attitude of mind, of cheerful
acceptance of the fate in store for them instead of rebellion against
it. If, in rare cases, they attempt to follow a line of their own and
join the professional class, every conceivable obstacle is put in their
way, and the prejudice against work which is not the business of “a
lady” is generally strong enough to drive them back into the smooth
groove of leisure. Not infrequently this fatal obligatory idleness
crushes the spirit out of them.
In later years love and marriage, difficult enough problems for anyone,
have additional snares and pitfalls for the children of the rich. It
is true that the rich man can marry the penniless girl to whom he is
devoted, and the rich girl can accept the man who is struggling for
a living. But the far more frequent occurrence is for the rich girl
to be captured by the man who wants her money, and for the rich man
to be entrapped by the ambitious mother who wants his wealth for her
daughter. Not even experience teaches. Instances could be given of
women who have married for money, and though every page of their life
has taught them the folly of this irreparable step, yet they refuse to
learn.
They spend their later life in arranging marriages at all costs with
rich men for their daughters, placing insurmountable obstacles in their
way if they attempt marriages on moderate means, which must entail
their dropping out from the ranks of the select. So it is that here
again money, far from assisting, impedes and even stifles the natural
preferences of human affections, and the average of unfortunate and
disastrous unions is far higher among the rich than in any other class.
Some people are apt to believe that the society scandals which afford
so much material for newspaper reports and gossip give an unfair
impression of the frequency of these disasters, which they maintain
arise just as often in other classes of society, but are not as widely
reported. This is not the case. In the middle and lower professional
classes, where marriages have been contracted by parties free to
exercise their natural choice and where lives are filled with work
and occupation, scandals of this description are very rare. It is in
the class where, as we have shown, the power to select is restricted
and distorted, where life itself deteriorates into prolonged idleness
and self-indulgence and the natural obligations of motherhood are
disregarded and shirked, and it is also at the very bottom of the
scale, where vice and degradation produced by want engender brutality,
where, in fact, there is too much and where there is too little, in the
scum and in the sediment, that married life becomes most frequently
intolerable.
A critic may now begin to insist that it is all very well to condemn
the large servile establishments, futile luxuries, defective education,
and foolish marriages as the outcome of riches, but that, taking them
as a whole, the class that have the assured possession of wealth are
superior in the refinements of mind and body to the lower classes, and
that as you go higher in the scale of society the proportion of mental
and physical excellence gradually increases.
The very use of the words high and low shows how completely the
money standard is accepted sociologically. If you have money you are
high-class, if you have not money you are low-class. Though poverty
may militate against refinement, have riches anything to do with it?
The two principal effects that riches exercise on character are
either to weaken it into effeteness or debase it into coarseness. Our
aristocracy, for instance, so long as they were occupied with fighting
or with the responsibilities of government--so long, in fact, as they
had some business of their own--preserved a certain distinction, and
by a careful process of selection and intermarriage, avoided any
coarsening of their breed. This, for a time, may have endowed them
with a certain high average of refinement of manner and tastes. But
when by the changes in our system of government, and later by the
rise of democracy, that is the great mass of the people awakening to
a consciousness of their own existence, the aristocracy became more
and more cut off from national services and had recourse to leisured
lives of unemployment and pleasure, the characteristics of effeteness
and what the French call _fin de race_ began to show themselves. In
many cases downright impoverishment overtook those who had squandered
their incomes on unprofitable amusement and stupid dissipation, till at
last they seem to have come to a determination to rehabilitate their
position and reinforce their caste by means of commercial and American
money.
The plutocracy gained ground immensely by the absorption in its ranks
of ancient families and long genealogies, and the aristocracy became
increasingly tainted with commonness, losing its distinction and
substituting for it ostentation, vulgarity, and the appreciation of
money for its own sake. They derived no advantage physiologically in
the shape of health and vigour which any alliance with the poorer class
might have given them.
So far from anything in all this indicating that money produces
refinement, the exact opposite is proved. That a full competence
enables a man to appreciate the refinements of life is, after all, what
we are doing our best to show; but riches--that is to say, anything
beyond the competence--can only act as a fatal impediment even to this.
Whatever refinement there may be in the upper classes is only a
survival, an element that is not being preserved, but is rapidly
waning. Their general disposition and influence is a source of anxiety
to many who are watching the signs of the times with attention. A
recent article in the _National Review_ sounded a grave note of
warning. “Inherited vitality of race,” said the writer, “which
upper-class women still preserve until they dissipate it in keeping up
with the procession, is frittered away by parental irresponsibility,
often commencing before birth, and by the ever-increasing excitement,
restlessness, and luxury of our generation.... Greed of money
is unblushing, and perhaps most shameless amongst mothers and
daughters.... Plutocracy and vanity are in possession.” Out of such
poor stuff, he concludes, no man of character or ability can come
forward in public life.
Another significant result of the kind of life of continual excitement,
constant change, combined with sensuous ease, led by these people, is
the noticeably declining birth-rate among those who are well off.
It is not worth while here to enter into a diatribe against the habits
and customs, the fashions and fancies, of what is known as Smart
Society, which is the general aggregate of people of affluence; or
attempt to describe the various sets, the life struggle for those in
one grade to lift themselves into what they think a higher and smarter
grade; the necessary qualifications to enter this society; the wild and
ceaseless hunger for excitement and amusement which prevents any time
being allowed for reflection, reading, or even ordered thought; the
cynical and inane quality of the intercourse; the endless gossip; the
contempt for anything that is considered dowdy; the accepted low level
of morality and network of irregular relationships; the snobbishness,
the artificiality, the want of education; in fact, all the low
standard of living down to which any set of human beings is bound to
fall if the key-note of their existence is idleness and the foundation
of their position is money. They are frightened of thought because it
might plunge them into desperation, they are frightened of knowledge
because it might dispel their dearest illusions, they are frightened of
work because it might reveal their incompetence, they are frightened of
progress because it may shatter their citadel.
One would have imagined that the so-called sporting instinct which we
are so proud of nurturing in our public schools and the spirit of fair
play would have made men ashamed to continue to lead lives solely and
systematically devoted to extravagance and selfish enjoyment while so
many of their fellow-men are condemned to the dismal existence of toil
and squalor, even if they refused to admit that the one influenced the
other. There are, of course, people in this society who endeavour, more
or less successfully, to stand up against the drift of fashion and are
conscious of the falseness of their privileged position, but they are
exceptional. It appears to be impossible for the very great majority to
get the delusion out of their heads that, by pensions and doles, and
charities and patronage, and presents of game and subscriptions, and
the employment of people in senseless occupations, they are doing all
that can be expected of them to help “the lower orders.”
If in all this luxury there were some trace of splendour or
magnificence, if art, literature, or music were generously patronised,
and beauty and good taste appreciated, some slight justification or
excuse for it might be found. The rich magnates of Renaissance Italy
or eighteenth-century France had, on the whole, a favourable though
capricious influence on art and literature. But the rich magnates
of twentieth-century England are chiefly noted for the deplorable
vulgarity of their taste and their ignorance of the best works in
painting, literature, and music. At the best, some few of them are
collectors, and if ever they seek the advice of experts to establish
some permanent method for the encouragement of the arts, too often
their motive is not any profound reverence for artistic beauty, but the
spurious fame or titular distinctions they can gain by this means. The
private collections they form are rarely exhibited, and being withheld
from the public view and from popular appreciation, the true function
of these great works of art is almost nullified.
Taking it as a whole, the manner of living of this set of people
would not be worth a moment’s attention were it not that human beings
are being sacrificed and talents and capacity prostituted, and that
the example set by these few is assiduously studied and followed by a
large section of the population who aspire to associate with those of
higher rank and greater wealth. So it is that special notice is taken
of all they do; the limelight is turned full upon them, and nothing can
surpass the servility of that section of the public press that recounts
the doings of these parasites, describing with intense solemnity
their entertainments and their hunting and shooting exploits, and
giving embarrassingly intimate episodes from their private lives for
public consumption. By publishing broadcast these alluring pictures it
attempts to glorify their profitless and empty existence.
From time to time, in sheer exasperation at the senselessness of it
all, men come forward and inveigh against society life; but not only
does this not make the very smallest impression, but the objects of
their invective enjoy abuse and thrive on the advertisement it gives
them.
The life of this society represents the outward and visible expression
of all the various contributory elements we have been trying to
analyse; it has, therefore, been necessary to allude to it in order to
give some general notion of the way many of the rich live. And it is
done in no cavilling or pharisaical spirit, but with the keen desire
to expose a state of social corruption which can only be corrected
in the long run by being brought fully into the light. The beauty,
the smartness, and the brilliancy on the surface, like the flowers
and lights and jewels of their entertainments, produce an attractive
glamour and present an alluring picture for those who cannot see
further behind the scenes, and form one of the chief inducements for
money-making and for continuing the fight for material gain.