I now allude to those financial harassments which have been a marked
feature of the home founded and managed by Mr. Smith, who has been
eternally worried about money. The children have grown up in this
atmosphere of fiscal anxiety, accustomed to the everlasting question
whether ends will meet; accustomed to the everlasting debate whether
a certain thing can be afforded. And nearly every house in the street
where the Smiths live is in the same case.
Why is this? Is it that incomes are lower and commodities and taxes
higher in England than in other large European countries? No; the
contrary is the fact. In no large European country will money go so far
as in England. Is it that the English race is deficient in financial
skill? England is the only large European country which genuinely
balances its national budget every year and regularly liquidates its
debts.
I wish to hint to Mr. Smith that he differs in one very important
respect from the Mr. Smith of France, and the Mr. Smith of Germany, his
only serious rivals. In the matter of money, he always asks himself,
not how little he can spend, but how much he can spend. At the end of a
lifetime the result is apparent. Or when he has a daughter to marry off,
the result is apparent. In England economy is a virtue. In France, for
example, it is merely a habit.
******
Mr. Smith is extravagant. He has an extravagant way of looking at life.
On his own plane Mr. Smith is a haughty nobleman of old days; he is
royal; he is a born hangman of expense.
“What?” cries Mr. Smith, furiousi. “Me extravagant! Why, I have always
been most careful! I have had to be, with my income!”
He may protest. But I am right. The very tone with which he says: “With
my income!” gives Mr. Smith away. What is the matter with Mr. Smith’s
income? Has it been less than the average? Not at all. The only thing
that is the matter with Mr. Smith’s income is that he has never accepted
it as a hard, prosaic fact. He has always pretended that it was a magic
income, with which miracles could be performed. He has always been
trying to pour two pints and a gill out of a quart pot. He has always
hoped that luck would befall him. On a hundred and fifty a year he ever
endeavoured to live as though he had two hundred. And so on, as his
income increased.
When he married he began by taking the highest-rented house that he
could possibly afford, instead of the cheapest that he could possibly do
with, and he has been going on ever since in the same style--creating an
effect, cutting a figure.
This system of living, the English system, has indubitable advantages.
It encourages enterprise and prevents fossilisation. It gives dramatic
interest to existence. And, after all, though at the age of 50 Mr.
Smith possesses little beside a houseful of furniture and his insurance
policy, he can say that he has had something for his money every year
and every day of the year. He can truthfully say, when charged with
having “eaten his cake,” that a cake is a futile thing till it is eaten.
The French system has disadvantages. The French Mr. Smith does not try
to make money, he tries merely to save it. He shrinks from the perils
of enterprise. He does not want to create. He frequently becomes
parsimonious, and he may postpone the attempt to get some fun out of
life until he is past the capacity for fun.
On the other hand, the financial independence with which his habits
endow him is a very precious thing. One finds it everywhere in France;
it is instinctive in the attitude of the average man. That chronic
tightness has often led Mr. Smith to make unpleasing compromises with
his dignity; such compromises are rarer in France. Take a person into
your employ in France, even the humblest, and you will soon find out how
the habit of a margin affects the demeanour of the employed. Personally,
I have often been inconvenienced by this in France. But I have liked
it. After all, one prefers to be dealing with people who can call their
souls their own.
Mr. Smith need not go to the extremes of the extremists in France,
but he might advantageously go a long way towards them. Pie ought
to reconcile himself definitely to his income. He ought to cease his
constant attempt to perform miracles with his income. It is really
not pleasant for him to be fixed as he is at the age of fifty, worried
because he has to provide wedding presents for his son and his daughter.
And how can he preach thrift to his son John? John knows his father.
There is another, and an even more ticklish, point. It being notorious
that Mr. Smith spends too much money, let us ask whether Mr. Smith gets
value for the money he spends. I must again compare with France, whose
homes I know. Now, as regards solid, standing comfort, there is no
comparison between Mr. Smith’s home and the home of the French Mr.
Smith. Our Mr. Smith wins. His standard is higher. He has more room,
more rooms, more hygiene, and more general facilities for putting
himself at his ease.
*****
But these contrivances, once acquired, do not involve a regular outlay,
except so far as they affect rent. And in the household budget rent is
a less important item than food and cleansing. Now, the raw materials
of the stuff necessary to keep a household healthily alive cost more in
France than in England. And the French Mr. Smith’s income is a little
less than our Mr. Smith’s. Yet the French Mr. Smith, while sitting on a
less comfortable chair in a smaller room, most decidedly consumes better
meals than our Mr. Smith. In other words, he lives better.
I have often asked myself, in observing the family life of Monsieur
and Madame Smith: “How on earth do they do it?” Only one explanation
is possible. They understand better how to run a house economically in
France than we do in England.
Now Mrs. Smith in her turn cries: “Me extravagant?”
Yes, relatively, extravagant! It is a hard saying, but, I believe, a
true one. Extravagance is in the air of England. A person always in a
room where there is a slight escape of gas does not smell the gas--until
he has been out for a walk and returned. So it is with us.
As for you, Mrs. Smith, I would not presume to say in what you are
extravagant. But I guarantee that Madame Smith would “do it on less.”
The enormous periodical literature now devoted largely to hints on
household management shows that we, perhaps unconsciously, realise a
defect. You don’t find this literature in France. They don’t seem to
need it.