A friend of mine--one of those people who talk about money with an air of
familiarity that suggests that they have got an "out-crop" of the Rand reef
in their back-gardens--said to me the other day that I ought to buy a
fur-lined coat. There never was such a time as this for buying a fur-lined
coat or a sealskin jacket, said he. What with the war, and the "sales," and
the tradesmen's need of cash, they were simply being thrown at you. You
could have them almost for the trouble of carrying them away. A trifle of
fifteen or twenty pounds would buy one a coat that would be cheap at sixty
guineas. And, remember, there was wear for twenty years in it. And think of
the saving in doctor's bills--for you simply can't catch colds if you wear
a fur coat. In short, not to buy a fur coat at this moment was an act of
gross improvidence, a wrong to one's family, a ... a ... And then he
looked, with the cold disapproval of a connoisseur, at the coat I was
wearing. And in the light of that glance I saw for the first time that it
was ... yes ... certainly, it was not what it had been.
Now I am not going to pretend that I have a soul above fur-lined coats. I
haven't; I love them. And by fur coats I don't mean those adorned with
astrakhan collars, which I abominate. A man in an astrakhan coat is to me a
suspicious character, a stage baron, one who is probably deep in treasons,
stratagems, and spoils. The suspicion is unjust to the gentleman in the
astrakhan coat, of course. Most suspicions are unjust. And if you ask me to
give reasons for this unreasoning hostility to astrakhan, I do not know
that I could find them. Perhaps it is the dislike I have for artificial
curls; perhaps it is that the astrakhan collar reminds me of those unhappy
pet dogs who look as though they had been put in curl papers overnight and
sent out into the streets by their owners as a poor jest. Yes, I think it
must be that sense of artificiality which is at the root of the dislike. No
doubt the curls are natural. No doubt the woolly sheep of Astrakhan do wear
their coats in these little heaven-sent ringlets. But ... well ... "I do
not like thee, Doctor Fell."
But fur-lined coats, with fine fur collars, are quite another affair. If I
had the "magic nib," I could grow lyrical over them. I could, indeed. In
place-of this article I would write an ode to a fur-lined coat. I would
sing of the Asian wilds from whence it came, of its wondrous lines and its
soft and silken texture, of its generous warmth and its caressing touch. I
would set up such a universal hunger for fur coats that the tradesmen in
Oxford Street and Regent Street would come and offer me a guinea a word to
write advertisements for them.
And yet I shall not buy a fur-lined coat, and I will tell you why. A fur
coat is not an article of clothing: it is a new way of life. You cannot say
with reckless prodigality, "Here, I will have a fur coat and make an end of
this gnawing passion." The fur coat is not an end: it is a beginning. You
have got to live up to it. You have got to take the fur-coat point of view
of your relations to society. When Chauncey Depew, as a boy, bought a
beautiful spotted dog at a fair and took it home, the rain came down and
the spots began to run into stripes. He took the dog back to the man of
whom he had bought it and demanded an explanation. "But you had an umbrella
with that dog," said the man. "No," said the boy. "Oh!" said the man,
"there's an umbrella goes with that dog."
And so it is with the fur-lined coat. So many things "go with it." It is in
this respect like that grand piano to which you succumbed in a moment of
paternal weakness--or after a lucky stroke in rubber. The old furniture,
which had seemed so unexceptionable before, suddenly became dowdy in the
presence of this princely affair. You wanted new chairs and rugs and
hangings to make the piano accord with its setting. Even the house fell
under suspicion, and perhaps you date all your difficulties from the day
that you bought that grand piano, and found that it had set you going on a
new way of life just beyond your modest means.
If I bought a fur-lined coat I know that I should want to buy a motor-car
to keep it company. It is possible, of course, to wear a fur coat in a
motor-bus, but if you do you will assuredly have a sense that you are a
little over-dressed, a trifle conspicuous, that the fellow-passengers are
mentally remarking that such a coat ought to have a carriage of its own. It
would provoke the comment that I heard the other night as two ladies in
evening dress left a bus in a pouring rain. "Well," said one of the other
lady passengers--a little enviously I thought, but still pertinently--"if I
could afford to wear such fine clothes I think I would take a Cab." Yes,
decidedly, the fur-lined coat would not be complete without the motor-car.
And then consider how it limits your freedom and raises the tariff against
you. The tip that would be gratefully received if you were getting into
that modest coat that you have discarded would be unworthy of the fur-lined
standard that you have deliberately adopted. The recipient would take it
frigidly, with a glance at the luxurious garment into which he had helped
you--a glance that would cut you to the quick. Your friends would have to
be fur-lined, too, and your dinners would no longer be the modest affairs
of old, but would soar to the champagne standard. It would not be possible
to slip unnoticed into your favourite little restaurant in Soho to take
your simple chop, or to go in quest of that wonderful restaurant of Arne's
of which "Aldebaran" keeps the secret. The modesty of Arne's would make you
blush for your fur-lined coat.
"The genteel thing," said Tony Lumpkin's friend, "is the genteel thing at
any time, if so be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation according-ly."
That is it. The fur-lined coat is a genteel thing; but you have to be "in a
concatenation according-ly." And there's the rub. It is not the coat, but
its trimmings, so to speak, that give us pause. When you put on the coat
you insensibly put off your old way of life. You set up a new standard, and
have got to adapt your comings and goings, your habits and your expenditure
to it. I once knew a man who had a fur-lined coat presented to him. It was
a disaster. He could not live "in a concatenation according-ly." He lost
his old friends without getting new ones. And his end ... Well, his end
confirmed me in the conviction of the unwisdom of wearing a fur-lined coat
before you are able, or disposed, to mould your life to the fur-lined
standard.