Part 21 (1/2)
”But what about the young people!” said Vincent.
”Oh, that will look after itself,” said Father Payne. ”There's no difficulty about that! You asked me whom it was worth while taking some trouble to see, and I prescribe a very occasional great man, and a good many well-bred, cultivated, experienced, civil men and women. It isn't very easy to find, that sort of society, for a young man; but it is worth trying for.”
”But do you mean that you should pursue good talk?” said Vincent.
”A little, I think,” said Father Payne; ”there's a good deal of art in it--unconscious art in England, probably--but much of our life is spent in talking, and there's no reason why we shouldn't learn how to get the best and the most out of talk--how to start a subject, and when to drop it--how to say the sort of things which make other people want to join in, and so on. Of course you can't learn to talk unless you have a lot to say, but you can learn _how_ to do it, and better still how _not_ to do it. I used to feel in the old days, when I met a clever man--it was rare enough, alas!--how much more I could have got out of him if I had known how to do the trick. It's a great pleasure, good talk; and the fact that it is so tiring shows what a real pleasure it must be. But a man with whom you can only talk _hard_ isn't a companion--he's an adversary in a game. There have been times in my life when I have had a real tough talker staying here with me, when I have suffered from crus.h.i.+ng intellectual fatigue, and felt inclined to say, like Elijah, 'Take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers.' That is the strange thing to me about most human beings--the extent to which they seem able to talk without being tired. I agree with Walter Scott, when he said, 'If the question was eternal company without the power of retiring within myself, or solitary confinement for life, I should say, ”Turnkey, lock the cell!”' Companions.h.i.+p doesn't seem to me the normal thing. Solitude is the normal thing, with a few bits of talk thrown in, like meals, for refreshment. But you can't lay down rules for people about it. Some people are simply gregarious, and twitter together like starlings in a shrubbery: that isn't talk--it's only a series of signals and exclamations. The danger of solitude is that the machinery runs just as you wish it to run--and that wears it out.”
”But isn't your whole idea of talk rather strenuous--a little artificial?”
said Vincent.
”Not more so than fixed meals,” said Father Payne, ”or regular exercise.
But, of course silent companions.h.i.+p is the greatest boon of all. I have a belief that even in silent companions.h.i.+p there is a real intermingling of vital and mental currents, and that one is much pervaded and affected by the people one lives with, even if one does not talk to them. The very sight of some people is as bad as an argument! The ideal thing, of course, is to have a few intimate friends and some comfortable acquaintances. But I am rather a fatalist about friends.h.i.+p, and I think that most of us get about as much as we deserve. Anyhow, it's all worth taking some trouble about; and most people make the mistake of not taking any trouble or putting themselves about; and that's not the way to behave!”
LIII
OF MONEY
I suppose I had said something high-minded, showing a supposed contempt of money, for Father Payne looked at me in silence.
”You mustn't say such things,” said he, at last. ”I'll tell you why! What you said was perfectly genuine, and I have no doubt you feel it--but, if I may say so, it's like talking about a place where you have never been, as if you had visited it, when you have only read about it in the guide-book.
I don't mean that you wish to deceive for an instant--but you simply don't know! That's the tragic thing about money--that it is both so important and so unimportant. If you have enough money, you need never give it a thought; if you haven't, it's the devil! It's like health--no one who hasn't been on the wrong side of the dividing line knows what a horrible place the wrong side is. Those two things--I daresay there are others--poverty and ill-health--put a man on the rack. The healthy man, and the man with a sufficient income, are apt to think that the poor man and the ill man make a great fuss about very little. I don't know about ill-health, but by George, I know all about poverty--and I'll tell you once for all. For twenty years I was poor, and this is what that means. To be tied hand and foot to a piece of hideous drudgery--morning by morning, month by month, and with the consciousness too that, if health fails you, or if you lose your work, you will either starve or have to sponge on your friends--never to be able to do what you like or go where you like--to know that the world is full of beautiful places, delightful people, interesting ideas, books, talk, art, music--to sicken for all these things, and not even to have the time or energy to get hold of such sc.r.a.ps of them as can be found cheap in London--to feel time slipping away, and all your instincts for beautiful things unused and unsated--to live a solitary, grubby, nasty life--never able to entertain a friend, or to go a trip with a friend, or to do a kindness, or to help anyone generously--and yet to feel that with an income which many people would regard as ridiculously inadequate, you could do most of these things--the slavery, the bondage, the dreariness of it!” He broke off, much moved.
”But,” said I, ”don't many quite poor people live happily and contentedly and kindly with minute incomes?”
”Why, yes,” said Father Payne, ”of course they do!--and I'm willing enough to admit that I ought to have done better than I did. But then I had been brought up differently, and by the time I had done with Oxford, I had all the tastes and instincts of the well-to-do man. That was the mischief, that I had tasted freedom. Of course, if I had been cast in a stronger and n.o.bler mould, it would have been different--but all my senses had been acutely developed, my faculties of interest and enjoyment and appreciation--not gross things, mind you, nor feelings that _ought_ to be starved, but just the wholesome delights of the well-educated man. I did not want to be extravagant, and I knew too that there were millions of people in the same case as myself. There was every reason why I should behave decently about it! If I had been really interested in my work, I could have done better--but I did not believe in the value of my work--I taught men, not to educate them, but that they might pa.s.s an examination and never look at the beastly stuff again. Whenever I reached the point at which I became interested, I had to hold my hand. And then, too, the work tired me without exercising my mind. There were the vacations, of course--but I couldn't afford to leave London--I simply lived in h.e.l.l. I don't say that I didn't get some discipline out of it--and my escape gave me a stock of grat.i.tude and delight that has been simply inexhaustible. The misery of it for me was that I had to live an unreal life. If I had been poor, and had had my leisure, and had worked at things I cared about, with a set, let us say, of young artists, all working too at things which they cared about, it would have been different--but I hadn't the energy left to make friends, or the time to find any congenial people. I can't describe what a nightmare it all was--so that when I hear you speaking as if money didn't really matter, I simply feel that you don't know what a tragedy it can be, or what your own income saves you from. You and I have the Epicurean temperament, my boy; it's no good pretending we haven't--things appeal to our mind and senses in a way they don't appeal to everyone. So I don't think that people ought to talk lightly about money, unless they have known poverty and _not_ suffered under it. I used to ask myself in those days if it was possible to suffer more, when every avenue reaching away out of my life to the things I loved and cared for seemed to be closed to me by an impa.s.sable barrier.”
”But one can practise oneself in doing without things?” I said.
”With about as much success,” said Father Payne, ”as you can practise doing without food.”
”But isn't it partly that people are unduly reticent about money?” I said.
”If people could only say frankly what they can and what they can't afford, it would simplify things very much.”
”I don't know,” said Father Payne. ”Money is one of those curious things--uninteresting if you have enough, tragic if you haven't. I don't think talking about money is vulgar--I think it is simply dull: to discuss poverty is like discussing a disease--to discuss wealth is like talking about food or wine. The poverty that simply humiliates and pinches can't be joked about--it's far too serious for that! Of course, there are men who don't really feel the call of life. Look at our friend Kaye! If Kaye had to live in London lodgings, he wouldn't mind a bit, if he could get to the Museum Reading-Room--he only wants books and his own work--he doesn't want company or music or art or talk or friends. He is wholly indifferent to nasty food or squalor. Poverty is not a real evil to him. If he had money he wouldn't know how to spend it. I read a book the other day about a priest who lived a very devoted life in the slums--he had two rooms in a clergy-house--and there was a chapter in praise of the way in which he endured his poverty. But it was all wrong! What that man really enjoyed was preaching and ceremonial and company--he had a real love of human beings.
Well, that man's life was crammed with joy--he got exactly what he wanted all day long. It wasn't a self-sacrificing life--it would have been to you and me--but he no doubt woke day after day, with a prospect of having his whole time taken up with things he thoroughly enjoyed.”
”But what about the people,” I said, ”who really enjoy just the sense of power which money gives them, without using it--or the people whose only purpose in using it is the pleasure of being known to have it?”
”Oh, of course, they are simply barbarians,” said Father Payne, ”and it doesn't do _them_ any harm to be poor. No, the tragedy lies in the case of a man with really expansive, generous, civilised instincts, to whom the world is full of wholesome and urgent delights, and whose life is simply starved out of him by poverty. I have a great mind to send you to London for a couple of months, to live on a pound a week, and see what you make of it.”
”I'll go if you wish it,” I said.
”It might bring things home to you,” said Father Payne, smiling, ”but again it probably would not, because it would only be a game--the real pinch would not come. Most people would rather enjoy migrating to h.e.l.l from heaven for a month--it would just give them a sharper relish for heaven.”
”But do you really think your poverty hurt you?” I said.