Part 20 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+llings a week,--the repayments commencing the very first week after the advance has been made. But though ten s.h.i.+llings 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 pa.s.sing 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 quant.i.ty 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 Wardens.h.i.+p 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.” Pa.s.sion 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 n.o.body. 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 s.h.i.+fts, 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 a.s.sured 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, b.u.t.ter, 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 dest.i.tute of the means of subsistence. His n.o.ble and royal friends had entirely deserted him. Executions for debt were in his house, and he pa.s.sed his last days in the custody of sheriffs' officers, who abstained from conveying him to prison merely because they were a.s.sured 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 sc.r.a.pes, 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 n.o.ble thought.” He was accordingly driven to very shabby s.h.i.+fts 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 s.h.i.+fts, and dishonesties, which debt involves.
Men of science are for the most part exempt from the necessity of s.h.i.+ning in society; and hence they furnish but a small number of instances of ill.u.s.trious 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 princ.i.p.ally from the circ.u.mstance of his salary, as princ.i.p.al mathematician to the Emperor of Germany, having been always in arrear. This drove him to casting nativities in order to earn a living. ”I pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+rts, a few books, and many ma.n.u.scripts. 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 polis.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses for the opticians was enough to supply his wants, he incurred no debts. He refused a professors.h.i.+p, 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 n.o.ble 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 acc.u.mulating 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 circ.u.mstances 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 princ.i.p.ally 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, t.i.tian, 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 b.u.t.terman, 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 b.u.t.ter 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 Ca.s.sandra'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]