Chapter LI: Money and Matrimony

MONEY and matrimony! what a fine taking title! If that does not
attract readers, we don’t know what will. Money and matrimony!
how different, yet how essentially combined, how intimately
blended! “No money, no matrimony,” might almost be written above
some doors. Certainly money is an essential, but not so absorbing
an essential as some people make it. Beyond the expenditure
necessary for a certain establishment, a woman is seldom much the
better for her husband’s inordinate wealth. We have seen the wife
of a reputed millionaire no better done by than that of a country
squire.

Mr. Prospero Plutus may gild his coach and his harness, and his
horses too, if he likes, but all the lacker in the world will not
advance him a step in society; therefore, what can he do with his
surplus cash but carry it to the “reserve fund,” as some
Joint-Stock Bankers pretend to do. Still there is a money-worship
among us, that is not even confined to the opposite sex, but
breaks out in veneration among men, just as if one man having
half a million or a million pieces of gold could be of any
advantage to another man, who only knows the rich man to say “How
d’ye do?” to. A clever foreigner, who came to this country some
years ago for the honestly avowed purpose of marrying an heiress,
used to exclaim, when any one told him that another man had so
many thousands a year, “Vell, my good friend, vot for that to me?
I cannot go for be marry to him!” and we never hear a man
recommended to another man for his wealth alone, without thinking
of our foreign friend. What earthly good can Plutus’s money do
us? We can safely say, we never knew a rich man who was not
uncommonly well able to take care of his cash. It is your poor
men who are easy about money. To tell a young lady that a young
gentleman has so many thousands a year is very different; and
this observation leads us to say, that people who think they do a
young man a kindness by exaggerating his means or expectations,
are greatly mistaken. On the contrary, they do him an injury;
for, sooner or later, the lawyers know everything, and
disappointment and vexation is the result.

Since our friend Warren wrote his admirable novel, “Ten Thousand
a Year,” that sum has become the fashionable income for
exaggerators. Nobody that has anything a year has less, though we
all know how difficult a sum it is to realise, and how impossible
it is to extract a five-pound note, or even a sovereign, from the
pockets of people who talk of it as a mere bagatelle. This money
mania has increased amazingly within the last few years, aided,
no doubt, by the gigantic sums the Joint-Stock Banks have enabled
penniless people to “go” for.

When Wainwright, the first of the assurance office defrauders by
poison, was in prison, he said to a person who called upon him,
“You see with what respect they treat me. They don’t set me to
make my bed, or sweep the yard, like those fellows,” pointing to
his brother prisoners; “no, they treat me like a gentleman. They
think I’m in for ten thousand pounds.” Ten thousand pounds! What
would ten thousand pounds be nowadays, when men speculate to the
extent of a quarter or may be half a million of money? Why
Wainwright would have had to clean out the whole prison on the
present scale of money delinquency. A hundred thousand pounder is
quite a common fellow, hardly worth speaking of. There was a time
when the greediest man was contented with his plum. Now the cry
is “More! more!” until some fine morning the crier is “no more”
himself.

This money-craving and boasting is all bad. It deceives young
men, and drives those of moderate income into the London clubs,
instead of their marrying and settling quietly as their fathers
did before them. They hear of nothing but thousands and tens of
thousands until they almost believe in the reality, and are
ashamed to encounter the confessional stool of the lawyers,
albeit they may have as much as with prudence and management
would make married life comfortable. Boasting and exaggeration
also greatly misleads and disappoints anxious “Mammas,” all ready
to believe whatever they like, causing very likely promising
speculations to be abandoned in favour of what turn out great
deal worse ventures. Only let a young man be disengaged,
professionally and bodily, and some one or other will be sure to
invest him with a fortune, or with surprising expectations from
an uncle, an aunt, or other near relation. It is surprising how
fond people are of fanning the flame of a match, and how they
will talk about what they really know nothing, until an
unfortunate youth almost appears to participate in their
exaggerations. Could some of these Leviathans of fortune know the
fabulous £ s. d. colours under which they have sailed, they would
be wonderfully astonished at the extent of their innocent
imposture. Yet they were not to blame because people said they
had ten thousand a year, were richest commoners in fact. Many
would then understand much unexplained politeness, and appreciate
its disinterestedness at its true value. Captain Quaver would see
why Mrs. Sunnybrow was to anxious that he should hear Matilda
sing; Mr. Grist why Mrs. Snubwell manoeuvred to get him next
Bridget at dinner; and perhaps our “Richest Commoner” why Mrs.
Yammerton was so glad to see him back at the Grange.