RICH YET POOR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21538, 9 January 1932, Page 11

RICH YET POOR

THEY SHOULD BE PITIED I am not such a fool as to agree with the words of the sentimental song which states that “The Best Things in Life Are Free ” (writes Beverley Nichols in the Daily Mail). The man who wrote that lyric was referring, of course, to such things as sunshine, the song of the birds, flowers, health, and all the rest of it, even Including love itself. I have never found that any of these things are free. If I want sunshine I have to go to the south of France, which is hardly a charitable institution. If I want to hear the song of the birds, I have either to get into a car or pay some transport company to conduct me. Flowers are not free unless you live in a cottage. And as for love—well, you can’t buy love for money, but you can most certainly destroy it by poverty.

In view of these observations, it may seem strange that I have chosen the title, “ Pity the Poor Little Rich Girl.” But I mention these things because I want to clear the ground of sentimental slush. It would be very easy to write the conventional article about the poor little rich girl. You know the sort of thing. She would be shown, pale and listless, sitting at the head of a long table, sending the ortolans away untasted, because she had eaten too much caviare.

Or she would be posed in front of a mirror, bored to death by having to try on so many clothes. I cannot write that sort of stuff, because I realise that the poor usually cat much more than the rich nowadays. It takes money to diet. As for clothes—even Mrs Midas would never be bored by trying on clothes. If women tell you clothes bore them, they are either such fearful liars or such fearful bores themselves that their opinions are of no value.

There is, however, a very definite reason why I pity the poor little rich girl, and it arises from one of the most disturbing phenomena of modern society. I refer to the enormous increase in marriages for money.

A certain proportion of men, of course, have always married women for their money. It used to be one of the most useful functions of the British aristocracy. Since our. aristocracy has degenerated in recent years from a merely mercenary condition into a state of almost complete coma, the function is, unfortunately, not so widely exercised. But it is exercised, more and more, in other directions. Half the young men who have come down from Oxford in recent years were educated out of capital. That capital is shrinking fast. Their fathers cannot support them, they have expensive tastes. . . . The rest follows. I repeat, that in no previous period of this country’s history has there been such a vast floating population of fortune hunters. That is why I pity the poor little rich girl. There is another reason why the trade of the fortune hunter is becoming so increasingly easy. In the old days many attractive young men of weak character, though they would have welcomed marriage with a rich girl, did not actually seek her out, for the simple reason that they were in love with a poor one. You may tell me that if society is rotten —or, should you wish to put it more kindly, if morals are elastic—the little rich girl has nothing to worry about. She can join the mad dance, you may think, jazz with the rest of the crowd., choosing her partners as she will. She can get the man she wants, and if he docs not turn out to be satisfactory she can take as many others as she chooses until the right one comes along. That argument does a gross injustice to women’s psychology. Women are not naturally promiscuous. Even the poor little girl who lives like a parasite on some rich girl’s husband wants to stick to that one man. Love, to most women, is more a matter of association, of protection, of a thousand exquisite and delicate intimacies, than a mere passage of passion.

The poor little rich girl doesn't want to live her whole life in constantly variegated epochs. She wants a home. And she is usually the last woman in the world to find one.

Besides, there is that question of dignity—the quality which G. K. Chesterton described as vital in woman and hateful in men.

A woman must keep her dignity, even if she keeps it in rags. And it is easier to keep in rags than in crepe de chine.