COST OF LIVING.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 934, 2 December 1933, Page 29 (Supplement)

COST OF LIVING.

Some Valuable Examples of Extravagance. DIVORCE RECORDS. (Special to the “ Star.”) SYDNEY, November 20. In a great and wealthy city like Sydney I suppose that it is natural that applications for alimony should loom large, from time to time, in the judicial reports. These equests usually lead up to interesting disclosures about personal expenditure, and I will mention three cases which have attracted i my attention within the past few months—solely because of the luxurious and extravagant habits that they reveal in the higher or more opulent levels of Australian social life. The first case that I cite concerns Mrs Caroline Bartlett or Wyatt, once* the idol of the Australian stage as Carrie Moore. It is twenty-five years since Carrie was charming all hearts on this side of the world as the “ Merry Widow,” and, without raising the invidious question of age, I may remind my readers that she was in “ DjinDjin ” when * she was twelve, and scored a great success as Josephine in Pinafore” when she was only seventeen. The years have been hard to Carrie—as everybody admitted when she appeared on the stage when the curtain was rung down for the last time at Her Majesty’s a few months ago. But she has divorced her husband, Vernon Bartlett, or John Wyatt, for good and sufficient reasons and she has applied for alimony. £SOO a Year For Dress. The evidence went to show that Wyatt, who had been a bookmaker and is now a business man, had once enjoyed an income of £7OOO a year, now, according to his testimony, reduced to £2OOO or £3OOO. But the wife’s statements showed that during her married life she had been accustomed to live at a most extravagant rate, of which her husband entirely approved. They had two cars—one a Rolls Royce—and their bare living expenses at the Astor in Macquarrie Street amounted to at least £2O a week. But Carrie usually .spent—with the full knowledge and consent of her husband—£soo a year on dress alone. Also, her husband “ for many years ” gave her a £IOO cheque to go down to Melbourne for Cup week; and he used to buy for her silk stockings, “a dozen pairs at a time,” and other personal presents in profusion. According to counsel for the petitioner, the principle usually adopted here in such cases has been to allot one-third of the husband’s income to the wife; and he asked for £2O a week. After a temporary arrangement for £l2 a week had been made, the Registrar, having reserved judgment, finally granted the wife £l3 a week as a permanent allowance. This will not enable her to recall the “ splendid days ” she had £SOO a year as dress allowance; but it would certainly seem to give a woman with only herself to keep a reasonable chance of “ keeping up appearances” at any social level to which she might attain. (And that is putting it very mildly.) The Second Case. Now let us turn to another walk of life. Mrs Ilay, wljo had obtained an order for “ restitution ” against her husband, William Hay. “ Sydney club man,” had been receiving from £3O to £4O a month from him since the separation—but she told the Registrar, “ I cannot live on that.” Hay, it seems, got £20.000 from his father’s estate, and in eight or nine years, by buying and selling stations and runs, he had made it up to £60,000. lie had “no occupation,” was living at the Union Club when he married in 1919, and is now a member of that club, the Royal Sydney Golf Club, the Imperial Service Club, and the Royal Automobile Club. His wife is a member of the Queen’s Club and two country clubs as well, and during their married existence their manner of life was very much what these social connections suggest. They lived for some time on one of his stations at Vass; they came to Sydney whenever she wanted to come, staying at the Australia, at the rate of about £IOO a week, or they rented a house at Rose ! Bay at ten guineas a week; and, of course, they kept two cars. When Mrs Ilay was in London, Hay gave her £4OO specially to buy clothes “ to bring home,” and in 1929-30 they went for a tour of the world that lasted twelve months and cost £BOOO. When they were first married, her husband made her a dress allowance of £2OO a year, increasing this later to £3O a month, and paying her club subscriptions as well. Now she “cannot live on £lO a week.” Last December she had run up debts to the amount of nearly £2OO. Her husband paid these off, and has been giving her about £lO a week since. In addition to this she got £9O from the sale of her car and £2O on her jewellery, and she is now nearly £2OO behind again. Counsel for Hay naturally suggested “ Possibly you could live more cheaply than that if you wanted to,” and Mrs Ilay replied: “ If I wanted to, yes; but I don’t want to.”

The Registrar’s decision has not yet been announced, but the few words that I have quoted throw sufficient light upon the whole case. An Illuminating Example. The third case that I will mention is even more illuminating. Last year, Mrs Muriel Windeyer Mackay, one of Sydney’s most attractive and best-known hostesses, was granted a judicial separation from her husband, William Mackay, of Leone, a wealthy pastoralist, whose assets are to-day estixiiated at close on £160,000. The Mackay marriage was one of the great events of the season twenty years ago. Mrs Mackay, daughter of General Meredith, was married when she was 20, and went to live in the country. Before 1914 she accustomed herself to station life, and went mustering with her husband; and during the war she superintended the station and sent him mirtute accounts and reports. After his return, they built a “ dream home at Tinagroo, near Scone—with lily ponds, rose arbors, and landscape garden, even helping to lay the stones in the house with their own hands. And all this time they lived at a rate that, even for a man of Hay’s undoubted wealth, was profusely extravagant. She spent £6OO a year on dress, and her husband gave her presents and jewellery most lavishly. Damascus brassware and Persian rugs for the home ran into many hundreds of pounds. There were week-end parties after polo tournaments and dinner parties at Tinagroo costing up to £6O each, and dinners at Bondi and Sydney running up to £3O each. On one occasion, a ” house-warming ”

in the country which began as a small party eventually included 120 guests—“it ran into the next day and some of them stayed on.” There was £2O for marquees from Sydney, £4O for Ces Morrison's band from the Australia: and the total expenses worked out at nearly £6oo—for that one festivity! The cost is worth mentioning because it helps one to understand how Mrs Mackay’s ideas of social duty were formed, and how her notions of personal expenditure appropriate to her “ station in life ” were encouraged by her husband. To do him justice, Mr William Mackay does not attempt to throw the blame for all this upon his wife. lie admits that he was extravagant himself; that for the year 1929, when his wife and he were still together, the total expenditure was nearly £7000; and that though the depression has compelled him to cut out a certain amount of racing and polo, he was spending “easily” £l3O a >-ear in liquor, and that his fruit bill for nine months—for himself and three friends—was over £IOO. In view of all this, it is not surpris- ; ing to find that, under cross-examina-tion, Mrs Mackay maintained that she ought to have the luxuries to which she was accustomed. She needs a six-roomed fiat; she objects to her present accommodation, because she has to share her bathroom with her maid; a car and a chauffeur; and she admits that she proposes to entertain and to buy clothes—“ French models,” she hopes—as heretofore. Counsel for the husband pleaded that Mrs Mackay should not be encouraged to squander her husband’s money on gross personal extravagance. “ Why should she not,” he asked, “ like the first lady in the land, do her shopping on foot?” But Mr Abrahams, K.C., who is a good “ jury man,” described Mackay as having “broken up the home”—it seems that they found that they simply “ could not live together—and urged that as he had accustomed Mrs Mackay to all this extravagance and splendour, therefore she is “ entitled to a life of ease and luxury and comfort for the rest of her life.” As Mr Mackay’s income at a moderate computation ought to be aborit £7500, it is therefore probable that she will receive at least £2OOO a year—£4o a w ? eek—to support herself in the station of life to which she is accustomed. I need say no more. But it is not strange that people who are not accustomed to this sort of thing denounce such profligate waste as sinful; or that the apostles of Communism and Bolshevism find their most appropriate texts in such records as these when they are preaching the gospel of social revolution.