Le Nouveau Pauvre

FROM olden time it has been the privilege and the pleasure of humanity to deride the newly rich; comedy, satire, and other forms of expression, literary and unliterary, have borne witness to the desire to point out the lack of standard, the ostentation, the selfish gloating over individual possession, of those who have been robbed by swift prosperity of a sense of values. Even in our new country, with its sudden fortunes, we know well how to punish by gibe and jest those whose recent wealth gives them an undue sense of their own importance, resulting in undue display. We make great sport of le nouveau riche; who is there to laugh at le nouveau pauvre and put him in his place?

Under the impact of new thought in regard to social rights and wrongs, and our large sense of responsibility in the matter of earth’s unfortunates, we are developing a new type, very limited in number, and, I fancy, limited in geographic distribution, — I should not think of offering these reflections to any but a New England magazine! — of those who flaunt a new type of recent wealth. That old boasting in regard to one’s material possessions has given place, in these, to new boasting in regard to what one has not. I can almost imagine a seventeenth-century writer of character-portraits sketching the type as follows; —

‘He is of a demure sadness, and goeth poorly clad’—or it might even be she; — ‘his countenance weareth ever a look of mild reproof, and ever he watcheth to detect extravagance in his neighbor’s apparel; his right hand moveth nervously lest his left know that which it doeth; he walketh as one who would fain keep step with his fellows, yet is ever apart, wrapt in a sad separateness.’

Standards of value alter; there are riches and riches. It is not mere difference in local conviction; time as well as space has something to do with ;the change; but surely I detect nowadays among the chosen few, new causes for self-congratulation, a new vaingloriousness. I cannot be mistaken in remembering in the atmosphere about my far-off childhood, pride in worldly goods, in glossy horses, in ruffled gowns of silk and lace; unquestionably I remember a reverential tone in speaking of the rich, deepening to awe in speaking of the very rich. Now, how different! We look with pity upon the multi-millionaire; a suggestion that he is no better than he should be is in our very way of saying his name. A shrug of the shoulders, a lifting of the eyebrows at the mere mention of great riches, betrays our inner standards. Doubt as to whether even honesty, let alone other virtues, could be his has been instilled into our minds by all that we have read concerning him and his kind. We act, somewhat prematurely, as if we were already within that kingdom of heaven whose entrance is so needle-hard for the rich. In all this we are a trifle over-assured, for the fact that we lack the plutocrat’s wealth is no proof that we have those other, more precious spiritual possessions whose absence we scorn in him.

But human nature is human nature always, in rich folk and in poor; the sources of inner vanity are perhaps over-quick to reflect the possibility of changed standards. Many of us are growing a bit ostentatious in our poverty. Do we not point with pride at the clothes we do not have, the pleasures we forego, the luxuries in which we would not for any consideration indulge? We wear again the old street suit, and loftily remark to our friends that we cannot afford to be tailored anew every winter. We sit upon platforms at meetings wherein the problems of the poor are discussed, tricked out in ancient garments, worn a trifle histrionically. There is a touch of moral snobbery in our attitude as we tell how little we spend on ourselves, how frugally we lunch, in what Spartan fashion we dine, with an ensuing silence suggestive of the long list of good causes that we are helping on. Vulgarly rich in convictions, airily intolerant of those who have not as great possessions as we, we flaunt our wealth, with a certain lack of good taste, in the faces of those less opinionated than ourselves. We are a bit self-conscious in displaying the evidences of this shameless monopoly of virtue, and wear a gentle air of patronage toward our less fortunate fellows. Can it be, — surely it cannot be that the old warning could apply here, and that this air of superiority may prove more of an obstacle than the camel’s hump at Heaven’s gate!

That look of reproof on the part of some of the leaders of modern social endeavor toward those who do not hold their convictions, is full of danger. Humble-minded self-indulgence is perhaps better than this; here, at least, one is one with one’s fellows. The situation is full of irony; endeavoring to share more generously our worldly possessions with the poor, perhaps even considering the possibility of common ownership, we hoard in more than the old individualistic manner these new virtues which our fellows have not yet acquired. Human progress is notoriously full of contradictions; here is one that gives pause for thought. In moving toward that era of more fully realized human brotherhood, we are perhaps losing as much as we gain: that old sense of kinship with man as man, breaking under the strain and stress of newly-discovered conviction which many fail to understand or to adopt. Proud spiritual walls are just as prone to keep one’s neighbor out as are high-piled walls of brick and stone, even with glass on top. How a sense of moral superiority locks its possessor in, cuts him off from his kind! At the stern mention of a new creed one can often hear a sound as of a key turning in a lock, and one knows that here is another soul condemned to solitary imprisonment in its own virtue, until some friendly imp of failure or transgression sets it free.

Humble, as it behooves the poor to be, in the presence of those rich in theory, many merely watch and wait. Each theorist is sure that his wealth is the only real wealth; each, that his panacea will cure all social ills. But, aware of the complexity of human ailments, the many-sidedness of human wrongs, what is one to do? Keeping step with one agitator, we lose step with another, — perhaps lose step with simple humankind in keeping step with either. Alack, and well-a-day! Meanwhile, one yearningly recalls that instinctive human sympathy, antedating social convictions, based on the ordinary experiences of the threshold and the hearth. This also has its fine uses; it may be the most precious thing there is: this sense, below difference of faith, of oneness with one’s kind, of common destiny in this common predicament. In this dim path whereon we struggle, groping our way, it is well to keep in touch with our fellows, no matter what the differences between us in worldly or in moral rank or station.

As for these new riches of professed poverty, we stop to ponder. They may not all be real; shall we gloat before we are sure? Many a fortune of dollars or of nuggets or of ideas proves to have sandy foundations and melts away. Perhaps here, as elsewhere, those who have had their wealth long enough to forget it are no longer self-conscious enough to gloat. Those whose interest in their neighbors is too recent to be human instinct, whose discovery of a common humanity is too fresh to seem part of them, who cannot care for their fellows and forget that they are caring, who cannot feel kindliness without flaunting it, who cannot sit in the presence of their kind without implying that their kind has no such wealth of love for humanity, are assuredly lacking in spiritual good breeding. My lady, newly rich, proudly conscious of her priceless furs and jewels, is perhaps less vain than my lady newly poor, proudly conscious of her priceless convictions and habits that make her not as others are. Tradition has delivered to our laughter, for just chastisement, the newly rich; shall not the newly poor, for similar reasons, be delivered to the laughter of the world?