established myself as the Maecenas of art and literature; and were I
ever called to play these parts in reality, I am convinced that my
competence would secure applause. The point at which I stick, however,
is this: rich men rarely do these things. It is the pursuit of wealth,
rather than wealth itself, that is their pleasure. Let us suppose the
case of a man who has toiled with undivided mind for thirty years to
acquire a fortune; will it not be usually found that in the struggle to
be rich he has lost those very qualities which make riches worth
possessing? He buys his estate or builds his house; but there is
little pleasure in the business. He is the mere slave of land-agents,
the puppet of architects and upholsterers. He has no original taste to
guide or interest him: what he once had has perished long ago in the
dreary toil of money-grubbing. The men who build or decorate his house
have a certain pleasure in their work; all that he does is to pay them
for being happy. If he should adopt the rich man's hobby of collecting
pictures or a library, he rarely enjoys a higher pleasure than the mere
lust of possession. He buys what he is told to buy, without
discrimination; he has no knowledge of what constitutes rarity or
value; and most certainly he knows nothing of those excitements of the
quest which make the collection of articles of vertu a pursuit so
fascinating to the man of trained judgment but moderate means. And, as
if to complete the irony of the situation, he is after all but the
infrequent tenant of the treasure-house which he has built; the blinds
are drawn half the year; the splendid rooms are seen by no wiser eyes
than those of his butler and his housekeeper; and his secretary, if he
be a man of taste and education, draws the real dividend of pleasure
from all these rare and costly things which Dives has accumulated.
Dives is in most cases little more than the man who pays the bill for
things which other folk enjoy.