GENEROSITY

Evening Star, Issue 22448, 19 September 1936, Page 2

GENEROSITY

1 Written by Maiiv Scott, for the ‘ Evening Star.’] We nil hove our pet aversions, am! 1 must confess to a quite unreasonable antipathy for the person who is mean in money matters. Common sense tells me -that such “ nearness ” is not one of the major vices, that under certain circumstances it may even approach a virtue. Nevertheless, I dislike it intensely,' and, while finding _ it possible to forgive many more serious faults, yet recognise that stinginess constitutes to my particular temperament, a difficult bander to, friendship. Yet no mistake could be more shortsighted than to confound; carefulness with meanness. Many people who are almost humiliatingly careful with their ponce arc surprisingly prodigal with their pounds. Others who are cohspicuously lavish and; open-handed in small matters fail at a moment when' generosity upon, a larger scale and of a more thoughtful kind is advisable. There is nothing more difficult to diagnose in a mere acquaintance than his attitude in money matters, and few problems, are at the same time more puzzling and more surprising, in their solution than the reaction of the individual mind to such questions. It is a familiar and an age-old truism that we all have our own particular meanness. Personally, I could hope that adage to be true, for, with all my professed dislike of stinginess, I must confess to a pet one of my own. I love to economise in postage. “ Economise ” —I pray you mark the word. Our own peculiarities are always economies; those of our neighbours invariably meannesses.

Yes, I must confess that when I weigh a parcel to ascertain its postage I have always a sneaking desire to risk one stamp too few rather than put on one in excess. Worse still, I like to break the law, to slip a note into my packages, and it is only by the exercise of immense self-control that I have schooled myself not to burden my family with messages rather than post a letter. “ You pass Mrs X’s, darling; at least, it’s not a_ minute out of your way; just run in with this note.” How often I have checked the words, and witli heroic self-discipline affixed that horrid little stamp. Disgraceful, but true. At least I may lay claim to this virtue in extenuation—l do admit my weakness, and consciously strive against it, enthusiastically assisted by my family, to whom in a rash moment I once confided my sins. Moreover, I am inclined to regard myself as the victim of heredity, for my grandmother, the most recklessly generous of women, had a naughty habit of enclosing coins in parcels, _ and even in her brighter moments, in actual letters, so that we who received her frequent gifts had as often as not secretly to pay a line because of the manner of their bestowal. And one of my aunts, lavish to a fault with money, will yet spend 10 minutes, and all the zeal that would have made her a crossword puzzle champion, upon concocting a telegram so cryptically abbreviated that Sherlock Holmes . himself would have bent that mighty brow in thought upon it. It is a pity that we should expend so much shrewdness and ingenuity in defrauding our own revenue of its dues, but in moments of self reproach I try to comfort myself with the reflection that there is probably some bar sinister in onr respectable ancestry, some swashbuckling smuggler unrecognised by the family tree. '■ ■ Generosity is admittedly one of the most beautiful of _ human attributes, nor need it invariably be associated with a matter of L.S.D: There are some who pour out their money upon those they love; there are others who spend themselves. I have a friend whom the world counts mean, and who, because of this prejudice of mine, I misunderstood for many years. Impossible even for my affection to deny that she, who is well blessed with wealth, is yet extremely, ingloriously careful with her pence. But, though over-careful, she is not mean, because this same care that she expends upon her own money is even more rigorously exercised upon other people s. lx she. who is a wealthy woman, will go to endless trouble to save herself halt a crown, will trudge from shop to shop to secure an infinitesimal bargain, yet such zeal is as nothing to the care she will take of my wretched shillings. She will ransack the town to save me a florin, will be unable to help recounting her triumph to my ears, albeit she knows them unsympathetic, and will end with grim cynicism: “ A waste of time to take so much trouble over you—who will never bother to take it for yourself.” If she is mean with her own money she is meaner with mine, meanest of all with that of any public body to which she acts as treasurer; and need I say that her habits, so splendidly justified by her undoubted wealth, have' caused her to be elected treasurer of endless societies? Moreover, my friend may board her money, but she is lavish in expending herself. She has never given me a present in her life; should she do so, 1 am sure that my agonised embarrassment at receivm'T it would exceed her reluctance at pitting with it; but she has spent herself, her time, her services a hundred times upon me. She, who has no need to work even for herself, will come to my house, should I be ill or overworked, and cheerily act the charwoman for days at a time. Mean, the casual observer might call her, but I know that she is the most generous of women.

Yet, there is one not uncommon form of generosity that I dislike intensely, and which 1 can best describe in the phrase of a friend of mine, a connoisseur in words, _ who calls it “ vicarious generosity.” There is a certain typo of person who wins an easy reputation for generosity by the habit of lavishly giving away other people’s money. “ It’s such a good cause; it will bo very mean of 15 if she doesn’t give at least ten pounds towards it."” “ O is so lucky in having lots of money; this is her chance.” “1) has an income of her own; it would be nothing for her to pay their doctor’s bill and send the woman to the seaside for a month.” It is amazing what they have done with other people’s money, the missions they have supported, the children they have educated, the orphanages they have endowed. They even adopt children for other people and rear them with these people’s stolon affection. They do all the good in the world—but "never with their own money. Their gestures arc lavish, their inspirations all upon the grand scale. A hundred pounds here, a fortune there—what matter, so it be not their own? But turn on them suddenly and ask: “ And what did you give yourself? ” and the bubble of the vicarious generosity is pricked on the instant. Yet, because they talk so largely, arc so splendidly open-handed and lavish in their barren giving, they manage in some obscure way to build up a reputation for generosity. It is a gloriously easy way of denying oneself. Vet those same people are often strangely harsh in their judgments of

another’s transactions, ever prone to accuse a neighbour of a disgusting miserliness. They talk so much against stinginess- that their own meanness passes undetected. They are disgusted at any failure in generosity, ready to attribute meanness when probably only poverty is to blame, to assume rashly that because a man happens to draw a big salary ho is necessarily rich, ignoring the fact that he may have a Hundred unsuspected expenses, a dozen poor dependents, liven if they were themselves open-handed, the meanness of such criticisms, the pettiness of such carping would prove the negation of any generosity of mere £ s. d.: for what, after all., avails openness of the purse unless it he accompanied by generosity of the heart?