Commonplace 124 George & Money
With the works of Sir Antony Gormley click - a personal favourite.
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| Another Place (Crosby Beach) |
George Orwell famously summed up the themes and subject of all of
George's works as being about 'not enough
money' - you can read Orwell's article, as covered in the Gissing
Journal/newsletter, here click. He goes on to say: Gissing is the chronicler of poverty, not working
class poverty (he despises and perhaps hates the working class), but the cruel,
grinding 'respectable' poverty of underfed clerks, downtrodden governesses and
bankrupt tradesmen. He believed, perhaps not wrongly, that poverty caused more
suffering in the middle class than in the working class. So, the
working class, being inured to poverty, are 'better off' than their middle
class peers? Someone should tell them this, as I am sure they would like to
know! Nowadays in the UK, those who are doing better in this time of austerity
are definitely not from the working classes, so what is really being addressed
here? Is it the class-ist notion that when you cut the working class, they
don't bleed? And that only the privileged miss wholesome food, warm homes,
adequate health care, good education for their children when it is no longer an
option? Let's not forget: if you take away 20% of a middle class person's
income, they are still well-off. Take away 20% of a poorly-paid person's income
and they are wrecked. Marianne aka Nell found this out when George docked 25%
of her alimony in 1883 and was still paying the same amount in 1888 when she
died from sickness exacerbated by poverty. As George would have been aware of
the economic depression stalking the land click at that time, with its knock-on
effects on the price of coal and basic necessities, no-one could ever claim he
treated her at all compassionately, fairly or heroically.
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| Exposure (Lelystad, Netherlands) |
George was the sort of cove who loves money but
hates work. Is that an unfair assessment? He makes it clear in The Private
Papers of Henry Ryecroft, that odious temple of cod philosophy so loved by
those who set their intellectual and aesthetic bar very low, that he isn't much
of a worker. Two of George's best known internet quotes are to be found here in
this section of TPPOHR headed 'Winter XXIV':
Time is money – says the vulgarest saw known to any
age or people. Turn it round about, and you get a precious truth – money is
time. I think of it on these dark, mist-blinded mornings, as I come down to
find a glorious fire crackling and leaping in my study. Suppose I were so poor
that I could not afford that heartsome blaze, how different the whole day would
be! Have I not lost many and many a day of my life for lack of the material
comfort which was necessary to put my mind in tune? With money I buy for
cheerful use the hours which otherwise would not in any sense be mine; nay,
which would make me their miserable bondsman. Money is time, and, heaven be
thanked, there needs so little of it for this sort of purchase. He who has
overmuch is wont to be as badly off in regard to the true use of money, as he
who has not enough. What are we doing all our lives but purchasing, or trying
to purchase, time? And, most of us, having grasped it with one hand, throw it
away with the other.
As with all of 'Ryecroft', it's difficult to know
how much of this goldmine of insipid platitudes is genuine George and how much
is his passive-aggressive piss-taking provocative snipe at critics luring them
in to taking it over-seriously - with George off stage laughing at their
efforts enjoying an 'Emperor's New Clothes' moment of intellectual
superiority. Can he really have ever thought such pedestrian writing was
artistically acceptable? (Anyhoo, I will save my thoughts on Ryecroft and how
much I hate it for another post - though one could compose an entire blog round
how nauseating it is - with its Have I not lost many
and many and his vulgarest -
such an inelegant word - and his nay and
his wont to and overmuch!)
Of course, Ryecroft isn't meant to be George - but I bet there are those who
think it is autobiography. (If that were so, George would be
an infinitely less loveable bod than he is.)
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| The Angel Of The North (Gateshead, UK) |
It seems to me only part of this 'money is time'
claim is true, because the main thing money really buys is choice. When people have choice they demand and expect
a better standard of living, better environments, the freedom to pursue broader
ambitions. Humanists know this, and Abraham Maslow set it out in his famous
hierarchy of needs click. By keeping the vast majority
of society at the bottom level of the hierarchy, anxious about the basic
necessities of food and water, you deprive them of the ability to progress up
the pyramid. The next rung is safety needs and when governments need to
destabilize society as a means of controlling the people, they introduce
threats to safety. These range from job losses to terrorism - or, a global
financial crisis. All people have the potential to climb the hierarchy to reach
self-actualization, but governments don't want everyone reaching their
potential - they would become ungovernable if they did. Because we are all wage
slaves, the flow of money is what fuels the processes of governments, with the control of money being a means of regulating people's behaviour in favour of compliance,
because we all fear poverty - we no longer have the means to be
self-sufficient, so we have to keep in with our oppressors. This is not, as
they say, rocket surgery.
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| Untitled (Tate Gallery) |
November 5th 2015 saw the mass demonstration of the Anonymous Movement
and they have quite a lot to say about money click and
the way it enslaves us all. Spend a few hours of your life learning about
economics. Learn the difference between money (which is real stuff like gold and
silver coins) and fiat currency (which is just numbers on a charge sheet or
fungible paper with no intrinsic value). A long time ago, the American Federal
Reserve cunningly took over the world and if you want to understand this in
more depth, then take yourself to this highly educational series of
well-presented films click to learn more.
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| from Bodies At Rest (Saatchi Collection) |
All this talk of a world-wide coming together in the name of Revolution
would have sickened George. He wasn't one for crowds haha. He did think of
dabbling in Capitalism himself, with some minor money-making enterprises that
did not rely on writing - stealing from coat pockets, being one of them haha -
but never followed through on any of them. When he came into his £300
inheritance in 1879, he thought of buying a house outright and possibly making
money from letting rooms while he spent his time writing. but he ploughed most
of that windfall into getting Workers In The Dawn published. And, thank
goodness, say I! Later, he thought of starting a periodical with Algernon,
but this project did not come to fruition. He thought he might write
plays... He claimed to have steadfastly refused many of the offers of money-making
journalism, but he did write articles and criticism so maybe he managed to see
the wisdom of lowering his artistic standards. He could have made more money if
he hadn't made so many daft decisions about selling copyrights. But if he had
made more money, where would he have found his mojo to write? It was resentment
that partly fuelled his work - a feeling of being hard-done-to, misunderstood
and passed-over that gave him a much-needed gritty edge. (Maybe also something
biblical about prophets not being listened to in their own lands: Luke 4:24?)
Without it, he might have ended his days as the real-life embodiment of
the loathsome Ryecroft!
Orwell's claim that all of George's works can be summed up as 'not
enough money' can be checked out in Simon James' excellent book 'Unsettled
Accounts: Money and Narrative In the Novels of George Gissing' click.
Last word to the Divine Oscar: It is better to have a permanent
income than to be fascinating.
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