How to be poor

Do You Sincerely Want to be Poor?
In Lieu of an Introduction

     
    All my life I have been running away from money.
On the whole successfully.
    Do not misunderstand me. I am not
trying to say that I am indifferent to money; that I don’t care whether I have
it or not. I do care. I do not want to have it. Neither do I want to convey the
notion that I am not materialistic and my mind is always dwelling on higher
matters. My mind often dwells on money, in order to loathe it. The loathing
seems to be mutual. We- money and I — sometimes nod to each other but that’s
all.
    Showing off one’s riches — indeed the
very desire to become rich — has always seemed to me the most vulgar sin. I
have instinctively avoided rich people; although, of course, I have made
exceptions. Some of my best friends are stinking rich, but they had to prove
themselves before they were accepted; they had to overcome my instinctive
suspicion and dislike. People who inherited money are more easily accepted.
They cannot help it, poor things. I have never wanted to visit the sins of the
father on their sons, particularly if they were doing their best — as they
often have done — to squander the fruits of a lifetime of avarice in a year or
two. But those people who actually strive to make money, who are proud of
having it and show off their ill-gotten, or even decently-gotten, gains have
achieved — to put it mildly — very low standing in my estimation.
    Why? I often asked myself. I learnt
early in life to regard my more violent feelings with the utmost suspicion.
Moral indignation is the most suspect of all the so-called noble emotions. More
often than not we react most violently against those sins which, at the bottom
of our hearts and often unknown to ourselves, we would most willingly commit — if
only training, or perhaps cowardice, didn’t make us repress the desire to do
so. So I must admit that my intolerance vis-à-vis rich people may be based on
the lowest of motives. It is quite possible that my soul too, like everyone
else’s, has its dark secrets. One of these secrets may be that I hate rich
people because I have a desperate subconscious desire to become a Croesus
myself and I have failed miserably. If so, it is so dark that it remains a
secret even from me.
    But I do not think this is so, for
two main reasons, i. As far as I know I never wanted to be rich. 2. My
family was reasonably well-off, so money never played a dominant part in its
life. I was born in the Hungarian village (now small town) of Siklós and was
only ten when my father — a lawyer, and himself the son of a lawyer — died.
Family finances were never discussed in front of me, but small boys are
perceptive and I would have sensed problems and difficulties had they existed.
Even during the harsh years of World War One I remember no hardships, and
immediately after the war, when Budapest was nearly starving, we in the country
always had enough to eat. After my father’s death, we moved to Budapest and my mother married a doctor. My step-father worked very hard. He had a vast
practice and his annual income was the equivalent of £3000: a substantial sum
in those days, even in Britain, and a real fortune in Hungary. (A popular song expressed the dream of young men to make the magnificent sum of
£240 a year.)
    I have never been a poor refugee in London, either. I was sent here by two newspapers, brought a useful little sum with me and
received my salary more or less regularly. True, there was a period — between
the end of my job which came when diplomatic relations between Britain and
Hungary were broken off, and my finding a new job at the BBC — when I ought to
have been worried. But I am a lousy worrier. Diplomatic, political and military
events absorbed me so completely that I had no attention to spare for the puny
problems of one insignificant individual, even if that insignificant individual
happened to be myself. I was not always sure where my next meal would be coming
from but it always came from somewhere. I never went hungry. Indeed — and more
of this later — my life-style has always stayed much the same whether I was
penniless or reasonably well off.
    So, I repeat, I was never poor in my
formative years, nor did money then play an important part in my life. Why,
then, this aversion from the rich?
    I vaguely remember some early
indoctrination: not so much words, as attitudes. I am sure that my father, in
the spirit of those days, looked