How to be poor

is. The Platniks
of this world might as well resign themselves to it.
    A rich man — and this is the third
point — cannot get away from his riches any more than a poor man can get away
from his poverty, or a healthy man from his robust health or a tall man from
his height. All these things are, or become, a part of what the person is as a
whole. He would not be the same person without his poverty, or his health, or
his height — or his money. Whoever loves a rich man loves — or reluctantly
accepts — his money too. I could love a women in spite of her money, but not
for it.
    There is nothing humiliating in this
— those silly rich people are quite wrong. But a rich man who can jump on his
own private jet and fly over to Paris to have dinner at the Grand Vefour will
be a different person from the guitarist at Aldgate East underground station
who is not quite sure where his next meal of sandwiches is coming from.
    In my younger days — when I did not
sincerely want to be poor — my dream was that young and beautiful women should love me for my money. It was not to be. They had to love me for myself. Poor
things.

Beware of
Money

     
    In that play of mine I mentioned earlier there is one single
song, and it begins:
     
    “A poor man can’t be free because he’s poor;
    A rich man can’t be free because he’s rich.”
     
    Wise words. A poor man, however, can
be considerably freer than a rich one.
    As soon as you have possessions you
start worrying about burglaries. Not that the poor are not being burgled.
Indeed, more poor people are victims of burglaries than rich, simply because
there are more poor people around than rich ones and there are innumerable
burglaries. My house has been burgled twice and I did not particularly enjoy
the experience, so I transformed my house into a mini-fortress and two further
attempts at intrustion have been frustrated. The casual thieves, the teenage
amateurs, cannot get in; the professionals, of course, can tackle anything,
including the safes of the Bank of England. But no true professional would take
the trouble to burgle my house. (These may be famous last words.) But the point
is that the problem is not constantly on my mind; I do not live in permanent
fear of being burgled. If I do come home one day and find my house ransacked, I
shall simply say: “Damn the bastards!”... meaning the burglars, not the police
who will come to check up, will send a fingerprint expert who will find no
fingerprints, and will then conclude the investigation which was hopeless from
the beginning in any case. They cannot find the culprits and they do not want
to find them. They have the strictest instructions from the Home Secretary not
to increase his already considerable problems by increasing the prison
population.
    The rich man, when it comes to
burglaries, is the victim of specialists. I have some rich friends whose house
was entered and only the silver — only the really good silver — was taken.
Nothing else was touched. In other cases only pictures, jewels or carpets were
stolen.
    In addition to the constant worry,
rich people’s movements are seriously limited. They are prisoners, in the
literal sense of the word. I once knew a couple who collected impressionist and
post-impressionist paintings. They were extremely rich, very successful
collectors and had in their house on the Riviera about fifty valuable Picassos,
Matisses, Renoirs and so on, worth millions of pounds. They were so worried
about thieves that they became nervous wrecks. Insurance cost a fortune, and in
addition to that, even the vast premium was not enough for the insurance
company, which made it a condition that the house must never be left unattended:
either the husband or the wife had to stay at home when the other went out.
Leaving servants in the house was not good enough. The couple could not go out
together for the rest of their lives. In some marriages this might well be pure
joy to one or other of the spouses, or to both; but even so, when people are
not allowed to go out together, whether they want, to or not, then they
are not free people.
    And is there any need for dozens of
valuable pictures in one’s house? A good picture or two can brighten life and
give immense and constant pleasure, but to live in a museum when you are rich
enough to live in a pleasant home is sheer folly. Rich men’s folly. No poor man
would think of having a dozen Picassos, a dozen Matisses and a dozen Renoirs in
his