THE LUXURY OF SHABBINESS.
R. COMMISSIONER KERR made a remark a few
days ago to the effect that "only rich people can afford to dress shabbily." It was, perhaps, a hasty generali- cation, but it is certainly true that, except those who are compelled to be threadbare by their honesty,—a very con- siderable class,—there are, at least, as many whose shab- biness is a luxury in which they take a good deal of selfish satisfaction, as there are of those who dress smartly in (A-der to give the false impression that they are rich and able to pay their way. Misers are always shabby,—firstly, no doubt, to impose on the world the notion that they are poor, like Mr. Arthur Gride in "Nicholas Nickleby ; " but more still, because it is one of their greatest luxuries to have always before them the living evidence of their own penuriousness,—an assurance to themselves of the success with which they surpass their fellow-men in economy. A miser likes to have constantly before his eyes the effective machinery by which he has added to his wealth. He looks on each stained and threadbare spot in his clothes as a monument f his own superior frugality, and dwells upon it just as a poet dwells on his happiest images and a painter on the finest touches of his brush. It is not that he admires what is frayed and discoloured on its own account, but that he piques himself on the courage which saved him a fresh expense, and the austere indifference to appearance which has in his hands proved BO mighty a power of accumulating fortune. But the miser is, on the whole, a rare character. You must be some- thing of an ascetic before you can be either a miser or a saint, and we are disposed to think that asceticism for noble objects is probably more common and even more easy than asceticism for mean objects. It is easier to deny yourself for what fills you with devout hope, than to deny yourself for what fills you with a degrading greed. If it were only misers who could afford to be shabby, there would not be very many rich men amongst the ranks of the shabby. But there are a much larger number of men who enjoy being shabby, because it gives them a comfortable feeling that they are so much superior to the rest of the world in substantial qualities that they have no need to consult appearances in order to ensure respect, than there are who enjoy for its own sake that habitual exercise of parsimony which first made them rich. They are like the great talkers, who know that they can afford to be rude because people are so anxious to hear them talk that they will tolerate a great deal of rude- ness in order to do so. So the really popular men like display- ing their indifference to the amenities of dress because they congratulate themselves on feeling that there is that under the disguise of shabbiness which is far more desired by the mass of mankind than any superficial gloss of conventional repecta- bility. There is a sense of power in despising convention because you possess the key to that which overrules all conven- tion, and this sense of power is much more gratifying to those who think they possess it than any satisfaction in pleasing the eyes of others. Eye-service is not looked down upon only by the good who try to be better even than they seem. It is also looked down upon by those who are proud of being able, if they choose, to surpass easily all the effects of ordinary seeming, and of being recognised by the world as above the necessity of conformity to ordinary rules. To feel above the plausibilities of life is even more gratifying to ordinary pride than to feel that you have fulfilled all their require- ments with the most punctilious success. To seem all that you are, or even more than you are, is not so gratifying as to persuade yourself that you are so much more than you seem, that you need not take any pains about what you seem. To combine indifference to appearance with the appearance of indifference, is the summit of a good many persons' ambition, and it is they perhaps who most commonly enjoy the luxury of shabbiness.
But there is a luxury of shabbiness which exceeds any feeling which has its root in pride. It is the luxury of a kind which loves above all things to avoid trouble, and to feel the advantage of a sort of disguise which increases real freedom of action. When Haroun Alraschid went about in Bagdad in the disguise of a merchant, he probably felt twice as powerful as he did when he sat on the throne of the Caliphs, for he felt twice as free. He was free to act like an ordinary citizen, and yet free also to resume his Sovereign power at pleasure. To ordinary men, the comfort of shabbi- ness, where shabbiness is not imposed upon them by their narrow income, is that they feel really at liberty to spend exactly as they please, without conforming to anybody else's judgment of what it would become them to do. Besides, even the richest man or woman is unwilling to expose good clothes to injury or ruin, whereas it is sometimes quite a relief to find a suitable occasion for finally repudiating clothes of which one is weary, partly because they are so shabby, more because, like old servants, they are so presuming, and seem to claim a right over you, and to take for granted that you can never turn off such old and tried friends. Now if the conventions of society restrict your liberty in one way, the habits of which you have got weary restrict it in another, and you never feel so free as when you are dressed in shabby clothes, for the protection of which you feel no kind of anxiety, and yet which you would not be sorry for an oppor- tunity of finally discarding. The last uses of a shabby snit are the pleasantest uses. Ton feel no responsibility for them, and yet you are not willing to find an opportunity for a rupture with a disguise which you begin to think a little unworthy of you. In shabby clothes you persuade your- self that your dignity is all interior, and that you have no need of dress to sustain it. Bat none the less you antici- pate without unmixed regret, the prospect of assuming a costume more in proportion to your intrinsic merits. And when you can combine the freedom of a nearly worn-out dress with the anticipation of casting off the chrysalis and coming forth like a butterfly, you are probably at the high-water mark of self-satisfaction. To unite the keen sense of being above dress, with an equally keen sense of being fully entitled to dress well, and of the intention to justify that title, is perhaps the very acme of any luxury that clothes can confer. Ton enjoy your proud superiority doubly, first in parading your indifference to the "accidents" of dress, and next in the immediate prospect of properly asserting that superiority on a fitting and near occasion
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