Long life
Scrupulously honest
Nigel Nicolson
Now, I do not claim a higher morality than the sculptor, simply a difference in habit, and a greater fear of being found out. I am quite often asked to pay for casu- al services in cash, and invariably tell the plumber or garage-hand that I will have to declare the sum in my own tax return which might lead the Revenue to scrutinise his more carefully. This never appears to deter them, and they seem to think my behaviour not offensive exactly, but odd.
The sculpture episode led me to question how honest I have really been in life. I found the record fairly clean. The occa- sions when I have broken the law are in my recollection rare. Twice only have I been summoned before the magistrates, once for delaying payment of a £25 rates bill, and once because I chose to contest a charge for obstructive parking, but I have never been locked up, even for a night, even in Albania, and I have never come close to committing a major crime, largely because I have never experienced the need or temp- tation to do so.
This summary may sound suspiciously untainted. There is a tendency in everyone to confess to minor faults in the hope of concealing major ones. Recently I asked a bishop if he had ever stolen anything. 'Yes,' he replied, 'a strawberry off a market-stall last Tuesday.' Is that all?' That's all.' I did not believe him. But I ask you to believe me. My life has been singularly free from crime, if one defines crime as the breaking of statutory, as opposed to moral, laws. If it had not been so, I would not have dared embark on this confession. I am honest to the extent that in the days when I smoked heavily, I would walk through the red cus- toms exit, not the green, if I were carrying 200 cigarettes acquired abroad.
On the other hand, if I can plead a mod- erate innocence of crime, I cannot plead the same innocence of sin. My father would tell us, 'There are only three sins untruthfulness, cruelty and sloth. All the rest are naughtinesses. For naughtiness you will be punished. But the sins are so dread- ful that you will not be punished. Their very exposure is sufficient punishment.' This was a delightful reprieve. We commit- ted all three sins with regularity and impunity. Of the three, sloth is the strangest to be raised so high in the cata- logue of iniquities, but the other two are, or should be, engraved on stone tablets. Untruthfulness fades with age because there is a decreasing need for it when one is no longer in competition, and cruelty is in any case contrary to most people's nature, except in schoolboys. In the past I have been guilty of both.
When I consider my sculptor's cheating the Revenue of a few hundred pounds, I feel the need for excuses. He is a poor artist. His sale was a rare scoop. In the scale of deception he is neither a Maxwell nor an Asil Nadir. To have denied him my slight complicity would have been selfish and priggish. Why then do I still feel uncomfortable? Is it my father's maxim surfacing, or the dread of being found out? I fear it is the latter.
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