Low life
Where there's a will
Jeffrey Bernard
When I study the wills column in the Times over the tea and toast every morning I can't for the life of me understand why people don't spend more money while they are alive. That's the time to do it. Yes, there are some strange wills that give me mixed feelings of envy and irritation. That isn't only because of the vast sums some people leave, it is also because of who and what they leave these bundles to. You may disagree but I consider myself and my circle (and, oh yes, they are magic) to be more deserving of £50,000 than a cat. A cat can fend for itself. My friends can't.
But what fascinates me is that odd legatee the Distressed Gentlefolk's Aid Association, which came in for some more money this week. You must understand that I don't begrudge them the money, I am simply interested to know just what it is one has to be to qualify as a distressed gentleperson. I have been sending out May Day calls for years but I wouldn't say I was distressed about much save the state of the world, the quality of life and woman's inhumanity to man. Distress may well mean all sorts of things from constipated to drunk. Does the Association go out look- ing for people they consider to be deserv- ing distressed gentlefolk or do people consider themselves distressed gentlefolk and then apply for help? What I don't much like is that the very phrase and title smacks of class discrimination. I know plenty who wouldn't qualify because of class, including a punch-drunk ex-boxer and a once-lovely woman who can't pull men any more and so sticks her head in the gin bottle. Both are gentle. My guess is that to get help from these people you would have to convince them that you were brought up in the sort of country house that had one of those sitting-rooms that constitute the standing set of any benign English play written in the 1930s. They probably also consider, just as this govern- ment does, that people who have always been in distress are inured to it. It may well be a sort of freemasonry for the once elite now in the shit.
Which reminds me, whatever happened to the begging letter which was so popular with artists and lounge-lizards when I was a lad? I knew past masters at composing them. Now, begging between strangers has sunk so pitifully low. A wino approached me in Dean Street this week and asked me for eight pence for a cup of tea. I didn't give it to him and it was horribly squalid because (a) you can't get a cup of tea for 8p, (b) he wanted a drink not tea and (c) if he had said, 'I am desperate for a drink, can you give me the money for one?' he could have had £1 with something approaching pleasure. You can't beat the truth although I can't think of many women who would respond kindly to a wino's request for help. 'You've only got yourself to blame,' is the phrase you can see in their eyes if they don't actually say so and they are quite right, which is precisely why one needs a handout. But distressed gentlefolk have not got themselves to blame, only others. That must be awful.
So I wonder just who would I leave money to were I a dying philanthropist? Certainly not dogs and cats or a university. Certainly not a charity that has to cream off a third of its income to run itself. I mistrust good causes as much as I mistrust do-gooders. Does the loot really get to its intended destination? No, I would simply leave it to needy friends and acquaint- ances, who are legion. The trouble is that when most people are scared, making out their wills and at the stage of life when they are desperate to be remembered, they seem to have come to the conclusion that 'deserving' cases must be morally unble- mished, upright, straight, fairly abstemious and very nearly celibate. This is probably why old nannies do so well from wills. God knows what they do with it when they get it. Eke it out in a palm court in Bourne- mouth I suppose. Well, I'm spending what I have now in a palm court of sorts. When is this rainy day people are saving for coming? As far as I'm concerned it has been raining since May 1932. And I'm singing in the rain. Humming, anyway.
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