BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE.
Ibelongs to a particular form of imagination to take pleasure in concentrated worth. Even now when money is so scarce a great many people love to feel that they have a small fortune " locked up " in a jewel or a picture. The beauty of the painting or the stones make their appeal, but it is not that exclusively or even primarily which delights them. It is not the genius of the painter, but the rarity of the possession which they think of as they gloat over the picture, and when the flash of the jewel catches their eyes they are bewitched by its value no less than by its lustre. This joy in small possessions—small in the sense that they are contained in a very small space—is not peculiar to those who have all that money can buy. Men and women cling to them instead of what would seem to their friends greater goods instead of more obvious pleasures and more ease of living. Treasures which can actually be grasped seem to their critics not worth having. To the generality of persons the thought that so many possibilities lie dormant within a tiny compass is simply irritating. "There within that frame or within that box lies what I long for and cannot afford," they would say to themselves if circumstances gave them " valuables " and forbade them to turn them into money. "If I sold them I could still feast my eyes upon better ones whenever I had a fancy to do so, and the money I should get would give me my heart's desire, whatever it may be : more leisure or more luxury or social advantage, a motor-car or a yacht or what not." They would get to hate the sight of the " treasures." This is the common- sense view of the majority, but it is far from being the universal one. We have all known charming and not seemingly very eccentric persons who have practised an irksome economy to retain cherished possessions whose sale would have relieved them of all need for it. They have not of course been poor people, but they have lived that uncomfortably limited life which is led in moderately pleasant surroundings by those whose first thought is to spare. Again, there are people who live in luxury who evidently set very great store by comfort who yet spend upon ornaments for their womenkind an amount which seems wholly out of proportion to their fortunes. They are so fond of the good things of this world that it seems incredible that they should forego any of them for the sake, for instance, of a string of pearls; yet they do make the sacrifice and it does appear to make them and their wives and daughters happy.
Of course the fascination of jewels is a thing which has never been entirely accounted for. It is felt as genuinely by the stock- broker of to-day as by the viking of a thousand years ago, and cannot therefore have much to do with risks run to obtain them. To the modern imagination pearls do not come from the depths of the sea nor diamonds from the heart of the earth. They both come from Bond Street, where they lie in the window under the electric light at the service of anyone who has sufficient balance at his bank. Some spell lies hidden in their shimmering bodies. All the same, it must be admitted that only experts can tell reality from imitation where jewels are concerned, and it is therefore evident that costliness is the greater part of their charm. Indeed, we cannot help thinking that it is in their costliness rather than in their beauty that romance lies. They are of the stuff that dreams are made of—and paste is not. The man who determines to " realize " his dreams, to turn his jewel or any other such treasure to money can dream no more, he has deliberately waked himself. While he retained it, while he could look at it and show it off to his friends upon his wife's finger he could have a fresh dream about it every day. It is worth, he could say to himself, such and such a 'sum. He knows, and all who see it know, that to the extent of that sum he is powerful, or, rather, to the extent which that sum symbolizes he can afford to waste. If he is a vulgar man he gets from this thought a vulgar pleasure ; if he is, on the other hand, a man of fine imagination he gets a more subtle one ; if he is a poet he may still get satisfaction from the feeling of potentiality flashed into his mind by the brilliant stone. The pleasure of the three men is different in quality, but it has the same origin.
How far all this applies in the case of a work of art it is difficult to say, but at any rate those who know most about art are seldom those who treasure one or two pictures of great rarity and money value to the exclusion of all that is new and nearly all which is not rare. Sometimes the picture is an heirloom, and when it is a portrait of an ancestor all sorts of things besides price may account for a determination
to retain it. A portrait may easily become a companion, and the interest of the educated in their ancestors is intense. Men who have risen in the world, who belong to families whose tradi- tions are very dim, feel it as keenly as those who, because of their clear traditions, the world calls great. Groping among very dim family histories is supposed to be a snobbish peculiarity and consequently many proud people do it in secret, but every man of trained imagination feels almost as eager a desire to know the whence as the whither and dreams of his ancestors with the same pleasure that he dreams of his grandchildren—whether possible or in being. These dreams of the past may be delightfully illuminated by a portrait ; it may throw light on children's characters and prospects ; it may enhance the natural interest which a man takes in himself. Again, the possession of a great picture gives a pleasant sense of import- ance not necessarily related to money. It connects its owner with greatness of mind and confers upon him a distinction which, though most of us would be content to barter for more tangible delights, we cannot unless we are quite inhuman hold in contempt. That beautiful thing he feels is almost as much his as though he created it. It is by his favour that the world sees it ; it is within his power to keep it for ever away from the public eye. He is in a position to confer a favour on the world—a recurrent favour such as its value would never enable him to grant and grant again. He is a bigger man in his own imagination because of it, and there is likely to be something rather noble about this dream of a wholly benevolent power. Why people who need the money refuse to sell collections of articles not individually very beautiful or very interesting will always remain a puzzle to the non-collecting world. If they made the collection themselves they may like it as a memorial of the chase, otherwise it is difficult to understand why it should give its owner more delight than saved money in a stocking—delightfully productive of mental imagery as such a stocking always is. Neither the sequence nor the bank-notes have the subtle fascination of artistry or the savage attraction of a jewel. Some light, however, is thrown on the subject by the joy which children find in " treasures " whose power to fire the imagination grown-up people are com- pletely at a loss to explain. Even the child may not regard them as pretty. They are dear to him only as aids to fancy, and he is content to suffer ridicule and reproof in order to retain them. The scorn or the scolding are to him as the " rent " which the grown-up treasure lover must pay to keep his possession. They are the price of a dream, and after all a really delightful dream is as well worth having as most realities.
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