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235
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
18
V.
"Sir,"
said
Johnson,
"all
the
arguments
which
are
brought
to
represent
poverty
as
no
evil,
show
it
to
be
evidently
a
great
evil.
You
never
find
people
labouring
to
convince
you
that
you
may
live
very
happily
upon
a
plentiful
fortune."
He
knew
what
he
was
talking
of,
that
rugged
old
master
of
common
sense.
Poverty
is
of
course
a
relative
thing;
the
term
has
reference,
above
all,
to
one's
standing
as
an
intellectual
being.
If
I
am
to
believe
the
newspapers,
there
are
title-bearing
men
and
women
in
England
who,
had
they
an
assured
income
of
five-and-twenty,
shillings
per
week,
would
have
no
right
to
call
themselves
poor,
for
their
intellectual
needs
are
those
of
a
stable-boy
or
scullery
wench.
Give
me
the
same
income
and
I
can
live,
but
I
am
poor
indeed.
You
tell
me
that
money
cannot
buy
the
things
most
precious.
Your
commonplace
proves
that
you
have
never
known
the
lack
of
it.
When
I
think
of
all
the
sorrow
and
the
barrenness
that
has
been
wrought
in
my
life
by
want
of
a
few
more
pounds
per
annum
than
I
was
able
to
earn,
I
stand
aghast
at
money's
significance.
What
kindly
joys
have
I
lost,
those
simple
forms
of
happiness
to
which
every
heart
has
claim,
because
of
poverty!
Meetings
with
those
I
loved
made
impossible
year
after
year;
sadness,
misunderstanding,
nay,
cruel
alienation,
arising
from
inability
to
do
the
things
I
wished,
and
which
I
might
have
done
had
a
little
money
helped
me;
endless
instances
of
homely
pleasure
and
contentment
curtailed
or
forbidden
by
narrow
means.
I
have
lost
friends
merely
through
the
constraints
of
my
position;
friends
I
might
have
made
have
remained
strangers
to
me;
solitude
of
the
bitter
kind,
the
solitude
which
is
enforced
at
times
when
mind
or
heart
longs
for
companionship,
often
cursed
my
life
solely
because
I
was
poor.
I
think
it
would
scarce
be
an
exaggeration
to
say
that
there
is
no
moral
good
which
has
not
to
be
paid
for
in
coin
of
the
realm.
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