Wealthy family

“ Hence we see all around us those who have lived in [Pg 360] wealthy families marrying, with no knowledge of providing for a family, or of using the little they have with economy. So they sink down, year after year, into deeper poverty and wretchedness; ending, perhaps, in the poorhouse; when if the lessons learned in their employer’s house had been those of true economy, they might now be living in neat and comfortable homes. ”

“ Times have changed since Luther’s day, and the necessity for small families is fairly obvious in the twentieth century for all but very wealthy people. Where money is no object, and the parents are thoroughly robust, the great luxury of a large family may be indulged in. ”

“ In contrast to these was the family of a wealthy citizen, who had amassed a vast fortune, and, having purchased the estate and mansion of a ruined nobleman in the neighborhood, was endeavoring to assume all the style and dignity of an hereditary lord of the soil. ”

“ The natural vanity of raising a family, the means that a rich man has to accumulate, the natural chance of wealth accumulating by marriages, and many other circumstances, operate in favour of all those rich men, who are freed from risk, and independent of industry. In some cases, extravagance dissipates wealth, but the laws favour accumulation of landed property, and counteract extravagance ”

“ If she acknowledged that the excuse was money she must also acknowledge that it was money for the family’s sake—money to keep the family alive, to save its estates from dispersal and its roof from strangers. These men and women married into a class beneath them to save their families. ”

“ At the same time, however romantic and improbable some of the announcements relating to such treasure-hoards may seem, there is no doubt that many a poor family, at the present day, would be possessed of great wealth if it could only gain a clue to the whereabouts of money rightfully its own. ”

“ Many examples of families seeking their fortunes in a land of which they have not even the most limited knowledge,—or into which they have been betrayed by the misrepresentations of those who value money in their own pocket higher than comfort in the poor man’s family,—and returning in perfectly destitute circumstances, have proved this fear to be well founded. ”

“ I don't care how much or how little money you make—I want you to understand that there's only one place in the world where you can live a happy life, and that's inside your income. A family that's living beyond its means is simply a business that's losing money, and it's bound to go to smash. ”

“ Pray, my dear, be so good as to tell me, What man of a great and clear estate would think of that eldest sister, while the younger were single?
You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you, by the constitutions of your family, marry to be still richer? People who know in what their main excellence consists, are not to be blamed (are they) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable?—Is true happiness any part of your family view?—So far from it, that none of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich. ”

“ The spare wealth of the family, stinted to spare it, is spent on this one youth. From the father to the daughters, all lay their bones to extraordinary work for him; the whole family is pinched in body that this one youth may go brave and full. ”

“ Had tidings come to those two people, whose wage in money would not amount to ten shillings a week, that they were heirs to a fortune, it would not have brought such pleasure to their souls as the good hope that their lowly stock would once at least in a generation produce the white flower of a scholar's life. The whole family, father and mother, with their grown-up sons and daughters in service, will now unite in one labour—to save and to sacrifice, that by hook or crook their brother may reach a university, and be sustained in his study there till he has reached its reward. ”

“ Branches long since obscure and forgotten come to the light again; members long since supposed—or hoped—to be gone away to the Ewigkeit appear alive, and with progeny. They rally round the money; the possessor of the money becomes the head of the family, the object of their most sincere respect, the source of dignity and pride to the whole family. ”

“ My father is not so rich as in days gone by. His fortune has dwindled until it is barely sufficient to keep up the house in the old style. If I would still preserve the family pride, still rule queen of the circle I have brought around me, I must marry rich. ”

“ The only son of a proud but impoverished family, who were eager to retrieve their fortune, he had early in life married the imperious spoiled daughter of a Boston millionaire, whose dower consisted of five hundred thousand dollars, and a temper that eclipsed the unamiable exploits of ancient and modern shrews. ”

“ It was my dear husband’s wish that I should continue to occupy this house for the term of my life, but after that it passes to his relations. It is an expensive place to keep up, and leaves little margin out of the income which goes with it. I cannot save as I should have wished, and my own property is not large. When it is divided among my various nephews and nieces, there will not be much for each. I should like to have done more for your father, as he has a large family to provide for, but it is impossible. ”

“ He would never court the rich,--he would go where he was called. He would rather save the life of a poor mother of a family than that of half a dozen old gouty millionnaires whose heirs had been yawning and stretching these ten years to get rid of them. ”

“ My children, the children of old Noel Hasluck, son of a Whitechapel butcher! Here's my pedigree!” Again be slapped his tuneful pocket. “It's an older one than theirs! It's coming into its own at last! It's money—we men of money—that are the true kings now. It's our family that rules the world—the great money family ”

“ People take you with all your faults if you’re rich; but they won’t swallow your family into the bargain. So if I don’t have at my house my own father and mother, whom I love dearly, and should like to see sitting at table, with my servants behind their chairs, I could still less have sister Jane. ”

“ The poor father had to yield just as before, though it nearly broke his heart to part with his only remaining child. The price which the young man paid was so very great that the family was now as rich as it had once been poor. ”

“ Here I was now the heir eventually to something like fifteen hundred pounds a year, two country houses, and a very fair house besides attached to my uncle’s house. You may easily imagine the joy of the whole family when from somewhat pinched economy, we found ourselves in easy circumstances, with at once quite double our previous income. ”

“ Many have exceeded their incomes, and then sunk down into poverty; others have, perhaps, only lived up to their incomes; but in so doing, have disappointed those who, induced by the appearance of so much wealth, have married into the family and discovered that they have obtained wives with expensive ideas, and no money. ”

“ An heir to a landed estate, is bred up from his infancy with the notion of living like his father: the son of a monied man has commonly very different sentiments; and even when any of this class takes a turn to expence, the lustre of it is all displayed round their own bodies; that is, in their own house, and in their own families: no country seats, hounds, horses, servants in every quarter, family interest to keep up, little oeconomy in spending. ”

“ They had wealth, position, a lucrative profession; everything, in fact, to help them on, that can be desired by a family in middle-class life; whilst you had poverty, obscurity, and toil to contend with. ”

“ After having made first cousins heirs, where there were no legitimate children, they could not so divide the property between two different branches as to prevent the simultaneous existence of extreme wealth and extreme poverty in the same family. ”

“ But with the great majority of families that compose the body-politic, the spending of a little of their very little money is a question of moment, that comes up from day to day, and almost from hour to hour: and if a garment cannot be bought, or a meal provided, without raising the question of separate pecuniary interests between the heads of the family, and that too in the presence of the children, the unity of the home, its sacred peace, and its hallowed lessons, are at an end; and it may be that the strong passions so constantly appealed to, will rend the family asunder. ”

“ This gentleman, by inheriting some property and by profitable investments, was able to live quite independent and very comfortably. The family, on account of its wealth, was on the verge of society, sometimes inside, but oftener on the outside. ”

“ The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction which attends hereditary possession, (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission. ”

“ A state of society that is based upon wealth as the chief good, may offer especial danger to the sons, from the very fact that it gave such incentives to the energy of the fathers, and the wealth gained in hardship may be wasted in dissipation. Some sons, indeed, catch the thrift of their laborious parents, and from love of money, or from family pride, or some better ambition, try to keep or increase their inheritance. ”

“ Here is the lady with her aged father about to be sold up and turned out of the estates which have belonged to her family for generations—why don’t you do the generous and graceful thing, like the hero in a novel, and take up the mortgages? ”

“ The son he has by his aristocratic wife may come in for the property of her brother, but her brother belongs to a different family, so he does not take up his father’s greatness and carry it on with the help his father’s wealth could give him in the father’s family. I do not say the system is unjust or anything like that, mind; I merely say that it does not tend to the production of a series of great men in one family. ”

“ There they tell all that they have seen and what they had to eat and everything is criticized; for rancor and envy fill the hearts of the poor sisters-in-law who flatter the prosperous member of the family notwithstanding, and are eloquent in their praise of her fine clothes. Finally some misfortune overtakes the father or the brothers and, whether he will or not, the rich man has to step into the breach for the sake of the family reputation. ”

“ Some family tradition of wealth or distinction is apt to be at the bottom of it, and it survives all the advantages that used to set it off. I like family pride as well as my neighbors, and respect the high-born fellow-citizen whose progenitors have not worked in their shirt-sleeves for the last two generations full as much as I ought to. But grand pere oblige; a person with a known grandfather is too distinguished to find it necessary to put on airs. ”

“ Thenceforward, among the more extravagant races, the family dwindles, as in ancient Rome or modern France, and marriage, having become a luxury, decreases. Moreover, the economic instinct impels parents to reduce the number of possible inheritors of their property, that its bulk may not shrink. ”

“ We know of a family who make it a boast that they, when young, had all they wanted; which either implies their mother to have been unwisely indulgent, or else the children to have been over-clamorous. It certainly does not imply wealth, and, least of all, culture, for the poorest families have usually the largest display of these things, while those with enlarged means and sense dispense with them out of good judgment. ”

“ To families divided by questions of money and inheritance he said: “Look at the mountaineers of Devolny, a country so wild that the nightingale is not heard there once in fifty years. Well, when the father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek their fortunes, leaving the property to the girls, so that they may find husbands.” ”

“ I am not a rich man; but I have a good position and the prospect of a prosperous future is before me. My family is a family of standing, and is honoured and respected. If you will permit me, I will send you credentials of my character, with which you cannot fail to be satisfied. Into my union with your daughter the question of money does not enter. We shall be satisfied to work our way without help from you in a money shape, either now or hereafter. ”

“ We wipe out with a sponge a deplorable great-aunt, we look the other way when we pass her grave; we agree to forget a whole family of cousins; we do not wish ourselves to be [Pg 187] remembered more than, say, thirty years back; we desire that no inquiry, other than general, shall be made into our origins. In a word—if we may compress so great a discovery in a single sentence—the middle class—the great middle class—backbone, legs, brain, and tongue, as we all know, of the country—the class to which we all, or nearly all, belong—is really the home and haunt of the family secret. ”

“ Which of you would be willing to share your hard-won provision for your own family with another family, the head of which you knew to be lazy, incapable, and dissipated? What incentive to struggle would remain if the results of that struggle were to be taken away from you and given to others who sat idly by? ”

“ For many years prior to my father's death I was not employed, but lived on a liberal allowance made to me by him. I am a married man, and in addition to my wife have a family of two children to support from my income.
"'All our friends are persons of wealth and of high social standing, and we are compelled to spend money in entertaining the many friends who entertain us. I am a member of many expensive clubs. I have absolutely no income except the allowance I receive from my father's estate, and the same is barely sufficient to support my family. ”