On Taxing Vanity

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Title:     On Taxing Vanity
Author: A. G. Gardiner [More Titles by Gardiner]

That quaint idea of Sir Edward Clarke's that, as a revenue expedient in time of war, we should impose a tax on those who have names as well as numbers on their garden gates has a principle in it which is capable of wide extension. It is the principle of taxing us on our vanities. I am not suggesting that there is not also a practical point in Sir Edward's idea. There is no doubt that this custom of giving our houses names is the source of much unnecessary labour and irritation to other people--postmen, tradesmen, debt collectors, and errand boys. Mr. Smythe--formerly Smith--of 236, Belinda Avenue, is easily discoverable, but what are you to do about Mr. Smythe, of Chatsworth House, Belinda Avenue, on a dark night? How are you to find him? There are 350 houses in Belinda Avenue, all as like as two peas, and though Mr. Smythe has a number, he never admits it. Chatsworth House is where he lives, and if you want him it's Chatsworth House that you have to find.

The other night a friend of mine was called to the door at a late hour. It was dark and raining and dismal. At the door stood a coal-heaver. "Please, sir," he said, "can you tell me where Balmoral is? I've got a load of coal to take there, and I've been up and down this road in the dark twice, and can't make out where it is." "It's the fourth house from here to the right," said my friend, and the coal-heaver thanked him and went away. That illustrates the practical case for a tax on house names.

But it was not that case which was in Sir Edward's mind. His view is that we ought to pay for the innocent vanity of living at Chatsworth House instead of 236, Belinda Avenue. Now if that principle is carried into effect, I see no end to its operation. I am not sure that Sir Edward himself would escape. I have often admired his magnificent side-whiskers. I doubt whether there is a pair of side-whiskers to match them in London. That he is proud of them goes without saying. Nobody could possibly have whiskers like them without feeling proud of them. I feel that if I had such whiskers I should never be away from the looking-glass. And consider the pleasurable employment they give in idle moments. Satan, it is said, has mischief still for idle hands to do. But no one with such streamers as Sir Edward's can ever have idle hands. When you have nothing else to do with them you stroke your whiskers and purr. Certainly they are worth paying for. I think they would be dirt cheap at a tax of L1 a side.

And then there are white spats. I don't know how you regard white spats, but I never see them without feeling that something ought to be done about it. I daresay the people who wear them are quite nice people, but I think they ought to suffer in some way for the jolt they give to the sensibilities of humbler mortals who could no more wear white spats than they could stand on their head in the middle of Fleet Street. I am aware that white spats are often only a sort of business advertisement. I have known careers founded on a pair of white spats. There is Simpkins, for example. I remember quite well when he first came to the club in white spats. We all smiled and said it was like Simpkins. He was pushful, meant to get on, and had set up white spats as a part of his stock-in-trade. We knew Simpkins, of course, and discounted the white spats; but they made a great impression on his clients, and he forged ahead from that day. Now he wears a fur-lined coat, drives his own motor-car, and has a man in livery to receive you at the door. But the foundation of his fortunes were the white spats. He understood that maxim of Rochefoucauld that "to succeed in the world you must appear to have succeeded already," and the white spats did the trick. I think he ought to pay for them--L2 a spat is my figure.

Most of us, too, I think, will agree that, if vanity is to be taxed, the wearing of an eyeglass cannot be overlooked. It is impossible to dissociate vanity from the use of the monocle. There are some people, it is true, who wear an eyeglass naturally and unaffectedly, as though they were really born with it and had forgotten that it was there. I saw a lady in a bus the other day who used an eyeglass and yet carried it so well, with such simple propriety and naturalness, that you could not feel that there was any vanity in the matter. But that is an exception. Ordinarily the wearing of a monocle seems like an announcement to the world that you are a person of consequence. Disraeli knew that. His remark, when Chamberlain made his first appearance in the House, that "at least he wore his eyeglass like a gentleman," showed that he knew that, in general, it was an affectation. It was so in his own case, of course. I hope Sir Edward Clarke will agree that L5 is a reasonable tariff for an eyeglass.

There are a thousand other vanities more or less innocent, that will occur to you in looking round. I should put a very stiff tax on painted cheeks and hair-dyes. Any lady dyeing her hair once would be taxed L5 for the privilege. If, growing tired of auburn, she decided to change again to a raven hue, she would pay L10. The tax, in fact, might be doubled for every change of colour. If rather than pay the tax Mrs. Fitzgibbons Jones resolves to wear her hair as nature arranged that she should, life will be simplified for me. The first time I met Mrs. Fitzgibbons Jones she had black hair. A year later I met her husband with a lady with chestnut hair. He introduced me to her as his wife, and she said we had met before. I said I thought she was mistaken, and it was not until we had parted that I realised that it was the same lady with another head of hair and another system of coloration altogether.

The weak point about Sir Edward's idea as a financial expedient is that so few of our vanities would survive the attention of the tax-collector. Personally, I should have the name-plate off my gate at once. Indeed, I'm not sure I'll not have it off as it is. It was there when I came, and I have always been a little ashamed of its foppery, and have long used only the number. Now the name seems rather more absurd than ever. Its pretentiousness is out of tune with these times. I think many of us are getting ashamed of our little vanities without the help of the tax-collector.

[The end]
A. G. Gardiner's essay: On Taxing Vanity

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