And then, too, the work
tired me without exercising my mind. There were the vacations, of
course--but I couldn't afford to leave London--I simply lived in hell. I
don't say that I didn't get some discipline out of it--and my escape gave
me a stock of gratitude and delight that has been simply inexhaustible. The
misery of it for me was that I had to live an unreal life. If I had been
poor, and had had my leisure, and had worked at things I cared about, with
a set, let us say, of young artists, all working too at things which they
cared about, it would have been different--but I hadn't the energy left to
make friends, or the time to find any congenial people. I can't describe
what a nightmare it all was--so that when I hear you speaking as if money
didn't really matter, I simply feel that you don't know what a tragedy it
can be, or what your own income saves you from. You and I have the
Epicurean temperament, my boy; it's no good pretending we haven't--things
appeal to our mind and senses in a way they don't appeal to everyone. So I
don't think that people ought to talk lightly about money, unless they have
known poverty and _not_ suffered under it. I used to ask myself in
those days if it was possible to suffer more, when every avenue reaching
away out of my life to the things I loved and cared for seemed to be closed
to me by an impassable barrier."

"But one can practise oneself in doing without things?" I said.

"With about as much success," said Father Payne, "as you can practise doing
without food."

"But isn't it partly that people are unduly reticent about money?" I said.
"If people could only say frankly what they can and what they can't afford,
it would simplify things very much."

"I don't know," said Father Payne. "Money is one of those curious
things--uninteresting if you have enough, tragic if you haven't. I don't
think talking about money is vulgar--I think it is simply dull: to discuss
poverty is like discussing a disease--to discuss wealth is like talking
about food or wine. The poverty that simply humiliates and pinches can't be
joked about--it's far too serious for that! Of course, there are men who
don't really feel the call of life. Look at our friend Kaye! If Kaye had to
live in London lodgings, he wouldn't mind a bit, if he could get to the
Museum Reading-Room--he only wants books and his own work--he doesn't want
company or music or art or talk or friends. He is wholly indifferent to
nasty food