Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/Hedging against fate
HEDGING AGAINST FATE.
Walking along the streets of London the other day, and noting a fact which the citizens of all large cities must have had impressed upon their minds—to wit, the magnificence of the buildings of the Insurance Companies,—we could not help asking ourselves if we were not beginning to “hedge” ourselves, to speak in sporting parlance, rather too cleverly against “all the ills that flesh is heir to.” It seems to us that there is a growing conspiracy against Dame Fortune: we are beginning to flout the blind lady, and are becoming shockingly safe in all the relations of life and death. Of old, when a merchant sent forth his argosies, he put up a prayer for a prosperous voyage at the shrine of St. Nicholas; but now he walks to Lloyd’s, insures her for a good heavy sum, and sometimes is not displeased to hear that she has gone to the bottom. It is the same with travellers on land. How odd it is to read of persons making their wills before setting out on a stage-coach journey, as they did in the days of our grandfathers! Now-a-days we make a will, it is true, but in a very different fashion; for we pay threepence, slip a ticket for 1000l., or more, as the case may be, into an envelope addressed to our wife, and take our chance that it will fall into her hands in case of the fulfilment of its prime condition—death. But we are not content with frustrating the effects of death in the thousand odd ways actuaries seem for ever puzzling their brains to find out, but we pooh-pooh accidents, in a monetary sense, in the same cool manner. For instance, there is the Accidental Death Insurance Company, which not only pays our widow a handsome sum in case of our decease in some abrupt unnatural manner, but engages to set us up in weekly clover if a wasp has bitten us, or our favourite dog has given us a spiteful snap. As for slipping on orange-peel, which used to be the terror of bulky old parties, it is now reduced to a positive luxury, inasmuch as it only entails upon us the very irksome duty of resting on the sofa at a weekly allowance of six pounds. Really, under such circumstances, it almost seems our duty accidentally to sprain our ankle in some promiscuous sort of way. If one is an agriculturist, again, what necessity is there for feeling anxiety about crops or stock? Hailstones may be smashing our neighbours’ glass right and left, and beating down their crops, but we are as merry as a glazier under such an infliction; for have we not our policy in our pocket?
But there is a moral kind of insurance society set up of late years, which makes us safe in our minds as well as in our goods and persons. There is not the slightest necessity for troubling ourselves about the trustworthiness of persons in our employ: there are offices which insure the honesty of servants. Integrity is a quality which the superior intelligence of the present day estimates at a fixed money rate; and, provided we insure, it is an advantage rather than otherwise to employ rogues, inasmuch as they are always the cleverest. We should not be surprised to find the article rising in market-price in consequence of this very convenient institution.
Friendship of old induced men to become trustees for orphans and bereaved widows, and certain kindly offices were pretty sure to fall to the lot of benevolent persons, but we have found out the way of doing these pleasant duties, these labours of love, by commission, and such persons as the brothers Cheeryble are considered a nuisance. There are public companies which take upon themselves the duties of trusteeship for a certain consideration. There is a growing custom again, we hear, of introducing into partnership deeds, and even into the deeds of joint-stock companies, a clause to the effect that the parties signing them shall not in any case become a surety for a friend, and when the commercial partner does not insist upon this condition, the sleeping partner at home generally does; for if you happen to ask a married friend to become a surety for you, two to one but you meet with the answer that he would gladly do so, but that he had made Mary Anne a solemn promise on the eve of marriage that on no consideration, &c., &c. Really, a benevolent man must find life scarcely worth having—every emotion of his heart, every loving impulse of his gushing nature being thus denied him by the arrangements of society. Do we not insure ourselves, morally at least, against indulging in creature comforts? If we do not, at all events, it is not the fault of our friends. We have been over and over again entreated to join a teetotal society and take the pledge, not because we required such a restraint, but because of the example to others; and there is George Cruikshank using our fairy-tales to preach the same doctrine. There seems to be a set of people who go about making solemn leagues and covenants against particular appetites, and the number is increasing so, that, if we do not mind, our very wills and appetites will be put into commission, and we shall all of us find ourselves pledged to do nothing that we like for fear that our liking may lead to abuse. For instance, there is tobacco; many respectable people who don’t smoke and never wish to smoke, have formed themselves into an anti-tobacco society, and pledge themselves never to touch under any circumstances a weed. Let us suppose a man, for instance, joining all these various insurance offices and societies, and becoming a member of all the leagues that good people thrust under his nose—what a singular creature he would be. For instance, half the incentives to take care of his person would be taken from him, because his policy would set his leg and compensate him for taking it easy. If a great fire were to threaten his premises, why need he care?—his insurance would amply cover his loss; his ships may founder, but the underwriters will make it all square with him; his best friend may for want of a little aid be slipping into the gloomiest depths of despair, but his serenity of mind on his behalf would not be disturbed, on account of his promise to Mary Anne, and in all matters of sensual indulgence he possesses an armour of defence in his leagues and covenants, his solemn vows and pledges. A man so hedging himself against misfortune and distress of mind, and even against a fellow-feeling, ought to be what is termed a “good life” in the phraseology of the insurance companies. He should certainly eat, drink, and sleep well:—a kind of domestic Nero, he might possibly fiddle while Rome was burning; but what an unnatural, disagreeable being he would gradually harden into! A man that is not likely to be affected by tears and distress and care himself, would be very unlikely to sympathise with the like failings in others. We all know, on the contrary, how strongly those who suffer misfortune palpitate with the troubles of their neighbours. In the “Sentimental Journey,” Sterne depicts a poor negress in a butcher’s shop flipping the flies off the meat with gentleness and care, and remarks, “She had suffered persecution and learned mercy.” But how is a man to learn mercy whose whole thought is to make himself always “safe,” and who, instead of living in the light and shade of ordinary mortal life, exists in a kind of dull-gray existence of his own creation, free enough from pain, but unchequered by the dramatic light and shade of the common world?
The poet has said, and our sense approves it, that our capacity for feeling delight and happiness is exactly in proportion to our capacity for sounding the depths of misery. May we not ask then, if all these provisions against misfortune and loss, and even liability to misfortune, are not so many conspiracies against the natural man,—have they not a direct tendency to dwarf and trample out some of the best qualities of his nature? Imagine any person so protected against himself and against others, that he cared for nothing and nobody, what a pleasant society we should be reduced to! What would become of our drama? If marine insurance companies had existed in the time of the “Merchant of Venice,” what hold would Shylock have had upon him, or what would have become of the plot? If society goes on as it is doing, squeezing out of its map every element of trouble, shall we not be able to paraphrase the adage “It is a sad heart that never rejoices,” by saying “It is a bright heart that never mourns”? We are afraid not, as we can only appreciate brightness by contrasting it with shade. If, again, we make ourselves so safe against misfortune, and altogether abolish temptation by our leagues and covenants, what becomes of the chastening influence of adversity? If by our mutual benefit societies man is made to support man, shall we not come to disregard Providence and place no dependence upon a Higher Power? There is much to be said, doubtless, in support of the advantages of securing ourselves in the day of prosperity against coming adversity, by thus “averaging” our losses among society at large; but we contend that the movement is calculated to lessen that feeling of trust in a Higher Power that obtains among a more childlike or less organised community: thus far it must doubtless have a deteriorating effect upon us religiously, and without question, it is calculated to level and beat out of us, that thing called character, which we contract in the sudden vicissitudes of life and fortune. What greater contrast can there be than between the smug citizen who leans upon half-a-dozen societies and associations to keep him straight, and prevent the necessity for the exercise of his own faculties and wits,—even assuming the exercise of his will,—and the roving man of the world, who has to do the work of his own preservation physically and morally, and who knows that unless he keeps “his body with his head,” he is sure to go down in the battle of life? In quiet times, men who allow half of their faculties to be usurped by companies and leagues, and associations, may get through well enough, but the day comes when society requires a man, in every sense of the word, to lead it, and then he most assuredly is not to be found among the sheep thus emasculated by the voluntary abdication of their instincts of self-reliance, but among the more self-contained specimens of humanity, which our social arrangements are doing so much to destroy.
A. W.