On this occasion - I pass the place quite often - I noticed that the main entrance was roughly the same size and shape as the carriage entrance in what used to be the Treasury building, a carriage entrance used occasionally until fairly recently by royal coaches, complete with footmen and outriders, on their way to visit the Prime Minister in nearby Downing Street. A yarn which went down well with the various visitors from the US whom I sometimes had occasion to show around.
From where I started to ponder about the various aspects of such doorways.
Some people, particularly in the olden days when roads were infested with bandits, would have wanted to ride around in a sprung carriage for comfort and with outriders and so on for safety. So they would have needed a large carriage, and so, by inference, a large carriage entrance.
Other people would want a large carriage to flaunt their wealth.
Other people again would want a large carriage entrance to give the impression of wealth, without having much of either it or large carriages. Entrances don't cost anything like as much to maintain as carriages.
Or maybe the idea was to give you the idea that they were visited by people who had large carriages. I guess one could carry on with this for a while, given the intricacies of human vanity.
From where I branched off to the uses of money and the reluctance of some people to spend the stuff.
So some people are so rich they just don't think about it. They spend freely without a thought. Other people do the same thing, but do think about it, they want you to know that they are rich. Or they might want you to think that they are rich when they are not.
Some rich people are very mean. The TB has furnished me with several anecdotes about the meanness of a famous popular musician, the owner of some hundreds of millions of pounds.
Some poor people are mean because they have to be. And some poor people, as Orwell pointed out many years ago, would rather spend what little they have on gaudy rubbish than on sensible food. Such people are not deserving at all; sturdy beggars in the language of the old poor laws.
Then there are the people who just don't think about money at all, they don't care about it and don't care much about what it might buy. If you ask them for money and they happen to have some in their pocket, they will help you out. Rather unworldly types, some of whom get themselves into a pickle.
Some people are mean because they were very poor in their formative years and learned habits of frugality and carefulness which they never shook off. The daughter in 'Le Père Goriot' is a famous literary variation on that type. The long-time owners of small businesses of uncertain profitability can get the same way.
Some people are open handed, but you do not get a free lunch, or a free drink or whatever. You get the drink fine enough, but then you have to listen to all the stories - which may pall after a while.
Curiously, most of the most generous people I have come across have been poor. Perhaps rich people are wary of appearing to be generous for fear of queues forming at the door. I have certainly read of stories of people suddenly get a lot of money who go on to get a lot of begging letters. I have also read that some poor people have folk memories of times of great hardship, times when you had to share to get along, to survive. You never knew when it might be your crops that failed. Your potatoes which got the blight. Most such people will share what little they may have.
All in all, the relationship between possessing money and possessing much inclination to spend it, not necessarily on others, is another complicated business.
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