h.
It is the special psychology of leisure and luxury that falsifies life.
Some experience of modern movements of the sort called "advanced" has
led me to the conviction that they generally repose upon some experience
peculiar to the rich. It is so with that fallacy of free love of which I
have already spoken; the idea of sexuality as a string of episodes. That
implies a long holiday in which to get tired of one woman, and a motor
car in which to wander looking for others; it also implies money for
maintenances. An omnibus conductor has hardly time to love his own
wife, let alone other people's. And the success with which nuptial
estrangements are depicted in modern "problem plays" is due to the fact
that there is only one thing that a drama cannot depict--that is a
hard day's work. I could give many other instances of this plutocratic
assumption behind progressive fads. For instance, there is a plutocratic
assumption behind the phrase "Why should woman be economically dependent
upon man?" The answer is that among poor and practical people she isn't;
except in the sense in which he is dependent upon her. A hunter has to
tear his clothes; there must be somebody to mend them. A fisher has
to catch fish; there must be somebody to cook them. It is surely quite
clear that this modern notion that woman is a mere "pretty clinging
parasite," "a plaything," etc., arose through the somber contemplation
of some rich banking family, in which the banker, at least, went to the
city and pretended to do something, while the banker's wife went to the
Park and did not pretend to do anything at all. A poor man and his
wife are a business partnership. If one partner in a firm of publishers
interviews the authors while the other interviews the clerks, is one of
them economically dependent? Was Hodder a pretty parasite clinging to
Stoughton? Was Marshall a mere plaything for Snelgrove?

But of all the modern notions generated by mere wealth the worst is
this: the notion that domesticity is dull and tame. Inside the home
(they say) is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and
variety. This is indeed a rich man's opinion. The rich man knows that
his own house moves on vast and soundless wheels of wealth, is run by
regiments of servants, by a swift and silent ritual. On the other hand,
every sort of vagabondage of romance is open to him in the streets
outside. He has plenty of money and can afford to be a tramp. His
wildest adventure w