Great wealth has always bred envy and resentment among the rest of us, which is why even in ancient times people liked to believe that it would be its possessors’ undoing. Thus one of the myths about King Midas of Phrygia was that, having sought and been granted the gift of turning everything he touched to gold, he died of starvation because his food underwent the same metamorphosis. Legend also had it that King Croesus of Lydia, still to this day a byword for unimaginable riches, lost his kingdom to the Persians, who then burnt him to death.
Sadly, such myths tend to be untrue, just inventions of the poor to raise their spirits. For on the whole the very rich are perfectly happy and lead fuller, longer lives than everyone else. They may, however, feel a little uncomfortable with their wealth, which is why, especially at a time of austerity, they hesitate to flaunt it. This may be partly because they feel somehow vulnerable but also, perhaps, because they don’t want to cause distress to others less fortunate than themselves.
They want to give the impression that they are no different from us, that they have the same concerns and preoccupations. So they complain about the costs of heating oil and of shopping at Waitrose; and they may try to suggest with little hints that they aren’t really quite as rich as we imagine them to be. And if their wealth is so vast and celebrated that there is no point in pretending otherwise, they may, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, give vast amounts of it away to the world’s poor as tokens of their humility and gratitude for their good fortune.
Most of the rich people I have met display modesty of this kind and seek to narrow the gap that their wealth creates between them and us.
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