One touch of nature makes the whole world a lender

It is a long time since I have experienced a ‘touch’. When I was a young man, people were always borrowing from me. I was brought up very strictly. My father said, ‘Never have an overdraft. Never have a mortgage except on your first house, and pay that off as quickly as possible. Never borrow. Always pay bills by return of post.’ I have stuck to these rules, even at Oxford, when I had very little and the temptation to get into debt was great. One of Charles Lamb’s most striking essays is called ‘The Two Great Races of Men’. They are ‘those who borrow and those who lend’. I have always, like Lamb, been a lender. When you are known always to be solvent, people instinctively come to you to borrow. Or rather, they always did in the old days.

I don’t recall any borrowing in Chaucer, though his master, John of Gaunt, richest man in Europe, exercised power by jud-icious lending.