Miser

This article is about parsimonious people. For other uses, see Miser (disambiguation).

Death and the Miser by Hieronymus Bosch in 1494

A miser is a person who is reluctant to spend, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities, in order to hoard money or other possessions. Although the word is sometimes used loosely to characterise anyone who is mean with their money, if such behaviour is not accompanied by taking delight in what is saved, it is not properly miserly.

Freud attributed the development of miserly behaviour to toilet training in childhood. Some infants would attempt to retain the contents of their bowels and this would result in the development of an anal retentive personality that would attempt to retain their wealth and possessions in later life.

Misers in literature

There were two famous references to misers in ancient Greek sources. One was Aesop’s fable of The Miser and his Gold which he had buried and came back to view every day. When his treasure was eventually stolen and he was lamenting his loss, he was consoled by a neighbour that he might as well bury a stone (or return to look at the hole) and it would serve the same purpose. The other was a two-line epigram in the Greek Anthology, once ascribed to Plato. In this a man, intending to hang himself, discovered hidden gold and left the rope behind him; on returning, the man who had hidden the gold hanged himself with the noose he found in its place.

Both these stories were alluded to or retold in the following centuries, the most famous versions appearing in La Fontaine's Fables as L'avare qui a perdu son trésor (IV.20) and Le trésor et les deux hommes (IX.15) respectively. In the following century, fellow fabulist Claris de Florian created the humorous verse fable L'avare et son fils (IV.9 The miser and his son). In this a father hoards apples and only eats those going rotten, until his son discovers his hoard and, when caught, excuses himself on the grounds that he was confining himself to eating the good ones.

Drama

Misers were represented onstage as figure of fun in Classical times. In particular the Latin treatment of the character Euclio in the Aulularia of Plautus, with the subplot of a marriageable daughter to complicate matters, was very influential. One of the earliest Renaissance writers to adapt it was the Croatian Marin Držić in about 1555, whose Skup (The Miser) is set in Dubrovnik. Ben Jonson adapted elements from Plautus for his early comedy The Case is Altered (c.1597). The miser there is the Milanese Jaques de Prie, who has a (supposed) daughter, Rachel. Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft and Samuel Coster followed with their very popular Dutch comedy Warenar (1617). The play is named from the miser, whose daughter is Claartje. Molière adapted Plautus' play into French as L'Avare (The Miser, 1668) while in England Thomas Shadwell adapted Molière's work in 1672 and a version based on both Plautus and Molière was produced by Henry Fielding in 1732. Among later adaptations there was Vasily Pashkevich's 18th century Russian comic opera The Miser and pioneering dramatic works in Arabic by Marun al-Naqqash (1817-55) and in Serbian by Jovan Sterija Popović.

Aubrey Beardsley's 1898 title page for Ben Jonson's play

There were also independent dramatic depictions of misers, including the Jewish moneylender Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (1598) by William Shakespeare and the title character of Ben Jonson's Volpone (1606). In Aubrey Beardsley's title page for the latter, Volpone is shown worshiping his possessions, in illustration of the lines "Dear Saint, / Riches, the dumb god that giv'st all men tongues." A similar scene takes place in the second act of Alexander Pushkin's short tragedy Skupoi rytsar (1836). This concerns a son, Albert, kept short of funds by his father, the Baron. Under the title The Miserly Knight, it was made an opera by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1906. In the corresponding act in the latter, the Baron visits his underground storehouse, where he gloats at a new addition to his coffers and moodily contemplates the extravagance of his son during a 15-minute solo.

Following on from the continuing success of Moliere's L'Avare, there were a spate of French plays dealing with misers and their matrimonial plans over the next century and a half. What complicates matters is that several of these had the same title but were in fact separate plays written by different authors. L'Avare Amoureux (The Miser in Love) by Jean du Mas d' Aigueberre (1692-1755) was a one act comedy acted in Paris in 1729. It is not the same as the anonymous one act comedy of the same title published in 1777.

Another set of plays borrows a title from the Italian dramatist Carlo Goldoni, who was working in France at the end of his life. He had already produced a one act comedy titled L’avaro (The Miser) in Bologna in 1756. In 1776 he produced in France the five act L' avare fastueux (The Spendthrift Miser). The same title was used by L. Reynier for his five act verse drama of 1794 and by Claude Baron Godart d'Aucourt de Saint Just (1769-1826) for his three act verse drama of 1805.

The early 19th century also saw misers become the subject of the musicals then fashionable. Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne collaborated on L'avare en goguette (The miser’s spree) in 1823., while Jean-François Bayard and Paul Duport collaborated on the two act La fille de l'avare (The Miser's Daughter) in 1835. However, the nearly contemporary American stage production, Julietta Gordini:The Miser's Daughter, a verse play in five acts (New York, 1839), claims to derive its plot 'from an Italian story'.

Poetry

In Dante Alighieri's Inferno, misers are put in the fourth circle of hell, in company with spendthrifts as part of their mutual punishment. They roll weights representing their wealth, constantly colliding and quarreling. During the 16th century, emblem books began using an illustration of an ass eating thistles as symbol of miserly behaviour, often with an accompanying poem. They appeared in various European languages, among them the illustrated trencher by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, on which an ass laden with rich foods is shown cropping a thistle, surrounding which is the quatrain:

The Asse which dainty meates doth beare

And feedes on thistles all the yeare

Is like the wretch that hourds up gold

And yet for want doth suffer cold.

At about this time Edmund Spenser created a portrait of a man trapped between conflicting desires in Malbecco, who appears in the third book of The Faerie Queene, cantos 9-10. He is torn between his miserliness and love for his wife Hellenore. Wishing to escape with a lover, she sets fire to his storeroom and forces him to choose between them:

Ay when to him she cryde, to her he turnd,

And left the fyre; love money overcame:

But when he marked how him money burnd,

He left his wyf; money did love disclame.

Eventually losing both, he becomes the embodiment of frustrated jealousy.

Alexander Pope created another masterly portrait in the character of Cotta in his Epistle to Bathurst. Reluctance to spend confines this aristocrat to his ancestral hall, where he refuses to engage with the world.

Fiction

There have also been several famous portrayals of misers in prose fiction:

The miser discovers the loss of his money, George Cruickshank's 1842 illustration for Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter

• Yan Jiansheng in an episode of The Scholars by Wu Jingzi (吳敬梓), written about 1750. This miser was unable to die easily until a wasteful second wick was removed from the lamp at his bedside.
• Jean-Esther van Gobseck − an affluent usurer in the novel Gobseck (1830) by Balzac.
• Felix Grandet – whose daughter is the title character in the novel Eugénie Grandet (1833) by Balzac.
• Fardarougha Donovan in the Irish William Carleton's Fardarougha the Miser (1839).
• Plyushkin - a compulsive hoarder in Nikolai Gogol's novel Dead Souls (1842).
• John Scarve - in the novel The Miser's Daughter (first serialised 1842) by William Harrison Ainsworth. The story is set in the 1770s and the character of Scarve was inspired by the real-life miser John Elwes. A dramatic version was put on by Edward Stirling in October 1842 and another was produced by T. P. Taylor in November 1842 at the City of London Theatre. In April 1872, an adaptation called Hilda was produced for the Adelphi Theatre by Andrew Halliday.
• Ebenezer Scrooge – the lead character of A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens. He too was based on John Elwes.
• Mr. Prokharchin – title character of the short story Mr. Prokharchin (1846) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
• Uncle Jan and his nephew Thijs in Hendrik Conscience’s novel of Flemish peasant life, De Gierigaard (1853, translated into English as "The Miser" in 1855).
• Silas Marner – title character of George Eliot's novel Silas Marner (1861), who eventually abandons his avaricious ways.
• Ebenezer Balfour the villain of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped (1886), which is set during the Jacobite disturbances in 18th century Scotland. Attempting to deprive his nephew David (the hero of the novel) of his inheritance, he arranges to have the young man kidnapped.
• Henry Earlforward in Arnold Bennett's novel Riceyman Steps (1923), who makes life miserable for the wife who married him in the hope of security.
• Séraphin Poudrier, the central figure in Claude-Henri Grignon's Un Homme et son péché (1933). This French-Canadian novel was translated into English as "The Woman and the Miser" in 1978. Set at the end of the 19th century, the novel broke with the convention of extolling rural life and depicts a miser who mistreats his wife and lets her die because calling in a doctor would cost money. There have been adaptations for stage, radio, TV and two films, of which the most recent was Séraphin: un homme et son péché (2002), titled Séraphin: Heart of Stone in the English-language version.

There were beside many other prolific and once popular novelists who addressed themselves to the subject of miserliness. For the most part theirs were genre works catering to readers in the circulating libraries of the 19th century. Among them was the gothic novel The miser and his family (1800) by Eliza Parsons and Catherine Hutton's The miser married (1813). The latter was an epistolatory novel in which Charlotte Montgomery describes her own romantic affairs and in addition those of her mother, an unprincipled spendthrift who has just married the miser of the title. Another female novelist, Mary E. Bennett (1813–99), set her The Gipsy Bride or the Miser's Daughter (1841) in the 16th century. Later examples include Eliza Lynn Linton, whose Paston Carew, Millionaire and Miser was published in 1886, and the American Frances Eaton, whose Dollikins and the Miser dates from 1890. Another is the portrait of Miser Farebrother (1888) by Benjamin Leopold Farjeon

Misers in art

Miser by Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia (1890)

In the Christian West the attitude to those whose interest centred on gathering money was coloured by the teachings of the Church. From its point of view, both the miser and the usurer were guilty of the cardinal sin of avarice and the two were often confounded. This makes interpreting the subject of early paintings with a moral message difficult, since they illustrate a type that might equally be a miser, usurer or even tax collector.

Such early paintings cluster into recognisable genres, all of which point to the sinful nature of preoccupation with money for its own sake. Hieronymus Bosch’s panel of Death and the Miser, dating from the 1490s, started a fashion in depicting this subject among Low Countries artists. Bosch shows the miser on his deathbed, with various demons crowding about his possessions, while an angel supports him and directs his attention to higher things. The link between finance and the diabolical is also drawn by another Fleming, Jan Matsys, in his portrayal of the man of affairs being assisted in his double bookkeeping by a demon. The same connection is made in "The devil and the usurer" in the Valenciennes Musée des beaux-arts, formerly attributed to Pieter Bruegel the Younger, in which two devils pluck at the sleeve of a poorly dressed moneylender.

The Gospel Parable of the Rich Fool lies behind another series of paintings which stem ultimately from mediaeval illustrations of the Dance of Death. There a skeleton compels those from all walks of life, but particularly types of the rich and the powerful, to join him in his dance to the grave. In 1538 Hans Holbein the Younger initiated a popular treatment of this subject in which each type is separately illustrated, of which there were many imitations in succeeding centuries. Among the depictions is a man starting up in protest behind a table piled with wealth on which a skeleton is laying hands. In his print of 1651, Wenceslas Hollar makes the connection with the parable clear by quoting from it in the frame. A variation is provided by Jan Provoost’s 16th century diptych in which death confronts the man of affairs with his own account. A century later, Frans Francken the Younger treats the theme twice, in both versions of which a skeleton serenades a luxuriously dressed greybeard sitting at a table.

Yet another genre was the Allegory of Avarice, of which one of the earliest examples is Albrecht Durer ’s painting of a naked old woman with a sack of coins (1507). This makes the point that age comes to all and confiscates all consolations. A woman is chosen as subject because the Latin avaritia is of the feminine gender. Low Countries artists who took up the allegorical theme added the variation of making the woman examine a coin by the light of a candle or lantern, as in the paintings by Gerrit van Honthorst and Mathias Stomer. Paulus Moreelse makes the link with the dance of death genre by introducing a young boy slyly fingering the coins while keeping a wary eye on the woman to see if she has noticed. These Dutch variations were mostly painted during the 1620s, when Rembrandt too borrowed the imagery, but his candlelit examiner of a coin is male and the piece is variously titled “The Money Changer” or “The Rich Fool”, in reference to the parable already mentioned. Jan Steen, on the other hand, makes his subject very obviously a miser who hugs a small sack of coins and holds one up for intent inspection.

In the Hieronymus Bosch Death and the Miser, the pull between spirituality and materialism is highlighted by making the deathbed a scene of conflict between the angel and demons. Quentin Matsys suggests the same polarity in his The moneylender and his wife (1514). Here the woman is studying a religious book while her husband is testing coins by weight. In the hands of the later Marinus van Reymerswaele the contrast disappears. The wife of his moneylender is shown helping with the bookkeeping and leaning sideways, as mesmerised as her husband by the pile of coins. Gillis van Tilborch‘s painting of much the same scene is titled The Misers and again demonstrates the ambivalent targets of the moral message. The only difference is that the couple engaged in inspecting their money are old, as was the case in all the allegories of avarice.

Another area of ambivalence centres on the kind of clothes worn by the so-called misers. The subject of Hendrik Gerritsz Pot’s painting from the 1640s in the Uffizi is fashionably dressed and wearing a ring. He may be inspired by the wealth and jewelry piled on his table, but he obviously has no objection to advertising his well-to-do status. On the other hand, the Miser Casting His Accounts presented by Jan Lievens is poorly dressed and his interest in hoarding is indicated by the way he gloats on the key that will lock his money away. The same dichotomy occurs in later centuries. Jean-Baptiste Le Prince's miser is also richly robed as he sits surrounded by his possessions, while Theodore Bernard Heuvel's miser sits on the chest containing his hoard and looks anxiously over his shoulder. Paul Gavarni’s miser shows much the same apprehension as he leans on the table where his money is piled and glances round suspiciously.

By this time the theme was distancing itself from the simply moralities of journeyman painters and becoming a subject for aristocratic amateurs. The Empress Maria Feodorovna's miser of 1890 handles a comparatively small strongbox. The Indian Raja Ravi Varma paints a Jewish character type for his miser, dated 1901, while the Hungarian nobleman Ladislav Medňanský titles his humanised study "Shylock" (1900).

Thomas Gray's 1868 painting of Shylock and his daughter Jessica

English depictions of misers in the 18th century also begin as genre paintings. Gainsborough Dupont's poorly dressed character clutches a bag of coin and looks up anxiously in the painting in the Ashmolean Museum. John Cranch (1751-1821) pictures two armed desperadoes breaking in on his. After the turn of the century, real examples became the subjects. Local painter William Brown portrayed Margery Jackson, the Carlisle Miser (c.1811), who was to become the inspiration of the modern Miser! The Musical (2011). Robert Mendham (1792-1875) painted a Suffolk subject, "The Miser of Eye" (c.1820).

Several other painters were inspired by theatrical misers. In the 18th century, Samuel De Wilde pictured the actor William Farren playing Lovegold in a production of Henry Fielding's "The Miser" at the Theatre Royal, Bath, while it was the French Grandmesnil playing Harpagon in Molière's L'Avare who was painted by Jean-Baptiste Francois Desoria. But Shylock is the most favoured by English artists. Johann Zoffany painted Charles Macklin in the role that brought him fame at Covent Garden in London (1767–68). Character portraits of other actors in that role have included Henry Urwick (1859–1931) by Walter Chamberlain Urwick (1864-1943), Herbert Beerbohm Tree by Charles Buchel and Arthur Bourchier, also by Buchel. The reason for this preference is Shylock's more complex character. Although Shakespeare underlines his avarice, it is overlaid by racial antagonism. Rather than simply hoarding for its own sake, he makes use of money as a weapon to accomplish his malice.

External links

Media related to Misers at Wikimedia Commons