About money

I invited Anne to Venice. I said she could bring her boyfriend, too. When she wrote that they would like to come for a week, I responded that they are welcome to stay three days with me, but that the balance of the week they shall have lodge in a hotel and I offered to cover its cost. Anne refused and is not coming.

My relationship with Anne has been troubled by money in a million little ways: she refuses to be taken out to eat, for instance. The grounds are supposedly pride, though I am not sure why that should be so: we have known each other since we were both eleven. She is the one person in my life whom I have known longest. Having known me all these years, she knows well that I never try to take advantage of my relative wealth to put her under any sort of obligation.

Poor people – by which I mean anyone who counts the price of what he buys in the supermarket – feel about money differently from us. Perhaps because they are not likely to be given anything as a gift but it has a hidden price attached to it.

But in this case, the thinking is puzzling: Anne would rather inconvenience me as my guest at my house for 7 days than accept the cost of a hotel room. It is in keeping with the European prohibition against ever giving money as gift, but it makes no sense, does it.

Clearly, I have not been tactful in making my offer.