How to Be Generous
論慷慨
[1] The word "gift" has got dangerously devalued of late. Salesmen use so-called free gifts as bait and publicists use them as bribes; the wealthy can make "gifts" to their children, or to charities, with no more noble motive than saving tax. And anything labelled a gift shop, or catalogue, can generally be guaranteed to be full of curious, zany items like personalised solid silver back-scratchers and musical ashtrays, which are only classified as "giftware" because nobody in their senses would buy them to use themselves.
[2] We need to claim the word back this Christmas. We also need to claim back the word "generous": which too often gets used in the sense of over-large portions of food, hotel towels, the size of sheets, or women spilling out of their dresses. For generosity--the ability to make real gifts with modesty and love, expecting nothing back--is one of the things which most make us human. You do not find pigs or lions giving one another thoughtful little presents, do you? Monkeys, apparently, offer one another fleas at times, but not in any provable spirit of kindliness. We should honour generosity more than we do.
[3] Perhaps it has become suspect because of the tales of over-the-top generosity sometimes told in gossip about the very rich. The late Christina Onassis giving her daughter a personal zoo and a flock of sheep with their own shepherd, for instance; assorted tycoons flying their guests halfway round the world for birthday parties where there is an emerald bracelet or cufflinks on every place-setting; wealthy men paying off old girlfriends with houses, yachts and Ferraris. In this context, generosity has come to mean that you hurl money around like a drunken sailor. And there is always the suspicion that, like the sailor, you are doing it just to prove that you can afford it. That is not giving: that is showing off.
[4] But the real thing, when you meet it, is magical, and as a quality it belongs equally to rich and poor. Sometimes the poor--like the widow in the Bible who gave her mite--are best at it. Travellers in remote parts, from Poland to Peru, come home with stories of bread, shelter, even beds shared without question with the stranger on the peasant principle that "A guest in the house is God in the house". Nearer home, I loved the stories collected in memory of Katie Sullivan, the 23-year-old mental home care assistant who was murdered last year. Particularly the one about the day she was walking to the pub, and lagged behind, and her student friends caught a glimpse of her emptying her whole purse into a tramp's hands when she thought they weren't looking. Later in the pub they teased her about not drinking, trying to make her admit what she had done; but she steadfastly pretended she didn't want a drink.
[1]“禮物”一詞近來已被危險地貶值了。推銷員用所謂的免費贈品作為誘餌，公關人員用它們來行賄;富人們可以制造“禮物”送給他們的子女或捐給慈善團體，這與避免上稅一樣都沒有什么高尚的動機。標有禮品店或禮品目錄的任何東西通常可以保證入目全是奇異的、滑稽的物品，如個人用純銀癢癢撓和音樂煙灰缸----因為精神正常的人都不會買來自用，所以它們只好被劃歸為“禮品”。
[2]今年圣誕節我們需要還這個詞本來的面目。我們也需要還“慷慨”這個同本來的面目，因為這個詞在食品、賓館毛巾、床單大小或胖得快要撐破衣裳的女人的絕大部分意思上用得太泛太濫了。慷慨----即出于謙恭和愛心贈送真正意義的禮物而不期望任何回報的能力----是最使我們人之所以為人的一個方面。你沒有發現豬或獅子彼此贈送親切的小禮品吧?猴子似乎有時互相幫助捉跳蚤，但是這并不在任何可以證明的善意的范疇內。與現在所做的相比，我們應該對慷慨表示更多的敬意。
[3]由于有時在閑聊中談及的有關非常富有的人過度慷慨的故事，或許它已變得令人懷疑。例如，已故的克里斯蒂娜?奧納西斯送給她的女兒一座私人動物園和配有牧羊人的一群羊;某些大亨們派飛機飛越半個地球去接客人來參加他們的生日宴會，并在每人的餐具處放上一只祖母綠手鐲或一付袖扣;富翁們用房子、游艇和法拉利跑車來堵住舊日女友的嘴。在這種情況下，慷慨已變了味，無異于你像一個喝得爛醉的水手，向周圍的人大把大把地扔錢。因此，那樣做總是令人懷疑你不過是為了證明你花得起。那不是給予，是炫耀。
[4]而當你遇上真正的慷慨時，它有著不可思議的魅力，作為一種品質，無論貧富，都一樣擁有它。有時窮人----就像《圣經》中那個給小錢的寡婦----在這一點上做得更好。從波蘭到秘魯，在遠方旅行的人回家時都會有這樣的經歷----所經之處的人們本著“家中客即上帝”的農民原則，毫無問題地與異鄉人共享面包、小屋甚至床鋪。在家鄉一帶，我喜歡的是為紀念去年被人謀殺、年僅23歲的家庭心理治療助理凱蒂?沙利文而收集的故事。尤其是其中的一則故事：有一天她去酒吧，走在了大家的后面，她的學友們瞥見她把錢包里的錢全倒進一個流浪者的手里，當時她以為他們都沒有注意。后來他們在酒吧中取笑她不喝酒，試圖讓她承認她所做的一切;但是她堅定地假裝她并不想喝酒。
[5] Another student I knew, a man, knew that his roommate couldn't afford an important textbook in his subject; a book which was very scarce in second-hand shops and impossibly expensive when new. His friend was far too proud to accept a loan, and so spent a lot of time trekking to the library in the rain to look things up. So the better-off student went to Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford, bought a brand-new copy for 35 pounds, dirtied it up a bit and tore off the paper cover, writing a fictitious name in the front. He even remembered to age the ink by putting it over a radiator, and made a few dogears and faint pencil-marks against what he thought might be significant passages. Then he went home in triumph claiming to have spotted the book in the second-hand bookshop and "beaten them down to two quid". He even got a receipt for the money by buying himself another book at the same secondhand shop. Talk about doing good by stealth: and in case you wonder, I heard the story from the poorer roommate, who had got suspicious and, ten years later, forced the richer one to confess.
[6] Tact is the key to real generosity: tact, and real thought for the person you are giving the present to. You can buy anyone a picture by a fashionable and expensive artist, if you can afford it; but it might be kinder to spend a tenth of the amount--and a bit of trouble on getting the framed original of a cartoon you know has cheered them up at a bad time. Anyone can buy a man a gold watch; but it takes a generous wife to do what one lately did, and track down an antique gold strap which precisely fits the old one he inherited from his beloved father.
[7] Conversely, it is not generous to keep pressing expensive drinks on people who really want a half-pint of bitter. ("Co on! Have another! Tell you what, have a double brandy! The best brandy!" ) It is harassment. So is refusing to let someone pay their half of the taxi if it makes them feel small. Buying someone a bottle of the very best champagne when they don't particularly like champagne is pointless; so is giving them a negligee, or sweater, which you would like to see them in but which they are going to hate. Until courting couples learn this rule, girls will go on ending up with drawersful of unwearable slippery camisoles in lurid colours, and men with racks of acutely embarrassing ties. On the other hand, this kind of present does give the recipient an opportunity to show another kind of generosity by selflessly pretending to appreciate it. In the Agatha Christie novel The Hollow, Henrietta displays remarkable kindness towards a shy, unintellectual woman who isn't fitting in to a sparkling houseparty. Greta is wearing a dreadful cardigan she knitted herself; Henrietta not only praises it, but asks for the pattern. Having got the pattern, moreover, she heroically knits the dreadful thing and wears it herself next time she meets Greta. That is what I call follow-through. So is the wedding present a friend got from a broke but domestic sister-in-law: she promised to bake her a loaf of special, delicious wholemeal bread every week for the first year of her marriage, and did so.
[8] You can give people to other people, too. Matchmaking for single friends can be done in a disastrously tactless way which makes both parties cringe; but there are circumstances--not necessarily romantic ones--when a well-timed introduction can be the best thing you can do for anybody. The best present you can give to a woman expecting her first baby, for example, is to introduce her to another like-minded pregnant woman, who lives reasonably close by. They will keep one another sane for the first chaotic year. And if you do happen to be of the type who networks professionally, and gives power dinner-parties, it would be a generous thing to remember sometimes to invite younger people in the field, who are looking for jobs or contacts or merely for stimulation and inspiration. One of the kindest things anyone ever did for me was an elderly, very distinguished don who introduced me to the world's most encouraging literary agent when I was 21. He shouldn't have gone to all the trouble, I said blushingly; but I was glad he had. And that is the test of any real present: the thoughtfulness, not the wrapping.
[5]我知道的另一個學生是個男生。他得知他的室友買不起本學科的一本重要教科書――一本舊書店中難得一見而新書又貴得出奇的書。他的朋友自尊心太強，不肯接受別人借錢給他，并因此而花費了許多時間冒雨去圖書館查閱資料。于是這位較有錢的學生去了牛津的布拉克韋爾書店，花35英鎊買了一本全新的，先是把書弄臟一點，然后撕去封面，在書面寫了一個假名。他甚至沒有忘記把書放在散熱器上使墨水的色澤陳舊，將幾張書頁折上角，并且在他認為可能非常重要的段落做上淡淡的鉛筆標記。然后，他得意地回到學校，宣稱已在舊書店找到了這本書，并且“殺價到兩英鎊”。他甚至通過從同一家舊書店買了另一本書而搞到一張兩英鎊的收據。說到悄悄地做好事，倘若你想知道，這故事我是聽那位較貧困的室友講的，他當時對此已有懷疑，十年后他通那位富裕的學生招認了事情的經過。
[6]靈活機智是真正慷慨的關鍵：對你要贈送禮物的人要做到策略得體并且設想周到。如果付得起錢，你可以買上一幅時髦名畫家的畫送人;但是花上該款額的十分之一，費點神買一幅你所知道的鑲框的漫畫原件，使他們在沮喪的時候高興不已，豈不是更親切一些?任何女人都可以給丈夫買塊金表，但慷慨的妻子在不久前做那件事的同時，還要為他從敬愛的老爸那兒繼承過來的舊表物色一條與之匹配完美的舊式金表帶。
[7]反過來說，硬逼著其實只想喝半品脫苦啤酒的人喝昂貴的酒并不是慷慨。(“來吧!再喝一杯!露一手，喝兩杯白蘭地!最好的白蘭地!”)這是騷擾。不讓別人付出租車的那一半費用，致使他覺得被人小覷，其情與此無異。人家并不特別喜歡香檳時，卻給他們買一瓶優質香檳，這就沒有什么意義;送一件居家便服或毛衣，你想看他們穿在身上，而他們卻不喜歡它，這與上面的情況一樣。互獻殷勤的男女們直到后來才了解這個規則，結果是女孩們的衣櫥抽屜塞滿了難以捉摸的、不能穿著的色彩艷麗的貼身內衣，男人們則有了一排排令人極度尷尬的領帶。另一方面，這種禮品確實也使受禮人有機會以無私地假裝感激的方式表示另一種慷慨。在阿加莎?克里斯蒂的小說《空谷幽蘭》中，亨里埃塔對去參加一個充滿活力的家庭舞會的一位既害羞又不聰明、與眾不甚相稱的婦女顯示了驚人的善意。格里塔穿著一件她自己編織的難看的羊毛衫;亨里埃塔不僅對它大加贊賞，而且索要其式樣。在拿到式樣后，她還英雄般地編織這件難看的衣服，并且在她下次與格里塔會面時把它穿在身上。這就是我所說的“始終貫徹”。一位朋友從一個一文不名但喜歡家事的嫂子那兒獲得的結婚禮物是這樣的：她的嫂嫂許諾在她結婚的第一年，每個星期為她烤一塊特制的美味的全麥面包。這位嫂嫂也確實這樣做了。
[8]你也可以把一些人介紹給其他人。為單身朋友做媒可能搞得拙劣不堪，太不乖巧，致使雙方畏縮不前;但是在有些情形下-----并不一定是羅曼蒂克的情況----適合時宜的介紹可能是你能為任何人所做的最好的事情。例如，你送給期盼她的第一個孩子降生的婦女的最好禮物是，把她介紹給另一個住在附近有著相同心境的懷孕婦女。她們將在這忙亂的第一年使彼此保持明智。如果你碰巧是在職業上交游范圍廣且有舉辦大型宴會能力的那類人，那么不要忘記間或邀請一些正在尋找工作或尋求交往或僅僅想尋求刺激和靈感的年輕人參加比賽或進行野外研究活動，那會是一件慷慨之舉。曾經有人為我做過的最好的事值之一是，一位年長的、非常有名的大學教師把我介紹給了世界上最振奮人心的一位文學代理人，當時我才21歲。我靦腆地說，他實在不必為我那么麻煩;但是我很高興他那么做了。這就是任何真正禮物的試金石：設想周到，而非走走形式。
