He prefers it that way

Paul Johnson, in the October 18, 2008 edition of the Spectator, Michelangelo, old boy, do you think you might . . . He is speaking of financial responsibility in general but focuses on the many instances of productive authors who were also compulsively financially improvident or just plain unlucky, including, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas, Oscar Wilde, etc. He does not mention any Americans but certainly Melville and Poe could be added to the list. He also tips his hat to their opposites, those authors who managed their affairs well and in turn provided assistance to their unfortunate peers. Men such as Johnson, Carlyle, and Eliot.

There were strong reasons for helping the needy in those days, for men might be arrested for paltry debts and be flung into the Marshalsea gaol, as Dickens's father was. Some never re-emerged. At least two of Lamb's friends died in debtors' prison. If you turned down a request for a 'loan', you might precipitate a chain of events which would haunt you later. It was not just the borrower himself you had to think about. There was a wan, lined, defeated wife and strings of pale children, doomed to lives of want and scrimping. Carlyle, a generous man despite all his bellowing, gave away his silver, like Dr Johnson before him. When Leigh Hunt called, obviously to 'make a touch', Carlyle would simply leave a sovereign or two on the mantelpiece, and leave the room ('He prefers it that way'). Lamb tried to avoid lending to people he knew, remembering Polonius's warning to Laertes ('Loan oft loses both itself and friend'). He gave it outright.