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Perhaps the jolliest benefit of being really rich is that we can do little things in a big way like the Detroit race-track owner who gave sports cars as favors to a dozen dinner guests. We all have our pet charities, and some of us even have crusades for example, H. L. Hunt, the Texas oil billionaire, spends millions on propaganda against assorted people whom he regards as Red subversives. Then in Britain, there's Sir Cyril Black, the rich Tory MP, who is dedicated to protecting the "moral" working class from dirty books. As he sees it, "the intelligentsia are the ones who are pulling down the temple."
But even when our crusades or benefactions are less extreme than these, we rarely get much credit for them. You will soon discover, I fear, the oldest and most obvious fact about the very rich: we are not loved. I could give you quite an anthology of nasty remarks made against the rich by assorted prophets and philosophers. It begins with Plato, who observed: "To be at once extremely wealthy and good is impossible." And it goes right on. Oh well, I suppose the public has a point with all our freedom from midnight money worries, fears of being fired and yearnings for unreachable possessions, why don't we wealthy ones make better use of our lives? Some of us do like the Kennedys and the Rockefellers but most of us are just as confused as anybody else. Maybe more so: listen to what a lady I know told me about her good friend Gianni Agnelli, the Italian motor magnate. "When he even fleetingly wants something," she said, "he buys it. But I think this is simply because he wants to forget that he wanted something he didn't have."
Whatever you do with your money, don't let the pains of having it snuff out the pleasures of wanting. The only point of having money is the freedom it gives you to sharpen your desires to learn more, help more, play more, enjoy more, and make life even more extraordinary than it is anyway. Certainly money can buy happiness; the secret is how to use it. I trust you will use yours well. And if you find some good new way teach us. God knows we need it.
Faithfully yours,