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If such things were to be explained rationally, several possible answers come to mind: 1) luxury redistributes wealth; 2) luxury is a sign of national strength; 3) individual big spending redounds to the well-being of the masses. Unfortunately, none of these explanations pertains. The general reason the world loves big spenders is fascination—not just for what they buy, but also for who they are, what they want of life. If the rich are different from you and me, it is not because they have more money, but rather because their money has enabled them to live in an apparently perfect tense: the hypothetical fantastical. To most people the question "What if . . . ?" is mere hazy speculation. To the luxuriating rich, "What if is a lever, the foretaste of a fact. It works the same way for artists as well, but the dreams of the rich fall something short of art.
So David Bowie, the rock star, outfitted his Lincoln Continental with a television, paintings and plants hanging from the roof. And a Saudi sheik recently bought a jet that he furnished with a $40,000 mink bedspread and 24-karat gold shower fixtures. Such stuff is child's play compared with oldtime big spenders like the Maharajah of Gwalior, whose model electric train ran on 250 feet of silver tracks between the kitchen and the banquet hall. But it is all child's play: Hugh Hefner's flying rabbit no less than the royal yacht Britannia, with space for a Rolls below decks. There seems a special need on the part of big spenders to locate treasures within treasures, thus ensuring the possibility of continuous surprise and delight. When little Willie Hearst asked his mother to buy him the Louvre, he may have foreseen whole hours of contentment.
The curious thing about a "What if state of mind is that it ought to provide lives of exquisite variety. In fact, it seems to lead to the most limited choices. There have been exceptions to be sure—the Chinese Emperor Qin Shihuang, who built 270 fully equipped palaces, each a replica of one that had belonged to a defeated king or warlord; and the Roman Emperor Elagabalus, who once had slaves bring him 10,000 pounds of cobwebs because it seemed like a good idea. Among the more gallant big spenders was the 8th century caliph Harun al-Rashid, who, in order to reduce the homesickness of a Greek slave girl he was fond of, built her an exact replica of her home town, and populated it with thousands of his own subjects. Among the more picturesque was Gerald, Lord Berners, who installed a piano in his Rolls and invited a horse to tea.
Unhappily, such ingenuity is a thing of the past—except for the oil-well-off Arabs who, no matter what sniffy Westerners may think of their taste, have at least restored adventure to money. A London Arab has redone his Regency bedroom in polyurethane clouds and stars that twinkle. He shows a sweet imagination, if not a wild one. For the most part, however, the rich follow disappointingly uniform patterns of spending.
First they buy a house, a very big house, or two or ten.