In the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations we find the following from the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope:

Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.

Now seeing it there in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations out of the context of the novel in which it first appeared, my mind began to whirl; what exactly did he mean by that?

My whirling mind was put in motion by two tempting hints.  One was the historical meaning of the word luxury and the other was Mr. Trollope’s name itself.

You know that a trollop is a “woman of loose morals,” but perhaps what you don’t know is that our word luxury has a bit of a seamy background as well.

The roots of luxury are from Latin.  Luxus meant “abundance” and “sumptuous enjoyment.”  This is certainly the sense reflected in a particularly long entry at Urbandictionary that talks of private jets, personal chiefs chefs, yachts and your own grass tennis court.  It is also the sense of deluxe which we get from French de luxe that means literally “of luxe.”

But there’s a hint here in that this word isn’t deluxury.

The fact is that although in Latin luxus meant “sumptuous enjoyment” the Latin precursor to luxury actually meant “sinful enjoyment.” So as Latin devolved into French and Italian and Spanish their words evolving from Latin’s luxuria mean “lust” and “debauchery.”

And so it was that when luxury first appeared in English from Old French in 1340 it didn’t mean sipping Champagne and swanning around in fur coats, it meant slipping between the sheets with someone you weren’t supposed to.

With that kind of background you might think that Anthony Trollope was talking about paying for prostitutes when he said ” Love is like any other luxury…”

But come on, he was a Victorian writer, a popular Victorian writer; he must have been writing in the most family-values-oriented way imaginable.

And so he was.  In the novel it is someone called Lady Carbury who tosses off the quote and the context is one where a young woman is said to be well advised to know her man has a bunch of cash in the bank before she falls in love with him.

I suppose that isn’t actually bad advice, but if you want my opinion it is this:

Love of almost any kind is a luxury and one we can’t afford to be without.