THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The sad life and death of Eva Rausing highlights the damage that inherited fortunes can cause
In 1944, Evelyn Waugh wrote a letter to an old friend, Coote Lygon, saying: “I am writing a very beautiful book, to bring tears, about very rich, beautiful, high-born people who live in palaces and have no troubles except what they make themselves and those are mainly the demons, sex and drink.”
The book was Brideshead Revisited – and the chief victim of those troubles was Lord Sebastian Flyte, a human parable of what too much money, charm and entitlement can do to your health.
If Waugh was writing Brideshead now, he’d throw in a third demon – drugs. Poor Eva Rausing, who was found dead this week, was the daughter of a rich American Pepsi-Cola executive who multiplied her fortune – and her troubles – a thousand times, with her marriage to Hans Kristian Rausing, joint heir to the £4.5 billion Tetra Pak fortune. It didn’t help that they met in rehab. As they don’t teach you in maths lessons in smart public schools, Predisposition Towards Drugs + Limitless Cash = Big Trouble.
There is a third element to the equation: too much playtime. It’s the drugs that actually shut down the body; but it’s the relentless dreariness of one empty day after another, with nothing to do – except the odd charity ball committee meeting and the forever unfinished screenplay – that buttresses the need for drugs. » | Harry Mount | Wednesday, July 11, 2012
