On Growing Old

ALTHOUGH age takes from us agility and hair, the wise have praised it, because they love wisdom more than women. In the supreme civilization that the world has seen, Nestor was esteemed as highly as the warrior. Those of us who enjoy and honor most the man heavy with years and ripe in thought wish he held an equal place to-day. A romantic civilization will never be the nearest to perfection. It is romance that gives exclusive value to “the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-andtwenty.” To the man whose diet is woman’s heart, whose soul at sixty still basks in the female eye, youth is glory. Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, calm and beautiful, shortly before he died, a fitting close to such a life, — the wisest of dramas thus springing from the brain which had followed the master love play with the unrivaled tragedies of stormy intellect. Happy always, with the bright and shadowy happiness of genius, Shakespeare must have rejoiced in the still sunlight of maturity, when his understanding gave birth to Ariel the Spirit, to wise Prospero, to the candid Miranda, and the incipient mind of Caliban. When he turned his back upon the town, forsook his pen, and departed to conclude his years amid the scenes of his early country life, what did his spirit feel ? He was the poet of philosophy and of passion. Reflection is the more friendly to our later years. The philosopher is happy at threescore and ten, the romancer’s heart sinks with the streaks of gray. Age may be less like autumn than like a peaceful, lazy afternoon. A friend of mine, designing for a golden wedding, carved three compassionate women, Spring, Summer, Autumn, — there was no fourth. Wordsworth can think of

for Wordsworth was the poet of Nature, and Nature is faithful to the end.

“When I was a child.” That distant phantom, now half a century dead, is “I,” the man of sober mind and altered heart. The " I " connects the cradle and the grave, the suckling with the latest age. When is this transient creature most himself ? Toward the end, perhaps, when change is past, and he is ready for the curtain’s fall. As the final act declares the meaning of the play, the manner of our growing old is the measure of our life.

Wisdom holds counters in her hand; she is grave, therefore, in her “ autumnal felicity ” as at her birth. The pleasures of sense are dimmed by time ; in eating and kissing the common man is the peer of genius. Sympathy and understanding, the blessing of the larger mind, increase with years. Says Seneca, " If it were so great a comfort to us to pass from the subjection of our childhood into a state of liberty and business, how much greater will it be when we cast off boyish levity, and range ourselves among the philosophers? ” Not losing color in the hair, smoothness in the skin, or the curiosity of sex, impairs the integrity of life. By the mirror and the Calendar the wise man is undaunted. For him, knowing and loving all, even " the best is yet to be,” that white light so valued by the ancients.

“ They do,” replies the jester, “ for an ordinary bird.” The jester, in his way, is right, and the best hope of age lies in not being an ordinary bird.

Not always is age even grave. There is a frivolity particular to fifty, a lighter side to this world’s philosophy, a gayety of the moment, a seizure of the cash, " solid pudding against empty praise,” drinking and merriment in the face of uncertain life.

“ You are becoming frivolous already,” says the worldling to his friend. " What will you be at fifty ? ” Storm and stress, transcendent guessing, melt before the impact of experience. What remains is solemn black ; or mayhap deft satire, enjoying life ; or silly and senile farce, for the aged rake is the butt of all. Recluse or epicure, anchorite or saint, age should have its wisdom, whether satirical or holy. Romance for youth, tragedy for stern maturity, high comedy for life’s afternoon, when all is charming and all a dream. Prospero, his garnered knowledge helpful for the young, reflecting that our little life is rounded with a sleep, is the type of respected age. When Browning, with silver locks, finds all the wonder and wealth of the world in the kiss of one girl, there is something vulgar in the thought, and even his " breast-forward ” farewell is a little warlike for his years. Not sex or war is the natural interest of the old, but understanding, best if it be grave, like Prospero, but suitable if light irony is its form, the irony of Omar mirrored in the English poet:—

I once planned three brief essays : “ The Friends of my Wife,” “The Wives of my Friends,” and “ Babies.” “ Write them while you are a bachelor,” said the cynic, " or you will not write them at all.” And they were never written. Knowing little of children, I yet knew too much to move comfortably through this paragraph, which would fain describe their influence on the old. Bachelors age earlier than married men, the childless earlier than parents reasonably prolific. Valid interests keep us young. He who lives solidly lives long. Care for others is more nourishing than thought about one’s self. Isolation is premature decay, and so is emptiness of mind or heart. Guilty Macbeth, facing a seared and yellow age, thinking what years should have, included in his list love and troops of friends. Farmers grow old before inhabitants of the town. I have seen a jockey at a village fair drive a race at the age of ninety-five ; but he traveled, following his exciting occupation, from town to town.

Love, says the same poem, seldom haunts the heart where learning lies; but Pope meant Aphrodite. Love diffused, love of action, art, thought, natural obligation, woman, the young, all together, is a very part of wisdom ; and the love of children is the love of life.

If age could not wither Cleopatra, the talisman was her infinite variety. Thought lines the forehead, but happy thought preserves the heart. Women remain young longer in America, of recent years, not only because they have followed the English into the open air, but because the girl has been dethroned in society, and the married woman reigns, plans, and flirts. If any word here spoken has seemed averse to flirting, I have said it ill. The interest of sex imprisons only when it stands alone. li Every woman is at heart a rake ” was said before Democracy increased each woman’s scope. Her tastes still narrower than those of man, she grows old earlier than he, but later than a century ago ; not half as early as her slavish sisters of the East. Actresses last better than average women, having a profession and a separate soul. “ An actor,” says some French moralist, quoted by Mr. Walkley, “ is less than a man, an actress more than a woman.” We should be the most of what we are. At three my daughter, told that she might wear her new hat, turned scarlet with pleasure. It is like the spread of the male turkey’s tail. In her new freedom woman remains herself, but becomes more. I have maligned, perhaps, our modern poets for their treatment of age. I will praise our writers in prose, who are beginning to feel that a heroine is not forever eighteen. Mr. Barrie has spoken his poetic word for the woman of fifty, Sudermann’s most attractive heroine has temples of gray, Pinero’s princess is forty, Ibsen’s plays begin in middle life. It was vanity that drew the line so young. The one male thinker of my acquaintance who habitually shrank before the thought of age was as sensitive about his beauty as a woman. But here are Mr. Barrie’s words : “ Oh, you mysterious girls, when you are fifty-two we shall find you out; you must come into the open then. If the mouth has fallen sourly yours the blame: all the meannesses your youth concealed have been gathering in your face. But the pretty thoughts and sweet ways and dear, forgotten kindnesses linger there also, to bloom in your twilight like evening primroses.”

Art is young, because it is longer than life, and the pursuit keeps us eager. Titian at one hundred, Voltaire at eightyfour, lend honor to longevity. Art and science gain advantage over action toward the end of life. Daily we hear that the old, having lived, should make way for the young, but it is only in the world of action, of money, place, and rule, that interests conflict. In thought and feeling, understanding and knowledge, there is room for all. Age should not need charity. To him that hath shall be given. The animals kill their feeble. Age must observe the course of youth and beware of becoming helpless. Favored with experience, it will be safe if it keep one eye on progress. Of the possible amends I know not who has spoken with the nobility of Wordsworth : —

Ponce de Leon sought with the wrong compass the fountain of eternal youth. Not of water is this fountain, and on no mariner’s chart. Not eternal, but still a fountain of youth, it springs from the heart, and is replenished by the mind.

Norman Hapgood.