Of Being Middle-Aged

WHEN are we middle-aged? There is no very definite year for its beginning, nor any special aspect to tell of its arrival— you may be it either before or after you look it. Superficially, much depends on the point of view, for there’s a wide angle between twenty and eighty; but not so much in reality. Let us consider the matter.

It, this middle-age, comes gradually, of course; though, as a rule, each of us realizes it for himself, suddenly, with a shock. One day we say of a contemporary, “ Oil, of the usual age,” which means, I take it, “between thirty” as Mark Twain (I believe it was he) has happily euphuized it. A Harvard professor once called this period the “Cambridge age.” which struck me at the time (I had not arrived at it then) as very clever. I dare sav, now, however, this specific Cambridge age has advanced along with him and me. It may be between forty now; come to think of it, I rather think it is. I did n’t connect any of these terms with myself for a long time. One day, however, I remarked of some one, “ Oh! of the usual age.” Instantly I said to myself, with a horrid shock, “That’s just what you are! You are it! ” This was the beginning of my rise, or fall, to middle-age.

Here let me digress a bit for the benefit of the “young person.” As soon as you, “my youthful reader,” begin to think about these things, it is the beginning of them; if you want to study the psychology of the further coming, now is the time to start. Before you know it, you will be if, — that is, middle-aged, — and the crucial moments will be gone. But. let me beg of you, don’t. Don’t, I pray you, “dear youthful reader,” don’t, until you are obliged to, don’t have more than two classes of people in your mind — the young anti the old. It is much nicer then; and so long as it is so, you yourself are young. What a sad thought it is (its coming to me is a sure sign of my own middle-age, for it’s a stock thought and expression of this period; let me give way to it once more!) what a sad thought it is that every one in the world, no matter what his condition, is for years of his life possessed of the one desirable, the one most beautiful thing in the world — youth,—‘and does not appreciate it till it is gone! If we could only be young and realize all that youth means at one and the same time! If only we did not, with youth’s perversity (almost its only one), want to be grown up! Some happy mortals, happy I call them, never do really grow up, though alas! by the time they and their friends realize it, they have lost the physical beauty of youth — which is half the game!

But to get back to middle-age. I did not (nor do any of us of ourselves, probably) realize being middle-aged for some time. It came to me, personally, when a youth, of twenty or so, called me “sir.” And even now, although I ’m almost between forty, I can’t quite get over it, when another youth whom I see frequently, and who treats me confidentially as no older than himself, always addresses me as Mister.

My most violent and painful shock was, however, when I read of some play that it was “familiar to the older generation of playgoers, but unknown to the present.” And I remembered that play! and not even vaguely, as one remembers the plays of one’s childhood! It was a shock, too, in speaking of Julia Marlowe with a young woman, who seemed to me to be as old as I, when she said, “I am so glad that Miss Marlowe is beginning to play Shakespeare. What a lovely Rosalind she will make!” “But,” I began; then I realized that Julia Marlowe was Rosalind when this young woman was bread-and-buttering in the nursery. I went the next week to see “As You Like It; ” but, alas ! I did not see my Rosalind. Incidentally, what a pity it is that there are no good parts for actresses of the “usual age” (let us use the euphemism). If I were a playwright I’d try my hand at them. But I suppose they would be turned down — stage folk being always either young or old.

I “acknowledged it” (I still cling to certain expressions in vogue before I was “between”) and went on to tell the young woman of seeing Maude Adams when she might have suggested youth in Peter Pan (and was well scored for my use of “ might”), of seeing Janauschek as Hortense, Booth as Hamlet, of laughing, and crying, with Warren and Mrs. Vincent at the Museum. Having thus confessed to her, she asked (innocently, I know), “And did you very much admire Charlotte Cushman ? ” I changed the subject before she could ask me how I liked Jenny Lind or the elder Booth. It was all one to her: I was a middleaged man “reminiscing ” of my youth. And I had started in to talk on equal terms! The stage is a terrible indicator.

And books! We are certainly middleaged “Misters” and “Madams” when we remember the sensation of “Called Back,” the flood of “ Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” the advent of “Mr. Barnes.” And we do not even have to remember waiting for the installments of “Trilby: ” it was but yesterday. Yet those superficially of our time know it not; and to them Kipling is as old as George Meredith!

And the cities! We remember when eight stories was a high building, when we watched steel construction with interest. We remember horse-cars, and the sensation of our first trolley ride, and squinting when we talked into a telephone! But no, no more! else I shall seem garrulous — a word of Old Age, not the “between.”

When, then, are we middle-aged ? When we have had these experiences, can remember these things. The keeping or the losing of our hair is a matter of health, of inheritance. The preservation or the loss of our enthusiasms is the same. Success and failure are personal affairs. Any one may mistake our ages on the street, or when they hear us talk of the weather — we do not yet say that in our youth winters were colder, or summers hotter. But when we have let slip the “between thirty” words, or thought of the “usual age;” when we remember these things; when we desire Youth; then indeed are we middle-aged, — just plain middle-aged, a word without a constant epithet. Youth is charming, joyous, exuberant: Old Age is serene, pathetic, terrible: middle-age is not even worth a capital letter. And yet, it has its compensation — we have an outlook in two directions — the only period which has; we have attained and not lost (it is to be hoped this is the case; Heaven help us if it is not!) a sane charity and a saving sense of humor.