Part 8
There have been cases in which some unsuspected talent has been developed in middle age. It has lain dormant through all the years when domestic life has claimed the finest and best of a woman's energies, and with leisure has come the opportunity for displaying itself, and making for something in the life of its possessor. Women of middle age are now being appointed to various posts of a semi-public character, such as inspectors of workrooms under the Factory Act, washhouses and laundries, and Poor Law guardians. In almost every case the appointments have proved satisfactory, conscientious care being bestowed upon the duties and a praiseworthy diligence being exhibited. But in some instances a peculiar and not too common gift of organisation has been evolved in discharging such offices, surprising the individual herself as much as those who are associated with her. No promise of it appeared in youth, but here it is in middle age, a quality that would for ever have remained unguessed and unutilised had life been accepted with folded hands as so many accept it, alternating between dining-room and drawing-room and daily drive, with no greater interest than the affairs of neighbours.
[Sidenote: After the storm and stress!]
[Sidenote: The joy of the harvest.]
[Sidenote: In praise of mellowing years.]
[Sidenote: "Hope springs immortal."]
Youth is delightful, glorious, a splendid gift from the gods, but half realised while we have it, only fully appreciated when it is gone for ever. But let no young creature imagine that all is gone when youth is gone! Sunsets have charms as well as sunrise; and incomparable as is "the wild freshness of morning," there is often a beautiful light in the late afternoon. The storm and stress are past, and the levels are reached, after the long climb to the uplands. We still feel the bruises we sustained in the long ascent, but the activity of pain has passed, and we have learned the lesson of patience, and know by our own experience what youth can never be induced to believe--that Time heals everything. We can cull the harvest of a quiet eye, and our hearts are at leisure from themselves. Cheerfulness, and even brightness, replace the wild spirits of girlhood, and our interests, once bound within the narrow channel of a girl's hopes and wishes, and then broadening only sufficiently to take in the area of home, are now dispersed in a far wider life. Philanthropy finds thousands of recruits among middle-aged women, and many of such beginners rise to the rank of generals and commander-in-chief. Youth is always looked back upon with a sentiment of longing, but middle age does not deserve to be decried. One, at least, who has attained it, can testify that at no other period of her life could she more intensely enjoy the lark's song, the freshness of the spring meadows, the beauty of the summer fields and woods, the pleasures of music and painting and oratory, and of new scenes and fresh experiences in a world that seems inexhaustibly novel the more we know of it. There are long, monotonous days in girlhood when one ardently wishes for something to happen to make a change; but in middle age life is full of interests, and days seem far too short for all that we should like to pack into them. There is no monotony in middle age if health is good and the energies are kept alive by congenial work. Nor is the exultant joy in mere living quite dead within the heart of middle age. It breaks out now and then on a bright spring day when the sun is shining and the lark is singing, and when perennial hope points to yet brighter days to come. For hope sings songs even to the grey-haired, difficult as the young may find it to believe it. We were surely meant to be happy, we humans, so indomitable is the inclination towards joyfulness under circumstances the most adverse. It is easy enough in youth, and even the sceptic, the pessimist, the cynic, if they live long enough, will find that it is not so very difficult in middle age, when scepticism, pessimism, and cynicism are apt to be outgrown. There lies the true secret of the matter. There is a joy in growth, and we must see to it that we do not cheat ourselves of it. Stunted natures are seldom happy ones, and their middle age is merely mental shrinkage, with a narrowing of the heart and a corresponding drought in all the sources of joy.
[Sidenote: The gist of the matter.]
In one of Christina Rossetti's loveliest songs, she refers to the meeting in a better world of two who loved and were parted here. And in the last line she wistfully and pathetically asks: "_But shall we be young and together?_" There lies the whole gist of the matter. If we are to be young again, what boots it if the loved faces of long ago are lacking? Could happiness be indeed happiness without these?
[Sidenote: "After many years."]
[Sidenote: Memory's magic.]
Sometimes two who have loved each other in their youth meet again when middle age has come to both. Such a meeting can never be commonplace to either. Nor do the two see each other as they are visible to ordinary acquaintances. In the eyes of memory, the grey hair is replaced by the sunny locks of youth; the saddened eyes are bright again and eagerly out-looking into a world of abundant promise; the worn and furrowed brow becomes smooth and white, the pale cheeks touched with youthful bloom; and with a delicious sense of reciprocity each knows that the lost youth of both is present to the mind of either. Neither says inwardly of the other, "Oh, what a change!" as is the case with ordinary acquaintances. Oh, no! For each of these two the other is young again. They are both young again, and together. The gentle wraiths of past joys take them by the hand and lead them back to youth's enchanted land, to the days when love touched everything with a radiant finger, turning the world and the future celestial rosy red.
[Sidenote: "Fed on minors."]
What middle-aged women regret is the well-remembered friends that were their companions in the old days, "when morning souls did leap and run." And now they are "fed on minors" when they pause and listen to their thoughts and the rhythm that they make. "The world's book now reads drily," except, indeed, for such as are enwrapped and mummified in the garments of the reiterant daily commonplace.
[Sidenote: The wider view.]
The only way to subdue regrets is to take the wider view, looking out on the great world as might a mouse from the granary door, over hill and dale and stream and distant town, blue sky and far green sea, realising how infinitesimally small a part of the whole is each individual life. There is a kind of comfort, after all, in insignificance. And can anything be more redolent of that quality than middle age?
"What is it all but a trouble of gnats In the gleam of a million million of worlds?"
_GROWING OLD._
[Sidenote: The common lot.]
To grow old is tragic, especially for women. Men feel it, too, there is small doubt. I once spoke on the subject with one of the best-known men of up-to-date journalism, and we exchanged condolences on the passing of youth and the wild freshness of morning. We both agreed that at times we felt as bright and blithe, as merry and as full of fun, as in the days of our fleeting teens, though at times the world weighs heavily, and its burdens are duly felt.
[Sidenote: In the eyes of the others.]
We had each undergone an experience which, to thousands of others must be a landmark in the years. It was not the first grey hair! That means nothing nowadays. Nor was it a touch of rheumatism. Do not babies of nine or ten experience that cramping ill? No! It was merely seeing ourselves as reflected from the mind of another. My companion had heard himself, in some legal proceedings, in which he had been a witness, described as a middle-aged man. With a shock of surprise he had realised that this really applied to him! To every one of us comes this horrid moment of recognition. Feeling young, and with daily sight of ourselves unrealising the marks that Time indites upon our faces, we go on from year to year with a vague idea that we are always as we were, or nearly so. And then comes the rough quarter of an hour in which enlightenment arrives. It is good and salutary, but very unpleasant!
[Sidenote: The inevitable moment.]
One of the most beautiful women I know, whose hair is prematurely white, with an exquisitely picturesque effect of snowiness above the pink of soft cheeks, and the youthful light of deep grey eyes, was a little over forty when, talking one day with a comparatively new acquaintance, she was astonished to hear her say, "My husband says you are a dear old lady." "Old lady!" The husband was, himself, her elder. The remark rankled for a long time, though I tried to convince her that only the most superficial and careless of observers would ever connect the idea of age with her.
[Sidenote: Time, the thief.]
The reason that women feel growing old so much more than men is that they know very well that they are more or less failures if they are not ornamental. Even the plainest of women can be decorative in her home surroundings so long as she has the bright eyes, fresh cheeks, and the rounded, yet slight contours of youth. But after awhile Time begins "throwing white roses at us" instead of red, and every passing year puts into his laden wallet a little light from the eyes, a little bloom and softness from the cheeks, a little gloss and colour from the hair, a little lightness from the step, a little blitheness from the smile, and bestows upon us, in their stead, a varied assortment of odds and ends, which are, as to value, exactly what we choose to make them. It needs a little moral alchemy to turn them to gold and diamonds, pearls and opals; and, failing this transforming touch, Time's exchanges seem sorry enough.
_THREE WAYS OF GROWING OLD._
[Sidenote: The best way.]
[Sidenote: Growing old in thought.]
[Sidenote: Regions to be conquered.]
There are three ways of growing old. In two of them there lies a possibility of benefiting by the New Year's gifts of the old man with the scythe. The best way is to face things, and deliberately accept the situation, stepping out briskly to climb that steep bit of hill, and enter the shadows that lie beyond the crest. It is a good time to be optimistic. Like Mark Tapley's cheerfulness, it is most valuable in moments of depression. To believe, with Browning, that--
"God's in His heaven! All's well with the world,"
is the best restorative for sinking spirits that see the best and brightest part of life behind them, and shrink from the bleakness of old age that lies before them. To feel young in one's own thoughts and emotions is not always a consolation. The young ones have interests of their own, apart from ours. They may be too kind and gentle to let us perceive it, but there is almost always some _gene_ or constraint upon them in the presence of the middle-aged. They enjoy themselves more when in the society of their contemporaries. The expression of their faces, bright and sunny, tells us that. It clouds over with seriousness, if not with gloom, when they leave the young ones and share the companionship of the elders. The latter, if young at heart, feel this with many a recurrent pang; but if they are elderly in their thoughts it gives them no trouble. They accept it calmly, as in the natural course of things. But with some of us it seems most unnatural that we should grow old. The whole being cries out against it, almost as urgently rebellious as we feel against an injustice. But all this emotion has to be conquered, and we have only to take ourselves in hand, once for all, and the thing is done. Let the young ones be happy in their own way. We had our day! Let them have theirs. It will, at best, be sadly brief. Let them make the most of it.
_THE SECOND WAY._
[Sidenote: Too easy submission.]
[Sidenote: Middle age and dress.]
[Sidenote: Good sense.]
[Sidenote: A crushing conspiracy.]
But there is a way of too freely submitting to grow old. A friend of mine sometimes says, "If you will insist on making yourself into a doormat you need not feel surprised if people wipe their boots on you." Quite so. Well, if we women lie down and regard friendly old Time as an inimical Juggernaut there is nothing to prevent us from sinking into dreary dowdiness, from wearing prunella shoes, and filling our husbands with the consternation that is inseparable from this elderly kind of footgear and false fronts. We need not too literally accept the warnings of disinterested friends, who think we should be told that we "dress too young," or that the fashion of our coiffure is inappropriate to advancing years. Far better is it to dress too young than too old; to keep our heads in consonance with the coiffures of the day than to date ourselves in any conspicuous way. The women of our upper classes are sensible in this matter. So long as they can cover their heads with hair they do not wear caps. Not until seventy or so do they envelop themselves in the cumbrous mantles that once were devised especially for middle age, a period of life which, after all, is not adapted to weight-carrying. In travelling they wear hats or toques, and for everyday costume the tailor-made suit is generally adopted; while for afternoon wear handsome and elaborate dresses are prepared. There is no reason why elderly women should carry weight for age when the latter becomes a disability instead of an advantage. And yet, in the fashion journals, as well as in the shops, all the heaviest and ugliest gowns, and all the least attractive of the mantles, to say nothing of the most hopelessly hideous bonnets, are presented to the elderly customer for her choice.
[Sidenote: Shining examples.]
And with regard to other things, middle-aged women make themselves into doormats for Time to tread upon. Because no enterprise or variety in life is expected of them, they never dream of originating any. There is no thought of foreign travel, of seeing all the interesting places where history is made, of keeping alive and awake and intent. It is only exceptional women, like the Duchess of Cleveland, Lord Rosebery's wonderful mother, who go round the world at seventy, and begin to write a book involving a visit to the eastern lands, where Lady Esther Stanhope, her great aunt, lived such a romantic life. Our Queen began to learn Hindustani when nearly seventy years of age. These shining examples are the ones to follow!
_THE THIRD WAY._
[Sidenote: Defying time.]
The third way of growing old is to attempt to defy Time--regard him as an enemy to be thwarted, and endeavour to hide his detested ravages under a false array of cosmetics, dyes, and other appliances. It is a despicable and silly way, but one cannot refuse a meed of compassion to those who practise it. They are generally women who have been beautiful, and it is so hard to let beauty go without an attempt to detain her. It is a great gift, and to lose it is, to those who have possessed it, a terrible thing. Small wonder that they hug its remnants close, and wrap its rags about them. And, after all, the day must come when the tawdry imitations stand revealed for the useless things they are, even to those who pinned their faith upon them.
[Sidenote: "The best is yet to be."]
But time gives us all something in return; a growing patience which brings sweetness and gentleness in its train; a wider outlook on the world and a deeper insight into the hearts of friends; a tender sympathy with those who suffer, and a truer sense of comradeship with our fellow-travellers on life's road. And all these things write themselves clearly enough on the ageing faces, sometimes beautifying what once was almost destitute of charm; and sometimes spiritualising what once was beautiful in form and colour, but lacked the loveliness that results from an equal balance of mind and heart.
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