THE APOTHEOSIS OF MIDDLE AGE.
IF with the progress of education, and the consequent general development of the intellect of the individual, the frequency of what our grandparents would have called youthful precocity is remarkable, almost as significant is what may be described as the refusal of middle age to accept its traditional position in the journey of life. Half-a-century ago a man of forty-five was regarded almost as elderly, and a woman of the same age was expected to have long since cut herself adrift from all ties binding her to her youth, and to assume the appearance and deportment of a staid, exemplary matron. All this has changed in a particularly interesting way, of which the prominent feature is a seeming contradiction. If the three-year-old child of to-day is as knowing as was the six-year-old of half-a-century ago, and the ten-year-old boy of to-day is in many respects quite as much a man as was his grandfather at eighteen, one might naturally expect that in due gradation the modern middle-aged man should be old beyond his years. But such is not the case. Middle age, so far from hurrying on into senility, so far even from standing still, would seem actually to have stepped backwards and marched alongside of youth. There is a jauntiness, a buoyancy, an elasticity about the middle age of to-day at which our fathers would have shaken their heads as unseemly. The gulf which once separated the middle-aged parent from his children has been filled up. The curtain which shrouded the middle-aged man generally from the eyes of youth, and which caused him to be regarded with respect, if not with awe, has been lifted, and in obedience to the same influences which have made the schoolmaster the friend of the schoolboy, and the regimental officer almost the com- rade of his men, the middle-aged man of to-day is never so happy as when working or playing upon an equality with, and actually in competition with, youth. Of course, to use a common phrase, youth will generally be served, but by no means invariably to such an extent as to make the action of middle age ridiculous or contemptible. So the middle-aged parent respects the opinion, and is not above taking the advice, of the son half his age who is associated with him in business, and is not ashamed to be seen playing with him in the same cricket match, or pulling with him in the same boat, or joining with him on perfectly equal terms in most sports and pastimes. The result can only be regarded as thoroughly wholesome and delightful. Without going so far as to say that the young men of the present day are superior to their fathers at the same age, it may be asserted that as a rule there is less kicking over the traces on the part of modern young men than there was in the days when a young man was hardly regarded as a responsible being, and when parental discipline was sternly maintained until long after the normal years of discretion were passed. It is a natural law that relaxation of a policy of repression should be followed by an ebullition of long-pent-up forces and passions. A boy admitted to a long-forbidden orchard will eat himself sick in a very short time, whilst the boy who has always had regu- lated access to it will have no appetite for such excess. Upon the same principle, the son who has been brought up to regard hie parent as an awful, half-mysterious being, looked on at a distance, and approached with fear and trembling, as sons were very generally brought up half-a-century ago, has a strong temptation upon emancipation to run riot with his
new-found joy. But the boy who is the companion of his father, and whose home training has been one of love and almost equality, has usually no inclination to kick over the traces.
Nor are the changes in the physical aspect of middle age less remarkable than those in the moral aspect. The middle- aged man of fifty years ago was older in body, as well as in mind, than his representative of to-day. Just as in certain old-fashioned households unchangeably fixed dates are marked by the performance of such rites as the lighting of fires for the winter and the cessation of them for the summer, or the putting up and taking down of seasonable curtains, so, of old, when a man attained a certain age he was expected to put away for once and all the occupations and indulgences of youth ; he assumed mature countenance and mature manners, and long before his time drifted into senility, and all without the smallest consideration as to whether he was ripe and fit for the change or not. The "heavy " father, the stern parent of the stage and the novel, the utterer of maxims, the represses of flightiness, the domestic and social arbiter from whose verdict there was no appeal, was rarely beyond the age of many thousands of modern Englishmen who enjoy with zest and enthusiasm the sports and pursuits of youth. We cannot imagine the fathers of the "Sandford and Merton" and Miss Edgeworth period chasing cricket-balls, getting up before breakfast for a swim in the sea, mapping out pedestrian and climbing tours, or even walking smartly and quickly. The country squire who saw little Tom Brown off from the 'Peacock' at Islington on his first journey to Rugby could not have been more than a middle-aged man, but the average schoolboy reader of the immortal book cannot but regard him as a "regular old buffer."
As with men, so it is with women. Social statisticians tell us that the age at which women are considered most eligible for marriage has been very notably advanced of late years, and we know that the lament of many a match-making mamma is that the most dreaded rivals of her darling are not to be found so much among the girls of her own age as amongst women who not many years ago would have been relegated to the ranks of hopeless old-maidenhood. The fact that the middle-aged lady of to-day is much younger in manner and tastes is, of course, not the only reason for this, but it is amongst the most potent. To a woman of forty hi/H- a-century ago the so-called fun of life was a closed book. Such a one who should have dared to cultivate the attractive arts, whose laugh was loud and frequent, whose talk should have been of frivolity and pleasure, who should have given time to juvenile pursuits, who should have studiously affected the society of men, would have been regarded askance, and have been classed amongst those "old enough to know better." If a girl did not marry by the time she was five-and-twenty her case was regarded almost as hopeless. At thirty she was generally a ballroom wall-flower," a Dorcas meeting and Aunt Tabitha sort of individual, a "poor thing," the butt of raillery and satire, and regarded quite as an elder by the young. If she did marry, it was usually to the "old bachelor" of those days,—to the man whose representative to-day can still enter with real enjoyment into the pursuits and pastimes of youth, and who hopes to have some years yet of it before him. Nowadays it is impossible to go to any centre of fashionable resort without being impressed by the fact that not only are middle-aged women as numerous as young ones, but that they enter into the spirit of their surroundings with all the verve of youth, and that so far from keeping themselves in the background and shunning observation, they are in the very forefront of all that is going on. Broadly speaking, there is no reason why the middle-aged woman should not enjoy life as long as possible, and put off to the last moment the discarding of youthful manner, any more than the middle- aged man. But when we come to a nearer examination, we shall find that the parallel does not bold good, inasmuch as the woman carrying out this line of conduct too often goes beyond the limits of duty. The middle-aged man who is the companion of his boys in their pleasures and pursuits, or who can thoroughly enjoy a youthful life, so far from being a worse man of business, is usually all the better, and there is no inconsistency in a man so dividing his time between his duties and his pleasures as to be enthusiastic in both. But with woman it is different, and by some apparently
unfair but unrepeals.ble law it would seem that the middle- aged woman who, so to speak, places herself in competition with girls young enough to be her daughters can only do so at the price of unperformed duties. Possibly some reason for the lament which goes up from the modern mother that her daughters are beyond her control may be found in that present- day passion of the niiddle-aged woman for unduly prolonging her youthful life, the gratification of which must necessarily keep her away from many of those duties which old-fashioned opinion considered as devolving upon a woman as soon as she married. Be that as it may, there is some other reason than the mere craving to be out and doing the work of the world which makes the girl of the period bend all her energies towards emancipation from parental control at the earliest opportunity, and the present writer would dare suggest that the reason in many cases may be the example of her mother. No longer does the old adage hold good that "a daughter's a daughter to the end of her life," as it held good in the days when daughters addressed their parents as " Sir " and 'Madam," when the training of a girl was conventual in its strictness, and when mothers by no means considered their maternal influence as ending with the marriage of their daughters. And here may be remarked another curious contrast in the operation upon the two sexes of what we have called the apotheosis of middle age,— that whilst fathers and sons have been drawn closer together, mothers and daughters have become more separated. Fathers have marked time on the road of life to allow their sons to come up with them, and have then proceeded side-by-side and arm-in-arm ; mothers in many instances have gone ahead as often as not upon quite a different part of the road from their daughters, or, what is still more striking, upon the same path but without recognition or communication.
How this will work out it is not easy to predict. We are inclined to regard the modern apotheosis of middle age as a passing wave of change, after which matters will revert to the old condition in a modified form,—that is to say, whilst the middle-aged fogey and the middle-aged mother or spinster of the old type will not be reproduced, the middle-aged people of the future will more resemble the old type than the new. There will be a striking rejuvenation of society for a period, inasmuch as the spectacle will continue to be common of men and women indulging in youthful tastes and pursuits long after the traditional age for such indulgence has been passed. This will be succeeded by almost as striking an ageing process, resulting from the more close and constant intercourse of boys with their fathers, and from the premature severance of ties binding girls to their homes and their early embarka- tion upon the sea of world's work. The middle-aged father of to-day may retain his youthfulness in certain directions ; still, he is a middle-aged man who has had his experiences, his struggles, and his troubles ; and this side of his nature must be reflected to some degree upon the character of his boys, so that they can hardly fail to become more mannish in his society than they would have become under the old regime of distinction and isolation, and by the time they are middle- aged will probably have almost as little youthfulness left as had their grandfathers at the same age. Similarly, the launching forth into the world of girls at an age when their grandmothers were still tightly held under parental discipline must result in their premature develop- ment into women, so that when they attain middle age they will be smarter, keener, busier, and more active in some respects than were their grandmothers, but older in appear- ance, manners, and ideas. On the whole, we think that although the middle-aged men and women of to-day are far and away ahead of their grandparents in the matter of making the most of life, there will be in the not distant future but few iepresentatives of hale, hearty, stately, impressive old age, and that the progress between the two milestones of life marking respectively middle age and old age will be more of the nature of a jump than it was in days when life moved at a steadier pace.
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