Long life
The sixth essential
Nigel Nicolson
Afew weeks ago I listed in this column the five essentials for a happy old age, and risked the claim that I enjoyed them all. They were: good health, enough money, the affection of family and friends, conge- nial surroundings and continuing activity. Now I receive a letter from a lady in Seat- tle, aged over 80, commenting that my list lacked a sixth benefit, at least for a woman, `lliat one is no longer an object of sexual desire and jealousy'.
I wondered what sort of woman she was. If she had been as plain as Eleanor Roo-
sevelt or had a voice like Dame Shirley Porter's, she would not have added the word 'jealousy'. So she must have been very beautiful. Then how much did she really mind being admired by strangers when she was young? I once asked Diana Cooper the same question, and she replied, with her usual aplomb, that she didn't mind at all. She just gave them her gimlet stare and they desisted. 'No woman,' she added, 'minds a first glance of admiration from a stranger. It's the second that's offensive.'
As I have been guilty of many a first glance, and often of a second, it was con- soling to read in last week's Spectator a quotation from Katie Roiphe's sensible book on feminism: 'If no one was ever allowed to risk offering unsolicited sexual attention, we would all be solitary crea- tures.' If women dress and use make-up to please men, she implied, they must expect an occasional wolf-whistle, actual or metaphorical. There are, after all, compen- sations. It is undeniable that a man is nicer to a woman at a first meeting if he finds her attractive, and the same is true in reverse. Women's strongest defence is not to look cross and ugly, but in men's fear of rejection. They have little idea how shy and vulnerable we are.
All the same, I sympathise with the com- plaint that looks count for more in a woman than in a man. Nobody cares tup- pence what Trollope looked like, but when a supposed photograph of Charlotte Bron-
to was published recently, there were wails of anguish from her admirers, including women, that she looked more matronly than in Richmond's idealised portrait of her, so it must be a photograph of someone else. This is ridiculous. Jane Eyre's com- pelling sweetness of nature made up for her shrimp-like appearnance, and so did her creator's acute intelligence. .
Once I was walking through St James's Park carrying a large bunch of flowers intended for my flat. A woman of extra- ordinary loveliness, 30-ish, approached along the path and, on impulse, I thrust the flowers into her arms. I said nothing, but walked on without even a backward glance to see whether she dumped the flowers in the nearest litter-bin, and wondered whether she was pleased by my gesture or insulted. I decided that if I had been younger, she might have felt herself men- aced. But when she told the story at the lunch party for which she was undoubtedly bound, she would, I thought, have told it with amusement and even some affection, along the lines, 'Wasn't it sweet of the old boy?'
So the old boys do have a certain advan- tage in this perennial game. They can risk flattery without insult. The assumption of the young that they are no longer objects of desire to the old is not true, but it is a con- venient myth. When they themselves grow old, they should try the telephone as an instrument of flirtation, where age and appearance scarcely matter.
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