24 NOVEMBER 1944, Page 9

DE SENECT UTE

By HARRY ROBERTS T was nearly two thousand years ago that Cicero wrote his justly famous essay on Old Age. He was but sixty-three years old, and the essay was dedicated to his friend Titus Pomponius Atticus, a celebrated Roman knight of the same age as Cicero himself. He arranged his essay, therefore, in the form of a dialogue between Scipio, a friend, and Marcus Cato, twenty years older than Cicero, a much-admired Roman censor noted for the " correctness " of his life and for his vigour in advanced age. It is from the words of Cato that we may gather Cicero's own conclusions and philosophy. My own age is intermediate between that of Cicero and that of Cato, for my seventy-third birthday was in September, 1944. But how little is age, even very old- age, justly pictured as a second childhood (in the commonly accepted meaning of that phrase) is shown by the fact that our celebrated contemporary, George Bernard Shaw, has just written one of his most brilliant and " tricky " books, he being eighty-eight this year.

Few of us, when we were young or even middle-aged, liked the idea that sooner or later, if we lived, we should join the ranks of the old. I certainly did not desire, in my youth, to reach old age. Youth alone seemed to be reasonable existence. Indeed, after my 'teens, I always intended to commit suicide at the end of my next decade. But when the time came for jumping off Waterloo Bridge I found myself at the height of enjoyment: Nor have' I in any period repented of having reached—as it seemed to me—that better and better age. And so again today.

Many readers of The Spectator must have been amused by a letter which appeared in the issue of September 15th headed " The Psalmist's Span." This letter is signed "Wilson Harris," and is sent " To the Editor of The Spectator." It referred to Sit Frederick Whyte's review of Wilson Harris's Problems of the Peace. Harris and his reviewer arc approximately of the same age as was Cicero when he wrote his famous essay. I can, therefore, in a sense, talk authoritatively and at first-hand about things that I alone of the four of us have seen and experienced. For I have passed the Psalmist's span, whilst the other three are, or were, but approaching it at varying distances.

What, then, is the first thing that strikes me, now that I have well passed three-score-years and ten? Perhaps it is that the world, and the people of the world, and books and pictures and music all seem to me much more interesting than they have ever seemed before. Towards other people. old and young, of both sexes, I feel

much kindlier, much more understanding, much more sympathetic, much more tolerant, than I used to be when I was younger. Some of each of them, of course, frankly bore me ; but even the most tedious I cannot hate. I can only shrug my shoulders and say: " Not for me." I still .prefer solitude to the prolonged companion- ship of almost anybody.

Another thing that fills me with gratitude is that I had an old- fashioned education, and was taught to master the " three R's " in the old-fashioned manner. I learned Euclid from the Book of Euclid, and had no need to use a ruler to draw my lines straight or compasses to draw my circles. I learned the definitions and the postulates and the axioms, and was taught to use my brain to work out the theorems and the problems which can be based upon them— let AB be the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle, or, with C as centre and CA as radius, describe a circle. It didn't matter whether my circle was quite round ; it served the purpose of making me think and mentally construct for myself. I understand that " geometry " is taught in a very different way now. Anyhow, I have no trouble with any branch of mathematics, and never have had.

That 'facility I attribute largely to little conversations between my father and myself when, in my very early boyhood, he took me for walks. Especially I am grateful for being early taught to read. This threw open to me, from the age of three or four right up to now, the whole contents of the temple of accumulated wisdom and knowledge from which I could help myself according to my ability and desire. Now, in my old age, I. am more thankful than ever that I love books and have books at my disposal, and can read with interest and pleasure new books, and old books that I read years ago, with eager curiosity. I am curious to find out how old books impress me now, and compare mental notes with my im- pressions of twenty or thirty years ago, when I last read them.

In some cases I realise what subtlety and beauty I missed ; in others I find that, though no doubt they served me well once upon a time, they are no longer " up my street." I find, what is I believe a common experience, that though my memory of recent events may be confused in matters of sequence and even of nomenclature, my memory of quite early episodes—even seventy-year-old ones—is more vivid. Without effort I can visualise and name people of whom I have never thought for sixty or more years. At night and in my dreams these people arc present to me as in life—though many of them died during my early childhood. The village on the side of the Quantocks where I was born and spent my younger days is (in its then state) invisible to all but to my few surviving contemporaries. So also with the men and women who lived there. When I describe them to friends and acquaintances, it is to them as a report of journeyings in a hitherto unexplored country.

But paper is still rationed severely, and other writers are anxious to have their say, so I will not extend my list of new pleasures. Plato in The Republic says: " Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom ; when the passions relax their hold, then you have escaped from the control not of one master but of many." There is but one experience that I have not myself yet tested, but I face it with equanimity.

" My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on ; Judge not the play before the play is done: Her plot bath many changes ; every day

Speaks a new scene ; the last act crowns the play."