The Last Lap

By STRIX

A KIND reader, solicitous for my welfare in the not too distant future, has sent me a book called How to be Useful and Happy from Sixty to Ninety, by A. Lapthorn Smith. It was first pub- lished in May, 1922, and by July had surprised and gratified the Bodley Head by 'passing rapidly through two large editions.' In the preface to the third, which I have, a reader is quoted as writing: 'I do not remember ever reading such a long series of reviews without a single word of adverse criticism appearing in any of them.'

My own impressions of the work are not wholly favourable, but its index is strongly to be recom- mended and may indeed be said to stand in a class by itself.

Alcohol as cure for insomnia, very had .. Beard. long white, don't wear Berens, Mrs., still wins prizes at archery at 77 Bulky food exercises bowels Carriage and pair shortens life .. . . Cook, good, source of danger to elderly men Crime to die rich . .

Engine drivers over sixty, what to do with If no relatives, spend on poor . .

M. M., Miss. of Kent, just 70, feels 35 .. 60 Otherdom leads to happiness 48.53 Rich man, difficult for, to reach 100 .. 67 Young people, company of, at 60, how to keep 56

The intricate craft of index-making is here exalted to an art. It may be a rather tachiste art, but I challenge anyone to call it derivative.

In his photograph which forms the frontispiece, Mr. Lapthorn Smith, whose features suggest a cross between Lord Reith and Mr. Robertson Hare, looks more useful than happy; but his sober garb and his gimlet-eyed air of purpose are belied by his discursive approach to the chosen theme. One expects the recipe for . an elixir, buttressed by diet charts; one gets instead a barrage of fads and faits divers.

He believes activity to be one of the secrets of longevity. John Faulkner, a retired jockey of ninety who rode in the Abingdon Steeplechases at seventy-two, found other outlets for his energy as well. 'I had twenty-one children in twenty-one years by my first wife,' he said, 'but I have only had eleven by my second.' Judging by the crowded but relatively short career of the first Mrs. Faulkner, one man's meat may be another man's poison in this context. She might have done better to stick to more cultural forms of activity, like Miss Elizabeth Warlow, of Acton, who 'at eighty was reciting the new universal language, Esper- anto, before a crowded audience,' and went on being happy and useful in this and other ways to the age of ninety-four.

The drinking of spring water is regarded by Mr. Lapthorn Smith as of the first importance. Not everybody, he admits, has ready access to a spring; 'but the poorest person can catch the rain off his roof and strain it through a few layers of muslin or canton flannel, and then boil it, and it would do just as much good as the purest spring water at a health resort.' As for those of

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ampler means, 'there are many people in England who could afford to drink a bottle of Vichy water every day and who might by so doing live twenty or thirty years longer than they would otherwise do; but they do not know about it.' Well, they do now.

Mr. Lapthorn Smith insists that old age is, or can be made, a sort of demi-paradise; but as he conducts us through this promised land he makes it seem more forbidding than, I am sure, it will prove in practice. There are few of its sprightly denizens for whom I can share his automatic admiration. The fact, for instance, that in his eighty-seventh year Lord Roe of Derby 'attended a ball given by the VADs and danced the lancers' fills me, not with wonder and certainly not with the hope that one day I shall be able to emulate this feat, but with an embarrassed sorrow. Whether or not Lord Roe enjoyed his caper, I an quite sure that the other dancers who made up the set did not; and I am prepared to bet that his presence on the ballroom floor at eighty-seven was as detrimental to the general enjoyment as would have been his presence at one of his father's dinner-parties at the age of eight.

Here and there, it is true, one encounters char- acters who excite a rather gruesome curiosity : like the lady who 'is not only alive at the age of ninety, but she has just become a bride for the fourth time.' When, reading further, we learn that of her previous husbands two died of starva- tion and one was frozen to death, there does, I think, steal over us a certain awe. And the same goes for Mr. Tylor, to whom Queen Victoria sent her photograph on hearing that he was the oldest postmaster in the world. He lived to be 134. 'He was a bachelor most of his life. only marrying it . the age of 108.'

As an agent of the Grim Reaper, the good cook is perhaps not quite so potent a force as she used to be, being less frequently found in private ser- vice. Mr. Lapthorn Smith regards her as a killer. who forces her master to 'dig his own grave with his teeth' for fear of offending her. Beyond saying 'You can get rid of her, but you cannot get rid of your stomach,' he rather shirks the question of what one should do with a good cook if one has got one.

It is a strange world through which Mr. Lap- thorn Smith leads us, strewn with out-of-daic statistics, peopled by impossibly venerable Bul- garians, maiden ladies who before retiring swing, Indian clubs to keep their feet warm in bed.

nonagenarians who run two miles through deer' snow every night, normally kind-hearted men who after over-inaulging in underdone roast beet 'would even destroy their own property while theil, nearest and dearest ran in terror from them. 1 may or may not cross its boundaries. Somethilw tells me that if and when 1 do, I shall not, beforc pressing on into the interior, choose Mr. A. kir thorn Smith as my guide.