MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
ILIKE autumn. This congenial season, " the - Sabbath of the year," arouses within me every one of the conventional senti- ments. It is with wholly appropriate emotion that I watch the smoke of bonfires drifting across the golden woods. The soft thud of a late apple falling upon the grass evokes the same placid reflec- tions as it has evoked in young and old for two thousand years. I enjoy, as all enjoy, watching the damp stalks of the herbaceous plants being flung upon the compost heap and seeing the dark soil forked up around their stunted stems. Like Browning and others I know full well what I mean to do when the long dark autumn evenings come: there is the typewriter, the carbon paper and the lamp. At this sedative season I feel one with Nature and in accord with all living beings ; with deft invention I murmur to myself, in tune with many thousand fellow citizens, the line, " When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang." Shelley was quite right in stating that there is a harmony in autumn ; I feel myself in accord at this season with all other men and women of middle-age who watch the leaves falling, whether at Chislehurst or Orpington, whether in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont. Yet in my case this harmony, this damp community feel, is marred by one discordant note. Much as I appreciate the gentle chords with which Nature closes her yearly symphony, I resent the fact that she should have accorded to trees and shrubs that renewal of beauty which she denies to human beings. How agreeable would it be if we also, in the November of our lives, could be decked with red and gold ! Crouching by my log fire I should overhear my grandchildren discussing with each other the aesthetic pleasures which I had evoked. " Did you notice," one would say to the other, " how lovely grandpapa looked this morn- ing ? It was when the sun came out after the rain. His whole surface glistened ; he positively shone with colour." " Yes," the other would reply, " I did notice. But actually I prefer grandpapa towards the evening. The setting sun seems somehow both to soften and to emphasise his tints. He takes on the tone of a cloisonné enamel of the best K'ang-hsi period." My grandchildren, thanks to niggard _Nature, will never exchange such remarks ; the most they will do is to whisper to each other Juvenal's harsh catalogue of the dilapidations of old age.
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In order to solace myself for this denial of opportunity I have been reading this week Cicero's dialogue upon the compensations of later life which he called Cato Major or De Senectute. It was written at a time when Cicero was only one year older than I am today. Considering the reputation of its author, it seems to me a superficial and indeed untruthful work. This defence of old age is put into the mouth of Cato the Elder, who, at the date when the conversation took place, had reached his eighty-fourth year. Now the elder Cato contends in this dialogue that the main consolation of old age is the contemplation of past virtue. " It is most delight- ful," remarks this dotard, " to have within one the sense of a well- spent life ; and to look back upon many actions worthily performed." I do not feel that Cato had any justification for such self-compla- cency. He was a philistine, a reactionary and a spoil-sport. He devoted most of his long and sullen life to preventing the brutish soul of Rome from being humanised by Greek culture. His attitude towards Carthage, that charming seaside resort, was one of obstinate vindictiveness. His speeches, it is evident, were long, repetitive and dull. He was a beast to his family ; and his conduct of the Spanish campaign was marked by quite unusual atrocities. No, Cato had no cause to feel self-satisfied on looking back.
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A second consolation which this old man enumerates is that when one reaches the end of life one is treated with enhanced respect. " Those very things," he says, " which might seem trivial or ordinary are in fact signs of esteem—such as being visited in the morning, being sought after, being made way for, having people stand up when one comes in, being escorted to and from the forum, and being asked for advice." Such marks of respect may have been agreeable to the elder Cato ; to me they would be hell. I much dislike being visited in the morning ; I should be acutely embarrassed if people made way for me or stood up when I came in ; it would for me be a nightmare if, when I walk to the South Kensington Underground, I were accompanied by a retinue of younger friends ; and I am not sure even whether I really like being asked for advice. " But," says Cato, " the crowning glory of old age is influence." Such influence, to his mind, was more delightful than " all the physical delights of youth." " For how," he asks, " can the pleasures of the body be compared with the distinction which authority and influence bestow ? " I should say myself that they compare very well indeed. But that is not the point. The point is that in our less reverential epoch very old gentlemen do not in fact retain either their authority or their influence ; they drop out. A retired Prime Minister, or a retired Archbishop, is not in our harsher and more hurried age accompanied upon his walks by a host of former admirers ; he is accompanied by his daughter or dog. An eminent civil servant who has passed the retiring age does not find thereafter that he receives visits from his former subordinates at breakfast or that his advice is sought by his old department with any assiduity. He finds that his auctoritas is taken sharply from him on the very night he leaves. And whatever Cicero or Cato may say, I much doubt whether, in fact, things were so very different in the days of Rome.
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There is another foolish remark which the old man makes. He quotes a line from one of the comedies of Caecilius to the effect that the most painful thing about old age is that one knows that one has become an odious bore. Cato blandly denies this un- pleasant but indisputable fact. On the contrary, he says, " young men find pleasure in their elders, by whose precepts they are led into the paths of virtue." I doubt whether, had I been a young man in 15o B.C., I should really have derived much pleasure from the elder Cato ; it would have interested me to meet him ; but if, as was his habit, he had sought to guide me along the paths of virtue for a period of seven hours, I should have felt in the end that Caecilius was correct. There is, in fact, only one section of the De Senectute in which Cicero allows his old hero to talk sense at all. Cato asserts that the most satisfying of all consolations is the pleasure which, in old age, we can derive from the contemplation of Nature. Cicero himself, we may assume, was too interested in his own career to take any prolonged delight in cultivating his garden. But Cato, to do him justice, really was an agricultural expert. In this dialogue he has some consoling things to say about the comfort to be derived from watching the growth of vines, or indeed from the contemplation in any form of that " inherent force in all plants which are generated from the earth." He tells how, at the age of eighty-three, he derives much delectation from the pruning of his vines. In this at least he is being sensible and sincere. The continuity of growth does in some gentle manner assuage the pangs of decay.
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Cato the elder possessed a didactic temperament, which is the most obnoxious form which the human character can assume. He loved to preach and teach. He enjoyed getting younger people to one of his afternoon parties and talking to them until the stars waned in the sky. Were I also a very garrulous or didactic man I should, I suppose, derive some slight satisfaction from the thought that my juniors will be obliged from politeness to listen to me when I reach the age of eighty-three. I know, however, that had I been Scipio or Laelius (the two young victims of this dialogue) I should have become restive with the De Senectute after the first two hours. And had I been Cato the elder I should have sensed their restiveness and felt ashamed. But the untalkative are always unsympathetic to the talkative, even as Cato the elder -would not, I feel, have understood my grievance that Nature has not permitted us, in the November of our lives, to assume autumn tints. •
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