XIAGE BEFORE BEAUTY
This frequently-heard statement is a left-handed compliment; like many conventional tributes, it carries a smirk rather than a smile. Underneath the formal and hollow homage paid to the ancient the preference is of course elsewhere. It is somewhat like the so-called complimentary vote given to the “favourite son” at a political convention, which no one takes seriously, not even the son. Nothing would perhaps more shockingly disconcert the ballot-casters than to have their candidate receive other than local support.
In the expression Age Before Beauty, it is implied that the two are incompatible; you cannot have both. Yet upon a little reflexion it will appear that the vast majority of objects that receive human attention become more and more beautiful with the accumulation of years. I can think of only two classes of things that are more beautiful in their early than in their later existence.
I refer first to all varieties of animal life, including man; second to all objects whose main purpose is practical usefulness.
It ought to be obvious that kittens, puppies, baby lions, boys and girls are fairer to look upon than aged cats, rheumatic hounds, toothless lions, decrepit men, and time-worn harridans—such as guide you to your seat in the Paris theatres. It is true that the ecclesiastical poet, Dr. Donne, made a couplet comforting to some whose youth is only a memory.
Nor Spring nor Summer’s beauty hath such graceAs I have seen in one autumnal face.
Nor Spring nor Summer’s beauty hath such graceAs I have seen in one autumnal face.
Nor Spring nor Summer’s beauty hath such graceAs I have seen in one autumnal face.
Nor Spring nor Summer’s beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
But you will observe he said “one” not many; and he had in mind not a number of charming old ladies, but just one. No doubt there are a sufficient number of exceptions to give added stability to the rule.
Browning said the reason why youth is so fair is that it would be intolerable without it; beauty is youth’s only asset. Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acquire some sense. As soon as they are able to pull their weight in the work of the world and in the intellectual clearing-house of society, then grace and beauty depart. Thus mature people who have no brains and no senseare the last word in futility. They are as ridiculous as old apple-blossoms which for some reason never went into fruition.
The second class of objects which are beautiful only in youth are those which are built mainly for use. The purpose of an automobile is to go. A motor car one year old is better than when ten years old; it is also more attractive to the eye. I suppose Americans are the only people in the world who often buy new cars. If an Englishman has a car that carries him satisfactorily, he keeps it; the American “turns it in.” There is no more striking evidence of the “prosperity” of the American people than the twofold fact of the abundance of new cars, and also—amazing, when you think about it—that the tremendously efficient T-model Ford was not sufficiently lovely to pay for its continued manufacture.
When I was a boy, the number of my acquaintances whose fathers owned a horse and carriage could be counted on the fingers of one hand, like those who now own a steam yacht; the fact that the old Ford car is not “good enough” indicates how times have changed. For the proper epitaph for the T-model we should have to adapt the words of Shakespeare, which he put into a funeral oration:
But yesterday the Ford T-model mightHave stood against the world; now lies it there,And none so poor to do it reverence.
But yesterday the Ford T-model mightHave stood against the world; now lies it there,And none so poor to do it reverence.
But yesterday the Ford T-model mightHave stood against the world; now lies it there,And none so poor to do it reverence.
But yesterday the Ford T-model might
Have stood against the world; now lies it there,
And none so poor to do it reverence.
Beauty and newness are inseparable in the case of bicycles, grocery-wagons, machinery, steamboats, factory buildings, flannel shirts, shoes, typewriters, trousers, socks; with all of these articles age means ugliness. In mechanical objects there is no charm in the accumulation of years.
But cathedrals, trees, mountains, castles, manor-houses, college lawns, violins, with the increase of age take on not only dignity but beauty. A thirteenth-century cathedral is more lovely than a glossy new church; an old tree is more beautiful than any sapling; the ancient turf in the quads of Oxford is fairer to behold than the graded front yard of a new house in Dakota.
Why do hundreds of thousands of Americans travel gladly in Europe every summer? Mainly for one thing. It is that their Yankee eyes may have the sensation of seeing objects which the wear of centuries has made beautiful. Many of us Americans have had the natural habit of associating beauty with newness; the new hat, the new clothes, the new motor car, the new stadium. It is worth while to discover thatthere are innumerable objects where age, instead of being a humiliation and a “depreciation,” is not only an asset, but a thing of beauty whose loveliness increases.
Boys and girls brought up in the slums naturally regard newness as essential to beauty and worth; the Fresh Air Fund should, if possible, take them not only to fresh woods and fields, but illuminate their minds with the sight of buildings whose age, instead of tarnishing, has made them surpassingly attractive. Henry James, in one of his novels, has a boy from the London slums entertained overnight in an English country house. This is what he saw as he looked out of his window in the early morning.
“He had never in his life been in the country—the real country, as he called it, the country which was not the mere ravelled fringe of London—and there entered through his open casement the breath of a world enchantingly new and after his feverish hours unspeakably refreshing; a sense of sweet sunny air and mingled odours, all strangely pure and agreeable, and of a musical silence that consisted for the greater part of the voices of many birds. There were tall quiet trees near by and afar off and everywhere.... There was something in the way the grey walls rose from the green lawn thatbrought tears to his eyes; the spectacle of long duration unassociated with some sordid infirmity or poverty was new to him; he had lived with people among whom old age meant for the most part a grudged and degraded survival. In the favored resistance of Medley was a serenity of success, an accumulation of dignity and honour.”