BRITAIN. Times of Your Life - Being Old Comes of Age

From wanton witches to parachuting patriarchs, a new book on old age looks at our attitudes over the centuries to the full mature. Today, the elderly have never had is so good LONDON (The Times), October 22, 2005: Everyone wants to reach old age but nobody wants to be old. Having achieved it, we lament; we strive hard to get there, fearing that we will fail, but when we succeed, we do nothing but complain. So Bernardino of Siena, the medieval preacher, saint and sage, neatly encapsulated the paradoxes of growing old. He might have said that growing old is no fun but dying young is no alternative. Given the choice, there is no doubt which we would prefer. Life, even at its most attenuated, is preferable to no life. The Long History of Old Age, a new book on the subject, traces the changes in human attitudes towards growing old. What is most striking, though, is not so much the change as the continuity, at least until quite recent times. Old age today is more easeful, for more people, than it has ever been, but its frustrations and disappointments have changed less than might be imagined from the holiday advertisements portraying greying sixtysomethings laughing cheerfully while sipping a cocktail on a cruise liner. In Bernardino’s day, and for centuries before and after, being old meant poverty, exclusion and disempowerment. Being old and female was even worse. Ageing was linked with a decline of the more charming traits, and a growth of distemper and melancholy, in both sexes. But, in women, the menopause added an extra poison to the mix. Medieval medical doctrine held that menstrual blood was impure, harmful and destructive. After the menopause, a women became more dangerous because she no longer discharged this malevolent fluid, storing it up, instead, as she evolved, perhaps, into a witch. Take, for example, William of Deguileville’s 14th-century Pilgrimage of Human Life, which illustrated the virtues of mercy, charity, reason, penitence and diligence in the persons of young women, elegantly dressed. Old women, bless them, represented the vices of sloth, pride, flattery, hypocrisy, envy, treachery, anger, avarice, gluttony and lust. Sloth is ugly, hairy, and dirty; pride monstrously obese, riding on the back of flattery because she is too fat to support herself. Envy crawls on her belly like a snake. Ah well, that’s the Middle Ages for you. But fast-forward to the 17th century and things are not much better. Menopausal women, it was then said, could cause grass to dry up, fruit to wither on the vine and trees to die. At the mere sight of them, dogs would become rabid and mirrors crack. By such crude prejudices were the 17th-century witch-hunts justified. Even trying to have fun was frowned upon. The words of Horace were often quoted: “Not yours the dance band and the red red rose, nor the cask drained to its last dregs: you’re an old woman now.” Most old widows were considered lustful, driven by sex and the desire for a husband, while pity was reserved for any young man foolish enough to marry them. “He who doth an old wife wedd, must eat a cold apple as he goes to bed” ran a 17th-century saw. James Howell, who collected proverbs, helpfully explained that the flatulence caused by the apple would cause erection — gratifying, if true. It is plain, then, that the sentimental grandmother gathering her tiny charges in the ample folds of her skirt is a modern invention, certainly no older than the Enlightenment. The French Revolution did indeed bring a concerted effort to alter the perception of old age, although, as usual, it was men who got the better of the deal. The regime sought legitimacy through patriotic images of elderly folk: praising them, parading them through the streets, decorating their houses with wreaths. Having toppled the authority of the Crown, the revolutionaries tried to legitimise their rule by borrowing the authority of the elderly. “Long live the Republic where old men preside,” an administrator called Moussard declared, as he wound up a fête de la veillesse in Paris. Old men, note; not old women. The images of art began to change at about the same period, paintings of old saints giving way to those of old philosophers, and a growing interest in genre paintings which portrayed the old with more dignity. The artists Jean-Etienne Liotard, Jean-Claude Chardin and Joshua Reynolds painted themselves as old men, sparing no wrinkles or gaps in the teeth but suffusing the images with life, nonetheless. These new ideas were not universally shared. Thomas Jefferson, in 1815, wrote: “Nothing is more incumbent on the old, than to know when they shall get out of the way, and relinquish to younger successors the honours they can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform.” Not much sentiment there. The experience of the elderly thoughout most of the 19th century was a matter of getting out of the way before they were pushed. Only the better-off enjoyed anything close to a retirement; others depended on the hospitality of their families or, if they were unwelcome at home, the chill of the workhouse. Today’s old age, for all its worries about degenerative disease and inadequate pensions, represents so complete a transformation that it may well be the greatest social revolution of the past century. Pensions themselves are barely a hundred years old, and pensions you can live on are more recent still. Old age has become two distinct lives for most of us: years of vigorous retirement followed by years of growing dependency. Only the latter bears much comparison with old age as it used to be. “It is rare in European culture, and indeed in most others, for people to be respected, or not, for their age alone,” remarks Pat Thane, in her introduction to the book. By Nigel Hawkes Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.