CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

In which I allow Myself to be entirely Sentimental

And thus, abruptly, I end. A line drawn, a cigarette thrown out of an open window, a pile of manuscript pushed into the corner of one’s desk, waiting to be sent to the typist.

And thus, I suppose, youth ends. A line drawn under one’s eyes, a sudden realization, as one is laughing or drinking, that the ‘stuff which will not endure’ has worn itself threadbare. To what purpose? God alone knows. Not I.

I have enjoyed the writing of this book far too much to indulge in any sudden moralizations. But I know my generation, this post-war generation which has so baffled the middle-aged onlookers, who, from the gallery, have watched the dance whirling beneath. And I know that the one thing of which we are always accused--that we live for the moment only--is the one thing of which we are disastrously innocent.

We are none of us living for the moment. We are far too self-conscious for that. We have formulated a creed of which the first principle is that happiness, as an actual emotion, does not exist. ‘Happiness,’ we proclaim, ‘consists either in looking forward to things which will never happen or in remembering things which never have happened.’ We are therefore young only as long as we can cheat ourselves, as long as we can go on dressing the future in bright garments, and spinning a web of illusion over the past. But in both cases the kind stuff of imagination has to be produced out of our innermost cells, like spiders forced every day to spin two webs. The process is apt to be exhausting.

And yet--we are constantly forgetting our philosophy. A bright summer morning will do it. An apple tree in fluffy and adorable bloom will do it. Sometimes (for those of us who are most depraved), pink foie gras will do it. But even then, we will not allow that we are happy. We only admit the possibility of happiness--i.e., that there may be some form of heaven, or even a mildly exhilarating hell.

Again--I have done. Twelve o’clock strikes. There should really be slow music playing outside my window, so that I might work myself into a frenzy of pathos at the thought that another day has arrived to carry me on to middle-age. I should rather like to stay, just a little longer. But then--better not. Accept the joke of life for what it is worth. It is not such a very brilliant one, after all. And was there not a man, called Browning, who wrote:

‘Grow old along with me, The best is yet to be.’?

_The End_

Transcriber's Notes:

Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.

Perceived typographical errors have been changed.