Intro & Preface & Contents
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Would I live it over again, that life of the garret and the cellar? Not with the assurance of fifty years’ contentment such as I now enjoy to follow upon it! With man’s infinitely pathetic power of resignation, one sees the thing on its better side, forgets all the worst of it, makes out a case for the resolute optimist. Oh, but the waste of energy, of zeal, of youth! In another mood, I could shed tears over that spectacle of rare vitality condemned to sordid strife. The pity of it! And -- if our conscience mean anything at all -- the bitter wrong!
Without seeking for Utopia, think what a man’s youth might be. I suppose not one in every thousand uses half the possibilities of natural joy and delightful effort which lie in those years between seventeen and seven-and-twenty. All but all [?] men have to look back upon beginnings of life deformed and discoloured by necessity, accident, wantonness. If a young man avoid the grosser pitfalls, if he keep his eye fixed steadily on what is called the main chance, if, without flagrant selfishness, he prudently subdue every interest to his own (by “interest” understanding only material good), he is putting his youth to profit, he is an exemplar and a subject of pride. I doubt whether, in our civilization, any other ideal is easy of pursuit by the youngster face to face with life. It is the only course altogether safe. Yet compare it with what might be, if men respected manhood, if human reason were at the service of human happiness. Some few there are who can look back upon a boyhood of natural delights, followed by a decade or so of fine energies honourably put to use, blended therewith, perhaps, a memory of joy so exquisite that it tunes all life unto the end; they are almost as rare as poets. The vast majority think not of their youth at all, or, glancing backward, are unconscious of lost opportunity, unaware of degradation suffered. Only by contrast with this thick-witted multitude can I pride myself upon my youth of endurance and of combat. I had a goal before me, and not the goal of the average man. Even when pinched with hunger, I did not abandon my purposes, which were of the mind. But contrast that starving lad in his slum lodging with any fair conception of intelligent and zealous youth, and one feels that a dose of swift poison would have been the right remedy for such squalid ills.
Alpha.
Where I was at variance with Henry Ryecroft was that, while pursuing purposes of the mind, I never tried to live by my typewriter. The jobs I worked were numerous and only bookstore clerking had any connection to literature, but much of my time was spent in books and libraries. I began reading Hellenistic philosophy and ended up reading almost all of Classical literature (in translation). Reading Classical history, Herodotus to Livy and so on, leads one to Gibbon and from there it’s an easy jump to Henri Pirenne and then to Fernand Braudel.
I think I prefer my youth to Henry’s, but as for the waste of the opportunities of youth...
Tomorrow and her works defy;
Lay hold upon the present hour,
And snatch the pleasures passing by,
To put them out of Fortune’s power.
Nor Love nor Love’s delights disdain;
Whate’er thou gettest today is gain.
Secure those golden, early joys,
That youth unsoured by sorrow bears,
Ere withering Time the taste destroys
With sickness and unwieldy years.
For active sports, for pleasing rest,
This is the time to be possessed:
The best is but in season best.
From this point of view there was a great deal of missed opportunity or potential, though I would have had to have been a different person to realize that potential. I can wish I had been the sort of person to have been “possessed” but since I am not, I don’t really regret how I did in fact spend my youth. Had I been truer to Horace, I might have missed, for lack of idle time, Braudel. I can’t consent to give up my actual past for speculative improvements.
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