From a College Window | Page 8

you cannot play, and to admire the dexterity you cannot rival.
What then, if any, are the gains that make up for the lack of youthful
prowess? They are, I can contentedly say, many and great. In the first
place, there is the loss of a quality which is productive of an
extraordinary amount of pain among the young, the quality of
self-consciousness. How often was one's peace of mind ruined by
gaucherie, by shyness, by the painful consciousness of having nothing
to say, and the still more painful consciousness of having said the

wrong thing in the wrong way! Of course, it was all immensely
exaggerated. If one went into chapel, for instance, with a straw hat,
which one had forgotten to remove, over a surplice, one had the feeling
for several days that it was written in letters of fire on every wall. I was
myself an ardent conversationalist in early years, and, with the
charming omniscience of youth, fancied that my opinion was far better
worth having than the opinions of Dons encrusted with pedantry and
prejudice. But if I found myself in the society of these petrified persons,
by the time that I had composed a suitable remark, the slender opening
had already closed, and my contribution was either not uttered at all, or
hopelessly belated in its appearance. Or some deep generalization
drawn from the dark backward of my vast experience would be
produced, and either ruthlessly ignored or contemptuously corrected by
some unsympathetic elder of unyielding voice and formed opinions.
And then there was the crushing sense, at the conclusion of one of these
interviews, of having been put down as a tiresome and heavy young
man. I fully believed in my own liveliness and sprightliness, but it
seemed an impossible task to persuade my elders that these qualities
were there. A good-natured, elderly friend used at times to rally me
upon my shyness, and say that it all came from thinking too much
about myself. It was as useless as if one told a man with a toothache
that it was mere self-absorption that made him suffer. For I have no
doubt that the disease of self-consciousness is incident to intelligent
youth. Marie Bashkirtseff, in the terrible self-revealing journals which
she wrote, describes a visit that she paid to some one who had
expressed an interest in her and a desire to see her. She says that as she
passed the threshold of the room she breathed a prayer, "O God, make
me worth seeing!" How often used one to desire to make an impression,
to make oneself felt and appreciated!
Well, all that uneasy craving has left me. I no longer have any
particular desire for or expectation of being impressive. One likes, of
course, to feel fresh and lively; but whereas in the old days I used to
enter a circle with the intention of endeavouring to be felt, of giving
pleasure and interest, I now go in the humble hope of receiving either.
The result is that, having got rid to a great extent of this pompous and
self-regarding attitude of mind, I not only find myself more at ease, but

I also find other people infinitely more interesting. Instead of laying
one's frigate alongside of another craft with the intention of conducting
a boarding expedition, one pays a genial visit by means of the long-
boat with all the circumstance of courtesy and amiability. instead of
desiring to make conquests, I am glad enough to be tolerated. I dare,
too, to say what I think, not alert for any symptoms of contradiction,
but fully aware that my own point of view is but one of many, and quite
prepared to revise it. In the old days I demanded agreement; I am now
amused by divergence. In the old days I desired to convince; I am now
only too thankful to be convinced of error and ignorance. I now no
longer shrink from saying that I know nothing of a subject; in old days
I used to make a pretence of omniscience, and had to submit irritably to
being tamely unmasked. It seems to me that I must have been an
unpleasant young man enough, but I humbly hope that I was not so
disagreeable as might appear.
Another privilege of advancing years is the decreasing tyranny of
convention. I used to desire to do the right thing, to know the right
people, to play the right games. I did not reflect whether it was worth
the sacrifice of personal interest; it was all-important to be in the swim.
Very gradually I discovered that other people troubled their heads very
little about what one did; that the right people were often the most
tiresome and the most conventional, and that the only