The View from 80

The View from 80

by Malcolm Crowley

[taken from

The Contemporary Essay.

(ed. Donald Hall). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1989:90-103.]

Even before he or she

is

80,

the

aging

person

may

undergo

another

identity

crisis

like

that

of

adolescence.

Perhaps there had

also

been a middle-aged crisis, the male or the female menopause, but the rest of adult life he

had taken himself for granted, with his capabilities and failings. Now, when he looks in the mirror, he asks himself,

makeup he is called upon to play a new role in a play that must be improvised. Andrd Gide, that long-lived man of

letters, wrote in his journal,

part of the 70-year-old that I certainly am; and the infirmities and weaknesses that remind me of my age act like a

prompter, reminding me of my lines when I tend to stray. Then, like the good actor I want to be, I go back into my

ro. le, and I pride myself on playing it well.”

In his new role the old person will find that he is tempted by new vices, that he receives new compensations

(not so widely known), and that he may possibly achieve new virtues. Chief among these is the heroic or merely

obstinate refusal to surrender in the face of time. One admires the ships that go down with all flags flying and the

captain on the bridge.

Among the vices of age are avarice, untidiness, and vanity, which last takes the form of a craving to be loved

or simply admired. Avarice is the worst of those three. Why do so many old persons, men and women alike, insist

on

hoarding

money

when

they

have

no

prospect

of

using

it

and

even

when

they

have

no

heirs?

They

eat

the

cheapest food, buy no clothes, and live in a single room when they could afford better lodging. It may be that they

regard money as a form of power; there is a comfort in watching it accumulate while other powers are dwindling

away. How often we read of an old person found dead in a hovel, on a mattress partly stuffed with bankbooks and

stock certificates! The bankbook syndrome, we call it in our family, which has never succumbed.

Untidiness we call the Langley Collyer syndrome. To explain, Langley Collyer was a former concert pianist

who lived alone with his 70-year-old brother in a brownstone house on upper Fifth Avenue. The once fashionable

neighborhood had become part of Harlem. Homer, the brother, had been an admiralty lawyer, but was now blind

and partly paralyzed; Langley played for him and fed him on buns and oranges, which he thought would restore

Homer's sight. He never threw away a daily paper because Homer, he said, might want to read them all. He saved

other things as well and the house became filled with rubbish from roof to basement. The halls were lined on both

sides with bundled newspapers, leaving narrow passageways in which Langley had devised booby traps to catch

intruders.

On March 21, 1947, some unnamed person telephoned the police to report that there was a dead body in the

Collyer house. The police broke down the front door and found the hall impassable; then they hoisted a ladder to a

second-story window. Behind it Homer was lying on the floor in a bathrobe; he had starved to death. Langley had

disappeared. After some delay, the police broke into the basement, chopped a hole in the roof, and began throwing

junk out of the house, top and bottom. It was 18 days before they found Langley's body, gnawed by rats. Caught in

one

of

his

own

booby

traps,

he

had

died

in

a

hallway

just

outside

Homer's

door.

By

that

time

the

police

had

collected,

and

the

Department

of

Sanitation

had

hauled

away,

120

tons

of

rubbish,

including,

besides

the

newspapers, 14 grand pianos and the parts of a dismantled Model T Ford.

Why do so many old people accumulate junk, not on

the

scale

of

Langley

Collyer,

but

still

in

a

dismaying

fashion? Their tables are piled high with it, their .bureau drawers are stuffed with it, their closet rods bend with the

weight of clothes not worn for years. I suppose that the piling up is partly from lethargy and partly from the feeling

that everything once useful, including their own bodies, should be preserved. Others, though not so many, have

such a fear of becoming Langley Collyers that they strive to be painfully neat. Every tool they own is in its place,

though it will never be used again; every scrap of paper is filed away in alphabetical order. At last their immoderate

neatness becomes another vice of age, if a milder one.

The vanity of older people is an easier weakness to explain, and to condone, With less to look forward to, they

yearn

for

recognition

of

what

they

have

been:

the

reigning

beauty,

the

athlete,

the

soldier,

the

scholar.

It

is

the

beauties who have the hardest time. A portrait of themselves at twenty hangs on the wall, and they try to resemble

it by making an extravagant use of creams, powders, and dyes. Being young at heart, they think they are merely

revealing their essential persons. The athletes find shelves for their silver trophies, which are polished once a year.

Perhaps a letter sweater lies wrapped in a bureau drawer. I remember one evening when a no-longer athlete had

guests for dinner and tried to find his sweater.

it away.

Often

the

yearning

to

be

recognized

appears

in

conversation

as

an

innocent

boast.

Thus,

a

distinguished

physician, retired at 94, remarks casually that a disease was named after him. A former judge bursts into chuckles

as he repeats bright things that he said on the bench. Aging scholars complain in letters (or one of them does),

I approach 70 I'm becoming avid of honors, and such things -- medals, honorary degrees, etc. -- are only passed

around among academics on a

quid pro quo

basis (one hood capping another).

Underwood has ten honorary doctorates and I have only three. Why didn't they elect me to . . . ?” and they menti

on

the name of some learned society. That search for honors is a harmless passion, though it may lead to jealousies

and deformations of character, as with Robert Frost in his later years. Still, honors cost little. Why shouldn't the

very old have more than their share of them?

To be admired and praised, especially by the young, is an autumnal pleasure enjoyed by the lucky ones (who

are not always the most deserving).

observes in his famous essay

De Senectute,