Resident In The “Victoria”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31304, 25 February 1967, Page 4

Resident In The “Victoria”

The Tenth Home. By F. O. Bennett. Blackwood and Janet Paul. 178 pp.

Within the scope of this slender but wittily perceptive volume the author has presented to us the tragedies, comedies, oddities, suffering and pathos which beset old age. There are nine Homes for old people in Christchurch, and the tenth of the title is

an imaginary one embodying the virtues and characteristics of them all. The patients whose case-histories Dr. Bennett so graphically describes are all women, and as he is a regular visitor in his professional capacity to an Old People’s Home he purports to take the reader into his confidence concerning the daily lives of those resident in the “Victoria,” together with those of the staff, and not forgetting the porter’s dog, Spam. Mental confusion, and persistant delusions, though not always immediately evident, are as much responsible for the need for institutional treatment as physical disabilities. The defiantly irresponsible Miss LakmOre, for instance, vanished for a whole day from human sight and the police were alerted. Having, by some occult means returned to her room, her only reply to frantic scoldings and questions was “It’s nothing to do with me,” before placidly going to sleep. Mrs Crosbie knew that unseen malefactors were intent upon murdering her, and Mrs Cunliffe was equally certain that her food was being poisoned by her charming young nurse.

Dr. Bennett’s compassion for physical infirmity Is best described in his own words. “The women here have never been bashed into subjection by crippling illness. Even though if they pooled all their best joints, lungs, and hearts there is not the makings of a grade one recruit among them, they have all made some sort of compromise with infirmity, and without cashing in their independence.” But tragedy lurks where hope has been given up, and Mrs Chadmill’s compulsion to commit suicide, though so often and so carefully circumvented, was brought off in the end. The “Back Room,” in which time-consuming occupations were carried on, was also the background of gloriously inconsequent conversation, highly reminiscent of the “Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.” By contrast is the more sober study of Miss Jensen who, during a lifetime of looking after other people’s children, had studied the poets for recreation, and conversed with the doctor largely by means of apt quotations—the last one on her deathbed. Her erudition was disapproved of by Matron, a model of dignity and efficiency, but no admirer of bardic qualities. Matron had her own method of showing a dissenting opinion from that of the visiting medical authority which was simply to say, “Very well Sir, if you insist.” That “Sir” indicated simply “On your own head be it you goat.” Dr. Bennett’s description of Mrs Lilly, a nonagenarian, could not be bettered: “She is delicate as an eggshell, frail as an icicle, gentle as thistledown. . » An exquisite evocation if ever there was one. The author ranges to and from the grave to the gay. One’s heart goes out to the poor muddled old dear caught in an act of senseless shoplifting. One sympathises with the bedridden patient, compelled to hear enthusiastic renderings of Moody and Sankey and expressing her feelings in the forceful phrase “Shut up you b’s and go home.” This reviewer’s favourite "Bennettlsm” is his comment on a political V.I.P. who, when he found that the Home was for old and not young women as he had supposed, “regretted” that he could not visit it “That man is a fool. He has spent his life regretting. It is a pity that some day he will no longer be able to regret that no one in the Home is regretting that he can no longer regret.” This brilliant study of geriatrics holds up to all of us a mirror of the physical and psychological pitfalls that must beset our earthly path if it goes on too far. The book should have a large sale, and its appeal is cosmopolitan.