Design For Living Alone

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 126, 22 February 1938, Page 5

Design For Living Alone

The Pleasures Of Solitude Outweigh Its Drawbacks

alone has been described as an art. This is merely because people who live alone generally do do it very well, while people who live with their families or their friends do it very badly. Living with other people is infinitely more difficult than living by oneself, but this fact is so little appreciated that to live alone from choice has become a foible of the morally courageous.

r po enjoy living alone is to reveal yourself as fundamentally selfish. It enables you to do what you like, in the way you like to do it, without incurring either the displeasure or the astonishment of other people. “But aren’t you afraid?” say your timid friends. Afraid of what? Of burglars? The most valuable of my possessions is No. 23 of a limited first edition of Huxley’s “Music at Night,” and I ! doubt whether there is'a burglar in existance with the intellectual discernment to climb through my ever-open window in order to obtain it. He would meet with unreckoned-for opposition if he did. . If not burglars, of what are you afraid? In broad day-light it is difficult to answer this question without becoming ludicrous, but I admit that in the mysterious silence of the night one is less reasonable. It is not breaking the rules of the game to keep a dog. A large alsatian is considered to be an excellent protection not only against the tangible evil of burglars but also against “ghosties and all things that go bump in the night.” If you put a suitable notice on the gate and call him “Prince,” a small Pekinese can serve much the same purpose and creates less havoc when he wags his tail. !

And if you are afraid, surely a few misgivings in the night are a small price io pay for the inestimable daytime advantages of living alone. Consider them.

No longer do you have to stop what you are doing in order to eat, simply because the hands of the clock are at a certain angle. No longer do you have to bow down to the convention that decrees marmalade for breakfast and strawberry jam for tea. You may,

if you wish to, eat cake at nine o’clock in the morning, and eat it in your pyjamas, sitting on the kitchen table with the morning paper spread out before you and with a cup of tea to which no needless saucer attaches. And, tiring of Bohemian life you may don an evening frock and dine on oysters and champagne without anyone wondering uneasily whether you are celebrating some anniversary that they should have remembered, and that you are stubbornly declining to refer to. Consider the radio. You may have on or off what you please. And when it it is on you will be able to listen to the programme that,you wish to hear, without enduring the martyred silence of a number of people who want to listen to something else. And nevermore need you suffer that saxophone soloist who so delights the person who is invariably nearest to the wireless controls.

No longer need you consider your fellows when you wish to take a bath, or go to bed, or smoke a cigarette, or have a friend to supper or do any of the other things that make life worth living. It is probably very bad for the character but living alone is its own very adequate reward. To live alone is not, as some people imagine, to retire into eccentric seclusion. You can still spend week-ends at other peoples’ houses and invite other people to spend week-ends at yours. The ideal house in which to live alone includes a guest-room, and even if your solitary paradise does not boast such a luxury you can still have people to stay. For if you select your own visitors, and select them with care, you will naturally not invite anyone who objects to a camp bed in the corner of a single room, if this is all that you have to offer them. It is delightful to entertain one’s friends, to enjoy their companionship and theii- conversation, and when they have departed it is incomparably delightful to return once more to the hedonistic pleasure of living alone. —M.J.