MY ADVICE TO YOUTH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23115, 13 August 1938, Page 13 (Supplement)

MY ADVICE TO YOUTH

(Copyright)

I; AM fifty-four years of age and a bit. What would 1 do if I were twenty-one to-dav plus the experience that life is supposed to have granted me?. This is a very old question. Many people have tried to answer it. I have noticed when I have read some of these answers that there are two things that people in general wish to have been able to alter—first, their job, and secondly the monotony of their daily round. Most married people of fifty and a bit and over seem to feel that they have missed the chance of adventure, and nearly everyone in our modern civilisation appears to be doing his job perforce rather than because, he wants to do it. In both these respects I myself am unrepentant. I have always loved my job and I feel that I have had plenty of adventure in my life. When 1 was twenty-one 1 was just leaving Cambridge and vainly struggling against the endeavours of everyone around me to turn me into a clergyman. I-knew there, was only on© thing I wanted to be or had ever wanted to be, and that was a novelist. Not any other kind of. a writer, not poet, nor historian nor critic, but a novelist, and at the age of five I had wanted to be that, and had never any doubt but that that was what 1 was going to be. " They Jeered " Everyone around me doubted nay, they jeered. I had a self-confidence then, which was a joy to myself and a revolting horror to all my friends, bo I wouldn't, if X were twenty-one, want to be anything else but a novelist. 1 wouldn't I think want any very different life from the one I have had. I have been extraordinarily lucky m two things at'least. First, in beginning to write novels thirty years ago when competition was much less sharp than it is to-day, and secondly, in possessing pleasure and excitement about a number of very, ■'different things people coming first, books, music and painting second"; travel and watching games and going to the theatre next, and the love of living in the country over all. . No, I couldn't want for better luck than I have had in my life so far. But what 1 would like to change, I think, if I were twenty-one to-day, would be qualities that have to deal with character rather than event. Avoid Spitefulness With the experience I have got now, I would resolve if I were twenty-one, and looking forward, that above everything else in life I would train myself to avoid meanness and spitefulness and all the sins that go therewith. !or myself now, such things as backbiting aud scandal and disloyalty to friends are worse than any other crimes whatever, except those of cruelty, but these meannesses are cruel and terribly easy to commit. When. 1 was young in London I was so greatly excited by the sudden chance I had of meeting people and enjoying life at its centre that I chattered and gossiped and propagated scandal with all the eagerness in tho world. There was especially. 1 remember, one lady in London at that time, who was a mistress at this art. With a soft rather sibilant ■ voice, she went from person to person, smiling and saying the most malicious things in tho kindest possible manner. She was deadly because while people were afraid of her, j

By Sir Hugh Walpole

they yet confided in her, because when she threw her spells around them, her soft voice seemed to bind them into a kind of trance. She did more harm in her day, that dear lady, than Messalina or Lucrezia Borgia. " Laughing Kindly " I don't want to be too solemn or priggish about this. I shall enjoy a little bit of scandal until I die. By that I mean I* sometimes laugh at or with my friends as they all laugh at or with me. The thing I have learnt about this very difficult question is that although we may laugh kindly at one another, it must always be perfectly clear to the company, we keep whose friend we are. There must never be any disloyaltyj anyone present must not doubt that you are the friend of your friend. Another thing that I would try to achieve if I were twenty-one again, would be serenity. The world is unquestionably to-day much more unsettled than it was thirty years ago, but I always was and always will be a non-political person. Serenely balanced people who are not fools, who are neither too gaily optimistic nor too determinedly pessimistic, who love their fellow-men without thinking them angels, who have a really strong and extensive sense of values, these are the people worth their weight in rubies. If 1 were a young man now I would train myself. to that sort of calm. I do not mean stupidity or lack of imagination, of courso. I can think of two friends of mine who express exactly this quality; one of them, Lauritz Melchoir, the Wagner singer, and the other, George Cukor, the film director. Although these men have achieved immense success, their heads have not been turned in the slightest. I know them very well indeed, and 1 have never seen either of them lose control of the conditions in which they are living. Knowledge of Life Their serenity comes especially from the knowledge of life. They have learnt the lesson that things are never so bad as they seem and that you must catch at pleasure while it flies, but realise that it is always flying; that fidelity to friends and a refusal to be cheated by the lures of applause and money are two of the best assureties of security. Above everything else, if I were to begin life again now, it is that selfcontrolled balance of mind plus a warmth of heart that I would like to have, but alas, balanced control of mind is now something I shall never haVe and that brings me to what I suppose is the real point of this article. Arnold Bennet once said to me when I told him I was sick of being myself: "Dear Hughie, the moment we're born, we're done for." That is, of course, only half true, but it does mean, young man of twentyone, that you have been given certain characteristics to deal with, and that no experience of life is going to rid yourself .of them. What you can do is to train them just as they train animals in the zoo. I had, as I have already said, the, great good luck to have a job that T loved from the very beginning; but if I had had a job that I detested, for instance, had 1 been forced to serve irate ladies in a shop, I should have bated it.' But I would have been able, perhaps, to twist it a little and turn it about and add things to it. Tf you are twenty-one, never despair. You can do almost everything to yourself and vour circumstances if you want. — S.F.B.