Hanging on and Letting Go

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

THE black rainy day ended at last, and yet I had not answered the hard question clamoring through its solitude: “Will you let go, or hold on? You have passed seventy. For fifty years and more you have written for publication, thankful for earning a livelihood if not fame. Has not the time come, perhaps passed by, when you should take your place with old-time writers who have shown that they are not lacking in what has been called the art of retiring, — the saving grace of knowing how to make an exit, — of vanishing at the timely moment?”

Perhaps Charles Wagner did not have writers solely in mind when he wrote of those who, when their work was finished, could not resign themselves to picking up their tools and being off, but cheapened what they had once done by trying to equal if not surpass it. The aged Simeon was brought forward as an example. He had not waited to be told when he must go; he had said that now was the time, and presumably he had not lingered until forcibly ejected, — like some poets for instance (and not only poets), who will hang on for another round of applause.

Must one have lived seventy years to learn that letting go demands more heroism than hanging on? Hang on! was the clarion cry we heard in our childhood, only another version of the “Sail on!" of Christopher Columbus. And Casabianca? — but then Casabianca is called “a silly" by the children of to-day, because “he did n’t cut and run,”as they would have done when they saw the absurdity of holding on.

“This art of retiring,” says Wagner, “is a long one; the secret of gaining success in it lies in the thorough training of yourself in never lingering over anything — nor anywhere.” Havelock Ellis says that all the art of living lies in the fine mingling of letting go and holding on. Here is a suggestion to keep one busy through the longest of black rainy days: was So-and-So, who helped to make history, a lettergo, a hanger-on — or, what perhaps made a hero of him, a half-and-half? Was I going to hang on, when common sense dictated that I should let go?

And floundering in a quandary, I took up my December Atlantic, — not the first time it has served me in making a decision, just as my father used to make his Bible help him in a doubt. Scanning the Table of Contents (like Aladdin rubbing his lamp), I fixed upon “A Gift from his Youth" as what I needed; nor was I disappointed. Hear this: “There’s no such thing as old age so long as you want to go on. . . . If you’ve got the instinct to go on, the strength will come. . . . Old age has nothing to do with the spirit. . . . Some people are [as] old at twenty [as at seventy] because they have given up wanting to go on.”(And oh, how I wanted to go on!) And then decision wavered — wobbled — I hung on with one hand, and let go with the other, thinking that the writer of that ideal story could not be an old woman; if she were young, or comfortably middle-aged, as the great majority of writers about the experiences of the aged are pretty sure to be, was her wisdom to be relied upon? But granting that the writer wrote from imagination, or close observation, in describing the experiences of the aged as she did — their spurts of physical exertion evaporating suddenly into depressing indecision; their throbbing sense of desolation “blighting every impulse”; their hopeless rebellion against old age; their causeless panics, defeating effort; their deadly conviction, that will not be downed, that they are no longer growing old, but are old, — could a centenarian have portrayed it all more perfectly? But then the inspiration that came to the old beau to go on, to hold on, the inspiration that came from the old sweetheart of the story, — that touch was by a youngling, I was sure.

So the next day saw me hammering away to finish a sonnet, that, if ever finished, and accepted for publication, will be one of the results of that charming story. And because of what it did for me, I am expecting a general revival in our magazines of writers who have been letting go, — poets, storytellers, essayists; those “antiques ” who have been advised to “retire to the background that their shadow may not retard the growth of the sprouting grain.” “Renounce,” says Wagner to these, “in time; don’t try to be, and to have been together.” Not such bad advice, after all, I find myself saying now as I copy his words. To let go, when one wants to hold on, — to go on, — is n’t that really a greater and braver thing to do than to hold on when one wants to let go? Selah.