Only fifty-eight
Above all, they were afraid of catching cold, and so put on thick clothes even in the summer and warmed themselves at the stove. Granny was fond of being doctored, and often went to the hospital, where she used to say she was not seventy, but fifty-eight; she supposed that if the doctor knew her real age he would not treat her, but would say it was time she died instead of taking medicine.
Anton Chekhov – Peasants (1897)
One of those attitudes not quite admitted among the chattering classes is the fate of those they consider to be too old, too useless or both. It’s an old attitude which every now and then bubbles to the surface in various covert and sometimes not so covert guises.
One of the covert guises is fiction. Writers of fiction are able to slip it into situations and conversations as part of the social ambience their writing aims to create. Fictional situations and fictional characters, but probably not unfamiliar to many readers. The most famously explicit example must be Charles Dickens –
“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides—excuse me—I don’t know that.”
Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol (1843)
Sometimes it goes further –
In any case he did not like old men. The War had carried him with the rest upon the swing of that popular cry “Every one over seventy to the lethal chamber.”
Hugh Walpole – The Young Enchanted (1921)
Source: https://akhaart.blogspot.com/2024/09/only-fifty-eight.html
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