The Wisdom of Old Age, by Loren Webster

Whenever you’ve immersed yourself in too much Emerson or Thoreau and feel yourself being uncontrollably lifted away by positive thoughts, it’s a good time to read a Hawthorne story or two. Perhaps that’s why Diane and I decided to spend a week on Hawthorne before beginning to review some modern poets again. Despite the fact that early in his life Hawthorne joined Brooks Farm, a burgeoning transcendental commune, he came to reject much, though not all, of the optimism of the Transcendentalists. Perhaps his long Puritan heritage was simply too great of a burden to be rid of in a single lifetime, but, for whatever reason, Hawthorne spent the rest of his literary lifetime challenging the pure optimism of his famous neighbors.

Seldom does Hawthorne directly reject the ideas of the transcendentalists, though. In fact, his multi-level ambiguity is, for me, one of his most endearing traits. This very ambiguity seems to suggest that it is impossible to know virtually anything absolutely. Life is by its very nature ambiguous, and there is seldom an absolute right or wrong. His unwillingness to give a definitive answer to the questions he raises forces his reader to make those decisions for themselves, which is as it should be.

“Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” is no exception here. The story appears to attempt to answer the age-old question of whether a fountain of youth would improve mankind’s lot. It’s easy to see the story simply in terms of the four characters who actually take the magical potion, but the narrator must also be seen as a direct participant in this experiment, even if he never actually takes the potion himself.

The four characters who quickly choose to take the potion given the chance are “melancholy old creatures, who had been unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they were not long ago in their graves.” Mr. Medbourne had lost his fortune through speculation. Colonel Killigrew “had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures.” Mr. Gascoigne was “a ruined politician, a man of evil fame.” The Widow Wycherly, “a great beauty in her day” had lived a scandalous life.

The story begins as a fabulous fairy tale with magical mirrors and a faded rose magically restored to its original beauty. Even this magical setting is shrouded in mystery, “it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased patients dwelt within its verge, and would stare him in the face whenever he looked thitherward. The author himself admits that “some of these fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be traced back to my own veracious self,” leaving us to wonder how a veracious person can spread “fables.”

It’s important to note that Dr. Heidegger does not take the potion himself because “having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry to grow young again.” He also urges them to “draw up a few general rules for your guidance, in passing a second time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be, if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!"

After taking the youth potion, Mr. Gascoigne's immediately turned back to political topics, and:

"he rattled forth full-throated sentences about patriotism, national glory, and the people's right; now he muttered some perilous stuff or other, in a sly and doubtful whisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents, and a deeply deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his well turned periods."

Sound familiar? Watched any national news lately? Apparently age is not guarantee of wisdom.

Surely the Widow Wycherly whose reputation had been besmirched by her actions would have learned from experience, right?

"As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world beside."

This, in turn, leads to the rivalry for her affections that had earlier condemned these four to sorrow and misery, a rivalry that seems all the more macabre because of their real age:

"Never was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered grandsires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam."

Revealing just how little they have learned from age, the three men struggle over the woman, and in doing so “the table was overturned, and the vase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor…” Symbolically and literally, any chance for a new life was destroyed by the old rivalries that had originally destroyed their lives.

Ironically, the four friends have learned nothing through experience and they are anxious to head out for Florida to find more of the Fountain of Youth. Only Dr. Heidegger seems to have no desire for the potion:

"Well--I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it--no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me!"

The reader, or at least this reader, though, is left wondering whether Dr Heidegger himself might not be wise enough to benefit from the potion. He seems to have gained wisdom over time. Isn’t someone wise enough to know the dangers of a potion precisely the one most likely to be able to overcome those dangers? Surely some people are capable of learning through experience how to overcome the emotions that threaten to destroy their lives. Or is the idea of regaining youth so dangerous that no one can be trusted with its knowledge?

There certainly seems to be many cases of older people acting just as foolishly at an old age as they did during their youth. One might, for instance, even wonder if this parable wouldn’t serve equally well to illustrate the problems Sharon and Arafat face in the Middle East. Why has neither of them gained enough wisdom through their struggles to lead their people to a successful peace? Can life and experience teach us nothing when it comes to emotional struggles? Are we doomed to repeat our mistakes until we are wiped from the face of the earth?