-ROBERT BROWNING (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889)
Those of you who have had the misfortune to hear me address several retirement banquets will know that the title of this essay is a lift from a poem by the English poet, Robert Browning. The first line is “Come grow old along with me / The last of life for which the first was made.” That quotation from Browning’s work has always seemed appropriate for those who are entering retirement and the so-called golden years. Poets are not much concerned with the realities of life, which is quite likely true in this quotation from Robert Browning. If we were to parse Browning’s words and measure them against two or three facts, they might take on a different outlook altogether.
Browning says, “…the last of life for which the first was made.” Those of us who have endured the earlier Depression of 1929 and the Second World War are clearly in “the last of life.” It doesn’t take a physician to recognize that the last of life is the period when ailments and illnesses plague all of us. I suspect that most people want to live as long as possible. That is understandable. But the unfortunate fact is that the longer we live, the more likely we are to be felled by an ailment or illness that we cannot handle at that time of life. But I am glad that Browning’s work lives on. It is good poetry and there is always the hope that those terrible illnesses will somehow elude us. That is the hope, not the reality.
When Ms. Chicka and I decided to be married, we asked the Mayor of Millburn, New Jersey to perform the ceremony. The Mayor was Frank Long. I wrote out the script for him to read from during the marriage ceremony, and one way or another Frank became confused and he failed to do Browning’s poem aptly. For that mistake, Frank Long, the former Mayor of Millburn, owes Robert Browning an apology.
Now if oldsters did not have the ailments that go with the last of life, there is now the plague of September 15, 2008. You will recall that on that day the gloomy news from Wall Street reached our ears. No less than the US Treasury Secretary and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernake, concluded that the entire financial structure of the United States was in grave danger. Fortunes were lost overnight and/or severely damaged. Whatever financial security that those in the last of life may have enjoyed was gravely threatened. Banks were threatened and a good many of them went out of business, as did some ancient investment houses. Several thousand people have lost and are losing their jobs in the financial industry.
In my own case, agony accompanied me nearly every step of the way last week. It is not that I have that much to lose, because I don’t have that sort of fortune salted away. But like most other people, I would like to keep what little I have while the last years take place.
The financial crisis of recent weeks has tended to drown out consideration of the war in Iraq that is going on endlessly. The United States is spending between $10 and $12 billion per month to prosecute that war. The plain fact is that regardless of whatever else happens in the Middle East, we simply cannot afford to underwrite this expensive misadventure that has been going on for nearly six years.
And so in the last of life, a good many of us are worrying about our financial condition, the war in Iraq, and the health of our nation and of ourselves. The health of ourselves in the last of life is something that we can do little about. But the financial crisis and the war in Iraq were avoidable and those who led us into such messes ought to be severely punished. But we all know that nothing will happen.
The gloom that pervades so many millions of Americans today as I dictate this essay on September 21 may tend to lift if we perceive that intelligent people are at work to provide a remedy. If I knew that Barney Frank, a Representative from Boston, Chris Dodd, the sane senator from Connecticut, and Robert Reuben, the former Treasury Secretary, were part of the process, I would be cheered and comforted. I put no stock in the power of prayer but if I could say a prayer that would keep George Bush and his neo-con cohorts out of the process, I would be on my knees in an instant.
When Robert Browning wrote his work about the last of life, the world was a lot simpler. In that era, life expectancy was somewhere around 50 years. But if Browning were alive today, I would be obliged to tell him that in the intervening years, life has not gotten any simpler.
This is a gloomy assessment of where we stand in the first week of this financial crisis. But if we give it enough time and if the right people go to work on it, I suspect that there may eventually be an ending that is
acceptable to the American people. Those of us who remember the 1929 Depression and World War II will be waiting. It may give us a reason to keep on hanging on for the day when we can again sing, “Happy days are here again.” On the other hand, if things do not go well, we may all be singing the Depression tune, “Brother, can you spare a dime?”
E. E. CARR
September 25, 2008
Essay 339
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Kevin’s commentary: Well, six (!) years later and we’re starting to pull out of it. The wars are mostly over, and hopefully the U.S. doesn’t decide that it’s time to dive into the Ukraine…
I’ll admit that I don’t think I fully grasp the titular saying, in this one. Specifically the bit about “for which the first was made.” I’m reading the rest of the poem now though, and it seems like a relatively religious one. So maybe we’re talking about some type of divine making?