The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

by Robertson Davies

  I HAD A WRANGLE today with a man who said that there was no such thing as grammar, and that “the living speech” was good speech. He talked about “Everyman’s grammar”—meaning anything anybody cares to say—as the only guide to usage. Humph! I wouldn’t particularly like to trust myself to Everyman’s medicine, or Everyman’s ideas about the law. Why should I accept Everyman’s grammar?

  • OF FRENCH DRAMA •

  YESTERDAY I SAW a play done in French by an excellent group of actors from Quebec. When this happens a synopsis of the play is printed for dullards like me, but these synopses are of very little assistance, being written, I suppose, by a Frenchman whose knowledge of English is about on a par with my knowledge of French. They generally run something like this: “Alphamet, the lover of Pheenaminte, is eager to break off his intrigue with Flanelette, ward of the miser Planchette, whose earlier affair with a woman of the town, Clitore, has been discovered by the wily notary Bidet. To achieve his end he disguises himself as a country cousin, Merde, and seeks the assistance of the maid, Vespasienne, who is in reality the disguised Comtesse de Blancmange. Meanwhile the miser has altered his will, leaving everything to the poet Tisane, whose love for the beautiful Parapluie is made known to her supposed father (but in reality her ward) Derrière, bringing the whole merry business to an end with a sextuple marriage and the birth of the triplets, Un, Deux and Trois.”

  • A BOON TO PUBLIC SPEAKERS •

  I HAD TO MAKE a speech today, and was not in the mood for it. In consequence I lay in the bathtub and invented Marchbanks’ Rhetorical Robot, a type of recording machine for the use of public speakers. You prepare your speech, and record it when you feel at your best. You then go to the meeting, and when the time for your address comes you turn on the Robot, which delivers the speech for you, while you loll at ease, picking your teeth, laughing uproariously at your own jokes, and leading the applause.

  • THE HORROR OF GRACIOUS LIVING •

  I HEARD SOMEBODY use the expression “gracious living” today. Until now I have only seen it in print. It is a phrase I dislike. To my mind it suggests a horrible daintiness—salads made of cream cheese and pineapple, doilies scattered over everything and plaster book-ends supporting five books bound in imitation suede. People who go in for “gracious living” call beer “ale,” when it isn’t ale, because they think “ale” sounds more refined than “beer”; they are the people who never want more food—they always “wish” it. “Do you wish further prunes?” they say, looking as though no one who was not a gormandizer could possibly want anything more to eat. “How warm I’ve grown,” they say, when they are drenched in sweat. They never go to bed—they “retire.” They spend their whole lives trying to be like characters in The Ladies’ Home Journal. In my opinion, anyone who finds the expression “gracious living” creeping into his mind, is in mortal danger of becoming a pantywaist or a stuffed shirt. Good manners, decent hospitality and comfort are the reality; “gracious living” is a shoddy, sugar-coated substitute.

  • OF UNSAVOURY WHOLESOMENESS •

  I SEE THAT Princess Elizabeth and Barbara Ann Scott have both been included among the “Six Most Wholesome Women of the Year” by the Women’s Research Guild of New York. A dubious compliment, if ever I heard one. In my callow youth, I was badly scratched several times before I learned that if there is one thing no girl wants to be called, it is wholesome. This word suggests that a girl eats a lot of turnips, laughs too loudly at clean jokes, wears too much underclothing of the wrong kind, and has not heard about depilatories. Wholesome is what one calls girls whom one cannot call beautiful, or witty, or charming without hurrying straight to the bathroom to wash one’s mouth out with brown soap. Even a girl who takes a lot of outdoor exercise, like Miss Scott, need not be wholesome because of it: even a princess, with the eyes of the world upon her, can avoid the curse of wholesomeness. What girl would be a slice of bread, when she can be a piece of cake? I think that both these maligned young women are thoroughly unwholesome, so there!

  • A CREATURE OF HABIT •

  TODAY I SAW a baker wearing a pair of plastic pants over his ordinary trousers, and pondered idly on the purpose of this strange garment. A baby-sitter might advantageously wear plastic pants; I have known babies who themselves wore plastic pants; but why does a baker need plastic pants? Some modern mystery, beyond my comprehension, no doubt, for I am a poor creature, bound by chains of habit. The first butcher I saw as a child had a wooden leg, and to this day I have an unreasonable feeling that butchers with two genuine legs are impostors. Such is the strength of an early impression on a mind ill-suited to the giddy changes of modern life.

  • OF POLICE INEFFICIENCY •

  I READ WITH INTEREST that agents of the R.C.M.P. have been searching the offices of a Canadian magazine in search of a manuscript. “They searched the safe,” says one report, “but found nothing in it except a stock of stationery.” This shocks me. The R.C.M.P. must really be very badly trained, or they would know that nobody keeps anything valuable in a safe any more, nor has anyone done so since 1910. The vault, or safe of most business offices contains all or some of the following:

  (1) The accountant’s rubbers

  (2) Some disused ledgers

  (3) The stick with a hook on it which is used for opening the windows.

  (4) Two or three tarnished cups won by the firm’s bowling team back in the days when it had a bowling team.

  (5) A bottle of ink which has congealed but is too good to throw away.

  (6) Vases in which the secretaries put flowers on the rare occasions when anybody gives them flowers. Valuables are kept in banks. Manuscripts are kept in confused heaps on desks.

  • OF SEXUAL EXCLUSIVENESS •

  I PONDERED AT LUNCH today on the fact that all waiters in good hotels are clean-shaven. Is this a reminiscence of the time—about a century ago—when all men-servants wore powder in their hair on great occasions (although their masters had long given it up) and were forbidden to grow their whiskers as a mark of their servitude? At the turn of the century the only clean-shaven men to be seen in the streets were actors, clergymen, servants and a few lawyers.… A women’s luncheon was going on near me. It looked deadly dull. Gatherings at which only one sex is represented are rarely enlivening. The only thing drearier than a pack of men eating together is a pack of women doing the same.… I quite agree with you, madam; the sexes are only tolerable when mingled.

  • OF MALE COOKS •

  I WAS AT A GATHERING last night where I ate cookies made by one man, discussed the chemistry of cooking with another, and examined a gingerbread house made by a third. The gingerbread house was particularly fancy and appeared to me to carry the pastrycook’s art to considerable lengths.… More men can cook than is commonly thought, and I think that these male cooks are more concerned with the philosophy and mystery of cooking than are women. Women say, of course, that if men had all the cooking to do they would not like it so much. This is comparable to the frequent feminine comment that if men had to have babies there would soon be no babies in the world. Both remarks are equally untrue.… I have sometimes wished that some clever man would actually have a baby in a new, labour-saving way; then all men could take it up, and one of the oldest taunts in the world would be stilled forever.… I see that Shirley Temple has had a baby. Dear me, how time flies! Next thing we know that sweet little Mickey Rooney will be getting married.

  • OF UNDESIRED INFORMATION •

  I WAS EATING AN excellent slice of bread at lunch today, when I sensed a foreign substance in my mouth, and after some fishing and digging I found that it was a bit of paper. After I had cleaned it (by washing it in my tea, if you must know) I found that it was a union label, proclaiming that my bread had been made by organized bakers. I think, frankly, that I would rather have this information conveyed to me by other means than a label which I suspect had been licked by an organized tongue.… Many years ago I knew a cook whose father and brothers were bakers, and sh
e told me that they always kneaded their dough with their feet, prancing rhythmically in the large wooden mixing tub, with their trousers’ legs rolled up.… Is there really any progress? A generation ago it was feet; today it is spit. I have a good notion to begin baking my own bread.

  • WHAT MANY WOMEN WON’T ADMIT •

  IWENT TO A SCHOOL play last night and enjoyed it greatly. But I am always fascinated by the false whiskers with which young actors love to adorn themselves. They apply crêpe hair in quantities which could never, by any freak of nature, grow upon the human face, until they look like the Hairy Ainus who inhabit the northern reaches of Japan.… The play was What Every Woman Knows and the secret which every woman is supposed to know is that every successful man owes his success to a woman. I am not convinced of the truth of this, and would like to take a poll on it in the national capital. There are, I should think, quite a few men who have achieved a high degree of success in spite of the silly, inconsequent, pin-headed women they married in some unguarded, youthful moment. The Marchbanks Masculinist Party (of which I am the leader or Great Bear) seeks to undo the damage which has been done by such fellows as J. M. Barrie, who flattered women, basely, for money.… No, madam, I do not wish to qualify anything I have said.

  • OF SUPERFLUOUS HAIR •

  I SEE A STRANGE gadget advertised—a special pair of circular scissors to remove hair from the nose and ears. Personally I regard hair in the ears as a sign of wisdom; the Chinese greatly esteem an elongated earlobe, and it seems to me that when such a lobe is allied with a splendidly hirsute ear, perfection has been reached, and should not be tampered with. As for hair in the nose, it is picturesque, and with a little practice it can be made to quiver, like the antennæ of one of the more intelligent and sensitive insects. Anything which gives interest to the gloomy, immobile pan of the average Canadian citizen should be cherished and not extirpated with circular scissors.

  • OF READING PLAYS •

  A SMALL PLAY-READING group of which I am one met last night and had a very good time with Goldsmith’s She Stoops To Conquer. Reading plays can be anything from the pleasantest to the most penitential of pastimes. I was reading in Thomas Davies’ Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq. a few days ago about one of King George the Second’s exploits in this direction. The King had reached the age of seventy-seven and had ceased to go to the theatre, but he was keen to hear Macklin’s farce Love à la Mode, and Macklin had some hope that he might be asked to read his play to the King—presumably acting it out with great spirit. But, as Davies tells us, Love à la Mode was read to his Majesty by an old Hanoverian gentleman, who spent eleven weeks in the misrepresentation of the author’s meaning; the German was totally void of humour and was, besides, not well acquainted with the English language; the King, however, expressed great satisfaction at the Irishman’s getting the better of his rivals, and gaining the young lady. I have myself been present at play readings which were not much livelier than this.

  • OF SELF-HEALING •

  I WAS PLAYING some gramophone records last night, and one of them stuck in a groove, and before I could reach it, played the same passage at least ten times. I can remember the days when this happened quite often, and records with two or three such faults in them were prized. The owners would put them on again and again and howl delightedly when the repeats came. I recall one man who had a Harry Lauder record which did this at three separate points, and he never tired of it. But some of his friends did.… I visited my doctor, who has been gazing into the crystal ball and informs me that I have strabismus of the epithalamium, and must undergo treatment for it. I passed a window on the way home which contained packages of Fowl Conditioner, and the wild thought struck me that I might cure myself with that, making a name for myself in the medical histories.

  • OF BONES •

  DRIVING NEAR a railway siding this morning I beheld a sight of grim beauty—a gondola loaded with bones on their way to a glue factory. The load was heaped high and the rib-cages, spines and skulls of horses and cattle were seen in silhouette against a winter sky. Skeletons of all kinds have a beauty of their own; to me a house half-built, or a tall building which is still in the steel-structure stage, is a more pleasing object than the same building completed. Why skeletons are considered frightening objects I have no idea; most people would be far handsomer without their flesh than with it and I think this holds true of animals, as well.… And yet I will admit that there was an air of austerity about this load for the bone-yard. It was a gigantic reminder of our mortality, and if Sir Thomas Browne had been riding in the car with me he would no doubt have favoured me with a few rolling periods on the subject. And although the bones in themselves were beautiful there was something depressing about the thought that they would end, in all probability, as ten-cent bottles of mucilage, and that vile substance which bookbinders use so freely in their trade.

  • THE LANGOURS OF TRAVEL •

  AS I SAT ON A siding today I reflected upon the extraordinary slowness of our Canadian trains. There are, I know, fast trains in this country, but they never go anywhere that I want to go. The trains which I am forced to take dawdle through the countryside, squatting every now and then to cool their bellies in the snow, while I yawn and try to read, a diversion which the lumpiness of the roadbed makes impossible. I was roused from a doze this afternoon by a fear that the train was on fire. There was no smoke, and I decided that someone must have left a pair of rubbers, or possibly a soiled baby, against the heating apparatus. But later I discovered that a man across the aisle had lit a pipe, at which he sucked with obvious enjoyment. There was a smoking section of the car, but he did not choose to go to it. Instead he blew his fetid exhalations everywhere, causing old ladies and expectant mothers to seek refuge between the cars, while men like myself, apparently in the best of health, turned grey in the face and wished for death to end our sufferings. I don’t mind pipes; I smoke a pipe myself; but this was such a pipe as the damned must smoke in Hell.

  • OF PRAYERS AND ENTREATIES •

  A SCIENTIST WHOM I know was telling me this evening that ants and spiders sing quite loudly for their size, that flies scream and that weevils make noises like rivetters as they bore into wheat grains, yet none of these cries is audible to us, being far above the sound level of our ears. As he explained, the notion struck me that possibly our prayers and entreaties are not audible to God’s ear. Perhaps as I walk in my garden ants and spiders send up the most terrific outcries to me for rain, or peace; maybe they think that I am being hard upon them when I do not answer their prayers, when the plain fact is that I do not hear them. Obviously they should lower their voices; and perhaps if we want to catch the ear of the Ancient of Days, we should moderate the eager shrillness with which we address Him.

  • OF HIS FALLING-OUT WITH DOGS •

  I WAS CORNERED before dinner by that solemn man over there who took me to task for my attitude toward dogs; who are, he tells me, noble creatures. This grieves me, for the quarrel between me and the canine world was begun by the dogs themselves. I am the sort of man at whom dogs bark, rush wildly, and jump up. People who think that dogs are wonderful judges of character insist that this means that I have the soul of a burglar, or possibly a cat. If dogs think so poorly of me is it any wonder that I am distant in my attitude toward dogs? I get on well with horses, I mix freely with cows, cats are affable in my presence, and goats consider me one of themselves. Babies (also considered infallible judges of character) gurgle with fascination when I go near them. Old ladies ask me to help them across the street. But dogs dislike me. By a process of reasoning too complicated to go into here, this leads me to dislike dogs, and to regard them as idiotic and dangerous, or both. My household pet is the cat, which was man’s friend while the dog was still unable to distinguish itself from a wolf.

  • OF CHEWING GUM •

  THIS MORNING I had a brief chat with a gum-chewer, whose technique, I was interested to observe, was very poor. She chomped vigorou
sly, with much wasteful jaw-movement and audible squelching. If I had had the time, I would have given her a lesson. The experienced chewer wastes no motion; he keeps his teeth together, merely nudging his quid from time to time with a single molar; he does not seek to produce the maximum of saliva, but is content with enough to keep his palate gently afloat; he does not work at his gum—rather let us say that he cherishes it; his technique is that of the cow, rather than the cement-mixer.

  • OF THE FIEND CZERNY •

  A LITTLE GIRL was showing me some of her piano exercises today. They were simple things with fanciful names, and she seemed to like them. When I was a child piano lessons involved an intimate acquaintance with the exercises of a fiend named Carl Czerny, all of which were intended to be performed at incredible speed. The pupil of those days began with a variety of Czerny, and soon passed on to thick books called The School of Velocity, The School of Finger Dexterity and so forth until he approached a work of blood-chilling difficulty called The Virtuoso Pianist. I never scaled this awful eminence (I broke down and was flung aside in Finger Dexterity) but I heard other students playing it, and such swoops, crashes and wrist-paralyzing convulsions of sound were never heard. The object of learning all this, I was told, was so that if, in later life, one broke down in the performance of a concerto, one could always fill in with a few spasms of Czerny; the musically ignorant in the audience would never notice the difference, and the musically élite would understand that the pianist was perfectly capable of playing anything.