The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

by Robertson Davies

  • OF BONHOMIE IN TRAINS •

  I HAD TO MAKE a train journey yesterday. In an advertisement for a mystery story I read a testimonial from Miss Hedy Lamarr, in these strange words: “It made my blood curl.” … On the train were four happy extroverts who drank copiously from flasks, and were bosom friends in less than an hour; in ringing voices they discussed their investments, private fortunes, the Palestine situation and the difficulty of getting any wearable underpants. When any woman under seventy passed down the car they whistled after her, to show that they were full of hormones. They rushed to and from the lavatory, shouting as they went. As train lavatories have direct access to the roadbed, I hoped that they might fall through, but none of them did so.

  • OF CHRISTMAS TREES •

  I PUT MY Christmas tree out for the garbage collection today. The custom of setting up an evergreen in the house and worshipping it is a pre-Christian Teutonic one, and there are times when I wonder if it might not be permitted to lapse. Could we not have synthetic Christmas trees, which fold up like umbrellas, and which can be stored away in the attic when the Yuletide is over? Every year I struggle with one of these gummy monsters, which scatter their needles about the house and make the place smell as though someone were trying out a new cold cure. Give me a chromium tree, which will collapse like a music stand.

  • OF BIBLIOPHILY •

  ONCE AGAIN, after a pause of many years, catalogues are beginning to reach me from sellers of old books in England. If I had any strength of character I should throw these into the garbage pail as soon as they arrive but I am a weak creature, and I always risk a peek. This is fatal, for in no time at all the concupiscence of the book-collector bums hotly within me. I send off an order, and in the course of time a new treasure is added to the cupboard at Marchbanks Towers.… Real bibliophiles do not put their books on shelves for people to look at or handle. They have no desire to show off their darlings, or to amaze people with their possessions. They keep their prized books hidden away in a secret spot to which they resort stealthily, like a Caliph visiting his harem, or a church elder sneaking into a bar. To be a book collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope-fiend with those of a miser.

  • OF DAY AND NIGHT •

  OUR HOST REMARKED to me before dinner that the days are already drawing out. It is true, and I disapprove of it heartily. If I had the ordering of such things, it would be dark every winter day at five o’clock and every summer day at seven. Day should be day, and night night, and the present careless mingling of the two is distracting and annoying. As a matter of fact I think that time was much more sensibly dealt with in the Middle Ages when everybody got up at about 4 A.M., worked during the hours of daylight, and was in bed by 7 P.M. Midnight in those days was really the middle of the night, and not the hour when most people begin to think about bed. But for some inexplicable reason we now compound our normal day out of half the light and half the dark hours. And I stoutly maintain that when a man has done his day’s work it should be dark. This is sheer cantankerousness, and I glory in it.

  • OF UNCOUTH SPEECH •

  THE AUSTRALIAN LADY on my right has been telling me of her labours to rid herself of her native accent under the tuition of an elocution master. She had to say “How now, brown cow?” over and over again, as apparently this greeting is a very hard one for an Australian to utter with complete purity. This amused her greatly, for it appears that in the Antipodes the word “cow” is applied to any unfortunate person, male or female, and a set of disagreeable circumstances or a distressing personality may also be called “a fair cow.” Only in Australia, so far as I know, could a man be a black sheep and and a fair cow at the same time. It seems to me that a Canadian who wanted to improve his speech would probably have to say:

  A virile young squirrel named Cyril

  In an argument over a girl

  Was lambasted from here to the Tyrol

  By a churl of a squirrel named Earl,

  as this bit of Ogden Nashery contains the sounds which most commonly overthrow us.

  • OF DAME NATURE •

  I WENT TO SEE an exhibition of modern Canadian paintings this afternoon, and liked them very much. But there were a few people present who appeared to consider the pictures an insult to themselves—a kind of aesthetic hot-foot. They muttered and mumbled, but none of them seemed able to explain just what it was that bothered them. My own guess is that the pictures disturbed their ideas about nature, and made them reconsider certain notions which they have cherished, but not examined, for years. Music and pictures are able to churn the soul without using the medium of words, and as most people are quite at sea when they have to transform feelings into words they were affronted and gagged at the same time.… Most people, too, appear to think of Nature as a dear old lady with steel spectacles and a bonnet, mouthing platitudes. To have Nature presented to them as a wanton, decked in gayest colours and obviously not wearing a foundation garment, hit them smack under the Moral Sense, which is to a Canadian as its shell is to a tortoise.

  • OF KINGS GREAT AND KINGS GOOD •

  THE LADY ON MY LEFT was complaining to me about the foolish caricature of King Charles II which appeared in the film Forever Amber; the Merry Monarch was shown as a man surrounded by silly little dogs, to whom he cried “Come children!” from time to time.… I replied that I had been annoyed by the same thing, and also by repeated film caricatures of Henry VIII as a gross monster, gorging, swilling, burping and pinching the bottoms of court ladies. Charles and Henry were two of the ablest kings ever to occupy the British throne, and it is not wise to forget it. They would never have become Sunday School superintendents, of course, but they had many excellent, and indeed admirable qualities as statesmen. For some reason the British rulers who have been chosen by common consent for adulation are Alfred the Great (about whom we know nothing save what is told us by his personal chaplain, who was on his payroll), Charles I, who was pious, but had no tact and owes much to the fact that Vandyke was his court painter, and Victoria, who carried goodness to a point where it became indistinguishable from self-indulgence.

  • OF MODERN HOUSES •

  I PASSED LAST EVENING in the company of some people who have bought a lovely old house, and are having great fun fixing it up. Of course the furnace is not in very good condition and shoots most of its heat up the chimney, and none of the sashes fit, and there are cracks in the foundation, but it is a dear old place all the same. Admittedly they have to burn their own garbage in the furnace (which makes a smell) and they have to bury their tin cans privily at dead of night, and the water supply is capricious, but it has lovely high ceilings (some of which need replastering). Yet, in spite of their woes, I see what they are after. They are in rebellion against the modern vogue for houses which our ancestors would not have accepted as almshouses, and which are undoubtedly the nastiest human habitations ever to be built since man emerged from the Mud Hut Period of architecture. An old house is a nuisance, but it is obviously intended for men and women to live in. Much modern housing would be better called kenneling.

  • OF A LOST ART •

  A SCHOOLTEACHER confided to me today that there is nothing so useful for sticking things to a blackboard as shaving cream. It holds as well as glue, and yet it does not harden, and it imparts a delicious scent to the schoolroom, slightly ameliorating the customary effluvium of chalk, Vapex and wet sweaters. This lady told me that she used approximately a tube a term for this purpose.… What she said reminded me of my childhood, when I used to get my hair cut in the tonsorial parlour of an elderly barber called Murphy; in front of his two chairs were mirrors elegantly framed in walnut, and on these mirrors it was his custom to write improving sentiments in lather, such as “Treat Your Wife and Your Hair Right and They’ll Never Leave You” or “God’s Finest Gift—A Mother; A Man’s Best Asset—A Fine Head of Hair.” Murphy’s spelling was not always equal to the demands of his philosophy, but he wrote a flourishing hand with the lath
er brush, and surrounded these profound reflections with curlicues and even flowers delicately executed in lather. The art of lather work has died out, I fear.

  • OF A DISCOVERY •

  I BOUGHT SOME ROPE today, for the first time in my life, I think, and was amazed to find that it is sold by the pound, like cheese. Who would think of going into a shop and asking for two pounds of nice fresh rope, suitable for a suicide? Yet the request would be a perfectly sensible one. I bought twelve feet, or about an eighth of a pound, and it cost me seven cents.

  • OF THE TRUE FUNCTION OF RADIO •

  I LISTENED TO THE NEWS on the radio last night—a thing I rarely do, as it is my experience that good news always seems better the following morning, whereas bad news at night disturbs my sleep. The news consisted of a list of people who died during the day in a variety of distressing circumstances. Such harping on death annoys and depresses me. What the C.B.C. needs is a newscaster with second sight (they could probably import one from the Highlands of Scotland) who would give the names of children who had been born each day who would, in twenty-five or thirty years, be either great leaders and benefactors of mankind, or notable scoundrels. What we want is not news of who has left the earth, but something resembling the passenger list of an ocean liner, telling us who is joining the human race and what we may expect of them. There is no news about a death; one of the few certain things in life is that we shall all die. But if the radio could, now and again, announce the birth of a philosopher, or a great artist, or a nasty little baby who will grow up to be a Hitler, I would pay for my yearly licence in a somewhat more sprightly manner.

  • OF YOUNG FOGIES •

  AN ACTOR FRIEND of mine left a copy of Variety in my office today, and as I looked through it I was amazed to find a full-page advertisement which said, “Gabriel Pascal and Bernard Shaw wish all their friends a Successful New Year.” I wonder if Mr. Shaw really paid for half of that insertion? It doesn’t seem like him to deliver good wishes in that wholesale manner.… The magazine also contained an article headed, “Is Radio Burdened with Young Fogies?” It seems to me that the probable answer is “Yes.” The whole world is burdened with young fogies. Old men with ossified minds are easily dealt with. But men who look young, act young, and everlastingly harp on the fact they are young, but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution which would be excessive in their grandfathers, are the curses of the world. We have a good many young fogies in Canada—fellows who, at thirty, are well content with beaten paths and reach-me-down opinions. Their very conservatism is second-hand, and they don’t know what they are conserving.

  • OF THE SIESTA •

  I COMPOSED MYSELF after lunch for my noonday snooze, but was called three times on the telephone; in consequence my afternoon was ruined. It has long been my contention that the siesta is needed far more in our cold climate than in the langorous South. Southerners snooze at midday because they are lazy; Canadians should snooze at midday because they still have several hours of hard work ahead of them, including a certain amount of battling with the wintry blasts, and slipping and slithering on the ice. They need to prepare themselves for what lies ahead. But it happens far too often that when I compose myself for fifteen minutes of delicious torpor some fellow who either has high blood pressure or is in a hurry to develop it calls me. He never wants to tell me that I have inherited a fortune, or that a beautiful dark woman is anxious to make my acquaintance; he invariably wants me to do something right away, usually of a vexatious nature. By the time I have lied my way out of doing whatever it is he wants, the shy nymph Snooze has fled, and there is nothing for me to do but begin the afternoon’s toil.

  • OF AN OPPORTUNITY MISSED •

  I HAVE RECEIVED a great many letters relating to a radio broadcast in which I took part a fortnight ago. They all make the same complaint, and if I may I will give you the substance of a representative letter, sent to me by an elderly clergyman in Sault Ste. Marie: “There you were, with a national hookup, and what did you do? Talked in a smarmy, Nice Nellie way that nearly made me throw up! Why did you not do what any man of spirit would do if he had a chance to address the whole of Canada—shove your face as near the microphone as possible and shout a dirty word? Such as ‘——’, or ‘——’, or better still ‘——’? It is such a chance as I have long dreamed of. You had it, and you missed it. —— you!” The others are in much the same vein.… But what was I to do? Naturally the idea occurred to me, as it would to any man worthy of the name. But there were a lot of big C.B.C. bullies watching me, and I knew that if I yielded to my impulse I should be dragged from the microphone, beaten with rubber truncheons, and shipped to Ottawa under guard, where I would be forced to wash out my mouth with soap in the office of the Minister of National Revenue. I know that I was weak, but try to understand my position. I am not of the stuff from which martyrs are made.

  • OF A USEFUL DOG •

  I SAW A DALMATIAN dog today—one of those curious spotted animals which used to be called “blotting-paper dogs” when I was a boy. They used also to be called Coach Dogs, presumably because it was the smart thing to have one bounding along the road after one’s coach, getting even more spotted from the spatter of the wheels. But of the three names I like “blotting-paper dog” best. It suggests that a Dalmatian has literary qualities not given to other dogs—that it lends itself to use as an auxiliary penwiper, or to rolling gently on large manuscripts. The average dog is a nuisance to a writer, as it lies on his feet, snuffling, coughing and having bad dreams, while he tries to collect his thoughts. No dog has ever whispered poems into its master’s ear, as was the case with Victor Hugo’s cat, but at least the Dalmatian has tried to make itself useful in the study.

  • OF A MEDICAL CONSPIRACY •

  I WAS TALKING this evening to an nineteenth century Liberal who accused me of being an eighteenth century Tory. This was because I had been holding forth at some length about the conspiracy against the home life of our nation on the part of the medical profession and the nurses. There was a day when a man took pride in the fact that he was born in the house in which he lived, and looked forward with confidence to dying in the same house, and perhaps even in the same bed. This gave a richness of association to a dwelling which has entirely been destroyed by modern medical usage. Babies are now born in hospitals, and there is a powerful and subtle move on foot to persuade everybody to die in hospitals. My desire is to die in my own bed, leaning back on a heap of pillows, wearing a becoming dressing-gown and a skull-cap, blessing those of whom I approve, gently rebuking my enemies, giving legacies to faithful servants, and passing out clean handkerchiefs to the weepers; I should also like a small choir to do some really fine unaccompanied singing within earshot. But will I be able to stage such a production in a hospital? Never! I’ll be lucky if the nurse answers the bell in time to jot down my last words.

  • OF AN UNACKNOWLEDGED AILMENT •

  I READ IN A magazine this morning that gout is just as prevalent today as it was in the eighteenth century, although some doctors do not recognize it when they see it, believing the disease to be extinct. It seems to me that several other diseases are in the same anomalous position. For instance, in The Anatomy of Melancholy Robert Burton makes frequent reference to a disease which he calls “crudity,” the symptoms of which were distress in the stomach, wind, and a sensation of having swallowed hot pennies. Lots of people that I know have these symptoms; if they are poor they consume patent medicines; if they are rich they permit surgeons to do fancy whittling and knot-tying in their entrails. They give the ailment many names, but it is just plain crudity, and I should think that doctors would recognize it. A sure sign of crudity, says Burton, is what he calls “hard, sour and sharp belching.” Everybody knows how common this is; at service club luncheons you can hardly hear the speaker because of it. I have even heard it mentioned on the radio. Crudity numbers its victims by the millions, yet doctors refuse to acknowledge its existence.

 
; • OF MOTHERHOOD •

  I SEE BY THE PAPERS that the champion milch cow of Great Britain drinks twelve quarts of stout a day, and is habitually soused. Also there is a cat in California which never drinks anything but Scotch, is 17 years old and has produced 111 kittens. These are fascinating bits of information, but I fear that brooding on them will only lead to the formation of socially unacceptable theories concerning Motherhood.

  • OF THE PYTHAGOREAN NOTION •

  EVERY DAY I SEE a dog which lies in wait for passing cars, and rushes at them, snarling. It is my theory that this dog is a reincarnation of a traffic cop. The belief of Pythagoras that the souls of men may return to earth in the bodies of animals, and vice versa, seems to me to be no more unreasonable than a lot of things we are expected to believe nowadays, and there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence to support it.

  • OF HOT WEATHER •

  YES, I THINK the heat wave reached a new level this week. I do not greatly mind the heat; I simply drink water by the pailful, and go about my business. But some of my friends are in a sad state. This leads me to wonder whether the use of the fan by men might not be revived in Canada. Men carried fans in the eighteenth century; Orientals carry fans to this day. Of course the modern craze for utility would make it impossible to revive the fan as a thing of beauty, but a fan which was also a notebook, or which had actuarial tables printed on it, or which bore a large advertisement of one’s own business would surely be permissible. Golfers could keep their scores on special fans, and preachers would write their sermons on them. It has been whispered to me by a low fellow of secular tendencies that many a preacher last Sunday wore no trousers under his gown. It may be so, but it would ill become a layman like me to let his mind dwell on such a subject.