The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

by Robertson Davies

  Will the love that you’re so rich in

  Light the fire in the kitchen

  And the little god of Love turn the spit, spit, spit?

  Love, like ice-cream, is a beautiful thing, but nobody should regard it as adequate provision for a long and adventurous journey.

  • THURSDAY •

  Had to do some motoring today. I have two characters, my Pedestrian Character, in which I am all for the Common Man, the freedom of the roads, and the dignity of Shank’s Mare; and also my Motorist Character, in which I am contemptuous of the rights of walkers, violent in my passion for speed, and arrogant in my desire to kill anybody who gets in my way. As I have never ridden a bicycle, I am the enemy of cyclists in both characters. If I am walking, they sneak up behind me, and slice the calves off my legs with their wheels; if I am driving, they wobble all over the road, never signal, and seem to be deaf, blind and utterly idiotic. In spite of their stupidity, cyclists rarely get themselves killed; the roads are slippery with defunct cats, squashed skunks and groundhogs, and hens who have been gathered to Abraham’s bosom, but I have never seen a mass of steel, leather windbreaker and hamburger which was identifiable as the cadaver of a cyclist.

  • FRIDAY •

  Went today to view the X-rays which were taken of my inside some weeks ago. They were hung up on a rack and lighted from behind. I saw what was wrong at once; a long, thin, jagged monster was gnawing at my vitals; it was at least two feet in length, and on every joint there was a cruel hook. The doctor was very kind. He showed me my pylorus, and commented pleasantly on the nice appearance my spine made in the picture. But I could not take my eyes off the monster. Was it a tapeworm? Or was it something infinitely worse—something hitherto unknown to science? How long could I last with a thing like that in my vitals? As the doctor drew attention to the wonders of my inner world I grew more and more apprehensive, for I knew that he was saving the worst for the last. But the time came when he seemed to have finished. Summoning up all my courage, I asked the fatal question. “And that, doctor,” I said; “what is that?” He lowered his voice, in case one of the nurses might overhear. “That is your zipper, Mr. Marchbanks,” said he.

  • SATURDAY •

  Was in a bookshop today, reading a magazine on the sly, when a man and a woman came in and bought a school-book for their child. Neither one had the look of a reader (this is understatement) and as they left the man said, “Jeez if they were onto their job they’d put all this school stuff in one book, and then I wouldn’t be all the time wastin’ money.” This seemed to me to sum up much of the popular attitude toward books and education. There was a time when reformers thought that if education were available to the masses, the masses would love it, and every humble cottage would be bursting at the seams with cheap reprints of the world’s classics. In this supposition, as in many another, the reformers were somewhat optimistic. A real dictatorship of the proletariat—if such a thing existed—would quickly result in a bookless world.

  -XIV-

  • GAMMOCKING SUNDAY •

  One of those fine bright days upon which communion with Nature is all but obligatory, so I obediently made my way into the country and tried it. But fine as the phrase “communion with Nature” sounds, it is anything but easy in practice. Observed that the pussywillows were well advanced, but what of it? I never cared much for pussywillows. The roads were muddy, and the air smelled pleasantly of spring, except when I passed a swamp, where it smelled powerfully of drains. Investigated an old churchyard and read some old tombstones, and admired the carving on them, which was really very skilful, though not particularly tasteful. Nature seemed to have no special message for me, so I went home and resumed the combat with my furnace, which is trying to roast me alive.

  • MONDAY •

  A cold, wet, foggy day—a sort of Indian winter; people who have gone about during the fine weather gloating that we should pay for it later are in the seventh heaven of delight because of the fulfilment of their prophecy. Business took me to Toronto, the Ontario Babylon, and in an odd moment, I tried to buy a copy of Edmund Wilson’s latest book, but was told that it had been banned from sale in Canada. Why? And by whom? Why is it that my government, which takes anything up to 18 months to check and return my Income Tax form, can tell me what I may not read within a fortnight of the book’s publication? I should like to know whether the official who banned this book read it through? I should like to know whether he knows anything about Edmund Wilson and his work? I should like to know what, specifically, he objected to in the book which he banned? Is this official a critic? What education has he had? I imagine him as a little man with thin lips and rimless spectacles who does not read himself (his real job is checking invoices for the Customs) but who acts on suggestions from professional sin-sniffers—a class abounding in our fair land.

  • TUESDAY •

  Train-travel tonight, and I sat up in a day-coach, reading. Everyone else, however, was disposed to sleep, and curled up in astonishing contortions on the seats; they looked as though they had all eaten toadstools, and died in agony. A young airman across the aisle from me took off his tunic, his tie and his boots, scratched himself as thoroughly as decency allowed, and laid himself down with his feet under my nose; I tapped the feet with my book; and he moved them a little nearer to himself, but they were still plainly visible out of the corner of my eye. A soldier nearby stuck his clenched fist into his mouth, which gave his snores a hollow bassoon-like quality. The women, for the most part, tucked their heads out of sight and elevated their hind-quarters, like Mohammedans praying. The air was heavy with the frowsy, dead stench of sleeping humanity. I sat bolt upright, feeling like the only reveller at a wake, and read the night through, starting nervously whenever the owner of the socks kicked in his sleep, or when the fist-sucker seemed in danger of strangulation, or when one of the women groaned. Toward morning they all looked greenish-gray, which added nothing to the charm of the scene.

  • WEDNESDAY •

  As I was slicing some bread this morning there was a ring at my door, and I opened it to find an ugly-faced ruffian with a heavy paunch standing on the mat. “D’yuh own this house or rent it?” he demanded. “Who wants to know?” I asked. “I do,” said Pauncho; “this house had oughta be insulated, and if yuh don’t own it there’s no good my wastin’ time talkin’ to yuh.” I disembowelled him neatly with the breadknife, and called the Sanitation Department to come and clear away the mess.… I am often amazed that reputable firms, anxious to sell their products, will permit underbred, impudent, discreditable, rascally slubberdegullions to go from house to house, losing friends and alienating people from them. Nowadays, when there are so many government snoops and stool-pigeons asking questions everywhere, mere hawkers of potato-peelers, loose-leaf encyclopaedias, and patent jamjar rings think that they may adopt the same insulting tone. Consumption, cancer and the pox are all said to be on the increase in this country, but in my opinion the disease of bad manners is outstripping them all.

  • THURSDAY •

  Visited the dentist today, and as I was a few minutes early I had a chance to look around his waiting-room and make a few Holmes-like deductions from what I saw. Like all dentists, he is apparently a slow reader, for magazines which other people discarded in the 1942 salvage drive are just beginning to find their way to his table. Examined his diplomas carefully. Why do all the boss-dentists who sign these things write so illegibly? A man who cannot control a pen any better than that is surely a dangerous fellow to be poking about in one’s mouth with the nut-picks and tiny power-driven grindstones which dentists use. Lying on the table was a parcel which obviously contained a pound box of a popular brand of candy, left there by the patient who was at that moment in the monster’s clutch. “Aha,” I thought; “a woman, obviously, and a self-indulgent woman at that; probably fat.” But when the door opened the candy was claimed by a big bruiser in a leathern jerkin, who had been getting his snappers put in condition for a delicious feas
t of nougat, chocolate creams, fudge, and caramels. There are times when I think that Sherlock Holmes was a fraud.

  • FRIDAY •

  My furnace passed peacefully away in its sleep last night; I could have prolonged its life with a transfusion of coke, but I thought it better not to do so; its temperature had risen to 82°, and I was sweltering, so I let nature take its course. The obsequies will be celebrated very quietly by the ash-man.… Thus ends another winter’s epic struggle, and as I watched my old enemy grow colder and colder this morning, I was able to think of him with the magnanimity of a victor. He did all he could to outwit me, but science, skill, experience, and superior brain-power were on my side. When I hung up my long poker and my clinkerhook, my scraper and my shaker, and put the shovel in the corner, there was triumph in my heart, but a little sadness too.… My furnace now being extinct, and invalid as a source of grief and irritation to me, I masochistically turn my attention to my garden. I am learning about gardening in the only practical way—by experience. Last year I planted $3.45 worth of flower seeds, all in 5 cent packages, and not one single bloom rewarded my efforts. Maybe my method was wrong. My desire was to have a garden which might be described as “a riot of bloom”, and so I mixed all my 69 packets of seeds in a big bowl and sowed them broadcast through the flower beds; all I got was the usual riot of weeds. But once again I am filled with hope for my garden. Upon the pleasures of the past the sun never sets, and over its horrors the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy.

  • SATURDAY •

  The coming of spring may mean blossoms and picnics for some people, but I am faced with enough repairs and painting to keep me busy till the dogdays. Did some staining today, with a particularly volatile stain, most of which I absorbed into my system through my nose; probably my breathing apparatus is a rich mahogany colour, in consequence.… The fumes of the stain, combined with some chocolates which I unwisely ate, produced a mystical lethargy, in which I saw strange visions; the lethargy was succeeded by a headache, which I cured with tablets.… Was trying to explain about Hitler to some children today; he was, I said, a very bad man. “Was he the kind that wanted his custard before he’d eaten up all his meat and vegetables?” one of them asked. I said that his sins had been even more scarlet than that, but was unable to abridge the iniquities of the Third Reich to nursery terms, for fear of putting ideas into their heads.… It turned cold tonight, and as my fireplace was inadequate for my wants, I had to relight my furnace. I make no bones about it; this was an humiliation which I found hard to swallow. The furnace giggled and sniggered and made thumping noises all evening, just to let me know that it was there, and had not finished with me yet.

  -XV-

  • SUNDAY •

  The press of the times forced me to work today, just as though it were any Monday or Tuesday, which afflicted me abominably. I hate work, regarding it as the curse of Adam, and am fully in sympathy with the medieval view that work is an ignoble way of passing the time, beneath the dignity of anyone of fine feelings or intelligence. However, as there was no escape, I pushed my pen and punched my typewriter all day, and all evening till bedtime, taking time off only for a short walk. When I returned, my furnace had gone out. Tired of being checked, it yielded up the ghost, leaving only a mass of clinkers in the firepot. Addressed myself to the task of re-lighting it, and at last, when I was worn to a nubbin and hysterical with exasperation, the new fire was ready, and in time a gentle warmth stole through the house.

  • MONDAY •

  Tonight to the movies to see a Noel Coward film of which I had heard and read a variety of conflicting criticisms. I enjoyed it very much, but I can understand that many Canadians would not care for it because it dealt with a kind of English life which is unfamiliar to most people here. So far as acting, directing and humour were concerned, I thought it far beyond all but the best Hollywood products.… Right behind me was a fellow who had brought his deaf and blind fiancée to the films, and he explained every piece of action to her in detail, and repeated all the dialogue as well. I thought the girl was dumb, too, but whenever anything particularly moving came on the screen, she said “Jeeznitawful,” which I interpreted as an expresson of emotion.… When this picture was shown in Ottawa, there was a newspaper controversy about the accent in which the characters spoke, which refined Bytowners thought common. It is interesting that most Ontario people suffer from the delusion that they speak without an accent of any kind, and that corruption of the King’s English exists only outside the confines of this blessed spot, this earth, this realm, this Ontario.

  • TUESDAY •

  Looked out of an upstairs window this morning and saw a squirrel apparently fast asleep on the roof of my woodshed; when I returned five minutes later, it was still dozing peacefully in the sun. I did not know that squirrels ever rested in this lazy way; I thought that only the more highly developed mammals, like man, had enough sense to keep still for long periods when the weather was fine.… A friend who wants to save my soul has sent me three tracts, which I have added to my collection of works of edification. One of them tells of a “devoted Christian businessman” who was knocked down by a truck, and called his family about him for a deathbed orgy; to all of them he said “Good-night” except Charlie, the Black Sheep; to Charlie he said “Good-bye” in such a significant manner that Charlie was soon brought to his knees, “crying out in agony of soul” and repenting. “Charlie is now a preacher of the Gospel,” says the tract, triumphantly.… Another is about a wicked sea-captain who repented on his deathbed in time to be saved; a cabin-boy with a Bible completed the job just in the nick of time. The eventual profession of this boy is not mentioned.

  • WEDNESDAY •

  Woke early this morning, looked out of my window, and saw snow descending in large wet flakes; later, when I had summoned up the energy to get out of bed, the sun was shining brightly; as I sat down to breakfast, the skies clouded and it began to rain. This reminded me of Sir William Watson’s painful lines:

  April, April,

  Laugh thy girlish laughter;

  Then, the moment after,

  Weep thy girlish tears.

  I have long thought that these displays of meteorological hysterics might better be described thus:

  Idiot April,

  You dribble and grin;

  Calm yourself, April,

  Wipe off your chin.

  This in turn reminded me of the girl in Schubert’s song who laughed and wept by turns, and didn’t know why, but coyly suspected that she must be in love. I have known plenty of girls who were in love, in my time, and I never saw one yet who behaved in this uncertain manner; they all looked like the cat who had just swallowed the canary.

  • THURSDAY •

  Attacks on my peace of mind are unpleasantly common this week. Today a man presented me with a volume called Seven Years Street Preaching in San Francisco, California, Embracing Triumphant Death Scenes. He said that he thought I needed it more than anybody.… It has its lively side; I am particularly impressed with the author’s observations on an auctioneer whom he saw in San Francisco: “If we could get ministers to cry aloud as earnestly over living immortal souls as this man does over spoiled cheese at two cents a pound, what a waking up they would produce among the sleeping thousands of this land!” … The triumphant death scenes are very choice, particularly those of Orlando Gale and Romeo Darwin, both of Ohio, and I am amazed that dying women and men should be able to find breath to make such long and involved speeches. I notice that the author has little hope for those who died outside the Methodist faith, and is particularly scathing about the Church of Rome. Upon the whole I judged that the writer of this book has never been exceeded in zeal, even by auctioneers selling spoiled cheese.

  • FRIDAY •

  Paid a visit today to the liquor store, that mighty democratic institution, where I hobnobbed with high and low, rich and poor, clergy and laity for twenty minutes or so, while waiting my turn. Was not pleased to
see a little girl there with her mother; the child could not have been more than four years old. Now was it her mother’s fault, that desire for a bottle of Ontario wine caused her to bring her child into that crowd, or the fault of our fatherly government, which makes the purchase of liquor so complex an undertaking? How long will it be before we learn to treat liquor sensibly in this country? … On another journey today I had to wait while an official filled up a form for me. I noticed that he spent a few seconds flourishing his pen in the air, before setting it to paper, every time he had to write, and this flourishing cost me several minutes extra before the job was done. I wanted to ask him about it, but did not want to embarrass him. I have seen business men, also, waggle their pens furiously above the page before making their mark (which is what most business signatures amount to).

  • SATURDAY •

  Meant to do some gardening this afternoon, but as a heavy snowfall made it impossible, I enjoyed a pleasant swoon on a sofa for a couple of hours, and arose much refreshed.… Then to a party, where I showed my prowess at those games where you have to fill out forms saying who Cain’s wife was, and whether it was Lincoln or Petrillo who said “We must save the Union at all costs.” I like games of that sort; the games I hate are those where somebody comes into the room and says that his first is in coffee but not in tea, and his second is in India but not in Canada, and so forth, until he has told you everything except what you want to know, namely, when the refreshments are going to appear.