The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

by Robertson Davies

  • SATURDAY •

  Was talking to a man today who advanced the theory that the violence of the recent election was attributable to the bad weather; wet, cold politicians, he said, were markedly more vicious than warm, sundrenched ones. Politicians, he continued, are like grapes; when they are allowed to ripen long upon the vine, they achieve a sweet, rich flavour, and give off a delightful aroma of wisdom and urbanity; but when they get too much rain and frost they are small, sour, thick-skinned and inclined to seediness.… Parliament he said (by now intoxicated with the insidious liquor of metaphor) was a wine, composed of all these diverse political grapes, and sometimes we got fine old fruity Parliaments, full flavoured and of exquisite bouquet, and sometimes we got little, sour Parliaments, provocative of bellyache; it all depended on the grapes.… Fascinated by his eloquence, I suggested that we should throw a few newly-elected members into a vat, and trample them with our bare feet, singing merry vintage songs the while, in order to see how the new brew would turn out; O for a beaker full of the Twentieth Parliament, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene!

  -XXIV-

  • SUNDAY •

  Had some notion of a picnic today, but it rained. A man I know who lives in the woods tells me that the mosquitoes this year will be as big as sparrows, and may be expected to last until well into December. He bases this prediction on the way the beavers are building their dams. As everyone knows, beavers eat a lot of insects, and particularly mosquitoes (for the formic acid which the latter contain, and which assists the beaver in seeing under water) and a beaver’s burrow contains a special chamber for the storage of the insects caught during the summer season. Apparently the beavers this year are making these chambers unusually big, and from this my friend deduces that they expect a bumper crop of mosquitoes, of particularly large size.… I have always wished that I were better versed in nature lore of this kind.

  • MONDAY •

  To a picnic this afternoon on the shores of a lake which contained many islands; because of the soft dampness of the air and some tricks of light, the scene was strongly reminiscent of the Hebrides. Saw a garter snake, the first in a long time, and observed its beautiful squirmings and dartings from a prudent distance. I am told by my naturalist friends that these creatures are about a foot long and completely harmless, but in the matter of snakes I suffer from telescopic vision; if I stand too near a garter snake it assumes the proportions of a boa constrictor.… Fear of snakes seems unrelated to other kinds of physical courage. I have seen large, tough men jump and squeak like school-girls at the sight of a grass snake, and I have known two girls who thoroughly enjoyed a romp with any snake they met. Personally I have developed a suave but distant politeness toward reptiles of all sorts, and I prefer to see them in zoos, if at all.

  • TUESDAY •

  Noticed a mixed group of dogs playing today, and wondered whether they had any consciousness of breed, as we have of race; I can see no sign of it. The lordly Afghan seems willing to play tag with a terrier, and a spaniel plays with a St. Bernard without any apparent consciousness of the difference in size between them. There seems to be no Master Race, no Jewish Problem, and no Quebec and Ontario feeling among dogs.… Tonight to the movies—one of those dreary pieces about a musical genius who has fits and kills people. Why is it that genius on the screen is so frequently represented as a form of idiocy? Is it to comfort the mediocrities who have paid the price of admission to sit and think, “O how lucky we are not to be geniuses; how fortunate we are to be happily dumb and imperturbably numb!”

  • WEDNESDAY •

  The recurrent Canadian Flag controversy concerns no class of society more deeply than elocutionists, as one of them was explaining to me today. For years they have made a specialty of a rousing poem by the late E. Pauline Johnson (“Tonakela”) called Canadian Born, every verse of which ends with some such assertion as:

  But each has one credential

  Which entitles him to brag

  That he was born in Canada,

  Beneath the British Flag!

  Canadian Born is what elocutionists call, in the parlance of their trade, “a ring-tailed peeler”, containing such noble and rampageous lines as:

  The Dutch may have their Holland,

  The Spaniard have his Spain;

  The Yankee to the south of us

  Must south of us remain!

  —these latter words being delivered in a loud, quarrel-picking voice. I have heard it recited often (sometimes even in Indian costume) at church socials, political picnics, Dominion Day Celebrations, and kindred uproars, and it never fails to rouse the audience to blood-thirsty fury—sometimes directed toward the foes of their country, and sometimes toward the elocutionist herself (for it is generally assumed to be a piece for a lady to speak). Tonakela has gone to the Happy Hunting Ground, and the chances that any of our icebound modern Canadian poets will write another such patriotic bobby-dazzler are slight indeed.

  • THURSDAY •

  Hot all day, and hot tonight—too hot to do any work, though I had plenty to do. So went to a movie instead. Its charm lay in the fact that it lacked “love interest” completely. I am not interested in anybody’s love affairs except my own, and I think that many people feel the same way. Who wants to sit through several reels of inanity which has no purpose except to postpone the inevitable kiss or bedding? Love, as a theme for the movies, has had its day; give me more movies about horses and other such interesting things. I know exactly what the Beloved in the Song of Solomon meant when she cried “Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love”.… Thunder storm in the night, which meant that I had to rise from my bed and flit about the house, like a wraith, shutting windows and falling over things people had left on the floor.

  • FRIDAY •

  Since I got a cat of my own, my life has been full of cats. Visited a lady today who has two beautiful black and white cats named Inky and Pinky. I hear news occasionally of my brother Fairchild’s Persian, named Button Boots. I see cats on the streets and by the roadside, where I never saw a cat before. A few days ago, making my way toward the In and Out shop, I was almost knocked over by a black Persian, as big as a spaniel, dashing past me, pursued by a man carrying a wrapped bottle. Whether it was a jinni which had escaped from the liquor I did not have time to enquire. As for my own kitten Tiger, I am learning things from her that I never knew before. First of all, I never knew that a kitten could burp, which Tiger does with all the abandon of an old mariner. Second, I never realized that a kitten could be completely and infallibly house-trained, and suddenly forget all it had been taught, reverting to intolerable Bohemianism. Also, why does she like to hide in the piano, plucking ghostly music from the strings with her claws? Is she a sphinx, or merely a humorist of a somewhat earthy sort?

  • SATURDAY •

  Worked in my garden this afternoon, until rain drove me indoors. Fed the kitten and observed that she ate from the front of her plate toward the back, thereby keeping all her food under her chin, in case an enemy should try to snatch a morsel from her. I have noticed many human beings who eat in precisely the same way, and I deduce that it is a continuance of jungle behaviour. Next time I see a man who crouches over his plate and scoops all his food from the outside edge, I shall let out a howl like a pterodactyl, and watch him give a primordial, prehistoric jump.

  -XXV-

  • SUNDAY •

  As it was a fine day I sat on my verandah and permitted passers-by to stare at me. Staring is the great Sunday-afternoon pastime. People who go walking on the seventh day seem convinced that anyone who sits on a verandah is blind, deaf and silly. They wander along the streets, gaping like egg-bound pullets, and making remarks in voices which carry perfectly for a quarter of a mile in all directions. “That house needs a good coat of paint,” says one, and another replies, “If that were my lawn, I’d rip the whole thing up and re-sod it.” “Look at those vines,” someone cries indignantly; “they just ruin the brickwork and harbour
vermin.” “You’d think those people would weed their beds once in a while, wouldn’t you?” counters his companion, while I sit upright and glare like a basilisk. But no passer-by ever pays any attention to me; they think I am a cigar-store Indian, or a stuffed souvenir of a hunting trip, probably. Some day I shall shout back. “Why don’t you wipe that child’s nose?” I shall scream, or “Did you buy that hat at a fire-sale?”

  • MONDAY •

  I am told that the strawberry crop this year will be a failure. I cannot remember a year in which this rumour has not been circulated. Probably it is like the rumours which fly about during the early part of December that Santa Claus has committed suicide.… However, I bought a few sour, green, imported berries, and ate them, just to make sure that I experienced some approximation of that most delicious of all flavours this year.

  • TUESDAY •

  To a movie tonight. It was a farce, and as often happens in farce, the actors thought that everything they said was much funnier if they shouted it at the top of their voices. The ladies also wore those peculiar lace negligees which are never seen anywhere but on actresses in farces. Women wear all sorts of garments when they want to be comfortable—magnificently cut housecoats, kimonos, flannel dressing gowns, and even old bathrobes which their husbands have discarded as unfit for further service—but they never wear those tight-fitting things with lace skirts split up the front, for the good reason that it is impossible to sit down in one, much less perform any of the feats appropriate to negligee.… I like movie magazines, but I have never dared to subscribe to one. I had a friend once who did so, and it was apparent that the magazine lent its subscription list rather carelessly to its advertisers, for he immediately began to receive free samples of lipstick, and offers from people who wanted to develop his bust a new scientific way—money back after 30 days if not satisfied. His landlady began to treat him with marked hauteur and he had to move.

  • WEDNESDAY •

  Listened to a broadcast of Shakespeare’s Richard III this afternoon, done by the Old Vic Theatre Company, which is in New York at present. Decided that Shakespeare would never be able to get a job writing scripts for the CBC, because he insists on dealing with controversial topics, and uses language which would bring a flood of complaining letters from the Holy Name Society of St. Jean de Crabtree Mills (P. Q.) and the Ladies’ Art, Culture, Poker-Work and China-Painting Club of Pelvis (Sask.).… Enjoyed the broadcast greatly, though I wondered why all the ghosts in the Dream Scene sounded as though they were speaking to Richard over the long-distance telephone. But that is the only way in which radio can suggest the supernatural, I suppose.

  • THURSDAY •

  Was roused this morning by a loud cawing, and looked out of my window to see a large crow sitting on a branch with its mouth full of bread, making daybreak hideous with its cries. This recalled to me Aesop’s fable about the crow which was flattered into singing by a fox, and dropped its piece of cheese as a result. It was obvious that this crow could sing and hold on to a huge piece of food at the same time. So much for that old scoundrel Aesop, whom I have long suspected of being better as a puritan moralist than as an accurate observer of nature. Read Aesop’s Fables in the light of everyday adult experience, and what do we find? We find that the man who gives up the substance for the shadow is often richly rewarded, and admired by posterity for his vision. We find that the dog in the manger can always get a well-paid job as a union leader, and the more difficult he is to appease, the greater is his success. We find that the lion who assists a mouse usually has to listen to a lot of saucy talk from the mouse about Imperialism. It is my belief that Aesop was a simpleton who took good care never to look about him, for fear of finding that the world did not gibe with his theories.

  • FRIDAY •

  I see by the papers that Scotland (or, more accurately, the Scottish Nationalist Party) is going to submit a brief to the United Nations on the unjust oppression of Scotland by England. Personally, I don’t think that England would ever give up Scotland without establishing a state of Pakistan for the protection of the Irishmen and Welshmen who contribute so much to the cultural and intellectual life of Glasgow, and the Englishmen and Jews who have won for the universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh the reputation for brilliance which they now enjoy. My own ancestors descended upon England from Scotland a century or more ago, pausing at the border only long enough to change their name from Marjoribanks to its present form. I don’t imagine that their descendants would want to be herded back to the bleak hillsides from which they escaped after the Great Capercailzie Famine of 1745. Nowadays you won’t find a Marchbanks in Scotland even during the grouse season; most of us just do our grousing wherever we happen to be. “A tussock wowsie’s nae doitit,” as Bobbie Burns said, putting the whole thing in a nutshell.

  • SATURDAY •

  While I was cutting grass and weeding this afternoon I was greatly troubled by mosquitoes, flies and other nuisances, and in this way my attention was drawn toward the benevolent insects—bees, grasshoppers and the like. I recall reading in a book about insects that they evolve their own economic laws, and abide by them. Thus ants go in for full employment, while bees consider it worth while to support a monarchy and an aristocracy; grasshoppers are definite laissez-faire liberals, and dung-beetles are bourgeois capitalists. But what about accidents, I pondered? Ants are socialists, possessing a complete, nasty, compact little socialist state of their own; but what happens to their economic laws when I run my lawnmower over their anthill? They didn’t foresee that. And the bees get an unexpected handout from me when I put out honey boxes for them to clean; that boosts their economy unfairly. I am convinced that no insect sees me, except the mosquito, and yet in my garden I play Providence to the insect world without giving the matter a moment’s thought. I am the Unknown Factor, the Parcae in the lives of thousands of creatures with whom I am not even on nodding terms. A sweetly solemn thought.

  -XXVI-

  • SUNDAY •

  Put out my hanging baskets yesterday, and woke this morning to find that the temperature had dropped to 42°. Just the sort of shabby trick that our Canadian summers are always playing. I well recall going for a picnic on the 24th of May in 1932, and returning home because it suddenly began to snow! It is this uncertainty of the weather which makes Canadians the morose, haunted, apprehensive people they are. The plays of Ibsen reflect the Canadian spirit admirably. For instance—

  GERDA: Where are you going, Inspector?

  INSPECTOR: Down to the waterfront to get a cod for supper. Don’t wait for me. I may commit suicide.

  GERDA: God’s will be done. But in any case, wear your muffler, your rubbers, your ear muffs and your wraprascal. It may snow.

  INSPECTOR: True, and if I decide against death I don’t want to catch a cold.

  That is a snatch from Ibsen’s early drama The Wartime Housing Co-Ordinator. It was never much of a success.

  • MONDAY •

  A magnificent day, and I passed a considerable part of it wishing I did not have to work. The more complex our civilization becomes, the less fun there is in it and the more work there is to do. The ultimate in civilizations is that of the ants, who work ceaselessly, and have no fun at all. And what do they get out of it? Well—did you ever look at an ant’s face under a microscope? It looks exactly like a composite photograph of Henry Ford and John L. Lewis, with just a suggestion of the characteristic frozen mug of the Nazi High Command.… To the movies tonight and saw a very dull film which tried to make out that missionaries have a lot of fun. Well—did you ever look at a missionary’s face under a microscope? That is the result of trying to persuade the heathen that it is wrong to get stinko on the fermented juice of the banyan, without using profanity, police or physical violence. The fact that many missionaries are married also makes it hard to interest the heathen in the Christian institution of monogamy, which they confuse with monotony.

  • TUESDAY •

  Upon the advice
of my physician (a distinguished man who has a perfect understanding of my case) I take a little rest each day after lunch. But recently my repose has been shattered by a bird which imitates the sound of a telephone-bell perfectly. I compose myself for slumber, then br-r-r-ring goes this accursed bird, and up I jump and rush indoors to the phone, to find that there is nothing stirring at the other end of the wire. Naturalists deny the existence of any such bird, but it lives in a maple tree just by my verandah, and I have seen it; it is about the size of a jay, and has a black and green plumage. If I can catch it there will be telephone-bird pie on the menu at Château Marchbanks.

  • WEDNESDAY •

  A very hot day, and owing to some lack of caution I had committed myself a week ago to do some heavy gardening today—to clean out a wilderness, in fact. The wilderness was a mosquito headquarters, and they were holding an œcumenical conference, which I broke up with a great display of personal bravery. There were times however when I debated whether it would not be easier to lie down and die on the spot than to go on with the job. I was forcibly reminded of a poem which I read years ago in Second or Third Book about a negro slave who collapsed in the field with his sickle in his hand, and died while thinking of his days of glory in Africa, where “the lordly Niger flowed”; he was too far gone to feel the heat of the sun, or the cruel overseer’s whip, or the indignity of his present position. That was just the way I felt. “Better death than work!” I cried, throwing myself into the jaws of my lawnmower, but it spat me out contemptuously. It is too dull to cut grass, let alone serve as an instrument of suicide.