The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

by Robertson Davies

  • TUESDAY •

  To the movies tonight to see a film in which Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck played the parts of a female psychiatrist and an amnesia patient respectively. I can feast my eyes on Miss Bergman’s beauty without paying too much attention to what she says or does, but Master Peck is another matter. His notion of acting is directly contrary to that of such exponents of the art as Irving, Coquelin and Stanislavsky; he does not use his head, but casts the full burden upon his face, which he works furiously, breathing meanwhile through his mouth. His resemblance to Buster Keaton is disturbing to me also; I am always expecting him to be hit with a pie, or to fall into a tub of cement. In this piece that brilliant actor, Michael Chekov, acted the pants off Master Peck.

  • WEDNESDAY •

  Tiger is not better, so I took her to the veterinary this evening. He diagnosed her case as one of garbage-eating; when she ran away she must have treated herself to a bit of over-ripe fish. He gave me some pills for her, and also demonstrated the proper way to give pills to a cat; you suddenly draw the cat’s head backward, pry open its mouth, shove the pill down into its stomach with a pair of forceps, and whisk the pill briskly around in its insides. Then you let go, and the cat uses language that scorches its whiskers. I decided that I would use the alternative method, which is to powder the pill and slip it slyly into the cat’s food. A man who is accustomed to going right to the seat of the trouble with a sick cow, and giving pills like baseballs to Percheron stallions, may safely take liberties with Tiger, but I am not in his class as a beast-tamer, and I know it. “A cat is no fool, and she may resent this,” he said: I knew that, too.

  • THURSDAY •

  A man came to me today in a state of great agitation because he thought that there should be more streetlights, and that they should be turned on earlier. “Young people park in cars in those dark places and The Dear knows what goes on,” he said, trembling at the thought. I tried to calm him, telling him about Chastity, and how she that has that is clothed in complete steel, but he did not seem to put as much faith in Chastity as in Electricity.… I wonder why people always think that dreadful things happen in the dark? When I look back over my own past, and examine my police record and my conscience, I find that the peak-hours of Sin in my wild youth were between 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. If I were a Puritan, I would not worry about parked cars, where nothing much happens beyond the conventional slap-and-tickle which is virtually obligatory in youth; but I would creep abroad at mid-day, peeping behind the lace curtains of sober houses on quiet, tree-lined streets. It is there that I would find things to make my mouth go dry and my eyes pop.

  • FRIDAY •

  To the movies to see Charles Laughton as Captain Kidd. Although the period of the film was supposed to be the reign of William and Mary (1694-1702) we were treated to a panorama of London, in which the principal feature was Tower Bridge, which was built in 1894; Hollywood is particularly prone to such bone-headed errors, even though it does spend large sums on experts and historical research.

  • SATURDAY •

  I see that a girl who was in the Hamilton beauty contest is complaining that twelve of the sixty-two contestants wore “falsies” to give greater impressiveness to their pectoral development. This reminded me of the fact that before the war the cadets at the Royal Military College wore “falsies” also, concealed in their scarlet tunics, in order to add a few inches to their chests. I have seen many a convex cadet remove his tunic, only to reveal that he was concave. This was standard military practice until the red tunic went out, about the time of the South African war, and many a dashing cavalry officer was saved from death because the Zulu assegai, or hill-tribesman’s snickersnee, had become imbedded in his “falsies.” But now, alas, anything might lurk beneath the blouse of a battledress and the military “falsy” has fallen into disuse. Chest-wigs for the pectorally bald are still sold by the principal military out-fitters, I am told.

  -XXX-

  • SUNDAY •

  Was reading a sermon by an eminent Montreal divine on the subject of frivolity, of which the divine disapproved. Pleasure, he said, was a legitimate indulgence; he would even go so far as to say that people needed pleasure in their lives; but he warned most seriously against frivolity. This interested me so much that I looked up the word in my dictionary, and found that it meant more than I had thought—“trivial, empty, paltry, lacking in character and depth of concentration” were only a few of the scathing comments in the definition.… Sighed heavily, for my schoolmasters used to accuse me of frivolousness; my inclination toward untimely levity annoyed them. And it has grown with the years. If I tended toward frivolity as a boy, I am incorrigibly settled in it now.

  • MONDAY •

  Watched a group of children playing school today; it seemed to me to be a depressing game for the holidays, but they enjoyed it hugely. Not many lessons were taught, but there was a great deal of spanking, asking permission to leave the room, and being sent to the principal. The most prized role was that of Teacher; the largest child got that by sheer physical prowess and the smaller ones were reduced to submission by violent threats.… I recall playing school when a child with a group of Roman Catholic children; the oldest was given the prized role of Sister Mary Somebody, who must have been an uncommonly severe disciplinarian. As a mere Protestant, I was only allowed to be the janitor; from time to time I was permitted to say “Is it warm enough for you, Sister?” whereupon Sister Mary Somebody would give me a stately nod of the head. I soon tired of the limited possibilities of the janitor’s part and went off to play by myself, while Sister Mary Somebody went on happily spanking, cuffing and scolding.

  • TUESDAY •

  Business took me to Toronto today, and I was amazed by the number of dead animals I passed on the highway. Most of them were skunks, though from time to time one saw a defunct rabbit, a squashed squirrel or a jellied groundhog. Why are skunks more prone to die on the highway than other animals? Is it because skunks, for thousands of years, have been used to stopping everything by sheer force of personality, and have not yet accustomed themselves to the automobile age? Certainly it is a lesson in the mutability of all earthly things to see a skunk, once nobly menacing and vainglorious, lying—a poor rag of grizzled fur—by the roadside. But it cannot be said of skunks, as it is of men, that they all smell alike in death.… And speaking of skunks, was it on purpose that the City of Toronto arranged that symphony of vile effluvia which assaults the nostrils on Fleet Street? Gas works, tannery, glue atelier and soap-rendering emporium all unite in a ferocious stench compared with which the bazaars of Calcutta are as morning roses washed with dew.

  • WEDNESDAY •

  My garden is a failure again this year. My morning-glory is not more than an inch above ground; my castorbeans (which should be like trees by now) are sickly shoots; a cow appears to have nested in the remains of my peony bed. The only things that are doing well are my runner beans, and some gourds, which are growing like Jack’s beanstalk and seem likely to push down a wall.… And do I care? No! If Nature doesn’t want to co-operate with me she knows what she can do.

  • THURSDAY •

  Because there is to be an Orange Walk tomorrow, I was drawn into a discussion of the Battle of the Boyne by two men who regarded it as a matter of the utmost contemporary importance. But I soon found that the Battle of the Boyne they were talking about was not the one I learned about in school; my Boyne was merely one in a series of small battles, and it was fought on July 1, and not on the Glorious Twelfth; and in my battle King William’s forces were principally composed of Dutch, French, Danish and English troops, and not of valiant Ulstermen; and in my battle the victory of King William was thought to have something to do with the fact that he had 35,000 men to his opponent’s 25,000, causing King James to run away, which was wise if not precisely valiant.… But my friends seemed to be talking about an entirely different fight. I quoted them Bernard Shaw’s wise dictum: “Peter the Fisherman did not know eve
rything; neither did Martin Luther.” But they would pay no attention. If we were all robbed of our wrong convictions, how empty our lives would be.

  • FRIDAY •

  The Orange Walk today. I had to go to Toronto again and missed it, but all the way along the road I passed Orangemen gorgeously arrayed and wearing the set, determined expression of men who might have to fight for their convictions and rather hoped they would. Some of them carried bottles of fife-oil; this is a special lubricator which you drink yourself and then blow into the fife.… Arrived in Toronto, which is the Rome of the Orange Order, too late to see the parade there, though I kept meeting Orangemen and Orangewomen all day long, and even saw an Orangeinfant, so covered in rosettes and ribbons that it could hardly breathe.… It was a hot, exhausting day, and during the afternoon I was forced to refresh myself with a pot of Orange Pekoe tea.

  • SATURDAY •

  Should have worked in my garden, but lay in a deck-chair and read Damon Runyon instead. It is about this time of year that my gardening enthusiasm, so hot in the Spring, fails me, and I make my annual discovery that a weed is just as pretty as a flower if you look at it the right way.… Sometimes I think I got too much gardening when I was a boy, and I know that many people suffered in the same way. Indeed, a friend of mine tells me that his father won a prize for the finest garden in his home town for two years in succession, and that this triumph was based firmly upon the back-breaking labour of my friend and his brothers and sisters. Thus it is in many families; the father is the planner and overseer; the children are the toilers and fieldhands; and from this uneven division of labour a fine garden springs. Gardening is an undemocratic pursuit. Somebody crawls through the flowerbeds, weeding and grovelling like the beasts that perish; somebody else strolls in the cool of the evening, smelling the flowers. There is the garden-lord and the garden-serf. When we are all socialists gardens will vanish from the earth.

  -XXXI-

  • SUNDAY •

  Agog today, preparing for the second instalment of my annual holiday. This year I had difficulty in finding a place to stay; for some reason no place where I have once been is ever able to give me a reservation again, and I had to do a lot of writing and wiring before I finally got a favourable answer from a place called Camp Laffalot, at Skeleton in Muskoka. I have packed my sola topee, my butterfly net, and—as I know Muskoka—my fur coat for wear after sundown. I can hardly contain my impatience until tomorrow. Yo-ho for Camp Laffalot!

  • MONDAY •

  On the road at dawn this morning. Stopped at Orillia to see Stephen Leacock’s manuscripts in the Public Library, but the Library was closed for all but a few hours a day; the Little Town is still a Little Town, apparently. Looked at the Champlain Monument in Couchiching Park, which is magnificent; another monument, called Somebody’s Mother, and flanked by four drinking fountains, assaults the vision as one enters and leaves the Park.… Drove on until I came to a sign—“You Are Now Entering Lovely Skeleton.” Appropriately enough this village consists entirely of frame houses. Without difficulty I found Camp Laffalot, and at once my nostrils were assailed by that pleasant and characteristic smell of damp woodwork which is peculiar to summer hotels. Three young females with legs of vivid scarlet and peeling noses mounted the stairs ahead of me; the custom of the burnt human sacrifice still persists in Muskoka, I observe.… This place has tolerable inside plumbing; all will be well.

  • TUESDAY •

  Woke at four a. m. to find that I was freezing; looked from my windows at Drowned Skeleton Lake, over which lay a heavy mist; pulled the bedside rug over me and shivered till morning.… A bell rang at 7:30, and the first thing I saw from my window as I crawled out of bed was two ample ladies, well advanced in middle life, hiking down to the lake in their bathing suits. Appalled by such hardihood, I huddled into a heavy suit and two sweaters, and went to breakfast; felt better after fruit, porridge, two eggs, a heap of toast, and an imperial gallon of hot coffee. By ten o’clock I was roasting, and had to discard everything that decency would permit; soon I shall be as half-baked as the girls I saw yesterday.… The name Laffalot, which I assumed to be Indian, is a droll contraction of Laugh A Lot, I find, and the invention of the proprietor, who hopes to put his guests in a good mood with it. He explained this to me himself. Ha ha, I thought; and later, after more reflection, tee hee.

  • WEDNESDAY •

  Have scraped acquaintance with some of the other denizens of Camp Laffalot. We sat on the lawn this morning, and in the fashion of guests at summer hotels, lied about our importance in our hometowns and hinted that we were richer than we looked. The only reason we were not at the Royal Muskoka or Bigwin Inn, we implied, was that we could not stand the stuffy crowd there, preferring the genial company at Camp Laffalot. We agreed that Drowned Skeleton Lake was the gem of the Muskokas, and that Laffalot had distinction and exclusiveness not granted to other summer hotels. These things settled, some of us went for a drive, to enjoy the scenery. Personally I get all the scenery I can conveniently hold in half an hour; and after a four-hour drive I estimated that I had said, “magnificent!” 422 times, “astounding!” 146 times, and “lovely!” 1066 times. These are the only words I know which apply to scenery, except “redundant”, which I use only in my thoughts.

  • THURSDAY •

  There is always a good deal of romance at a summer hotel. Was talking today to a pretty girl who told me that a young man was going to canoe 20 miles, portage 5 miles, and motor 60 miles to take her to a dance that night. I said that I wasn’t a bit surprised, and she would have flushed prettily if she had not already been cooked to the colour of underdone beef by the sun. She then pointed out islands in the lake to me, saying that there was a home on this one which cost $20,000, and that the boat-house on another one had cost $12,000, and that a nasty old miser who lived on another had a yacht for which he had had the effrontery to pay a mere $25,000. I was glad that somebody else was taking her to the dance; I am never comfortable with girls who can think higher than $3.50 at one time.

  • FRIDAY •

  Was talking this evening to a maiden lady of uncertain age who was thrown into a fantod when she discerned that I was a writer. “Don’t you dare to put me in a book, you naughty man,” she trilled. I toyed with the idea of saying that it would be a rare pleasure to press her between the sheets, but decided that there was a hint of indelicacy about such a remark which might be misconstrued. I then thought of saying that it would be a privilege to embalm her in prose, but that was worse. So I kept my mouth shut and tried to look mysterious, which gave me eyestrain. She did not know that I was a very base sort of writer; she probably thought I wrote novels, or perfume advertisements for Vogue. Having failed to extract a compliment from me, she proceeded to entertain me with a long and harrowing account of her dog’s last illness; the emotion generated by this tale made me hungry, but the cook kindly gave me a plate of cereal in the kitchen before I went to bed.

  • SATURDAY •

  Left Laffalot today; it would be effective, but untrue, to say that my going caused a pall to fall over Skeleton; the emotion, such as it was, was all on my side. In the course of a short week, I had learned to cope with the tropic days and Arctic nights of Drowned Skeleton Lake; I had learned to listen to the astounding tales of personal prowess told by the other guests, and to counter them with a few choice untruths of my own; I had learned to say, “Gad, what a beauty; I never saw such a big fellow” whenever I saw another guest come in from the lake with a fish the size of a minnow. I had learned to eat enormous meals with an appearance of merely picking at my plate. But the time had come to leave, and I left.… Motored to Toronto, and put up at my club, the Junior Deipnosophists, for the night. As usual, I forgot my toothbrush, and may have to go back to Skeleton to get it. I have had it for years, and it has a sentimental value which no new, luxuriantly-bristled, hard toothbrush could equal.

  -XXXII-

  • SUNDAY •

  Not long ago a friend of mine ope
ned the door of the garage at her summer cottage, and found a man inside who had hanged himself about two months before; what is more he had been cut down. She is deeply anxious to know (a) why he hanged himself; (b) if he hanged himself or was hanged; (c) who cut him down; (d) what it was about her garage that appealed to his morbid fancy. She will probably never know any of these things. It is thus that life falls short of the movies; in a film she would immediately have been accepted by the detective in the case as a full partner and would have shared his risks of life and limb until the criminal was in the hoosegow, and the full story was in the newspapers. But the real-life detective never even asked her to sit all night in the haunted garage and shoot on sight anyone who came down the ladder from the loft. We deplore this lack of imagination on the part of detectives, who never seem to catch anybody, anyway.