• MONDAY •
Business called me to Toronto, where I found the lobby of the Royal York thronged with men in handsome blue uniforms which were richly ornamented with gold lace, gold rope and gold insignia; many of them wore impressive medals and ribbons, and I heard one of them address another as “General.” All of them carried swords, the scabbards of which appeared to be composed of gold and ivory, and one of them was accompanied by a lady of dominating appearance who wore a purple cloak of military cut, and a hat with a prodigious ostrich plume in it. I assumed that they must be foreign grandees, perhaps a government-in-exile, until I noticed that fighting men in ordinary khaki and blue did not salute them, but seemed indeed to look upon them with ill-concealed amusement; I saw one airman point them out to his dinner partner with what I can only describe as a contumelious gesture.… I made discreet enquiries, and learned that the gorgeous creatures were attending a convention of a fraternal order—the Ancient and Honourable Order of Poltergeists, I believe. There is a corroboree of some sort at the Royal York every week.
• TUESDAY •
Every day I pass a beverage room in the course of my duties, and at least every second day an habitué of the place pursues me for a hundred yards or so, telling me in a low, compelling voice how badly he needs twenty-five cents. I have given him money several times, chiefly from a fear that he will fall dead at my feet, if I refuse, but I am beginning to be indifferent to his fate. What is more, an uncharitable suspicion dawns in my mind that he uses my money to buy beer. Now if he spends all his daily income, which is my twenty-five cents, on drink, he is obviously an improvident oaf, and the despair of economists, and the next time he appears trembling and muttering at my side I shall tell him so. If he were a true Canadian he would spend five cents of my quarter on food and drink, he would save five cents, and he would pay the other fifteen for Income Tax and the Baby Bonus. That is what I have to do. Why should he live a life of pleasure, spending his whole income on drink, when I have to slave and pinch to keep him and several thousand civil servants in luxury? This is the sort of social injustice which makes communists of white-collar workers like me.
• WEDNESDAY •
When I was born good fairies clustered round my cradle, showering me with wit, beauty, grace, freedom from dandruff, natural piety and other great gifts, but the Wicked Fairy Carabosse (who had not been invited to the party) crept to my side and screamed, “Let him be cursed with Inability To Do Little Jobs Around The House”, and so it has always been. I cannot drive a nail straight, or mend an electric iron, or make a door stop sticking, or change a fuse. I do not glory in my inefficiency; I suffer under it. Whenever anything goes wrong with my household arrangements, I have to get a man in to mend it—no small task in these days—and I know that he despises me as he does the fiddling little job and takes away a dollar of my money. People who are good at odd jobs are blessed above common mortals; I have some trifling skill in swatting flies and shining shoes, but otherwise I am a nuisance in the house. If I were ever shipwrecked on a desert island with several thousand feet of lumber, a complete set of carpenter’s tools, and 100 cases of assorted foods, I should die in a week of exposure and starvation.
• THURSDAY •
Attended a concert in the line of duty, and suffered agonies with my cough. There are coughers at every concert, but none like me; I am to ordinary coughers what the late Chaliapin was to a schoolgirl singing in her mother’s drawing-room; I am a virtuoso cougher, and when I cough at a concert it is like the trumpets of Joshua outside the walls of Jericho. Artists have been known to stop in midsong, and stare into the auditorium in horrified amazement; a circus man I once knew said it put him in mind of an elephant trumpeting. I cannot help it; it is my cross, and I must bear it as best I may. Hardly had the concert begun, until I felt horrid ticklings and heavings in my throat, and I knew at once that I was a goner. I hastily ate a Smith Bros. cough drop, but it was powerless against the rising fury of my cough; I held in by sheer power of will until the first song was over, and then I allowed my cough to drown the generous applause. This went on until the interval, when I was able to get a drink of water. Every song, for me, was a struggle with a cough which raged to escape. I heard the artist telling the head usher to find that dog and put it out, and I trembled in fear. But later in the evening the demon within me relented, and I was able to enjoy the music, though exhausted by my struggle.
• FRIDAY •
Received a telephone call from a friend of mine, who wanted to know who invented the water-closet; he has had one in his house for years, but has only recently become curious about it. The answer is that it was first devised by the Elizabethan nobleman, Sir John Harington, who in 1596 described his invention, which he was certain would mitigate the plague, and what did the world do? It condemned him as a man whose mind dwelt on filth. Thus the very name of this great benefactor of mankind is known to about one person in 5,000, whereas the inventor of the zip-fastener was given an LL.D. by the University of Upsala. What a world!
• SATURDAY •
Undertook to bathe a small child and put it to bed, in the absence of its mother; this is not a fitting pursuit for a man whose temperament is philosophical and whose habits are sedentary. Several times I under-estimated the elusiveness of a small creature covered from head to foot in soapsuds, and almost fell into the tub myself. The child took this for frolicsomeness on my part, and began to throw water on me; I toyed with the idea of stripping, in order to meet this situation on fair terms, but rejected the plan as undignified. When at last I had landed my fish and begun to dry it, the unforeseen problem of ticklishness obtruded itself, and then hair-brushing created a great hullabaloo. When at last it was in bed, and had had all the drinks of water and Kleenex it demanded, I was a nervous and physical wreck.
-XLIV-
• SUNDAY •
To the zoo this afternoon, just to see how the animals liked the cold weather. The bear looked restless and banged his cage resoundingly from time to time; the raccoon and the skunk had retired for the winter; the foxes looked as though the cement floor gave them cold feet. But the ducks were very hearty, and nipped at the toes of my boots in a spirited manner; a duck nipping at one’s boot is a good joke, but a duck nipping at one’s nether regions when one is in a bathing suit is something entirely different. The pheasants were moulting—a process which is chronic with them, though the Ringneck Cock was in his finest plumage and a glorious sight. Two owls had been added to the collection, and were resenting it; I know of no animal which has a capacity for dignified outrage equal to that of an owl.
• MONDAY •
A correspondence school has written to me, inviting me to take a course in writing; this is a type of criticism which I resent. “You do not have to be a genius to become a successful writer,” they say, in what is meant to be a reassuring manner. Then they go on to urge me to look in my own neighbourhood for subjects. “Dig below the surface of your home town,” they say; frankly I am afraid that this method would not win me “a big income and interesting friends,” as they promise, but merely a pack of lawsuits.… People who have taken the course write eagerly, “Last week I hit The Country Gentleman; this week I hit Mademoiselle; next week I hope to hit the American Mother!” Frankly I don’t think this course would suit me; I don’t want to hit any of those people, though I might toss a pie at the American Mother, just for fun.… But I like the promise the people make that they will teach me how to create tense moments, and how to play on the heart-strings; I have never been any good at either of those things. And I particularly like their offer to teach me how to be funny; any school which can make a man funny by correspondence must possess a secret which has been hidden from the rest of mankind for some thousands of generations. It would be nice to be unfailingly, perpetually, remorselessly funny, day in and day out, year in and year out until somebody murdered you, now wouldn’t it?
• TUESDAY •
Walked home this evening in the
dusk, and passed a surprising number of couples of High School age conversing in low, tense voices as they leaned over bicycles or huddled under trees. Poets insist that Spring is the time of mating, but personal observation convinces me that the austere, bright nights of late Autumn are equally favourable to romance. The interesting thing about these lovers’ conversations are the pauses. The lad asks some question which (to my ears, at least) has no amorous significance, and the girl then casts down her eyes, fingers her Latin Grammar in an agitated manner, and after a breathless interval (during which I try to keep on walking without getting out of earshot) replies, “Oh, I guess so”, or “Oh, I just as leave”, causing her swain to breathe hard and gulp.… Why doesn’t he throw himself on the ground, saying, “You are my Soul, my Better Self, be mine or I stab myself with this pair of protractors”; then she could reply, “Nay, press me not, I am Another’s.” In that way they could really have some romantic fun and store up things to tell their grandchildren. No style, no breadth, that’s the trouble with the modern High School set.
• WEDNESDAY •
An unseasonable warm spell forces me to reverse my tactics with my furnace; instead of begging the thing to give me a little heat, I am now imploring it to relax its efforts. Perverse as always, it huffs and puffs and frizzles me with its breath.… However, I have got a load of wood, with not more than a fair amount of soft stuff, punk and limbs in it, and I shall conduct Marchbanks’ Annual Wood Bee on Saturday. Hard cider and doughnuts will be served to all helpers.
• THURSDAY •
Was talking to a woman who has just had a baby, and who passed her period of recovery in a public ward in a Great Canadian City. There were nine other women in the room with her, and she said that they talked all the time—mostly about names for babies and the peculiar behaviour of their husbands. When these husbands came visiting one piece of dialogue was invariable:
HUSBAND: “Do you want anything to read?”
WIFE: (patting her bedside table) “No, no; I have MY BOOK.
… My informant was burned up with curiosity to know what these books were which were spoken of in such a portentous manner; she was able to discover that in all nine cases the “book” was a magazine of true love stories, or of confessions. This is an interesting sidelight on Canadian reading habits. Furthermore, she said that she never saw one of her nine companions open her “book” upon any occassion.… My informant read several books during her recovery, to the amazement and ill-concealed indignation of her room-mates. It was their opinion that too much reading was a sign of being stuck-up, and furthermore liable to harm the baby’s eyes—by sympathetic magic, I suppose.
• FRIDAY •
Was in a music store, buying more gramophone records, when a man came in and asked for a ditty called Just a Rose From My Mother’s Grave. He expressed great admiration for this lugubrious piece. I was reminded of an earlier song on a somewhat different theme, entitled We Shall Miss Her Old Gray Hairs, or Let’s Drive A Nail In Dear Old Mother’s Face. This in turn led my thoughts to an even more affecting ballad, called They’re Moving Father’s Grave To Build A Sewer, which I last heard rendered with the most moving pathos and delicacy of expression by a high official of the National Film Board.
• SATURDAY •
This afternoon hove wood into my cellar and piled it; the heaving was a wild, brutal ecstasy, but the piling was a weary penance. It was necessary for me to grab up as much wood as I could hold, and scuttle under the rafters and furnace-pipes in a crouching position, rather as an ape rushes through the forest with a stolen bunch of bananas. After an hour or two of this my back began to hurt, and my philosophy took a violent turn toward pessimism. It was at this time also that my woodpile began to slip and slide, and drop on my feet. After some very delicate engineering I got it to stay in place, and decided not to tempt fate by putting any more on it, so I retired to an upstairs room and settled down with a book and a foaming glass of burdock blood-bitters.… During the night a mouse tramped rather heavily on the cellar floor, and I heard a thunderous roll as my woodpile sank into ruin.
-XLV-
• SUNDAY •
Woke with an aching head and a vile taste in my mouth—the consequence of piling wood yesterday; the pursuit of pleasure always leaves me in splendid condition (a fact which puzzles and irritates the Moral Element among my friends) but hard work gives me the most intolerable hangovers. Obviously Nature is evolving a new type of man, geared for a life of pleasure, and I am the first model.… But on the principle of “a hair of the dog” I went out and heaved and piled the rest of my wood, having reconstructed the woodpile which fell down yesterday. By the time I was finished, I was on the verge of physical and mental breakdown. Though thousands of people indulge themselves in it regularly, and even develop a taste for it, there is no doubt in my mind (and that of scientists whom I employ to prove it) that Work is a dangerous and destructive drug, and should be called by its right name, which is Fatigue.
• MONDAY •
Attended a concert in a collegiate auditorium tonight, and sat in the front row in order to have room for my legs; in the ordinary concert-hall seat (designed by and for dwarfs) I have to sit side-saddle, while numbness seizes first one haunch and then the other. But being in the front row I had a fine view of the empty orchestra pit, and during a rowdy rendition of Chopin’s Scherzo in B Minor a tiny mouse crept from under the piano in the pit and began to dance, lightly, elegantly and charmingly. When the music twiddled, the mouse twiddled: when the music bounced, the mouse bounced; there was no arabesque of sound which the mouse was not able to transmute into an arabesque of movement. When it was all over I applauded the mouse vigorously, assuming that it was a protégé of the Board of Education. I learned later, however, that the concert committee had been put out by the fact that the mouse got in, somehow, without a ticket.… Why are school mice always so fat and sleek? Is it because they have access to unlimited floor-oil?
• TUESDAY •
There is a special grubby joylessness about life these days which oppresses the spirit. As I look out of my window there is not a green leaf or a flowering plant to be seen; dust blows everywhere; a woman passes, and pulling at her arm is a little boy dressed in a snow suit, in which he is hot and fretful; a man with a paunch stalks by, looking as though all his meals in the last fifteen years had soured his stomach; a girl goes by wearing an elaborate hairdo, a pea-jacket and a pair of short slacks, from which her dirty legs emerge; she is pigeon-toed, but she holds her head proudly; an elderly woman in an ill-chosen hat waits for a bus; she breathes through her mouth and stares at the passers-by. Is there any hope in these people? Could immortal souls inhabit such frames without showing some spark through the eyes, or in a smile? November is a month to breed pessimists.
• WEDNESDAY •
Was discussing wart-cures with a physician this evening. He says that in his experience the best one is this: rub the wart with a slice of bacon, then go outdoors on a night when the moon is full, throw the bacon over your left shoulder and then, as the bacon rots, the wart will vanish. “But what if a cat eats the bacon?” I asked; “The wart will vanish that much sooner,” said he.… Naturally this led to talk of magic, and a lady present spoke of an old woman known to her grandmother, whose custom it was, (when her luck was bad) to bind her churn with willow-withes, and beat it with a stick; then whoever it was that was wishing her ill would come to the door and beg forgiveness. This was in Canada, about 1850–60. Our pioneer ancestors had a lot of simple fun that we miss.
• THURSDAY •
Life, for a man of my temperament, is an endless procession of vexing domestic problems. Shall I have my storm-windows put on, or not? At present the weather is warmer than it was most of last May, and it is only by the most rigorous repression of my furnace that I keep my house liveable. But I know that Winter will come upon me like a thief in the night, blowing its raw breath through every chink, ruffling the carpets on the floors and whipping the p
ictures off the walls. God pity all the poor souls in Wartime Housing on a night like that! And then I shall not be able to get anyone to creep up a ladder in the icy blast, bearing 15 square feet of glass in his arms. Shall I do it now, or shall I wait a little longer? My indecision will be the ruin of me, I know it. But oh, the heat of storm windows in warm weather! I will.… I won’t.… I will.… I WON’T. Come then, Boreas, and be damned! It is better to tarry than to burn.
• FRIDAY •
Waiting for a bus today, I listened to the conversation of two women who were waiting also; they were exchanging symptoms. Such tales of nervous breakdown, bad dreams, uncontrollable crying, pains in the legs, bladder weakness and general debility I have never heard: although they stood side by side they shouted as though they were conversing in a hurricane, and as their symptoms grew worse and worse, their voices grew louder and shriller. They talked so loudly that I had no need of my formidable powers of eavesdropping. To my unskilled eye they looked healthy, though unwholesome and glum.… Most people like to be ill, and ask nothing more than a chance to rehearse their ailments. In some dark corner of their minds (I use the word loosely) there lurks the notion that if they ever admit that they feel quite well the gods will at once punish them with some direful malady.
The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks Page 17