• SATURDAY •
Rain all day. What can a man do on a rainy day which is also his half-holiday? I am never at a loss for an answer to that question. Immediately after lunch, I went to bed, and bade farewell to the world for a few hours. The telephone rang. “It can’t be anyone of any consequence,” I thought: “every sane man is in bed this afternoon.” After a while the ringing ceased.… Later there was a knock at the door. “Nobody is up to any good this afternoon,” I said to myself; “that is doubtless someone wanting to sell me a ticket on a sanctified raffle, or a dozen repulsive Christmas cards, or a copy of the Christmas War Whoop, or a pillow stuffed with pine needles.—A pox upon them.” The knocker went away.… “If everybody spent one half-day in bed,” I reflected, “there would be no need of a United Nations Organization; world peace would come as a matter of course, the divorce rate would be cut in two, and even grim-visaged labour leaders would become creatures of light and spirit.” At this point Oblivion claimed me.
-XLVI-
• SUNDAY •
Was looking through a book today which had a good deal to say about prayer as a mental exercise. Prayer, it said, was not a formal thing, and could be indulged in anywhere; pray on the bus, while eating your dinner, or while taking a bath, it said; it was particularly scornful of the notion that prayer should be done on the knees; much better to say one’s prayers lying in bed.… Now this may be all right as mental exercise, but it entirely neglects the function of prayer as physical exercise. Most people, if they don’t kneel to pray, never kneel at all, and kneeling is good for you. The Moslems understand the value of prayer as exercise, and several times a day they prostrate themselves with their heads toward Mecca; I once knew a Moslem who said that this kept the most sedentary of his sect in good physical trim. The Chinese, before the revolution, made a great point of the kotow, in which you kneel gracefully and touch your forehead to the ground when in in the presence of your superiors, or in temples; this kept them admirably supple and healthy, and when the revolution put an end to the kotow the Chinese went straight to the bad. The present decline of Christianity may be traced to this habit of praying in bed, which is bad for the Christian liver.
• MONDAY •
A doctor tells me that he has observed a number of cases of poultry diseases among middle-aged women in the last few weeks; apparently the women are regular attendants at Bingo games, where they absent-mindedly consume large quantities of the corn which is used for counters; then they go home and drink several cups of tea, and the trouble begins. Sometimes he says, it is simple distension of the crop, and can be cured by purchasing a set of celluloid Bingo counters, but often the disease has gone too far for anything but severe measures. He mentioned one patient of his (whom he referred to as a White Wyandotte type) whose wattles had turned greyish and whose eyes had filmed over simply from a prolonged surfeit of Bingo corn. Another woman he mentioned (a table Plymouth Rock) showed every symptom of pip, and waddled about his office uttering pitiful squawks and occasionally falling over on her side. Still another was far gone in fowl-convulsions, and he did not think she would last for the Christmas trade.… I tried to cheer him up by pointing out the sturdy character which the Scotch built on a diet of oats; he said that he was afraid that Bingo corn would turn Canada into a nation of sick hens.
• TUESDAY •
The Russians are acclaiming Robbie Burns as a genius—a sort of primeval, pre-Marx Communist. This proves only that the Russians are not reading Burns’ works complete. His dislike of aristocracy pleases them, no doubt, but his hatred of orthodoxy and bureaucracy cannot go down very well. Probably the Russian editions of his works are carefully expurgated, and such verses as The De’il’s Awa Wi’ The Exciseman are omitted. By judicious expurgation I could prepare a Shakespeare which would be an eloquent plea for Communism, and I daresay that I could prepare a cipher which would show that Shakespeare’s plays were written by Joe Stalin.… My advice to the Russians is that they should give thanks that Burns is dead, and not alive in Russia today. He would be a great bother to the commissars of literature and popular thought, before they decided to kill him.
• WEDNESDAY •
Was introduced to an elderly lady today who offered me two fingers to shake; they were cold, damp and blue, like uncooked sausages. Her conduct in this matter did not please me greatly, for I would much have preferred to have no hand at all, rather than half a hand. It was the custom in the last century to give a few fingers—three, two, or in extreme cases, one—to people whom one regarded as social inferiors, or in some way undesirable. I only know one man who still does it, and as he does it to everybody I assume that he has a high regard for himself. The story is told that the late Arthur Balfour once offered a man one finger to shake, and the man vindictively shook it to such a degree that Balfour was unable to write for a week. Moderation in the handshake is highly desirable; neither the blacksmith grip, which crushes the hand into the semblance of hamburger, nor the chilly extension of two or three fingers. I think handshaking is overdone, in any case; why do we not compliment our friends by shaking hands with ourselves, like Chinamen, or boxers who have won a match?
• THURSDAY •
Was talking to a woman today who kept giving out strange squeaks and groans, as though she had mice in her corsage; I soon diagnosed her trouble; her corsets were creaking, and whenever she moved the stresses and strains of her underpinning were audible. This reminded me of one of my earliest business ventures, when I patented and attempted to sell Marchbanks’ Patent Stay Oil, a scented unguent which was rubbed well into the corsets before putting them on. It rendered the stays supple, without weakening their repressive powers. I was unlucky in the time I chose to market my invention; it was just when rubber corsets were coming into fashion, and the heavier corset of canvas, steel, whalebone and leather thongs was falling into disuse. But there are still a few women who need my Stay Oil, and I am thinking of getting one of the big cosmetic houses to try it on the public again.
• FRIDAY •
Was talking to a young woman today who informed me that she had no soul. I think she hoped to shock me by this declaration, but it was old stuff to me. The world is full of bright young things and cynical old things who think they have no souls. They appear to regard the soul as a part of their personalities upon which the Christian Church has established squatters’ rights, and they very properly resent such intrusion. As to defining the soul, they never attempt it, though I gather that they regard it as a sort of vapour floating about the heart—not unlike gas on the stomach. For a belief in the soul, and the deity of which the soul is a reflection, they substitute belief in such chimaeras as Progress, General Education, Single Tax, cold baths, colonic irrigation, free love, women’s rights, vegetarianism, the Century of the Common Man, the infallibility of radio commentators, social security, and their laughable congeners and equivalents. As a result, their souls become anæmic and debilitated, and their faces have the unlit look of vacant houses.
• SATURDAY •
Quite a heavy snowfall today, and I decided that it was time to prune my hedge for the winter; there is no sense in being hasty about these things. Pruned, and got thorns in my hands; then put on a storm door. Exhausted by these labours, retired to bed and read a book which the critics insist is very funny, but which impressed me as a melancholy affair.… One of the great lacks of our time is a body of really comic literature; when I want a good laugh, I am forced to turn to the writings of Dorothy Dix.… Lay at ease, thinking how nice it would be if I were to receive a telegram saying that I had been left a million dollars, free of tax; then reflected that there is really nothing that I want, which I could buy with a million dollars. I should like to travel and see the world, but no millionaire can do so today. Decided that what I really ought to do is to give away the $37.72 which I have in the bank, and declare myself destitute; then governments and benevolent societies would vie with each other to give me money and assure me of “social secu
rity.” The day has arrived at last when the poor are going to inherit the earth.
-XLVII-
• SUNDAY •
Impossible to postpone any longer the tidying of some attic closets, so faced the task with a heavy heart. Under the debris of the years discovered an astonishing quantity of old wallpaper. I have never seen an attic yet which did not contain a lot of old wallpaper, and this makes me wonder why it is that a paperhanger doesn’t feel safe unless he has a lot more material than he really needs. I learned how to calculate the amount of paper needed for a room when I was at school: you multiply the square footage of the walls by the cubic contents of the floor and ceiling combined, and double it; you then allow half the total for openings such as windows and doors; then you allow the other half for matching the pattern; then you double the whole thing again to give a margin for error, and then you order the paper. Result: every attic contains enough extra wallpaper to print a complete Sunday edition of the New York Times.
• MONDAY •
Peeped nervously from behind my lace curtains today to see if the Offal Officer would really take away all the assorted junk which I banished from my attic yesterday; he did, and he even wore some of it as he drove down the street.… Christmas draws near, with its desperate challenge to every man to buy presents for people whose taste he does not know, or who have no discernible taste of any kind. I buy a few Christmas cards as a beginning, knowing full well that they will not be enough for my needs. The Christmas spirit has not yet taken possession of me.
• TUESDAY •
In the course of a conversation about drinks this evening, a man told me that I am wrong in supposing that no joy goes into the making of Ontario wines. Vintage time in the Niagara Peninsula, he says, is a season of Bacchic revel and riot; the merry Niagara farmers and their plump, rosy-cheeked wives roll up their blue jeans and tread out the grapes in an elaborate ritual dance, singing this song the while:
Io, Father Bacchus, Io, Io!
And hurrah for the Chairman of the L.C.B.O.!
Merrily we sing
As we dance in a ring,
Banishing our troubles
With gulps of gas and bubbles!
Io, Father Bacchus, Io, Io,
And hurrah for the Chairman of the L.C.B.O.!
When night falls, they all drape exquisite garlands of flowers about the priapic statues of the Chairman of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario which stand in every vineyard, and then depart into the woods in pairs. It is very dangerous to follow them.
• WEDNESDAY •
A year ago today I was in a motor accident—not a large one, but big enough to make me nervous of cars even yet. Without wishing to do so I still press hard on the dashboard of any car I am riding in, mumble warnings to the driver under my breath, and cringe and scrunch whenever another car comes within spitting distance. For peace of mind I should really ride with my back to the engine, and sometimes I do, but on a long drive I get tired of kneeling on the back seat, and besides it gives people in other cars a wrong impression.
• THURSDAY •
To Toronto, the Ontario Babylon, on business. In a restaurant a notice asks me not to whine for more sugar or butter “to spare the staff embarrassment”; later I am in a shop where a sign urges me to show all my parcels at the desk “to avoid possible embarrassment!” People must embarrass awfully easily in Toronto.… Passed hastily through Toyland, and saw children being introduced to Santa Claus. Two or three harrassed men were busy shooing the tots away from S. C. down a ramp; they all wanted to turn around and barge back into the crowd whence they had come, disarranging the queue. This is an instinct deep in the childish heart. What does Omar Khayyam say?—
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
A Santa Claus to Toyland yearly sent—
Then turned, and vainly tried to butt my way
Outward by the same path as in I went.
Saw also a toy train big enough to pull children and a few adults. Would fain have had a ride on it, but I had no child with me, and feared that I might excite remark and even rebuke if I tried to pass myself off as a nursery-school type. The train had an excellent whistle which sent me, just as Sinatra sends the bobby-sockers. Whoo! it went, mellowly and invitingly: Whoo! Whoo!
• FRIDAY •
Toronto is already in the toils of Christmas, and from several windows the hollow Ho Ho! of a mechanical Santa Claus may be heard. Children watch these creatures with hard calculating eyes, wondering if the old man is really crazy, or only pretending to be, like Hamlet.… Everywhere I went Christmas preparations were going on, but they all seemed to be of a secular nature. Gnomes, elves, giants and Disney oddities abounded, and there were a few angels, but even they had been Disneyized, and made cute, rather than spiritual. A Man from Mars would never know that Christmas was a religious festival from what he sees here. Is it the final triumph of Protestantism that it has pushed the sacred origin of Christmas so far into the background that most people are able to ignore it?
• SATURDAY •
Dashed out this morning to get some more Christmas cards; I am not what could be called a greeting-card type, but at Christmas I bow to the general custom. Saw a great many which inspired me with nausea, being depictions of jolly doggies hanging up their stockings, or pretty pussies doing the same thing; several cards were in what is called “the semi-sacred manner”, showing the Holy Family with figures and postures strongly recalling the kewpies who used to appear in the advertisements of a famous tomato soup. St. Nicholas, too, appeared on many cards as a frowsy old drunk in a red ski suit, fingering his bulbous nose. In short, everything possible had been done to rob Christmas of its beauty, dignity and significance. It was not in this spirit that Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, and it is not in this spirit that I, personally, shall celebrate Christmas. I can stand almost anything except vulgar infantilism, and against that I shall war as long as there is breath in my body.
-XLVIII-
• SUNDAY •
My brother Fairchild is my guest today, and as there is always something of an unusual nature going on in Fairchild’s vicinity, I kept a close watch on him, and soon surprised him in the act of shaving himself with a little electric machine which he kept in a leather case. It was, he said, a razor, and not a miniature sheep-shearer, as I thought; held close to the face, it chewed the whiskers off with tiny teeth; he passed it over the rugosities of his countenance with a great air of virtuosity, and I must admit that the little machine seemed to work. I asked him if it did not excite his face too much to have electricity applied to it? Was there no tendency for the skin to loosen and hang in folds? He denied this with more heat than was really necessary, for my question was purely academic. Later I crept off to the bathroom and cut myself with a razor I have used for years; I have a fear of new-fangled contrivances. Fairchild is the daring member of the family.
• MONDAY •
This Christmas shopping leads a man into the most alarming situations. Decided today to get a bottle of toilet water for my Great-Aunt Lettice, and sought out a shop which had a big display of unguents, balms, lotions, electuaries and the like. Asked for a bottle of scent, and a young woman with more curves than the Burma Road brought out two or three, and poured drops from them on her wrist and arm. Then to my horror she invited me to sniff them! I did so, tentatively. She rippled her muscles like a wrestler. “Young woman, have you any idea where this may lead?” I cried, but she smiled in an oblique manner and said that it was impossible to tell anything about perfume if it were not applied to flesh. At that moment my pastor passed her, and muttered something in my ear about the Temptation of St. Anthony; I blushed to such a degree that I scorched a handkerchief in my hip pocket.… At last, after what seemed ages, she sold me a bottle of something at four dollars an ounce, which I fear Aunt Lettice will have to wear in the privacy of her own chamber, for if she ventured into a drawing room with it on she would immediately become the object of embarrassing attentions, a
nd might have to make a run for shelter. I really wanted some lavender water, but this stuff is called Très Ooomph, and is guaranteed to rouse the dead.
• TUESDAY •
Addressed Christmas cards tonight. There was a time when I used to hunt for the most suitable card for everyone on my list. I chose cards covered with lambs and reindeer for children, snow-scenes for friends who were wintering in Florida, High Church cards for friends of a ritualistic tendency, Low Church cards for evangelicals, Thick Church cards for those whose religion impressed me as a bit thick, cards with coaches and jolly drunken Englishmen on them for my jolly drunken American friends, and so forth. It was a lot of work, and I gave it up long ago. Now I buy my cards in large inexpensive bundles, and send them out in whatever order they happen to come.… Like everybody else I am sending cards this year to people who sent me cards last year, but whom I forgot last year, and who will not send me cards this year. This desperate game goes on for decades, and there seems to be no way of stopping it.… On several cards I put messages such as, “Why don’t you write?” or “Am writing soon”, which is a lie. I have no intention of writing them, but in an excess of Christmas spirit I pretend that serious illness, or the press of affairs, is the only thing which keeps me from sending them a long letter every week.
The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks Page 18