The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks

by Robertson Davies

  • 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 security.” 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 harassed 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.12

  -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. 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 ou
t 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 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, and 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.

  • WEDNESDAY •

  Was driving with a motorist today who nearly ran down several pedestrians who persisted in crossing streets against the traffic lights; he thought they did it on purpose, and I really think they were trying to commit suicide; some had a hopeless O-god-let-me-die look on their faces, while others wore the fixed grin of idiocy. It seems to me that when people dearly want to die, motorists should be encouraged to assist them…. This evening read in Nellie McClung’s autobiography that a properly licensed dog has the same right to use the street as a citizen. I am glad that citizens do not exercise their rights as freely as dogs do, however…. Not long ago a clergyman said to me, apropos a scruffy dog he had with him, “Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if there were nothing but dogs? No wars, no racial discrimination, all friends.” Was so stunned by this idea that I said “Yes, indeed” before I knew what I was about. Hurried home and washed my mouth out with soap.

  • THURSDAY •

  To the government liquor store today, to lay in a Christmas stock. Wartime shortages turn the celebration of Christmas into a matter of makeshifts. Still no Chinese Rice Wine, which I like to burn on the top of my Christmas pudding, in the real old English style; will have to do the best I can with brandy, but it will not be the same.

  • FRIDAY •

  My Chinese laundryman, hearing that I have been unable to get any Rice Wine to burn on my Christmas pudding, turned up in my office today with a flagon of the precious distillment. “Oh brilliant-hued chrysanthemum of Eastern Ontario,” he said, kotowing deeply, “this utterly contemptible one entreats you to accept his laughably inadequate tribute to your sublime genius; drink, O Marchbanks, and gladden the heart of your washworm.” I uncorked the bottle, and the room was filled with the heady bouquet of dragon’s bones. “This ineffectual trifler with the written word is choked by the copiousness of his thanks, O magical rehabilitator of world-weary underpants,” I replied, bowing graciously and pouring out a couple of glasses of the liquor; we drank, ceremoniously, and exchanged a few more polite observations. Before he left I reached into the bottom of my desk, and presented him with a pound of opium which I happened to have; he bit off a quid and chewed it with evident satisfaction as he put on three sweaters, two suits of pyjamas, a buffalo robe and a rain-cape, before leaving. It was what we Sinologues call “A three-coat cold day.”

  • SATURDAY •

  A few friends in this evening. Wanted to give them mint julep, though this is the wrong season for mint. But the scientific knowledge of a Marchbanks laughs at such trifling difficulties. Prepared the other ingredients, then brought down a bottle of Oil of Peppermint, which I sometimes take for indigestion: on the label it said “Adult dose: five to thirty drops,” so I put thirty drops in each glass, never having been one to skimp on hospitality…. Guests looked rather strange, and showed a tendency to suck in air through their teeth. One, standing by the fire, belched suddenly with such force that his toupée fell into the grate and was badly scorched; his wife remarked sourly that at least it helped to kill the smell of humbugs…. I drank my julep to the dregs, just to show them that it could be done. The only trouble with me is, I’m ahead of my time.

  -XLIX-

  • SUNDAY •

  A small girl of my acquaintance sang me a Christmas carol which she had learned in school. It was the familiar one which begins:

  Good King Wenceslas looked out

  On the Feast of Stephen—

  and I expressed my appreciation of her performance warmly. This was a mistake on my part, for she began to cross-examine me about the words. Why was Stephen feasting outside in the snow? If Stephen had enough food for a feast why didn’t he give some of it to the poor man who was gathering winter fuel, instead of leaving it all to King Wenceslas? I tried to explain that a Feast did not really mean a feast, and that Stephen was not really there, but I saw disbelief and scorn rising in her eyes. No wonder children think that all adults are crazy.13

  • MONDAY •

  Woke this morning with a sense of sick shock, realizing that Christmas is near at hand and I have not done any shopping. Worried about this until at last I rushed out and made a tour of the shops, and was depressed to find how much stuff there was for sale which I would not give to a relative, let alone a friend…. There stole into my mind Coleridge’s poignant lines:

  Ah, God! It is fell Christmas-tide

  So to the shops I hie;

  And my shopping-list, like the Albatross,

  About my neck doth lie.

  This was to be included in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner but was dropped to please Wordsworth, who secretly held shares in a large toy-shop and was afraid it might hurt business.

  • TUESDAY •

  Alack the day! Christmas gifts are not what they were. Was looking through the diary of my uncle, the Rt. Rev. Hengist Marchbanks (who lived to be ninety-six and was Bishop of Baffinland when he died) and discovered that in December, 1845, when he was a lad of thirteen, he made his own presents. This is what he says: “Made dear Mama a trunk today, for I know that she wants one sorely. Cut down a sturdy oak this morning, and hollowed out the body of it with my adze; hewed the solid block into a charming lady’s travelling trunk. Slew and skinned a Shorthorn bull, which showed symptoms of mumps, and stretched the skin tightly over the wooden casing; it makes a truly handsome covering. Tomorrow I shall line the case with clean copies of The Christian Guardian, and my surprise for Mama will be complete. Am giving Papa the usual jug of corn whisky, which I drained from the bottom of the silo this evening. Tested it to make sure it was good, and fell into a profound swoon. Popped a few prunes into the jug, to give the liquor body.” Those were the days of really thoughtful, personal gifts.

  • WEDNESDAY •

  Met a small boy today—a sinister child with a stern jaw and a brooding hot eye—who had just mailed his letter to Santa Claus. “I told him what my minimum demands were,” he said, “and I’m
giving him till the 25th to come across—or else—” I blinked, and asked him to explain. He continued: “Claus has been in the driver’s seat too long; everybody has always lickspittled to him and made him think he’s a big-shot; well, the time has come for Organization; he thinks we can’t get along without him, but we’ll show him that he can’t get along without us; he expects a year’s good conduct for a few gew-gaws at Christmas; from now on there’ll have to be a Christmas every month, and an eight-hour day for good conduct, with all statutory holidays and two weeks vacation in the summer; Claus has been exploiting us.” He marched off, and as he turned to give me a knowing leer he inadvertently fell down an open manhole. I watched it for a few minutes, but he did not reappear. Walked home slowly, thinking about Fate.

  • THURSDAY •

  I see that a rich fellow in the U.S.A. has bought a fine tapestry as a Christmas present for his wife. I like tapestries, and have thought of weaving a few myself, in the grand manner, but with modern subjects. For instance, Dr. Brock Chisholm,14 with his foot on the recumbent body of Santa Claus, holding aloft a volume of The American Journal of Psychiatry, from which streams forth a golden light, would make a very pretty tapestry, suitable for a dentist’s waiting room. Or a large piece depicting the inventor of the fountain pen meeting the inventor of the typewriter, and each of them scowling horribly at the other, would be suitable for a tycoon’s office, as would also a depiction of the inventor of the rubber hotwater bottle, shielding himself from the onslaught of the inventor of the electric pad, while plunging a dagger into the breast of the inventor of the china hotwater bottle (or “stone pig”). Or how would it be if I did a really immense tapestry, showing industrialists and union leaders dancing on the prone form of a Consumer, while in the background Inflation snatched them up to the skies, by the hair? It could be hung in the Union Station at Toronto, to take away that bare look it has.