The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks
Read The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks Online
Authors: Robertson Davies
By Robertson Davies
NOVELS
THE SALTERTON TRILOGY
Tempest-Tost
Leaven of Malice
A Mixture of Frailties
THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY
Fifth Business
The Manticore
World of Wonders
THE CORNISH TRILOGY
The Rebel Angels
What’s Bred in the Bone
The Lyre of Orpheus
Murther and Walking Spirits
The Cunning Man
SHORT FICTION
High Spirits
FICTIONAL ESSAYS
THE SAMUEL MARCHBANKS COLLECTION
The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks
The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks
Samuel Marchbanks’ Almanack
The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
ESSAYS
One Half of Robertson Davies
The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies
The Merry Heart
Happy Alchemy
Selected Works on the Art of Writing
Selected Works on the Pleasure of Reading
CRITICISM
A Voice from the Attic
PLAYS
Selected Plays
ROBERTSON DAVIES
(1913–1995) was born and raised in Ontario, and was educated at a variety of schools, including Upper Canada College, Queen’s University, and Balliol College, Oxford. He had three successive careers: as an actor with the Old Vic Company in England; as publisher of the
Peterborough Examiner
; and as university professor and first Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, from which he retired in 1981 with the title of Master Emeritus.
He was one of Canada’s most distinguished men of letters, with several volumes of plays and collections of essays, speeches, and
belles lettres
to his credit. As a novelist, he gained worldwide fame for his three trilogies:
The Salterton Trilogy
,
The Deptford Trilogy
, and
The Cornish Trilogy
, and for later novels
Murther & Walking Spirits
and
The Cunning Man
.
His career was marked by many honours: He was the first Canadian to be made an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he was a Companion of the Order of Canada, and he received honorary degrees from twenty-six American, Canadian, and British universities.
The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks
New Canadian Library electronic edition, 2016
Copyright © 1949 by Robertson Davies
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
First published in Canada by Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited in 1949
First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus in 1951
All rights reserved.
e-ISBN: 978-0-7710-2798-7
Electronic edition published in Canada by New Canadian Library, an imprint of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company, Toronto, in 2016
McClelland & Stewart with colophon is a registered trademark
Library of Congress Control Number is available upon request
v3.1
HE
N
ATURE AND
U
SE OF THIS
B
OOK
I
T IS A
frequent complaint of the sort of person with whom complaint is an ingrained habit that the art of conversation is dead. I do not believe this. I think that conversation is in a reasonably flourishing state and I assert furthermore that when I have the right company I am not a bad hand at it myself. I find that company most often seated around a dinner table. Encouraged, therefore, by the kindly reception which has been given to some extracts from my
Diary
which I published two years ago, I offer to the public these odds and ends from my Table Talk.
In the hope that such an arrangement may call up the atmosphere of the dinner table, I have set out my paragraphs (for a good talker should speak in paragraphs and not in disjointed utterance) under headings which trace the course of a good dinner. I do not mean a great dinner, for such things are almost impossible in private houses in our day; I mean a simple seven course dinner, consisting of a Soup (I like a choice of thick or clear), a Fish (I am very partial to lobster for this course), an Entrée (where the cook shows her utmost skill with a soufflé or some other complex and ingenious dish), a Remove (which is the proper name
for a really good joint of meat or possibly a fine fowl if the meal is a simple one), a Sweet (and if anyone is thinking of asking me to dinner I may say that I am always well content with a Sherry Trifle), a Savoury (but no unnatural unions of prunes and bacon, if you please) and a simple Dessert of fruits, nuts and bonbons. In the matter of wines I do not insist, as some greedy diners do, on an array of fine vintages: a little Sherry, an honest Claret, a sound, wholesome Burgundy (or Vin de Champagne if you simply
must
) and a glass or two of Port, or better still, Madeira, to top off, will suffice me. If the Hostess insists, a Salad may be interpolated between the Entrée and the Remove, but I have provided no conversation for it; one does not talk while eating Salad; one crunches.
As to the use of this book, the reader may please himself, but I suggest that he may memorize pieces from it and cleverly pass them off as his own when next he dines out; in that way he will get a reputation as a talker. For the particular convenience of dull people I have inserted several long boring stories into the book, and these are clearly marked as such in the text. Those who wish to spare themselves the pains of getting passages by heart may take the book to dinner with them, and read aloud from it frankly. Those who, for one reason or another, are never asked to dine out, may create an agreeable illusion of society if they will read the book to themselves, as they regale themselves with soda biscuits and weak tea, sitting at a corner of their own kitchen tables. To all, under every circumstance, I raise a glass (or, if total abstainers, a loaded fork) and cry “My dear Sir, (or Madam) — your very Good Health!”
S
AMUEL
M
ARCHBANKS
The Deipnosophists Club
September 1, 1949
.
•O
F
H
IS
G
IFT FOR
R
EMINISCENCE
•
B
EFORE DINNER
, I observed, everybody seemed to want to talk about the Good Old Days. I am, generally speaking, better at this than anybody else, for I am not bothered by details of chronology, and tend to regard as my own, reminiscences which have been imparted to me by the Ancients of my tribe. Thus I frequently tell people about how I taught Disraeli to play croquet, because my Great Uncle Hengist did so, and I also have a good story about how I sent Sir John A. Macdonald his first brief, though I have a hazy notion that
it was my second cousin Bloodgood Marchbanks, who did it. Thus I embody in myself the whole Marchbanks Tradition, and possess what anthropologists call Racial Memory.
F
H
IS
E
CONOMICS
•
A
MAN WROTE
to me today who says, “Why has Samuel Marchbanks no economic problem? To me no Canadian is real unless he is engaged in a death-grapple with his bank manager.” This is easy to answer; I have no economic problem because I do not believe in economics. I am an atheist and an infidel in all matters relating to Mammon. I have never had a bank account; I keep all my money in a tin box under my bed, and I never buy anything unless I have enough money in the tin box to pay for it in cash. I am rarely tormented by the desire to own anything, and I would exchange the Towers for a tent tomorrow if tents were practical dwellings in Canada. I fight inflation by eating cheaper food, and wearing my clothes past the bounds of hygiene. I have no insurance, and have made no provision for my old age, as I am resolved to become a whining beggar outside church and beverage-room doors when I am past work. All my life I have defied economics and I shall go on doing so. What is the result? I look at the world with the clear, bright eye of a man who has a tin box, and bank managers love me and sometimes give me blotters advertising their establishments.
EVENGE
•
B
EFORE I FELL ASLEEP
last night a moth flew up my pyjama sleeve and tickled me excruciatingly. I overlaid the creature and slept on its corpse.
O
F
C
HARACTER
R
EVEALED IN
D
EPORTMENT
•
O
N MY WAY
to the dentist this afternoon, I was pursued by an elderly bum, who kept murmuring, “Hey Perfessor, wanna speakcha minute, Perfessor.” Indigents almost always address me as Professor, a title to which I have no claim. But I observe that men of very upright carriage are usually spoken to by beggars as “Captain,” whereas fellows whose spines are noticeably out of plumb (“Bible-backed” is the phrase in some circles) are called “Professor.” I suppose this is my fate, but I wish that once in a while a beggar would call me “Sport,” or something dashing of that kind, suggesting that he took me for a frequenter of race-courses, an habitual drinker of champagne, and altogether a knowing and dangerous character.