The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (11 page)

I
WAS TALKING TO
a young person who attends the kindergarten, and she gave me some interesting details about the teaching of music, as it is done at her school. All the children must sing, and are divided by the teacher into canaries (the best singers), robins (fairly good singers), blue birds (definitely not choral material) and pigeons (creatures who croak moodily upon one note). The young canary with whom I spoke expressed deep scorn for pigeons. It seems to me that this name has been well chosen. I once lived in a house which was very popular with pigeons, and their croaking was a great nuisance, and caused me to look up a recipe for pigeon pie. Poets have affected to find a pleasing melancholy in the note of the pigeon, but poets are notoriously heavy sleepers, and are not wakened by these pompous, detestable, strutting birds in the early hours of the morning. I never made the pigeon pie, for the labour of skinning and cleaning enough birds daunted me. But to this day I never see a pigeon waddling in the street, eating something disgusting,
without wanting to let it have the toe of my boot. Have you ever kicked a pigeon?

I
ATTENDED A GATHERING
today at which I met a large number of people for the first time, and all greeted me with a handclasp. Or perhaps handclasp is the wrong word; ninety per cent of them gave me what appeared to be a rubber glove half-filled with cold porridge, and I was expected to do the clasping. Are people with damp, chilly, squelchy hands on the increase, or am I being drawn into circles where they are common? A distressing possibility.… Being introduced to women is always a hazard, for the foolish creatures will not adopt a firm policy in such cases, and stick to it. Some of them shake hands like men; some raise a hand, and then snatch it away in fright; some put their hands behind their backs in a marked manner; still others give me a hand to hold, and then appear to forget about it, leaving me to dispose of the thing by putting it in my pocket or feeding it to a passing dog. There was a day when no woman ever shook hands; I wish they would return to that usage, or else shake hands properly. Their present habit of playing put-and-take with their hands is productive of social unease, if not downright neurosis.… No thank you, madam, I would prefer not to test your grip.

I
HAD MEAT BALLS
for lunch today. This is a delicacy of which I am very fond. But I insist upon the True Meat Ball—prepared in an open pan and tasting of meat—rather than the False Meat Ball—prepared in a pressure cooker and loathsomely studded with raisins. The pressure cooker is all very well in its way, but
there are some dishes with which it cannot cope, and the meat ball is one of them. A meat ball made in a pressure cooker has a mild, acquiescent taste—the sort of taste which I imagine that a particularly forgiving Anglican missionary would have in the mouth of a cannibal. Your True Meat Ball is made of sterner stuff, and if he tastes of missionary at all he tastes like some stern Jesuit, who died dogmatizing.

I
TOOK AN OPPORTUNITY
which presented itself today to see a film about Princess Elizabeth, which showed her from earliest babyhood to the present day. I found this impressive and moving, for I admire royalty, and am sorry for nations which have none. Scores of my obscure and unmeritable ancestors have shared with the Royal House the task of building Great Britain and its Empire and Commonwealth, though I am the first to admit that the Marchbanks tribe were more active in the South Sea Bubble, the Rebecca Riots and the War of Jenkins’ Ear than in the more spectacular events of history. There were a few bad kings, and many a dubious Marchbanks, but they all wove the tapestry of history together, and will do so, I trust, for many centuries to come.

I
THINK SERIOUSLY
of launching a crusade against the custom of removing the hat in an elevator. I wear my hat in the lobby of my hotel, and I wear it in the corridors. Nobody expects me to take it off in a streetcar or in an automobile when I ride with a woman. But as soon as a woman comes aboard an elevator all the men in it sweep off their hats as though she were the American Mother of The Year; some extremists
even hold the hats over their hearts and assume that colicky look which indicates nobility of feeling in the Canadian male. The elevator operator is a woman, but nobody bothers about her. The whole thing seems to me to be false and foolish.… Frankly, I should like to see a corresponding custom decreeing that women should keep their heads covered in the presence of men, as a gesture of respect toward the Defender, Bread-Winner, Prophet, Sage, Seer and Begetter of the Race. Why should I show respect for any strange woman who flouts my manhood by running about with a bare head? A fig and a resolutely pulled-down fedora for all such hussies! … No, no, madam, it is quite unnecessary for you to cover your head with your fruit-plate. Desist, I beg!

I
TOOK TO MY BED
last week end, for my bones ached and my tripes felt as though I had swallowed a porcupine. I treated this malady by drinking countless glasses of lukewarm water. I wish it were the fashion to groan when one is ill. I like groaning, and I believe it helps me to bear suffering; what is more, groaning helps to pass the time. But modern sickroom practice is all against groaning. In Victorian times it was different; everybody groaned when they were ill; it was considered the right thing to do. Their roars were an inspiration to their doctors and nurses, urging them on to greater flights of bleeding, purging, leeching and poulticing. Furthermore, groaning has curative powers. A Hindu, when he is ill, repeats the mystic syllable “Om” as loudly and as resonantly as he can until he is well; it is his belief that the resonance provides a gentle and beneficial massage for his suffering insides. And what is “Om,” I ask you, but a stylized groan?
There is more to groaning than Western medical science has yet recognized.

I
SEE A LETTER
to the press complaining that Toronto is terribly abused, and that the jokes about Toronto are the fosterlings of cankered minds. Personally I always think of Toronto as a big fat rich girl who has lots of money, but no idea of how to make herself attractive. She has not learned to drink like a lady, and she has not learned to laugh easily; when she does laugh, she shows the roof of her mouth; she is dowdy and mistakes dowdiness for a guarantee of virtue. She is neither a jolly country girl with hay in her hair, like so many other Ontario cities, nor is she a delicious wanton, like Montreal; she is irritatingly conscious of her own worthiness.… Toronto ought to read the advertisements which explain why girls are unpopular and get themselves whispered about. Maybe she needs more bulk in her diet.

I
PASSED SOME TIME
today laughing at the crowds of Christmas shoppers. I settled my Christmas problems weeks ago, by buying a lot of magazine subscriptions and allotting them to the various people who expect presents from me. My brother Fairchild gets a year of
Wee Wisdom
and my nephew Gobemouche will receive
The Butter and Cheese Review
; my Aunt Prudence Marchbanks is to have
The Police Gazette
and her sister Salina will get
The Canadian Jeweller and Die-Sinker
;
The International Snail-Watcher’s Journal
will go to my Cousin Ghengis, and
The Renal and Urological Quarterly
will go to my Uncle Gomeril. Some people have criticized my choices, but it is really very difficult
to do better. I picked all the magazines which could be had for a dollar a year, or less, and distributed them as best I could. After all, it is the thought that counts.

H
AVING A LITTLE
spare time this afternoon, I renewed my sketchy acquaintance with the Anglo-Saxon tongue, and was impressed anew with its beauty and utility. In this language, as you probably know, a body is called a “bone-house”; this is the only Anglo-Saxon word I have ever been able to get thoroughly into by head. It has enabled me, however, to make a rather charming translation of one of Bobbie Bums’ best-known verses, thus:

I
think that the mingling of Scots and Anglo-Saxon is rather moving. But as I say, I found my old Anglo-Saxon grammar in the attic, where it had been used to mend a leak in the roof, and re-discovered that a boss used to be called a “ring-giver” before the Norman Conquest, and that the language contained no words for “union leader,” “closed shop” or “nationalization.” Would Britain have been wiser not to develop her language to quite the degree of subtlety which distinguishes it today? What a topic for a debating society!

I
HAD A LETTER
this morning from some association which is agitating for the repeal of the Sales Tax which is, its pamphlet assures me, “a straight violation of the laws of God.” This is fascinating. Not long ago one of the larger Canadian churches notified me of its
intention to “prepare a statement of God’s Will concerning marriage.” How lucky we are to live in a country where God’s Will and His Laws are so thoroughly understood, and so zealously publicized!

I
TRIED TO READ
a book on economics today and got through about thirty pages, of which I remember nothing. This is a recurrent disappointment. For months at a time I read articles in newspapers and magazines which are full of references to the Law of Supply and Demand, to Diminishing Returns, to Undistributed Assets, to Non-perpetuating Wages (I think I understand this, because mine have always been of the non-perpetuating kind) to Good Money Driving Out Bad, and all those things with which the intelligent world seems to be on such easy terms, and I don’t understand any of them. So from time to time I get a book which professes to make economics clear even to lunk-heads like myself, and I read it solemnly, but I can never remember what it says. This is one reason why I shall always be a member of the exploited proletariat. Why, I never even understand what Money is. The books tell me that it is merely a variable medium of exchange, representing a variable amount of goods or services, but I can never remember these discreditable facts about good old money, which is probably my favourite commodity. It’s a terrible thing to be ignorant.

I
RECIEVED A LETTER
this morning informing me that I had been appointed to a Committee; it did not tell me, however, what the Committee was formed to do, or whether it would ever meet, or whether the members were merely expected to become pen-pals. I am already
a member of a vast number of committees, associations, commissions, ginger-groups, pepper sprinklers and mustard pots and they rarely expect me to do anything, so I shall lie low and wait until this new Committee shows its hand; if it reveals any disquieting signs of life I shall send the chairman a letter signed with a false name, saying that I am dead, and that will be the end of that.… I find it very useful to be a member of plenty of committees; I can point to the list whenever I am asked to do anything which might involve real work, and ask how I can be expected to shoulder any new duties? In a few more years I am going to begin collecting Vice Presidencies; they ensure that one’s name will be kept high on the official stationery of several important bodies, and it is only once in a blue moon that a Vice President (like Mr. Truman) is called upon to do anything. Besides, in our North American civilization any man over a certain age is expected to be Vice President of a few organizations, if he is not a moron or one of Nature’s secretaries.

I
WAS LOOKING
through a pile of books this afternoon, which I had not read since I was a boy. To my astonishment I found that I remembered the stories in some detail. But in those days my mind was young and impressionable, and had not been subjected to the horrible wear and tear of book reviewing; nowadays my poor brain is a sort of incinerator, which seizes upon huge amounts of literary garbage, quickly reduces it to ashes, and spits them out, retaining only a disgusting slime upon its walls.… As I leafed over the pages of these boys’ books, I was delighted by the unambiguous style in which they were written, and particularly the way in which the characters were named. When in a
boy’s story, you find a character called “Sir Judas Snake” you can be pretty sure that he is up to no good, and will probably get seriously in the way of the hero, who is quite likely to be called “Justyn Bloodygood” or “Samkin Steelheart.” Indeed, it is amazing how closely these villains resemble one another; they are all fancy dressers, they are all thin, they all talk in a nastily grammatical manner, and they are all cowards at heart. My life has not brought me into close association with many important criminals, but I have known a few very unpleasant types who were fat, sloppy, illiterate and braver than the average Good Citizen. But then, art is always superior to truth.