The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (16 page)

I
COMPOSED MYSELF
after lunch for my noonday snooze, but was called three times on the telephone; in consequence my afternoon was ruined. It has long been my contention that the siesta is needed far more in our cold climate than in the langorous South. Southerners snooze at midday because they are lazy; Canadians should snooze at midday because they still have several hours of hard work ahead of them, including a certain amount of battling with the wintry blasts, and slipping and slithering on the ice. They need to prepare themselves for what lies ahead. But it happens far too often that when I compose myself for fifteen minutes of delicious torpor some fellow who either has high blood
pressure or is in a hurry to develop it calls me. He never wants to tell me that I have inherited a fortune, or that a beautiful dark woman is anxious to make my acquaintance; he invariably wants me to do something right away, usually of a vexatious nature. By the time I have lied my way out of doing whatever it is he wants, the shy nymph Snooze has fled, and there is nothing for me to do but begin the afternoon’s toil.

I
HAVE RECEIVED
a great many letters relating to a radio broadcast in which I took part a fortnight ago. They all make the same complaint, and if I may I will give you the substance of a representative letter, sent to me by an elderly clergyman in Sault Ste. Marie: “There you were, with a national hookup, and what did you do? Talked in a smarmy, Nice Nellie way that nearly made me throw up! Why did you not do what any man of spirit would do if he had a chance to address the whole of Canada—shove your face as near the microphone as possible and shout a dirty word? Such as ‘——’, or ‘——’, or better still ‘——’? It is such a chance as I have long dreamed of. You had it, and you missed it. —— you!” The others are in much the same vein.… But what was I to do? Naturally the idea occurred to me, as it would to any man worthy of the name. But there were a lot of big C.B.C. bullies watching me, and I knew that if I yielded to my impulse I should be dragged from the microphone, beaten with rubber truncheons, and shipped to Ottawa under guard, where I would be forced to wash out my mouth with soap in the office of the Minister of National Revenue. I know that I was weak, but try to understand my position. I am not of the stuff from which martyrs are made.

I
SAW A DALMATIAN
dog today—one of those curious spotted animals which used to be called “blotting-paper dogs” when I was a boy. They used also to be called Coach Dogs, presumably because it was the smart thing to have one bounding along the road after one’s coach, getting even more spotted from the spatter of the wheels. But of the three names I like “blotting-paper dog” best. It suggests that a Dalmatian has literary qualities not given to other dogs—that it lends itself to use as an auxiliary penwiper, or to rolling gently on large manuscripts. The average dog is a nuisance to a writer, as it lies on his feet, snuffling, coughing and having bad dreams, while he tries to collect his thoughts. No dog has ever whispered poems into its master’s ear, as was the case with Victor Hugo’s cat, but at least the Dalmatian has tried to make itself useful in the study.

I
WAS TALKING
this evening to an nineteenth century Liberal who accused me of being an eighteenth century Tory. This was because I had been holding forth at some length about the conspiracy against the home life of our nation on the part of the medical profession and the nurses. There was a day when a man took pride in the fact that he was born in the house in which he lived, and looked forward with confidence to dying in the same house, and perhaps even in the same bed. This gave a richness of association to a dwelling which has entirely been destroyed by modern medical usage. Babies are now born in hospitals, and there is a powerful and subtle move on foot to persuade everybody to die in hospitals. My desire is to die in my own bed, leaning back on a heap of pillows, wearing a becoming
dressing-gown and a skull-cap, blessing those of whom I approve, gently rebuking my enemies, giving legacies to faithful servants, and passing out clean handkerchiefs to the weepers; I should also like a small choir to do some really fine unaccompanied singing within earshot. But will I be able to stage such a production in a hospital? Never! I’ll be lucky if the nurse answers the bell in time to jot down my last words.

I
READ IN A
magazine this morning that gout is just as prevalent today as it was in the eighteenth century, although some doctors do not recognize it when they see it, believing the disease to be extinct. It seems to me that several other diseases are in the same anomalous position. For instance, in
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton makes frequent reference to a disease which he calls “crudity,” the symptoms of which were distress in the stomach, wind, and a sensation of having swallowed hot pennies. Lots of people that I know have these symptoms; if they are poor they consume patent medicines; if they are rich they permit surgeons to do fancy whittling and knot-tying in their entrails. They give the ailment many names, but it is just plain crudity, and I should think that doctors would recognize it. A sure sign of crudity, says Burton, is what he calls “hard, sour and sharp belching.” Everybody knows how common this is; at service club luncheons you can hardly hear the speaker because of it. I have even heard it mentioned on the radio. Crudity numbers its victims by the millions, yet doctors refuse to acknowledge its existence.

I
SEE BY THE PAPERS
that the champion milch cow of
Great Britain drinks twelve quarts of stout a day, and is habitually soused. Also there is a cat in California which never drinks anything but Scotch, is 17 years old and has produced 111 kittens. These are fascinating bits of information, but I fear that brooding on them will only lead to the formation of socially unacceptable theories concerning Motherhood.

E
VERY DAY I SEE
a dog which lies in wait for passing cars, and rushes at them, snarling. It is my theory that this dog is a reincarnation of a traffic cop. The belief of Pythagoras that the souls of men may return to earth in the bodies of animals, and vice versa, seems to me to be no more unreasonable than a lot of things we are expected to believe nowadays, and there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence to support it.

Y
ES, I THINK
the heat wave reached a new level this week. I do not greatly mind the heat; I simply drink water by the pailful, and go about my business. But some of my friends are in a sad state. This leads me to wonder whether the use of the fan by men might not be revived in Canada. Men carried fans in the eighteenth century; Orientals carry fans to this day. Of course the modern craze for utility would make it impossible to revive the fan as a thing of beauty, but a fan which was also a notebook, or which had actuarial tables printed on it, or which bore a large advertisement of one’s own business would surely be permissible. Golfers could keep their scores on special fans, and preachers would write their sermons on them. It has been whispered to me by a low fellow of secular tendencies that many a preacher last Sunday wore no
trousers under his gown. It may be so, but it would ill become a layman like me to let his mind dwell on such a subject.

The heat is more intense this evening, and only men whose natural juices have dried up have not sweat through the back of their shirts. I am melting like a tallow candle, but I do not really mind. In a shop today I saw two of the clerks fanning each other, but they fanned so hard and laughed so much that they had to stop in order to cool off. My brother Fairchild, avid of a martyr’s crown, has taken his children to the Canadian National Exhibition, and from time to time my thoughts turn to him, and I have sharp stabs of exquisite self-congratulation because I am not with him. What really amazes me is that many young people under twenty moan to me about the heat, though I am sure that they are not really suffering; they just think that such complaining is grown-up and makes them seem mature. Well, let it rage. I can stand a lot of heat, and in no time at all it will be winter. This afternoon I drank a pail of cold water, and put my feet in a pail of beer, and was perfectly happy.

A man groaned to me today that he rarely ate anything in such weather as this, and that even in spite of this healthy self-denial he felt dreadful. “Poor deluded wretch,” said I, pulling out a sausage-roll and munching it before his astonished eyes, “haven’t you the gumption to know that if the heat makes you suffer you need energy to compensate for that suffering? I always eat like a poor relation in hot weather to keep my strength up. A hot cereal for breakfast, two eggs, toast and four cups of coffee puts me in trim for the day. A hearty lunch, a light tea at four, dinner at seven and a snack at bedtime keep me going. And do I suffer from heat? Not on your tin-type!” … He was unconvinced,
but I cannot help that; in my dietary ideas I am away ahead of my time.

I
SEE THAT THE
U.S.A. is going to issue a stamp with the head of William Allen White of Emporia on it. I think that Canada is wise never to have created a stamp with the head of an editor on it; editors at best are disagreeable fellows, professional contradicters and sassers back. An editor of any degree of experience becomes incapable of complete agreement with anyone, and he reads the dictionary so much that he always knows more nasty names for any particular offence than the man who has committed it. Whatever an editor may be in his private life, he is professionally ferocious, and he can turn on his tap of belligerence at a moment’s notice. There was a time when the horsewhipping of editors was a common sport, and shooting their hats off in the street was regarded as mere pleasantry. Now the law forbids both these manly pastimes.… But glorifying an editor by putting him on a stamp is as inexplicable to other nations as is our Canadian custom of worshipping the beaver, that other unattractive, gnawing, surly mammal. To be obliged to lick even the back of an editor’s picture would be intolerable to a free man, though, an instant later, he could punch the picture in the face with his thumb.

T
HIS IS SUMMER
, unmistakeably. One can always tell when one sees schoolteachers hanging about the streets idly, looking like cannibals during a shortage of missionaries. Of course, schoolteachers are not idle all summer long; no, no. Very soon the well-paid ones
will be travelling, the poorly-paid ones will be sweating in summer jobs, and great numbers of others will be in summer schools, stoking themselves with knowledge which they will disgorge next autumn. Here and there a few mad eccentrics will be found reading and thinking, having somewhere received the impression that this indulgence is somehow connected with their work. But for a few days at the end of every school year teachers of whatever degree may be seen roaming the streets, slightly dazed and a trifle irresponsible, like the slaves immediately after Lincoln signed the decree of emancipation.… You are a school teacher? Then what are you doing in that attractive gown, you little skeezix!

I
ATTENDED A PLAY
which I had written myself last week, and at the end of Act One two women hurried past me, making for the door. “I don’t care what happens, those pickles have got to be done tonight,” said the larger and more determined one. It is incidents such as this which keep authors from getting swelled heads. And indeed at this time of year pickles are the prime concern of every really womanly woman. The subtle alchemy which transmutes a mess of tomatoes and celery (which looks like something the police have swept up after a disastrous bus collision) into chili sauce, cannot be understood by men; nor can the coarse male hand compound mustard pickles which do not scorch the epigastrium of the eater, and give him a breath like the monsoon of the spicy East. There are indisputably some jobs which women do better than men, and making pickles is one of them. Women cannot make wine—Sir James Fraser tells why in
The Golden Bough
—but they are priestesses of the pungent mystery
of the pickle, and the 25th of September is their Picklemas.

O
F LATE I HAVE
been much in the company of some professional Canadian actors, who were engaged in the production of a play. Most Canadians still think of actors as gay, carefree souls and not quite respectable by our grisly national standard. (In Canada anyone is respectable who does no obvious harm to his fellow man, and who takes care to be very solemn, and disapproving toward those who are not solemn.) But my experience of Canadian actors is that they are intense and earnest folk who work very hard and spend the time when they should be asleep chewing the rag about a national theatre for Canada. For this reason I think that it is wrong to call pieces which are written for the theatre in Canada “plays,” for that word suggests lightness, fantasy and ease of accomplishment. Canada will only respect her theatre when plays are called “works.” Canada has a high regard for anything that involves toil. Therefore I think that in future I shall describe all my plays as “works,” and if they ever reach the apotheosis of print I shall take care to call them
The Complete Works of Marchbanks
. Let triflers talk of plays; Canada wants to be given the works.… Yes, madam, I entirely agree: all works and too few plays makes Canada a dull nation.