The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (19 page)

Then on the next day I went to London, where the Dominion Drama Festival was in the throes of its final competition. This city has the windiest station in Ontario, and my hat blew under a train, acquiring an oily patina. At the hotel and the Grand Theatre hundreds of amateur actors and producers were milling around, addressing one another in the merry shrieks which theatrical people consider obligatory in conversation. I had not been in the hotel a minute before I was greeted by the front legs of a horse of which I had been the back legs in a pantomime in 1933. The years sat lightly upon these front legs, and we tried out our act then and there: nobody noticed, for everyone else was horsing around, too.… During the afternoon I engaged in several envigorating fights about a Canadian National Theatre—a sort of Loch Ness monster which rears its ugly head at every Drama Festival.

I was surprised and delighted by the number of pretty and smartly-dressed woman attending the Drama Festival. Though really there is no occasion for amazement: pretty women like to act and show themselves off, and acting and showing off tends to make women pretty. I am no admirer of the retiring violet, who forgets to powder her nose and straighten her stocking-seams, and who prides herself on being natural and unspoiled; if the human race had persisted in being natural and unspoiled we should all still be swinging from tree to tree by our tails. Women are the flowers of humanity, and I find it hard to be patient with poor bloomers, and worse still tiresome thorny shrubs which never bloom at all.

At a matinee performance I sat between two parties of elderly people who enjoyed the comedies in a somewhat moribund way. Their praise was all negative. “Glad this isn’t one of those gloomy ones,” said an elderly man, with a despairing face: “Yes, I don’t like those plays about death,” agreed his female companion, who wore false teeth made apparently out of bone buttons and red sealing wax, and whose gayest smile was a ghastly
memento mori
. The elderly usually crave comedies, even though they have no touch of the Comic Spirit: it is the young, the dewy, the not-quite-dry-behind-the-ears who applaud the grim plays.… A performance of
Jane Eyre
one evening suffered from the fact that theatrical wigs are virtually unobtainable in Canada; consequently Mr. Rochester wore a thing on his head which had apparently been made from a dustless mop, and gave him an unfortunate resemblance to King Kong.

I
WAS CALLED
to the telephone during my lunch today, and sat listening to quite a lot of bad news while my food congealed on my plate and my digestive organs protested. It was one of the maxims of my old school nurse, Miss Toxaemia Dogsbody, Reg. N., that nobody should ever discuss disturbing topics at the table. Indeed, she made me learn a round, to the tune of
Row Your Boat
, which went thus:

But Miss Dogsbody reckoned without that miracle of modern ingenuity, the telephone. It is the conviction
of every man that if he has dined, all the rest of the civilized world has dined also; conversely, he assumes that if he has not yet eaten nobody but a low-bred oaf will be at the table. Consequently, anybody who is not eating is quite likely to call up somebody who is eating, and pour the leprous distillment of his sorrows and frustrations into the ear of the interrupted eater. This causes the interrupted eater (if he has an inside like mine) to suffer the conflicting emotions of sympathy and rage, short-circuitting his esophagus for the rest of the day.

I
ATTENDED AN ACADEMIC
festival today, and as several hundred young people were awarded degrees of one sort and another, I wondered idly where they would all find jobs.… I greatly enjoyed the Principal’s address, which was not only good in itself, but was spoken in one of the best Canadian accents I have ever heard—neither English nor American, nor the depressing whine of Ontario, but a good clear, expressive and distinguished utterance.… Throughout the afternoon my eye wandered again and again to a richly wrought silver trophy, about the size of a baby’s bath, which stood at one corner of the platform; it looked heavy, expensive, and impressive, and when it was at last presented to a young man who was both a scholar and an athlete I clapped as loudly as so rare a prize demanded. But judge of my surprise when, as the ceremony ended, a lewd fellow of the baser sort (a janitor, I assume) hurried to the platform, flung his hat into this treasure, picked it up by one handle and bore it off to the cellars. The effect was similar to the circus trick in which the strong man’s bar-bell, marked “500 lbs.” is carried away by the puniest of the clowns.

A
FRIEND PLAYED ME
a gramophone record of a song called “
Little Sir William
” yesterday, which is about a small boy who was murdered by his school-teacher. When his mother calls piteously for him outside the school he replies:

This song is obviously a relic of the good old days when teachers were not forbidden to inflict corporal punishment on troublesome pupils. If we had the school-wife’s side of the story we should no doubt find that little Sir William had been throwing spit-balls, or pinning signs saying “kick me” on the seat of the school-wife’s gown. Many a teacher has fingered her knife reflectively under such circumstances.

T
HE CROSSROADS
at which I live has recently treated itself to a few score parking meters; the hitching post having gone out of fashion, the parking post has become the mode, and rude fellows have been referring to them as pay-toilets for dogs. A more seemly attitude was shown today by two Wolf Cubs whom I observed from my window. “Let me show you how these things work,” said one of the lads, pulling a cent from his pocket and putting it in the slot of a meter. When the indicator swung into view his small friend was suitably impressed. Now, I should be interested to know the legal position of that boy, who had bought twelve minutes worth of parking time, but who had no car.
Would he be within his rights if he stretched himself prone beside his meter, and took a twelve minute nap? And if so, would it be legally possible for me to unfold a deckchair by one of these gadgets, buy an hour’s time, and sun myself in the street, in the Mexican fashion? What would happen to a man who parked his trailer by one of the things, and kept his rent paid by stuffing the meter with money? There are some pretty problems of jurisprudence inherent in this question of parking meters.

A
NEW TRANSLATION
of Dante’s
Divine Comedy
came to hand today, and I took a quick look at it before putting it on the review shelf. Reading Dante is a valuable corrective to too much reading of American political philosophy, for Dante had no use for the Common Man, although he was one of the great democrats of the ages. People who had done nothing in life were of no interest to him, and he states plainly that such people are of no interest to either God or the Devil, and are condemned to spend eternity in a nasty, cold place (like the recent Spring) outside the gates of Hell.… What fun, what deep, marrow-warming satisfaction Dante must have had in the composition of this mighty poem! Putting all his enemies (including the reigning Pope, Boniface VIII) into Hell, and attributing various unsuitable and undignified sins to them, doling out praise and blame, and vicariously spitting in the eye of anyone who disagreed with him! Nowadays of course the law of libel (that cloak of scoundrels and and ruffians) would restrain his hand.… Dante’s name may very easily have been Durante, but the tradition which says his pet name in the courts of Italy was “Il Schnozzolo” is of doubtful validity.

A
CHILD ASKED
me today to explain a picture it had found in a magazine, which showed some mailed warriors walking toward a castle carrying branches of trees in front of them. It was an advertisement for Scotch whiskey, and the picture was Malcolm’s forces advancing upon Macbeth’s castle—Birnam Wood moving toward Dunsinane, in fact. I explained this to the child, and gave a rough and expurgated version of the Shakespeare play, in which I happened to mention that the Witches had told Macbeth that this very thing was likely to happen. “If a witch had told me that, I’d have cut down the forest right away,” said the child. I agreed that this would have been a wise precaution, but that if Macbeth had done so there would have been no tragedy, and the whole course of Scots history would have been altered. She looked up at me searchingly and said: “That’s silly.” Sometimes I think that the reins of government should be put in the hands of children. They have remarkably direct minds, and when a witch tells them something, they pay attention.

I
SAW IN A PAPER
today that Hollywood is going to make a film based on Byron’s poem
The Corsair
. My guess is that the movie boys will take their cue from the lines:

and will turn the whole thing into an exposure of juvenile deliquency, altering those lively scenes in the Pasha’s harem to a sequence in which some rough boys with pea-shooters have fun in the lady’s section
of a Turkish bath.… It is a matter of surprise to me that Hollywood has not yet attempted a film on the life of Byron. True, the facts are too lurid for the censors, but the movie makers could always use one of their tried-and-true stories about poet meets girl, poet loses girl, poet gets girl. The truly Byronic conclusion—i.e., poet, having got girl, kicks her into the street—would not suit Hollywood’s customers.

I
READ IN THE
fashion news that the Handkerchief Skirt is coming back; this garment, fashionable in the twenties, is short and hangs in rags, as though the wearer had been fighting a particularly sharp-nailed wolf. I hope that this is not true, and that the Handkerchief Skirt will remain in Oblivion, where it belongs. I do not like short skirts; I like long skirts which swish and whirl. A short, tight skirt on a girl is ugly enough, but on an older woman to whom life and her metabolism have been unkind it is a cruel joke. Some men whose notion of Fashion is to bring women as near to utter nakedness as possible like short skirts because they reveal a lot of leg; but to my mind a really graceful woman is shown to greatest advantage in a skirt which compliments the poetry of her walk, instead of revealing the muscular action of her
gluteus maximus
. And though I yield to no man in my admiration of the female leg, I do not want to see all the legs in the world: there are thousands which I am ready to take for granted as useful, sturdy servants. Let us be spared Nature’s rougher handiwork.

I
WENT TO THE
movies last night and on the newsreel saw the Hon. George Drew welcoming some immigrants.
I started a clap for him, in which only one other person joined. I do this whenever I see a politician on the screen, to test his popularity; I am President, Statistician and only field-worker of an organization called the Marchbanks Poll of Worthless Public Opinion. If I raise a big clap for a politician I know at once that (a) it is payday, and the audience is in a generous mood; (b) the audience consists chiefly of married couples, who are not holding hands. If the response is small I know (a) that the hands of most people in the audience are otherwise engaged; (b) that the audience does not expect the feature picture to be any good and only came to the movies to get away from home; (c) that the audience consists chiefly of people who have never heard of George Drew, and think the figure on the screen is Eva Peron, or the Pope, or some other distant dignitary. I am compiling a large volume of my findings, and will shortly sell it to industrialists who will be impressed by the price and the word “Poll” in the title.

I
WAS LEAVING
an hotel this afternoon just as three noble old Mothers in Israel tumbled out of the beverage room, arm in arm. Two of them had one eye tight shut, but all three wore enigmatical smiles, like the Mona Lisa. They eyed me with unabashed interest, and one of them gave me, quite unmistakeably, what Shakespeare calls “the leer of invitation.” People have accused me of being a reactionary, but thank God I know how to behave toward my elders: I raised my hat politely. Two of the beldames bowed in return, but the third was awe-stricken. “Jeez, it’s Saint Paul!” she gasped. At that moment a taxi man, who was waiting for her, seized her and bundled her
into his cab. Her companions rolled toward the revolving door, got a compartment each and marched solemnly round and round; I joined them, and hurried the pace a bit, which caused them to grab the handrails and cry “Whoa!” I escaped from what seemed likely to become an endless and fruitless procession, and as I passed out of sight they were still spinning. “Like a white candle, in a holy place, So is the beauty of an aged face,” I murmured, turning for a last look.