The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (8 page)

M
Y DENTIST
told me last week that modern man eats too much soft food, which weakens his bite and loosens his teeth. But this afternoon I bit my tongue with such vigour that I nearly bit it off. I do not understand how anyone could possibly have a stronger or more destructive bite than I have. Probably I am the only writer and critic in Canada of whom it can truthfully be said that his bite is worse than his bark.

T
HE LADY ON
my right passed the afternoon at the hairdresser’s. Such women are full of information, for they read old copies of digests and news magazines under the drier. She told me that a psychologist says that it is wrong to repress anger, as anger creates adrenalin and if this nasty stuff is not used up it poisons its owner, giving him indigestion, communism, rabies or ulcers. Anger, this fellow says, should be rationalized by violent physical action. It seems to me that the trouble with this idea is that the kind of violent physical action which follows anger is awfully hard to explain. If a man disagrees with me, and I become angry and pop him on the button and then say, “Nothing personal, you understand; I’m just rationalizing my anger and working off my excess adrenalin,” he will probably secrete a lot of adrenalin himself and pop me back
again. Then I shall fill up with adrenalin for a second time, and be compelled to re-pop him, and when the cops arrive it will look just like a low brawl, and not like a high-class adrenalin-rationalizing party. I wish psychologists wouldn’t fill women up with such stuff; I am slopping over with adrenalin all the time and it doesn’t seem to hurt me—very much.

I
WENT FOR A WALK
this afternoon and pondered about democracy. Good as it is, no one can pretend that we have carried it out to its logical conclusion. The equality of man and man is now pretty well established, but what is being done to spread democracy among animals? Is the junk-wagon horse treated as the equal of the race-horse? Does the thoroughbred Boxer receive the same treatment as the mongrel? There is not even equality of opportunity within such fairly homogeneous groups as dogs and horses, much less among all beasts. Is a duck ever given a chance to run in the Grand National? And yet who is to say that a duck, given the proper education, and the right food and housing, might not some day win that famous race? And this question of equality among animals brings up the greater question: what is Man that he should consider himself the Lord of Creation? Will we not realize that all life is sacred and all animals—man included—equals (or “on all fours” if you prefer the expression)? There will be no real equality until our Parliament is filled with fowls, rodents, and horned cattle, as well as men. Then we will have earned the right to talk about Democracy.

I
HAD A WRANGLE
today with a man who said that there
was no such thing as grammar, and that “the living speech” was good speech. He talked about “Everyman’s grammar”—meaning anything anybody cares to say—as the only guide to usage. Humph! I wouldn’t particularly like to trust myself to Everyman’s medicine, or Everyman’s ideas about the law. Why should I accept Everyman’s grammar?

Y
ESTERDAY I SAW
a play done in French by an excellent group of actors from Quebec. When this happens a synopsis of the play is printed for dullards like me, but these synopses are of very little assistance, being written, I suppose, by a Frenchman whose knowledge of English is about on a par with my knowledge of French. They generally run something like this: “Alphamet, the lover of Pheenaminte, is eager to break off his intrigue with Flanelette, ward of the miser Planchette, whose earlier affair with a woman of the town, Clitore, has been discovered by the wily notary Bidet. To achieve his end he disguises himself as a country cousin, Merde, and seeks the assistance of the maid, Vespasienne, who is in reality the disguised Comtesse de Blancmange. Meanwhile the miser has altered his will, leaving everything to the poet Tisane, whose love for the beautiful Parapluie is made known to her supposed father (but in reality her ward) Derrière, bringing the whole merry business to an end with a sextuple marriage and the birth of the triplets, Un, Deux and Trois.”

I
HAD TO MAKE
a speech today, and was not in the mood for it. In consequence I lay in the bathtub and invented Marchbanks’ Rhetorical Robot, a type of recording
machine for the use of public speakers. You prepare your speech, and record it when you feel at your best. You then go to the meeting, and when the time for your address comes you turn on the Robot, which delivers the speech for you, while you loll at ease, picking your teeth, laughing uproariously at your own jokes, and leading the applause.

I
HEARD SOMEBODY
use the expression “gracious living” today. Until now I have only seen it in print. It is a phrase I dislike. To my mind it suggests a horrible daintiness—salads made of cream cheese and pineapple, doilies scattered over everything and plaster book-ends supporting five books bound in imitation suede. People who go in for “gracious living” call beer “ale,” when it isn’t ale, because they think “ale” sounds more refined than “beer”; they are the people who never want more food—they always “wish” it. “Do
you wish further prunes?” they say, looking as though no one who was not a gormandizer could possibly want anything more to eat. “How warm I’ve grown,” they say, when they are drenched in sweat. They never go to bed—they “retire.” They spend their whole lives trying to be like characters in
The Ladies’ Home Journal.
In my opinion, anyone who finds the expression “gracious living” creeping into his mind, is in mortal danger of becoming a pantywaist or a stuffed shirt. Good manners, decent hospitality and comfort are the reality; “gracious living” is a shoddy, sugar-coated substitute.

I
SEE THAT
Princess Elizabeth and Barbara Ann Scott have both been included among the “Six Most Wholesome Women of the Year” by the Women’s Research Guild of New York. A dubious compliment, if ever I heard one. In my callow youth, I was badly scratched several times before I learned that if there is one thing no girl wants to be called, it is wholesome. This word suggests that a girl eats a lot of turnips, laughs too loudly at clean jokes, wears too much underclothing of the wrong kind, and has not heard about depilatories. Wholesome is what one calls girls whom one cannot call beautiful, or witty, or charming without hurrying straight to the bathroom to wash one’s mouth out with brown soap. Even a girl who takes a lot of outdoor exercise, like Miss Scott, need not be wholesome because of it: even a princess, with the eyes of the world upon her, can avoid the curse of wholesomeness. What girl would be a slice of bread, when she can be a piece of cake? I think that both these maligned young women are thoroughly unwholesome, so there!

T
ODAY I SAW
a baker wearing a pair of plastic pants over his ordinary trousers, and pondered idly on the purpose of this strange garment. A baby-sitter might advantageously wear plastic pants; I have known babies who themselves wore plastic pants; but why does a baker need plastic pants? Some modern mystery, beyond my comprehension, no doubt, for I am a poor creature, bound by chains of habit. The first butcher I saw as a child had a wooden leg, and to this day I have an unreasonable feeling that butchers with two genuine legs are impostors. Such is the strength of an early impression on a mind ill-suited to the giddy changes of modern life.

I
READ WITH INTEREST
that agents of the R.C.M.P. have been searching the offices of a Canadian magazine in search of a manuscript. “They searched the safe,” says one report, “but found nothing in it except a stock of stationery.” This shocks me. The R.C.M.P. must really be very badly trained, or they would know that nobody keeps anything valuable in a safe any more, nor has anyone done so since 1910. The vault, or safe of most business offices contains all or some of the following:

(1)  The accountant’s rubbers

(2)  Some disused ledgers

(3)  The stick with a hook on it which is used for opening the windows.

(4)  Two or three tarnished cups won by the firm’s bowling team back in the days when it had a bowling team.

(5)  A bottle of ink which has congealed but is too good to throw away.

(6) Vases in which the secretaries put flowers on the rare occasions when anybody gives them flowers. Valuables are kept in banks. Manuscripts are kept in confused heaps on desks.

I
PONDERED AT LUNCH
today on the fact that all waiters in good hotels are clean-shaven. Is this a reminiscence of the time—about a century ago—when all men-servants wore powder in their hair on great occasions (although their masters had long given it up) and were forbidden to grow their whiskers as a mark of their servitude? At the turn of the century the only clean-shaven men to be seen in the streets were actors, clergymen, servants and a few lawyers.… A women’s luncheon was going on near me. It looked deadly dull. Gatherings at which only one sex is represented are rarely enlivening. The only thing drearier than a pack of men eating together is a pack of women doing the same.… I quite agree with you, madam; the sexes are only tolerable when mingled.

I
WAS AT A GATHERING
last night where I ate cookies made by one man, discussed the chemistry of cooking with another, and examined a gingerbread house made by a third. The gingerbread house was particularly fancy and appeared to me to carry the pastrycook’s art to considerable lengths.… More men can cook than is commonly thought, and I think that these male cooks are more concerned with the philosophy and mystery of cooking than are women. Women say, of course, that if men had all the cooking to do they would not like it so much. This is comparable to the frequent feminine comment that if men had to have babies
there would soon be no babies in the world. Both remarks are equally untrue.… I have sometimes wished that some clever man would actually have a baby in a new, labour-saving way; then all men could take it up, and one of the oldest taunts in the world would be stilled forever.… I see that Shirley Temple has had a baby. Dear me, how time flies! Next thing we know that sweet little Mickey Rooney will be getting married.

I
WAS EATING AN
excellent slice of bread at lunch today, when I sensed a foreign substance in my mouth, and after some fishing and digging I found that it was a bit of paper. After I had cleaned it (by washing it in my tea, if you must know) I found that it was a union label, proclaiming that my bread had been made by organized bakers. I think, frankly, that I would rather have this information conveyed to me by other means than a label which I suspect had been licked by an organized tongue.… Many years ago I knew a cook whose father and brothers were bakers, and she told me that they always kneaded their dough with their feet, prancing rhythmically in the large wooden mixing tub, with their trousers’ legs rolled up.… Is there really any progress? A generation ago it was feet; today it is spit. I have a good notion to begin baking my own bread.

I
WENT TO A SCHOOL
play last night and enjoyed it greatly. But I am always fascinated by the false whiskers with which young actors love to adorn themselves. They apply crêpe hair in quantities which could never, by any freak of nature, grow upon the human face, until
they look like the Hairy Ainus who inhabit the northern reaches of Japan.… The play was
What Every Woman Knows
and the secret which every woman is supposed to know is that every successful man owes his success to a woman. I am not convinced of the truth of this, and would like to take a poll on it in the national capital. There are, I should think, quite a few men who have achieved a high degree of success in spite of the silly, inconsequent, pin-headed women they married in some unguarded, youthful moment. The Marchbanks Masculinist Party (of which I am the leader or Great Bear) seeks to undo the damage which has been done by such fellows as J. M. Barrie, who flattered women, basely, for money.… No, madam, I do not wish to qualify anything I have said.