The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks by Robertson Davies
• MONDAY •
A friend of mine lost confidence in himself today because he discovered that he had put the garbage can carefully in the luggage compartment of his car, and had stood his wife’s dressing-case on the curb to await the offal officer. I assured him that I had been doing things like that for years, and attributed it to abstraction of the kind from which Professor Einstein suffers.
• TUESDAY •
My brother Fairchild paid me one of his infrequent visits today, and asked to watch while I stoked my furnace. This was unfortunate, for Fairchild is a bigoted Back-to-Fronter, while I am a determined Middler. That is to say, Fairchild stokes his furnace by raking the live coal from the back to the front, and putting his new coal in the resulting trough, whereas I make a bed of coals with the poker, and put my new coal in a heap in the middle. I was brought up a Back-to-Fronter, but I changed to Middle-ism when I married my furnace. The feeling which Back-to-Fronters have for Middlers is comparable to that which Roman Catholics cherish for adherents of the Greek Orthodox Church.… However, while Fairchild stood by I stoked the furnace in my usual way, and I noticed his jaw tighten and his temples throb. In a low voice, he asked me whether I expected to make a good fire that way? I said that I did, and to spare him embarrassment, I leaned toward the fire-door at that moment. I think it was the big poker he used when he struck, but luckily I caught the blow on my shoulder, and was able to push his head in an ash-bucket while I screamed for help. When the police came we were locked in a deathgrip on the cellar floor.… We parted fairly good friends, but my furnace went out in the night. The slightest thing upsets it.
• WEDNESDAY •
Tonight on the radio Maggie Teyte sang Oft In The Stilly Night better than I ever expect to hear it sung again. Beauty of tone, intelligence and poetic feeling—all were there. I must have heard the song murdered a score of times by male quartettes, female vocalizers and other assassins. And of course I recall it from schooldays when it was usually rendered thus:
Off in a stilly NIGHT
Ere Slummer’s chainuz BOWN me
Fon memry bringza LIGHT
Uvuther dayza ROWN me.
I often wonder if school teachers know what a crime they commit by giving children fine verse to murder. Children are savages, and do not like any verse except gems of their own compostiion, such as:
Julius Cæsar
Was an old geezer
Who froze his feet
In an ice-cream freezer.
True poetry should be left to adults; school lessons kill whatever taste for poetry the average child may have.
• THURSDAY •
Thought I would go to the movies tonight, but when I arrived at the place I found a long queue, and neither Greer Garson nor Gregory Peck is a person whom I will stand in line to see. So I went for a country walk instead, and as it was a fine moonlight night, I enjoyed myself very much.
• FRIDAY •
For a brief drive in the country today; was amazed by the number of farm dogs who seem anxious to quit this life and join their ancestors in whatever future existence a discerning providence has provided for dogs. They rush at every car, attempting to hurl themselves under the wheels, and when they fail (which they do quite often, being slow and stupid) they bite at the tires, hoping to cause a puncture. In the World of Tomorrow dogs who want to commit the Happy Despatch will present themselves before a Government Board, explain their reasons for wishing to die, and if successful, will receive a cyanide bone, coated with synthetic beef gravy. The expense of this service will, of course, be borne by the taxpayers. Dogs who fail to make a case for themselves will receive the Order of Mother Hubbard (first class).
• SATURDAY •
It was so warm today that I let my furnace go out; it thinks it went out of its own accord, but I know better; I starved it, and it expired.… Bought a new rake, and seized the opportunity to sharpen my penknife, free, on the various stones in the hardware store. Then set about tasks of raking leaves, emptying flowerpots, cutting back bushes, and preparing Marchbanks Towers for its long winter’s nap. I am still waiting for my winter wood, which is apparently marooned in a swamp somewhere and cannot be reached; it will arrive simultaneously with the first snow, I predict, and I will have my usual jolly weekend piling it. Otherwise no squirrel is better prepared for winter than I; I am looking for a cidermill in good condition, and will buy it if I can find it, though I understand that apples are going to be very scarce this year; but I have a scheme of my own for making cider out of oranges.
-XLI-
• SUNDAY •
To a christening this afternoon, a ceremony in which I always take a large measure of innocent delight. At best it is a race between the parson and the infant, both gathering steam and momentum as the moment of immersion approaches; if the parson is still audible above the outraged screams of the child after this point, I award the victor’s palm to him. The shrieking of the child, of course, is merely the Old Adam protesting against an invasion of his property.… I understand that in most churches a first-aid box is kept in the vestry for the use of parsons who have suffered damage during a christening; I have seen men of God horribly clawed by infants who possessed extraordinary resistance to Grace.… Sometimes I have doubted the efficacy of the baptismal rite; so many children seem to be in full possession of the Old Adam, or, more accurately, the Old Nick is in full possession of them.
• MONDAY •
To the bank this afternoon, and was once again amazed by the nonchalance with which the young women behind the bars treat my balance. To me it is a matter of the most profound significance; to them it is a mere sum in addition and subtraction. Without being in the least aware of it, they can drive their cruel pens deep into my heart. That is, they are not aware of it unless I sink upon the floor with a despairing cry and attempt to disembowel myself with my pen-knife; then they call the assistant manager to throw me out. Banks hate suicides on the premises—looks bad.
• TUESDAY •
To the movies tonight to see a piece written by Sir Arthur Pinero and produced with complete and humiliating failure on the stage in 1922, and now served up by Hollywood as something new and dainty. Its theme (which is the old and laughably untrue one that Love Conquers All) might have been handled acceptably by Barrie, but Pinero, who had all the delicate appreciation of human nature that one expects in police court lawyers and auctioneers, made a mess of it, and Hollywood has piled its own mess on top of the original. A pilot who has been injured and disfigured in the war marries a girl of remarkable ugliness, and in the throes of the Tender Passion they are transformed, and seem beautiful to one another; but they do not seem beautiful to anyone else, and this is supposed to be tragic, though it appears entirely normal and explicable to me. Pinero was no hand at such confectionery; he was happier with plushy Edwardian trollops such as Paula Tanqueray and the notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, who could sin, repent and have hysterics without disturbing their elaborate hair-dos or making their corsets creak more than was considered decent.
• WEDNESDAY •
Saw some posters today, adjuring hunters to make sure that their cigarette stubs were doused before they threw them away; the solemn assurance was given that one carelessly thrown match might start a forest fire. I wish that the government officials who dream up these posters would come and light my furnace for me some time with one of their carelessly thrown matches, or a cigarette stub. Tonight I laboured fifty minutes cleaning out my furnace (which had passed quietly away at 8:30 a.m.) and putting paper and kindling in its maw, preparatory to re-lighting; then I put a few carefully lighted matches inside and awaited results. There were none. Remembering the posters, I threw a lighted match carelessly into the fire-door; it went out at once. Next I tried a cigarette stub; it went out too. So at last I made a torch of twisted paper, and that worked. I can only conclude that it is easier to start a forest fire than it is to light my furnace.
• THURSDAY •
Suffere
• FRIDAY •
Everything is relative, I suppose, but I wish that the law, or a Chamber of Commerce, or somebody, would define the word “lifetime” as it is used by merchants. Fourteen months ago I bought a suit which was made of a cloth which I was assured would not—could not—wear out; the tailor jabbed pencils through it to show me how tough the fabric was. I have given it good care, and the sleeves and cuffs are undeniably worn through; the lifetime fabric is just wartime shoddy. A few years ago I was sold a Harris tweed suit, which I was assured would last my lifetime; I wore both elbows through in just over three years. And I have never had a pen with a lifetime guarantee which lasted five years. Yet the days of our years are three-score years and ten.
• SATURDAY •
Long discussion this evening with a man who wants to revise our system of funerals and burial. The Vikings, he points out, lived in their ships and loved them, and when they died their bodies were laid out in their ships and sent off to sea. Ours, he points out, is an automobile civilization, and if we had any real respect for the dead, we would sit them at the wheel of the car in which they spent so much of life, and which they loved so dearly, and we would then allow the machine to dash along a special funeral speedway and eventually over a cliff. There is a poetic sweep about this notion which appeals to me strongly. For non-drivers like myself, of course, the plan might prove somewhat humiliating, but perhaps an arrangement could be made to whisk me into oblivion on castors, cunningly let into the heels of my burial boots.
-XLII-
• SUNDAY •
Was reading some of the letters of Edgar Allen Poe today, and they confirmed me in my belief that a man’s private correspondence should never be published. He does not write his letters with a horde of snoopy strangers in mind, and he says things which he would never say for publication. Poe was a great literary artist, and we have all the poems and stories which he wanted the public to see; why publish letters in which he makes a fool of himself, drooling weakly to his child wife, and tearfully addressing his mother-in-law as “Dearest Muddy”?
• MONDAY •
Was talking to a most unusual physician tonight—a man who scorns vitamins and laughs uproariously at talk of allergies. Medicine, he said, was an art and not a science, and could only be usefully practised after deep study of human nature and of each individual patient. This attitude, he said, was commonplace among the great physicians of the past, but was out of favour with the modern school of pill-peddlers, who like to do their diagnosis by machine as much as possible, and prefer not to see the patient if they can possibly manage with a piece of him. Too many doctors are deeply interested in disease, but don’t care much for people, he said.… This all sounded like good sense to me, though I put in a word or two for the overworked physicians, whose patients always expect a bottle of medicine, and love to be treated for any disease under the sun, but hate to be accused of Original Sin, which is what is wrong with most of them.
• TUESDAY •
To Toronto on some business, and found it noisier and dirtier than ever. Of course, visitors see Toronto at its worst. I had to fly around the business section, meeting this one here, and phoning that one there and my impression was all of tiresome noise, stench and rush. But native Torontonians rarely encounter this; they sit in their luxurious offices, with their feet on desks, smoking big cigars and wondering how long it will be before they can run around the corner for their hourly cup of coffee. At home their wives and children live in the pastoral surroundings of Bayview, where grass grows in the streets, in Forest Hill, where the wild maztoth blooms luxuriantly all the year round, or in Lawrence Park, where cows and sheep graze peacefully on the lawns. The calm, white, expressionless face of a real Torontonian is never creased with care, and his collar is never soiled with smuts from the chimneys. Those frantic, feverish, sweating wretches who run about the downtown area are all visitors from the country, rushing madly to do a week’s business in a few hours.
• WEDNESDAY •
This afternoon bent to the task of carving a pumpkin face as a Hallowe’en surprise for some children I know; this is a neglected branch of art which I have made peculiarly my own. I scorn the mediocre pumpkin face with triangular eyes and nose, and a gash of a mouth: mine has a noble nose, a mouth full of teeth, eyes which search your soul when the pumpkin is illuminated, and a leer which sums up the whole spirit of Hallowe’en. The only proper way to illuminate a pumpkin head is with the stub of a candle; electric light is harsh and lacking in mystery.
• THURSDAY AND ALL HALLOW’S EVE •
Hallowe’en, and a fine windy night. There was a ring at my door, and when I opened it a frightful ghost, about three feet high, confronted me. “Who are you?” I demanded in a voice which trembled with fright. “I’m Charles,” whispered the spirit, and whisked my proffered orange into the folds of its ectoplasm.… Not long after the ghost of Charles had disappeared, I heard a groan, and went outside just in time to see a gang of hooligans running up the street, having ripped my gate off its hinges. I cursed them with a slow, lingering, horrible curse imparted to me by my grandmother, who was a witch. They will not feel the full effect of this curse for a week or so, but then parts of them will begin to turn black, and drop off, and they will be regarded as undesirable even in the circles of society in which they now move.… There was a good deal of writing on windows with soap, too, mostly confined to such comments as “Ha ha” and “Boo.” The world is so constituted that people who feel like writing on windows can never think of anything funny to write, while those who can think of funny things have too much brains to want to write them on windows.
• FRIDAY AND ALL HALLOWMAS •
The folk-spirit in poetry is not dead. Today I heard some children singing Sing A Song O’ Sixpence, the last verse of which runs:
The maid was in the garden
Lining out the clothes;
Along came a blackbird
And snapped off her nose.
But to this a youthful poet in the group had added a delightful sequel:
She went to the doctor
To get a wooden nose,
And when she came home,
She couldn’t blow her nose.
I hope to see this addition incorporated in the next edition of Mother Goose.
• SATURDAY •
People make their livings in the oddest ways. I heard today about a man who has become wealthy through the manufacture of “slumber slippers”—soft little slippers like ballet shoes which are placed on the feet of corpses. All God’s chillun got special shoes.… And a man in Winnipeg has become well-off through the cultivation and sale of sunflower seeds, for the chewing trade. It seems that great numbers of immigrants from Middle Europe like to chew sunflower seeds, spitting out the husks and eating the tiny, oily kernel, which tastes like a nut.… I should like to get into one of these queer trades, and make my fortune: I wonder how neon false teeth would be, so that lovers could smile at one another in the dark? Or pipe-cleaners with blunted ends, so that they could safely be used as ear-reamers? Or a pair of stays that rings a bell when the occupant has eaten enough, for fat women on diets? The possibilities are infinite.
-XLIII-
• SUNDAY •
For years I have been known to a large circle of sports enthusiasts as the Nimrod of the Fly-S