The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks by Robertson Davies
• WEDNESDAY •
Was driving with a motorist today who nearly ran down several pedestrians who persisted in crossing streets against the traffic lights; he thought they did it on purpose, and I really think they were trying to commit suicide; some had a hopeless O-God-let-me-die look on their faces, while others wore the fixed grin of idiocy. It seems to me that when people dearly want to die, motorists should be encouraged to assist them.… This evening read in Nellie McClung’s autobiography that a properly licensed dog has the same right to use the street as a citizen. I am glad that citizens do not exercise their rights as freely as dogs do, however.… Not long ago a clergyman said to me, apropos a scruffy dog he had with him, “Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if there were nothing but dogs? No wars, no racial discrimination, all friends.” Was so stunned by this idea that I said “Yes, indeed” before I knew what I was about. Hurried home and washed my mouth out with soap.
• THURSDAY •
To the government liquor store today, to lay in a Christmas stock. Wartime shortages turn the celebration of Christmas into a matter of makeshifts. Still no Chinese Rice Wine, which I like to burn on the top of my Christmas pudding, in the real old English style; will have to do the best I can with brandy, but it will not be the same as Fow Mu Chung Guk. Chinese Rice Wine, I understand, is made by stewing a whole duck in a large pot of rice and water; then the duck is thrown away, and lichees are added to the mixture, which is left on the back of the stove until it blackens, and begins to emit low sneering noises and greenish gas. It is then bottled (in old birds’ nests) and buried in a graveyard for a few years until it is ready for export. The vintage years are those in which the ducks are most torpid. There is an old Chinese vintner’s proverb which is roughly translated as:
Don’t use a giddy duck
To make Fow Mu Chung Guk.
I can tell at a single sip whether the duck used in a bottle of this delicious beverage has been sufficiently dormant.
• FRIDAY •
My Chinese laundryman, hearing that I have been unable to get any Rice Wine to burn on my Christmas pudding, turned up in my office today with a flagon of the precious distillment. “O brilliant-hued chrysanthemum of Eastern Ontario,” he said, kotowing deeply, “this utterly contemptible one entreats you to accept his laughably inadequate tribute to your sublime genius; drink, O Marchbanks, and gladden the heart of your wash-worm.” I uncorked the bottle, and the room was filled with the heady bouquet of dragon’s bones. “This ineffectual trifler with the written word is choked by the copiousness of his thanks, O magical rehabilitator of world-weary underpants,” I replied, bowing graciously and pouring out a couple of glasses of the liquor; we drank, ceremoniously, and exchanged a few more polite observations. Before he left I reached into the bottom of my desk, and presented him with a pound of opium which I happened to have; he bit off a quid and chewed it with evident satisfaction as he put on three sweaters, two suits of pyjamas, a buffalo robe and a rain-cape, before leaving. It was what we Sinologues call “A three-coat cold day.”
• SATURDAY •
A few friends in this evening. Wanted to give them mint julep, though this is the wrong season for mint. But the scientific knowledge of a Marchbanks laughs at such trifling difficulties. Prepared the other ingredients, then brought down a bottle of Oil of Peppermint, which I sometimes take for indigestion: on the label it said “Adult dose: 5 to 30 drops”, so I put 30 drops in each glass, never having been one to skimp on hospitality.… Guests looked rather strange, and showed a tendency to suck in air through their teeth. One, standing by the fire, belched suddenly with such force that his toupée fell into the grate and was badly scorched; his wife remarked sourly that at least it helped to kill the smell of humbugs.… I drank my julep to the dregs, just to show them that it could be done. The only trouble with me is, I’m ahead of my time.
-XLIX-
• SUNDAY •
A small girl of my acquaintance sang me a Christmas carol which she had learned in school. It was the familiar one which begins:
Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen—
and I expressed my appreciation of her performance warmly. This was a mistake on my part, for she began to cross-examine me about the words. Why was Stephen feasting outside in the snow? If Stephen had enough food for a feast why didn’t he give some of it to the poor man who was gathering winter fuel, instead of leaving it all to King Wenceslas? I tried to explain that a Feast did not really mean a feast, and that Stephen was not really there, but I saw disbelief and scorn rising in her eyes. No wonder children think that all adults are crazy.
• MONDAY •
Woke this morning with a sense of sick shock, realizing that Christmas is near at hand and I have not done any shopping. Worried about this until at last I rushed out and made a tour of the shops, and was depressed to find how much stuff there was for sale which I would not give to a relative, let alone a friend. Decided finally that the hardware merchants had the nicest things, and bought an adze for my little nephew Gobemouche, a spokeshave for my brother Fairchild, a maul for my brother Hickathrift, and three files, a crow, two jemmies, four lock-picks and a dozen hickory axe-helves for other members of the Marchbanks tribe, as well as gift bottles of TNT for their wives. I toyed with the idea of giving them all panes of glass in handy sizes, but recalled the tendency of Christmas family gatherings to get out of hand, and broken glass can be nasty stuff, when one is doing Sir Roger de Coverley in one’s bare feet. Better be on the safe side, and stick to edged tools.
• TUESDAY •
Alack the day! Christmas gifts are not what they were. Was looking through the diary of my uncle, the Rt. Rev. Hengist Marchbanks (who lived to be 96 and was Bishop of Baffinland when he died) and discovered that in December, 1845, when he was a lad of thirteen, he made his own presents. This is what he says: “Made dear Mama a trunk today, for I know that she wants one sorely. Cut down a sturdy oak this morning, and hollowed out the body of it with my adze; hewed the solid block into a charming lady’s travelling trunk. Slew and skinned a Shorthorn bull, which showed symptoms of mumps, and stretched the skin tightly over the wooden casing; it makes a truly handsome covering. Tomorrow I shall line the case with clean copies of The Christian Guardian, and my surprise for Mama will be complete. Am giving Papa the usual jug of corn whisky, which I drained from the bottom of the silo this evening. Tested it to make sure it was good, and fell into a profound swoon. Popped a few prunes into the jug, to give the liquor body.” Those were the days of really thoughtful, personal gifts.
• WEDNESDAY •
Met a small boy today—a sinister child with a stern jaw and a brooding hot eye—who had just mailed his letter to Santa Claus. “I told him what my minimum demands were,” he said, “and I’m giving him till the 25th to come across—or else—” I blinked, and asked him to explain. He continued: “Claus has been in the driver’s seat too long; everybody has always lickspittled to him and made him think he’s a big-shot; well, the time has come for Organization; he thinks we can’t get along without him, but we’ll show him that he can’t get along without us; he expects a year’s good conduct for a few gew-gaws at Christmas; from now on there’ll have to be a Christmas every month, and an eight-hour day for good conduct, with all statutory holidays and two weeks vacation in the summer; Claus has been exploiting us.” He marched off, and as he turned to give me a knowing leer he inadvertently fell down an open manhole. I watched it for a few minutes, but he did not reappear. Walked home slowly, thinking about Fate.
• THURSDAY •
I see that a rich fellow in the U.S.A. has bought a fine tapestry as a Christmas present for his wife. I like tapestries, and have thought of weaving a few myself, in the grand manner, but with modern subjects. For instance, Dr. Brock Chisholm, with his foot on the recumbent body of Santa Claus, holding aloft a volume of The American Journal of Psychiatry, from which streams forth a golden light, would make a very p
• FRIDAY •
A man asked me today if I had heard of the theory that the North American Indians are of partial Welsh descent, stemming from a pre-Leif-Erickson Cymric explorer? I have gone farther; I think I have proved the theory to be correct. About two years ago I chanced to meet an Indian in a woodland walk, and I facetiously addressed him thus:
MARCHBANKS: “Dyna gapel y Bedyddwyr, onid e?” (Translation: “Look you, are you not the son of Mrs. Jones the Gas?”)
INDIAN: “Nage, nage; dyna gapel y Methodistiad Calfinaidd.” (Translation: “Indeed to goodness no! I am the love-child of Rev. Hopkin Hopkins.”)
MARCHBANKS: “Ple mae’r Ficerdy?” (Translation: “Pless my soul, whateffer! do you understand me?”)
INDIAN: “Dyna fe; dyna’r Ficer hefyd.” (Translation: “Yes indeed, whateffer.”)
MARCHBANKS: “Dyna deulu’r gof yn cerdded gyda mama modryba chwaer y crydd.” (Translation: “Then let us sit down here and refresh ourselves with elegant conversation.”)
INDIAN: (Speaking Indian for a change) “Golliwogagog, hoganogagog egganoggagog.” (Translation: “I am all agog.”)
In the course of the conversation the Indian told me that his ancestors came to North America, inspired by the example of a Welshman named, I think, Jonel Oowis, who was reverenced as a god by the simple North Americans.
• SATURDAY •
Visited a friend this evening who had procured a bottle of a very special tonic called Noilly Prat; in the interest of temperance, we experimented to see how much of the tonic it was necessary to put with a jigger of gin in order to kill the horrid taste. After several tries we got the measurements exactly right.… Driving home, passed through a small town where Saturday Night was in full swing. Farmers shouted conversation from buggy to buggy; their wives stood in the general store, gossiping and criticizing the goods; girls walked up and down the street, arm in arm, pretending not to notice the young men who leaned on door-posts, haw-hawing and passing remarks. It was all rather idyllic and rural, and reminded me of my far-off youth in Skunk’s Misery, before I was tarnished by the fetid breath of city life. I suppose everybody has these softheaded spells, when they think it would be fun to live in a small town. They pass quickly, of course.
-L-
• SUNDAY •
A man was lecturing me on the benefits of deep breathing this evening. “Fresh air cleanses the bloodstream and keeps the mind alert,” he said, sucking in deep draughts of cigar smoke which undoubtedly polluted his bloodstream and fogged his brain. “When you’ve got pneumonia—gasping for breath—you pay a pretty penny for oxygen out of a tank; but all day, every day, the precious stuff is everywhere around you, begging to be breathed, and do you breathe it?” He puffed in my face, ferociously. “No, you don’t. You’re a shallow breather, a thorax-man, like millions of others. Well, don’t say I didn’t tell you.” I promised that I would never say he didn’t tell me, and felt rather guilty about the whole matter. Walking home, I breathed as deeply as I could for several blocks. It made me dizzy. I am a poor creature unworthy of the fresh air which Providence has lavished upon me.
• MONDAY •
My brother Fairchild has been having rather a difficult time with magic. Hoping to ingratiate himself with his children, he bought them some magic tricks, with which he thought that they might mystify their little friends. Having made this false step, he was soon involved in the appalling task of teaching the children to perform the tricks. Teaching a child to do even the simplest sleight-of-hand is like teaching a hippopotamus to embroider pillow-slips. The result of the whole mad scheme was tears, bad temper, and frustration for Fairchild.… I sympathize with him. Once, in the bleak past, I cherished a desire to be a magician; I would have been quite content if I could have achieved the modest skill of, say, Thurston or Blackstone. I laboured before a mirror with coins, cards, eggs, handkerchiefs and billiard balls for weeks, my arms aching, until one bitter day when I came to my senses and admitted that nothing short of psycho-analysis and blood transfusions could make a conjuror of me. For the same reasons that I cannot carpenter shelves, fix leaky taps or tend a furnace, I was unable to pluck fifty quarters out of the air or pull a rabbit out of a hat.
• TUESDAY •
Passed a bank this evening which was being re-modelled. Workmen were taking down the iron cages in which the tellers used to be kept. If anything marks the decline of belief in private property, it is this. Not so long ago, putting a teller into his cage was a solemn ceremony; the manager locked him in, and there he stayed until the manager let him out; while he was in the cage he spoke in a hushed voice, like a man who had swallowed a bomb, and he handled money with a kind of religious awe. In some English banks he did not even touch the money: he pushed it around with a brass scoop. Whenever he was handed a cheque, he held it up to the light, crackled it at his left ear, and sniffed at it before he cashed it. And when he was let out of the cage he had to strip before the manager, and prove that he had not secreted any doubloons about his person. But the modern teller is a carefree soul, able to run all over the bank if he likes, and ready to hobnob with Tom, Dick and Harry. It is all part of the breakdown of the monetary system.
• WEDNESDAY AND ST. FRISGIG THE FRICATRICE •
Two different manifestations of the same attitude toward women forced themselves on my notice this afternoon. On the street I passed a young couple just as the boy wrenched the girl toward him by the shoulder. “Aw, yuh little nincompoop, yuh!” he said, as he gave her a shake; she replied with a spirited, but uncultured, reflection on his legitimacy. Five minutes later I opened a magazine at a luridly coloured advertisement for perfume. In it another young man, in evening dress, was gazing at the shoulder of his female companion with glowing eyes, like a vegetarian about to bite into an onion; his hands hovered in the air behind her, as though he might suddenly snatch her, just as the boy in the street had snatched. The caption of the picture was “Potent Essence of Desire to Touch”.… I shall never understand life, but I suppose the lesson of this is that if young men do not grab you and call you a little nincompoop, you need a perfume which will force them to do so. The girl in the advertisement was cool, exquisite and beautiful; the girl in the street was tousled, and had been barking her shins on rocking-chairs for weeks, I should judge. But both of them, apparently, were able to rouse men to wild flights of shoulder-madness.
• THURSDAY •
Heard a lady greeting her physician this afternoon.… “Well, doctor,” she said, breezily, “I hope you’ve been keeping well?” He gulped a couple of times and staggered a little, but his presence of mind did not desert him, for he immediately turned the conversation to a less ticklish subject. Of course it is terribly bad form to ask a doctor how he feels; it is almost the same thing as giving him a dig with a surgical scalpel, or telling him that he would not puff so much if he got more exercise. Doctors like to give the impression that they have no fluctuations of health, and are always in the absolute pink of condition. Nevertheless, in spite of the bad manners it would show, I should love to put a doctor on the spot about his health. “Let me see your tongue,” I should like to say; “Oh, dear me, doctor, how did you ever let your tongue get in that frightful condition? Have you been licking the carpet with it? How’
• FRIDAY •
Did some more odds and ends of Christmas shopping today. Bought fifteen dozen handkerchiefs for female relatives. I don’t know what women do with their handkerchiefs; every year I give away a car-load of them, but I have never known a woman who had a handkerchief on her person at any time when she needed one. Older women always keep their handkerchiefs upstairs so that they can send their younger relatives after them. Young women never have handkerchiefs, and when they cry (which they do very frequently during courtship, and usually for no good reason) they always borrow a handkerchief from the man in the case. When they marry, they appoint their husbands Handkerchief Bearer in Chief for the rest of his life. Sometimes they carry boxes of paper handkerchiefs, when they have colds, but never the cloth variety. And why are women’s handkerchiefs so small? What a woman really needs is a handkerchief as big as a table-cloth, pinned to her bosom with a blanket-pin.