The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks by Robertson Davies

  • MAN BITES DOG •

  I WAS TALKING to a man this afternoon who said that a little girl had come to his door at lunch-time and had given him a cake of maple sugar. This astonished him, as it did me. When an adult does something for a child nobody notices, but when (probably by mistake) a child does something for an adult—that’s news.

  • OF UNNATURAL AFFECTION •

  THE SCHOOLS re-opened today and troops of children in unwontedly clean clothes rushed past my gate, all agog to resume their studies. I met one little girl who was crying because she had a cold and could not begin her kindergarten class for a few days. I eavesdropped as some of the groups rushed by, and found that they were assessing the relative crabbiness of their teachers. What has come over the children of today, I wonder? In my childhood nobody liked school, and with excellent reason. What makes the modern school so attractive? Does the Minister of Education cause a powerful love philtre to be put in the drinking fountains? Stranger things have happened.

  • OF ENCOURAGING THE GROWTH OF HAIR •

  AS THE WEATHER grows warmer I see more and more men going without hats. For my part, I do not feel comfortable without a hat on, and much as I detest the felt chamber-pots which are sold nowadays as suitable gentleman’s headgear, I always wear one. The people for whom I really feel sorry are the bald men who go without hats in the hope that the sun will bring out a few spears of hair on their naked noggins; it is my belief that the sun is an enemy of human hair, and that if you have a tendency to be bald, the sun will encourage it. Consider this matter scientifically. Scotsmen have hairy knees, for although they wear no knee-clouts their climate is cold, damp and sunless. But African savages do not have hairy knees, because they get too much sun on their knees for the hair to flourish. If bald men really want hair, they should wear hats filled with damp and slimy moss; this would cause hair to grow as a form of protection.

  • OF CHIVALRY SCORNED •

  I TOOK A LADY’S ARM as she was stepping off a curb this afternoon, and she snatched it from me with a great show of offence. But I was raised in the Old School, and I automatically grab at any woman who is changing her level, to prevent her from tumbling down or wrenching her ankle. I cannot rid myself of a traditional belief that women are delicate creatures, though reason and observation assure me that most of them are as tough as old boots.

  • OF ORTHODOXY IN BREAKING HIS FAST •

  I AM STAYING in an hotel and suffer the inconvenience of being asked what I want for breakfast. I am not accustomed to answering such a question. For many years my breakfast has not varied by so much as a calory, and I consider any breakfast but my usual one a heathen abomination. In the matter of breakfast, I am out-and-out Tory. If my day is not to fall in ruins it must be founded upon a sliced orange, a dish of porridge, one slice of toast with marmalade, and three cups of weak tea. I know men of shifting and uneasy faith who change breakfast foods as easily as they change their minds; I know women of doubtful virtue who will jump from toast to hot rolls with a light laugh and a wanton glance from beneath their sweeping eyelashes. I know inordinate men who eat meat and eggs at breakfast, and deliquescent women who break their fast with a rusk and a glass of lemon juice. But mine is the one, true, apostolic breakfast, ordained at Creation, and enduring till the twilight of Time.

  • OF SMUTTY JESTS •

  A KIND FRIEND has sent me a Bay of Fundy lobster for Christmas, and I decided to eat it last night, as lobsters grow impatient if kept too long. I spent quite a time trying to undo its buttons and find its zipper, for a lobster is one of Nature’s most baffling packages, though a noble sight. At last I had to call for skilled assistance. The Skilled Assistant laid the lobster bare in no time, reminding me of a jest much favoured by Gaffer Marchbanks, my great-great-grandfather: “What made the lobster blush?” “It saw the salad dressing.” This was considered delightfully salacious when Gaffer was a roystering blade, and he once had his face slapped for whispering it to a Nice Girl. The incident deepened his determination to marry a girl who was not Nice, and their descendants all suffer from a taste for ribaldry which I have never been able to root out of my heart. Strive as I will, gross expressions such as “bottom,” “tum-tum” and “camisole” creep into my conversation, and I was once guilty of telling, in mixed company, about a lady organist who could change her combinations without taking her feet off the pedals. That sort of thing marks a man as a Smutty Fellow, and people avoid him lest they be dragged down to his level.… You like smutty talk? My dear madam, why didn’t you say so before?

  • OF FLORICULTURAL FAILURE •

  I RECEIVED a pamphlet this morning urging me to get to work on my lawn. “One can hardly do lawn work too early; grass seed loves cool weather, and so does the grass itself,” I read. Looking out of the window I saw at least two feet of snow on the ground, and more was falling; even if grass seed does love cool weather, I am not going to dig through all that snow to oblige it. Nor am I going to make my sweet pea trench this week, as the pamphlet advises; I have planted sweet peas for three successive years, and I have not had a single bloom yet; therefore I cannot see that it makes much difference when I dig my trench; September would be early enough. Indeed, I wonder whether I shall bother about my garden at all this year. I have proved over a period of years that I am incapable of growing anything. Just as there are people who cannot wear pearls without discolouring them, or a wristwatch without stopping it, I cannot enter a garden without withering it: Sam Sours Soil and Marchbanks Mars Mould. Just as women are forbidden to enter Italian vineyards for fear of blighting them, all sensible people keep me out of their gardens, and frankly, I am happy to admire them from the non-working side of the fence.

  • OF WIND AND WATER •

  A CHILD WHO received a plastic version of a tin whistle appealed to me today for a lesson in how to play it. This was a sop to my vanity which I could not resist, for I fancy myself as a performer on all tootling instruments. But when I took the thing to demonstrate, it slobbered half a pint of spittle on my waistcoat, and depressed me deeply. This is the trouble with all blown instruments; they drool. Brass instruments have special valves to collect this deposit, and one of the less pleasing sights in an orchestra is the frantic shakings of the trumpeters as they void their ptyalism upon the floor, and at almost any Wagner opera the conductor enters and leaves the orchestra pit in his rubbers. Nor is it nice to take over a wind instrument which someone else has been playing—particularly when one’s pupil has been hitting the humbugs hard all afternoon.

  • OF WORDS AND THEIR EFFECTS •

  I WENT TO the movies last night and saw, among other things, a film about soil erosion called The Rape of the Earth. The word “rape” was so irresistibly humorous to two girls and their escorts in my neighbourhood that I thought they would burst; their sniggers were like the squirtings of a hose when it is first turned on. Some people are affected by some words as slot machines are affected by coins; feed in your word, and the result is invariable. Feed “Communist” into an old gent with a quarter of a million dollars, and out comes a huffy lecture; feed “Booze” into a prohibitionist, and out will come highly imaginative statistics about accidents and insanity; feed “Rape” into girls and boys and you get this bromo-seltzer fizzing.

  • OF ADULT IGNORANCE •

  A LITTLE GIRL asked me to read her a piece about clouds this evening, and I did so, although experience has taught me that reading things to children always ends up in an uncomfortable quiz, with me in the role of Marchbanks the Moron. Sure enough, she asked me where all the vapour comes from which forms the clouds. I took a leap into the dark and said that it was caused by the warm earth meeting cold air. Was the air wet, then, she asked. Yes, I said firmly. Then why weren’t our clothes wet? They are wet, said I, feeling like a man stepping off a cliff. If the air is wet why don’t we drown? Because our lungs are made to stand it. Like fish? Yes, like fish. Are people a kind of fish? Yes.… It just shows where a little child can lead yo
u.… And yet it would be worse to say “I don’t know.” Children never forgive their elders for their ignorance. It is obviously a grown-up’s business to know.

  • OF SUMMER’S CHILL •

  IT IS MID-JUNE and the ladies of my acquaintance have all put on their summer stays and hung their fleecy ones in the cupboard, but it is still far from warm. In winter I rush to the furnace-room if the temperature of my house sinks below 65, but in June I try not to notice when it drops to 58. I huddle closer into the spongey embrace of my armchair, and when I sneeze I think it must be hay fever. It is much easier to catch cold in Canada in summer than in winter, if you want my opinion.

  • OF THE CONSERVATISM OF YOUTH •

  CHILDREN ARE the most confirmed Tories I have ever met. Today I heard a group of them boasting among themselves about how high they could count; such improbable figures as drillions and squillions were being lightly bandied about by the bragging tots. I remember that when I was in kindergarten the same sort of blowing to the teacher used to go on morning after morning. I never joined in it, for although I am almost illiterate mathematically, I grasped very early in life that anyone who can count to ten can count upward indefinitely if he is fool enough to do so. But apparently the kindergarten set of today are threshing the same old straw. Tories, that’s what children are, perpetuating the same old nonsense from generation to generation.

  • OF WASTED EFFORT •

  I WAS AT A PARTY last night at which the refreshments consisted solely of cheese, biscuits and beer. This seems to me to be an admirable lesson in simplicity, and the party was a great success. Not, mind you, that I dislike elaborate parties; let the footmen cluster around me with the quail on toast, the caviar and the anchovies; let sherry trifle be heaped upon crêpes suzette and liqueur cherries swim in the zabaglione. I can take parties as elaborate as they come. But many times my heart has bled for the hostess who has slaved for hours to produce four kinds of sandwiches and two kinds of cake, and who is so exhausted by her labours that she casts a gloom over her own party. Far, far better to offer something simple and good, in a spirit of revelry, than to toil to produce pretentious mediocrity. It is the spirit which makes a party, and not dainty sandwiches, cut in the form of hearts and tasting like spades.

  • OF HIS CONCERTINA BROW •

  I CAME ACROSS a chart in Life magazine yesterday which was designed to help me decide whether I am a Highbrow, a Lowbrow, an Upper Middlebrow or a Lower Middlebrow. After some pondering I think I must be a Concertina Brow, for I like such Lowbrow things as beer and parlour sculpture, and I also like such apparently Highbrow things as red wine, art, ballet and pre-Bach music. But then I am a great fellow for the theatre, which is rated as only Upper Middlebrow. I even like front-yard sculpture, which is supposed to be Lower Middlebrow, though I also admire the fat naked female statues of Maillol, which are Upper Middlebrow. In short, my brow heaves up and down alarmingly, like a concertina, and I have a few tastes which do not fit into any of these categories, like my affection for corduroy trousers, and my fondness for bananas dipped in hot coffee. I am inclined to think that it must be very dull to have one’s brow stuck at a particular point; I am glad my brow is able to expand and contract.

  • OF BIRDS •

  I MET AN ornithologist just before dinner and as the conversation lagged, I sought to beguile him by talking about his hobby. Dale Carnegie says that you should always talk to people about what interests them, whether it interests you or not, so I began thus: “I saw a funny-looking bird this morning; a blackish bird, or maybe it was a dirty brown; what would you say it was?” He pricked up his ears. “Had it a yellow spot about half a centimetre in diameter under each wing?” he asked. “I am not accustomed to peeping into the armpits of birds,” I replied, haughtily, “but it had two feet, instead of the usual four, if that gives you a clue.” “What size did you say?” he continued. “Roughly the size of a two-year-old child’s shoe,” I said after some thought, “but rather a different shape; it was shaped like an ocarina, or a sweet potato.” “Was its mate nearby?” he persisted. “I couldn’t say,” I parried, “but it was on the lawn of a church, and I don’t suppose it would go there with anybody else’s mate, do you?” “I think you must have seen a squirrel,” said he, in what I think was meant to be a satirical tone. And yet I am always nice to ornithologists when they talk about my subjects.

  • OF HIS LACK OF SOCIAL GRACE •

  OUR HOST asked me before dinner if I play bridge. No, I don’t. An ancestor of mine was once a fair euchre player, but the talent for cards died out of the family when he passed. In my youth, when I still thought that by Herculean efforts I might turn myself into a social success, I tried to read a book about bridge, but it was worse than geometry. For the same reason I tried to learn to dance, and although I enjoyed it I found that I got on better without a partner than with one, and this was considered eccentric in the circle in which I moved. Still pursuing the fleeting goal of popularity, I attempted to become a raconteur, and memorized several funny stories and a number of witty rejoinders which I dragged painfully into any conversation in which I was engaged; this device failed me, also. It was quite a long time before I realized that I lacked the qualities which make a man the darling of a large and brilliant circle of friends, and resigned myself to being an outcast and a curmudgeon. Nowadays when I am asked to a party I sit in a corner and snarl at anyone who comes near me. This is called Being a Character, and although it is not very much fun for anyone, it is the best I can manage.

  • OF DIVORCE •

  A MAN BEWAILED the increase of divorce today until I could bear it no longer. “My dear creature,” I cried, “you attack this problem from the wrong end. It is not the frequency of divorce which makes the times wicked; it is the wickedness of the times which increases divorce. We live in an age when man is expected to waste and wear out as much as he can. Do we not call the ordinary citizen a ‘consumer’? He buys ‘lifetime’ fabrics and soon wears them out. He buys a ‘lifetime’ pen and a ‘lifetime’ watch and in ten years he wants new ones. His books are not lifetime friends; they are the enthusiasm of a month. He is sneered at if he drives a perfectly good car which is ten years old. Is it any wonder, then, that he exhausts one ‘lifetime’ marriage and seeks another? Mind your economics, and your morals will take care of themselves.” This bit of Marxian sophistry shocked him, and he fled.… No madam, our hostess did not tell me that you were a divorcée. Tell me, are you a discard, or a discardee?

  • OF DRABBERY AND SQUIRTDOM •

  THE ENTERTAINMENT tycoons don’t seem able to let musicians alone. I see that there is now a musical show in New York purporting to reveal “the romance of Tschaikowsky,” though it has long been an open secret that Tschaikowsky had a neurotic dislike of women, and that much of the tragedy of his life arose from this cause. A new movie is based on the love of Robert Schumann for Clara Wieck, attributing his greatness as a composer to this inspiration. Bunk! Pure bunk! And yet I suppose it flatters a section of the public to think that the biological urges which they share with the great somehow reduce the great to their level. The points of resemblance between great people and paltry people are infinitely more numerous than the points of difference: they all eat, sleep, fall in love, catch cold, and use handkerchiefs. It is good business to pretend that no real difference exists, and Hollywood has long known how to exploit it.… But I am powerfully reminded of Théophile Gautier’s division of men into two groups, The Flamboyant and The Drab; my sympathies and loyalties are always with The Flamboyant, of whom Churchill is one, though his followers are mostly Drabs. But this is very much the age of the Drab—the apotheosis of The Squirt. The Squirts and Drabs are not worth much singly, but when they organize into gangs and parties they can impose Drabbery and Squirtdom on quite a large part of mankind.

  • OF TRAGIC FLAB •

  PSYCHOLOGISTS, now maintain that human fat is a sign of misery, and that fat people are immature, frustrated and anxious for prote
ction. I have known this for years. Indeed I am known to the medical profession as the first man to identify Tragic Flab, a lardlike substance which is secreted under the skins of unhappy people, and which may be observed as a characteristic of many great figures in literature. Was not Hamlet described by his mother as “fat and scant of breath”? I have long maintained that Charles Laughton is the ideal Hamlet. I have also suggested that Romeo and Juliet should both be shown getting fatter and fatter as the play grows more and more tragic, until they are barely able to shift their carcasses about the stage in the final act. King Lear, too, should obviously be an immensely fat old man, weighed down with Tragic Flab. I wish psychologists would stop coming out with my old notions as if they were new discoveries.

  • OF HIS NURSING EXPERIENCE •

  (A Boring Account)

  THE DARK SHADOW of Disease hung over Marchbanks Towers this week. All members of my domestic circle wore a stricken look, and I feared the worst. I packed them off to bed, hoping that my fears were groundless. I have just escaped from the doctors myself, and dread to see my near and dear fall into their hands. But every last Marchbanks was abed next morning with chickenpox or mumps, and one had both; I felt like some rugged old oak, left standing in a forest which has been levelled by the wind. I summoned a doctor, who arrived and prescribed for all and spread an air of calm which does more good than his medicine, I am sure. I looked with interest at the bag he carries, which is in good condition and about ten years old, I should judge. I always estimate the length of a doctor’s practice by the look of his bag. It has been suggested to me that doctors may sometimes buy new bags, but I know that this is untrue. They buy a bag when they get their degrees, and make it do till they die, just as the monks of certain orders are given one gown when they take their vows, and wear it to the grave. When the doctor left I was alone with my ailing community, and Marchbanks Towers was indistinguishable from a lazar-house. I flitted about (Florence Nightingale Marchbanks) saying a kind word here, bathing a fevered brow there, and ever and anon holding a cup of water to parched lips. I enjoyed this greatly, for it satisfied my urge for amateur quackery and gave me a fine picture of myself as a noble, self-sacrificing, devoted figure.