The Cunning Man

by Robertson Davies

  “But never on really good terms. Not like you and me. Well, Chips, you see how it is. I’d have to see her before I could say anything useful.”

  “But can’t you say anything at all? I’m desperate, I don’t mind telling you.”

  “With what you tell me I can’t offer anything better than a medieval diagnosis. It sounds as though Emily were suffering from an excess of black bile.”

  “What the hell’s that?”

  “If the body is really governed by four humours—I say if—blood makes them sanguine, phlegm makes them phlegmatic, choler or yellow bile makes them choleric, and black bile makes them melancholic. The thing is to keep the humours in balance and if one begins to dominate it chooses the disease in which it will manifest itself. That’s what Galen believed and Galen was no fool. Galen would say that Emily had too much black bile, which makes her melancholy and rather a lot of yellow bile, which makes her testy and sour-natured. If we take a giant leap forward from Galen into modern psychiatry, I’d say Emily was in a state of advanced denial. Her life has lost its savour. If you want a grand word for it, call it anhedonia.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “I wish I could tell you. But unless I can put Emily on my table—”

  “Yes and sniff her doings and lay your head on her dear little tum and all that nonense—yes, yes, yes, and I tell you it won’t do. Well—sorry to have wasted your time. Send me your bill.”

  “Chips, you wound me. What bill? We doctors treat members of the family gratis. Aren’t we family, after all these years?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m so worried. Yes, I suppose we are. Thanks, and I do see your point. But it’s hopeless.”

  “Oh, nothing’s hopeless to those of us at St. Aidan’s.”

  As I showed her out she paused and looked searchingly at my fine print of Wiertz’s picture of Death and the Lady in my waiting-room. She shuddered.

  “Why don’t you get rid of that awful thing?” she said, as she went.

  It was one of those moments, and we both knew it.

  (9)

  Note for ANAT.: Only a partial estimate can be made of the quality of a life unless we know something about the defecatory habits of the patient, and that is why doctors make those tactful enquiries about the bowels, and why men patients are subjected to a dismaying examination of the prostate, with the doctor’s finger jabbed as far as it will go up the rectum.

  So of course, for my Anatomy of Fiction, what would I not give for a tickle of Mr. Pickwick’s prostate? What was the condition of Miss Havisham’s bowels, sitting all day in a wheelchair as she did? Intestinal stasis can have a profound influence on the personality.

  Dickens, for purposes of my book, offers an almost embarrassing wealth of speculation. All those low-life characters, who lived in the streets and lay at night in Tom-all-Alone’s—where did they void their bowels, when they did? In alleyways, one presumes. Those people who went on prolonged journeys by coach, did they seize the opportunity every time the horses were changed to go into the stable-yard, where they found one of those inclined troughs, emptying into a hole in the earth, for urination? Doubtless they did, considering what a lot they drank, thinking nothing of a pint of sherry—a wine substantially fortified with brandy—as a mere refresher. No wonder disease was rife. And the travelling ladies, what of them? Fiction gives no hint, but one presumes they had to ask the landlady for a room into which they could retire, with a chamber-pot. And who dealt with that? The chambermaid, of course; it was an important part of her work.

  Indeed, much of the class system of European and American life right up until the present century, rested upon the distinction between those who dealt habitually with human detritus and those who did not. Persons of gentle degree, however challenged, decidedly did not. The commodes and the chamber-pots were emptied, cleansed, and sweetened in the sun by persons who could not, for that reason, pretend to gentility. Ladies and gentlemen, even the most benevolent, drew the line at any such association. Hence the assumption that if Tom Jones impregnated a maidservant it was a trivial matter, but any attempt upon the virtue of a lady was a grave offence.

  The absurdity to which such ideas might lead is satirized by Swift in his famous—for many years considered infamous—poem in which a lover steals into his adored one’s bedchamber, and delights in all the pots of pomatum, scents, and ribbons he discovers there. But then, stupid ass, he investigates a pretty stool by the bed, opens it, and finds it is the commode! He rushes from the room, a man distraught, crying, “Celia! Celia! Celia shits!” Serve him right. Her personal maid could have told him other things about Celia which, though not pretty, would have given Celia a human dimension he denied her.

  The line between the mistress and the maid—even Mrs. Micawber, brought low by the ill-fortunes of her beloved Wilkins, had someone to empty the chamber-pots; true the wretch was an orphan, quartered on the Micawbers for her board, which must have been scant. This orphan, who was almost certainly illegitimate, came from a workhouse and was thus virtually a non-person. Just the one to cope with the slops. And a servant Mrs. Micawber must have, or every pretension to gentility would disappear.

  Has this line of investigation anything to do with the shadow that has come over Glebe House? Yes, it has. If I could have a look at Emily, and perhaps have an analysis made of two or three of her stools, I might find corroboration for what I already guess, and what I think Chips fears.

  (10)

  Professional etiquette might stop me from interfering in Emily Raven-Hart’s treatment (though I strongly suspected that Dumoulin was on the wrong tack) but it did not stop me from observing Emily at times when she was not aware of my presence. From my consulting-room I looked out of the window a good deal, onto my courtyard, which was flanked on the one side by the garden of Glebe House and on the other by the rear portion of St. Aidan’s. My premises had lost virtually all the appearance of a stable (except for the horses’ heads so pleasingly moulded over the main entrance) and the group of buildings was pretty and nicely kept. As I listened to my patients I often looked out of the window because they talked more readily when I was not looking directly at them. I knew that my gaze could be disconcerting.

  From my window I invariably saw a few of God’s People hanging around the entrance to the crypt of the church, which Canon Carter had developed into a refuge for them. “Crypt” was the handsome new word for the old, cluttered cellar; it was now fitted out with tables and benches and a kitchen, from which good-hearted ladies of the church, and a few retired men, served a hot breakfast to all who came. But it was not comfortable for those who were not eating, and so the courtyard became a hangout for them, and a few of the more venturesome went into the church itself and slept the day away, on the thinly cushioned pews at the back, near the font. I disliked the use of my courtyard as a place of assembly for indigents, but there was little I could do without making a fuss and being accused of a want of charity; some of my more nervous patients did not like having to elbow their way through such a group, who did not scorn to beg from them. But my yard-man, who had little sympathy with what he called “down-and-outs,” made the place as unwelcoming as he could, sweeping under their feet, and—most effective of all—asking for their help with jobs of lifting and cleaning.

  This somewhat medieval arrangement undoubtedly gave an air of activity to the courtyard, but The Ladies and I could have done with less of that, and Chips became markedly hostile toward God’s People when they made free with her garden, and now and then urinated in the adjoining graveyard.

  My window permitted me a good view of the comings and goings of The Ladies, and at least once a day I saw Emily taking the air in the garden, or going off to do some errand. To the casual eye she showed no change from her old, pretty, and obviously well-bred self, but to my gaze she had become slower in her step, and especially when seen from the rear she seemed to droop, which was most unlike her. I made an excuse to visit the house—droppers-in were n
ot encouraged—and although Emily was not present in the body, she was so in the spirit, to my sensitive diagnostic faculty, and I do not think I deceived myself when I caught, now and then, a smell which every physician knows but which some prefer to ignore. The spirit of Glebe House had altered significantly.

  Twice a week now I lay on Christofferson’s table as she searched out stiff spots, aching spots, and tense spots on my body; she was a masterful masseuse and her method was the Swedish massage of an earlier day, which at times became a sort of painful rough-house, but refreshing. Of course we talked. Attention to the body loosens the tongue.

  What did she make of the situation at Glebe House, I asked.

  “I have never really understood those English ladies. Of course their situation is plain enough; it’s to be seen everywhere and now it’s becoming quite a public cause. But in their young days it wasn’t so well understood, and they always seemed as if they were united against the world. Not hostile, but ready to resist criticism. Now the hostility has gone inside the front door. For the first time since I’ve known them, they are at odds.”

  “They still sleep in the same bed.”

  “Yes, but the lively times are past. Now it’s the hot-water-bottle-and-flannel-nightie stage of Lesbianism. Domesticity has almost choked out romance.”

  “Do you think they were ever very close, physically?”

  “I would bet money on it. And why not? They can have some very good times together, those people, and these two are resourceful artists.”

  “Cunnilingus, I suppose?”

  “Oh yes, and anilingus, too, I expect. Very jolly once you get the hang of it, I’m told.”

  “You’re ahead of me, Chris. But you think that’s all past?”

  To my astonishment, Christofferson burst into song:

  Everything passes

  In this world:

  Everything makes its appearance

  And dies.

  But the grief in my heart, my beloved,

  Will never pass away.

  “That’s an old Danish song, we used to sing when I was a girl; not so good in English, but you get the idea. Am I hurting you?”

  “Yes, but in an entirely beneficial way. So you think the time has come for grief at Glebe House? I agree. Miss Todhunter is very worried.”

  “She may well be. Of course you know what’s happening.”

  “I think I know.”

  “Of course you know, and I know, too.”

  “But there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Professional etiquette? Dr. Dumoulin is a man with exuberant, good health; he thinks anybody who is ill needs a tonic and encouragement. A doctor’s treatment is always a reflection of himself, to some degree. But Dumoulin prides himself on his twelve-minute consultations, and sometimes he misses what a slower doctor would see.”

  “But I can’t prance into Glebe House and say, I think Emily’s got cancer and I want to take a look at her, and there’s no time to lose.”

  “No, you can’t do that. Professional etiquette.”

  “Which can very quickly become one of the decorums of stupidity.”

  “You cannot fight destiny, Doctor. You have put it up in your own waiting-room. Anangke. If you rush in like a rescuing knight on his charger, you may make worse mischief than if you let destiny have its way undisturbed. Emily Raven-Hart is a woman of very strong character, for all her winsome, peely-whally ways, and if she has come to hate her life you must let her go her way.”

  “Dree her weird, as the Scotch say.”

  “Anangke. You have placed it above both wisdom and medicine, and that is where it belongs. You must take your own medicine, Doctor. Am I hurting you?”

  “Yes. But helpfully.”

  (11)

  All very well for Christofferson to tell me to take my own medicine but as one who had been brought up in the interfering, help-offering, Nosy Parkering tradition of modern Canada I could not entirely keep clear of my neighbours’ business. I made an excuse to call at Glebe House.

  Emily was there. “What have you come for?” she asked, rudely, I thought.

  “Just a social call. A cup of tea, perhaps. Just to see how you are.”

  “I’m perfectly well, thank you. Chips is never ill, as you very well know.”

  “Happy to hear it. But since you have given up your Sundays I don’t see as much of you as I did.”

  “The Sundays got to be an intolerable bore. A great deal of hard work, and for nothing, really.”

  “Oh, don’t say that. You had a salon. It was a place of resort for the most interesting people—artistic people, that’s to say—in town.”

  “But they’ve changed. Or faded so you can’t recognize them. Moscheles can’t even get a place in the symphony today.”

  “Oh, that’s unjust. Moscheles doesn’t want a place in the symphony. He’s a quartet man if ever there was one. And he’s too old now for the symphony grind.”

  “Just as well for the symphony. Neily Gow is out. Sir Neily, now, of course, but on the shelf. We don’t know any of the new people. Don’t know anything about the opera, which is struggling ahead. Nor would they want to know us, I’m sure. Those days are gone.”

  “But they were very good days. Something was growing, then. The arts were blossoming as never before in this city’s, history. There was a Gemütlichkeit that seems to have vanished. And your Sundays contributed greatly to that wonderful feeling.”

  “You’re a romantic. You really believe in Bohemianism as an element in art.”

  “I suppose I do. But it’s given place to a kind of dry artistic respectability. For example, have you heard about Jimmy Scrymgeour and Kitty? For as long as I can remember they lived together in the lurid light of bigamy, because years ago Jimmy fled from Scotland, getting on the boat just as it pulled away from the dock and leaving on the shore his alcoholic wife, raving and screaming. Everybody knew about it, and everybody approved. But a few months ago Kitty met somebody I know and declared, ‘What do you think? The Woman is dead!’ Mrs. Scrymgeour had apparently expired at last in a home for drunks in Dundee and Kitty and Jimmy are now respectable! And that’s what has happened to music, and art generally, in Toronto: respectability has descended in a fog of Arts Councils and Foundations and, although things are better on the whole, so far as performance goes, a lot of the elfin glamour of sin and improvisation has been dissipated. We have become a typical American city; visited by the travelling virtuosi, used as a stepping-stone to a better orchestra by flitting conductors, and your Sunday Afternoons have given way to President’s Councils, and Women’s Committees, and all the paraphernalia of modern artistic strenuosity.”

  “You can’t halt progress.”

  “You mean you can’t halt time. I don’t know that I believe wholeheartedly in progress. Civilizations in the past have managed very well with some sort of local equivalent of your Sundays. Loving patronage I suppose is what I’m talking about. But I’m being rude. Music isn’t everything. How’s your work going?”

  “You mean my efficient production of bronze likenesses of Nobody-in-Particular, to adorn boardrooms? Or do you hark back to my great days as a butter-sculptor?”

  It was here that Chips appeared, bearing the tea-tray. “Dear Em’s a bit down,” said she, “but really she’s doing awfully well.”

  “Oh, I have quite a list of presidents and chairmen to get through, if that’s what you mean,” said Emily.

  “Darling, I keep pointing out that the great ones of the Renaissance did a lot of presidents and chairmen, but then they were called Popes and Princes,” said Chips.

  “Yes, but those Popes and Princes had style, and often a distinguished ugliness. Wens, and hook noses. These bankers and brokers have no style, no faces. Nobody in this God-damned country has a face!”

  “No, but they pay on the nail, which Popes and Princes didn’t often do. Forget the wens and hook noses and be glad of the lovely money.”

  They wrangled on, foolishly, and
I thought of my own hankering for crowned heads and great beauties. At last Emily could bear no more of the reasonableness Chips could not resist pressing on her.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, shut up!” she said, and ran out of the room, sobbing.

  “Poor love, she’s a bit down,” said Chips. And then she too broke into tears, and she was not a lovely weeper, as Emily was. “Oh God, how I wish I could get her to see you!”

  I felt it was time for me to go, and go I did. But not before Chips had said, at the door as I left: “Have you noticed anything funny in the courtyard?”

  “Funny?”

  “Queer. I’m pretty sure of what I’ve seen. You keep your eye peeled.”

  And sure enough, as I stepped from their front door, I saw what she was talking about.

  (12)

  Note for ANAT.: Emily had been lying—or perhaps I should say reclining—on a sofa during this passage, and I was reminded how many women in fiction spent a great part of their life on sofas. Why? What ailed them? To be in bed may signal true indisposition, but to dominate the drawing-room from a sofa suggests something else—some chronic complaint, surely. And what could it be?

  I thought of the Signora Madeleine Neroni, who figures so delightfully in Trollope’s Barchester Towers; her beauty is described as perfect and Trollope is particularly enthusiastic about her “bust,” which was the modest Victorian word for her breasts. She is the centre of admiration wherever she goes and men of all sorts find her irresistible. But she spends her life on sofas, and when she goes to other people’s houses her brother has to carry her immediately to the nearest, or most strategically placed, sofa. What was wrong with the Signora?

  An exotic creature, surely, to be the daughter of an English clergyman, even a wealthy one, but we know that she had been married to one Paulo Neroni, an Italian who was a captain in the Papal Guard, and that he had treated her with cruelty. Thus the sofa life.