The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

by Robertson Davies

  • OF TRANSPLANTED TRADITION •

  THERE’LL ALWAYS BE an England while there is a U.S.A. I looked through a quantity of American magazines this afternoon and was amazed by the number of shaving creams, foods, leather goods and types of booze which are advertised with pictures of Windsor Castle, London clubs, Scotsmen in native dress and similar phenomena, suggestive of Ye Merrie Olde Englande. The more fiercely the socialists hack at Englysshe Tradition the more avidly do their American cousins embrace it, fake it, and attach it to their consumer goods. In Britain the stately homes are turned into hostels for Labour Youth Cycling Clubs, and the velvet lawns of noble lords are ripped up by miners pretending to search for coal; meanwhile in Akron, Ohio, Antonio Spigoni shaves himself with a soap which he thinks gives him an Old Etonian appearance, and in South Bend, Indiana, Mrs. Brunnhilde Klotz stuffs her friends with Olde Nell Gwynne Tea Biscuits (made in St. Louis, Mo.). A mad world, my masters, and one half of it doesn’t know how the other half lives!

  • OF THE POTENT ONION •

  I WAS BROUGHT UP to believe that it was dangerous, if not downright suicidal, to eat onions. From time to time, just out of perversity, I would eat a few in a restaurant, and they always gave me pains, but they were so delicious that I could not resist them. Now, after deep thought, I have decided to conquer onions, and so yesterday I bought a very small bottle of pickled onions, and consumed two of them at lunch. I felt no ill effects during the afternoon, and so I ate two more with my evening meal. I still live, and unless I drop dead I shall continue this homeopathic approach to onions, increasing the dose each day until I am able to pick up a big, red Spanish onion and eat it like an apple.… The chief objection to onions, of course, is that they make one smell like an onion oneself. The breath of an onion-eater is a powerful weapon of offence. I am told that a glass of milk kills the smell of onions on the breath, but this must be a well-guarded secret or a lie, for I never see any onion-eaters drinking milk, and their blow-torch breaths can be felt at forty feet.

  • OF THE MADNESS OF LOVE •

  THE PAPERS ARE full of news this morning about a gravedigger who killed a girl for love. Indeed, for several weeks I have been reading about murderers and suicides who are all described as “love-crazed.” I wonder how many love-crazed people there really are? As I walk through the streets, what portion of the people I meet are in this distressing and dangerous condition? Quite a few, it appears. But from my newspaper reading I can make a few deductions about them. Most love-crazed people appear to live in boarding-houses, and a majority of them earn less than $2,000 a year. They are not extensively educated, as a usual thing, and none of them toil under the burden of a mighty intellect. But they are great lovers, and very handy with knives, pistols and blunt instruments. Very few of them have steady jobs, and not many of them belong to the skilled trades. They do not eat regularly. (It is a curious fact that most of them have been grabbing a snack—a hamburger and a soft drink or something of that kind—within three hours before they commit murder.) Their physical health is good, but they tend to be puny above the eyebrows. They are under 35. They need a good hobby and a larger circle of female acquaintance.

  • OF BRITISH SOCIALISM •

  I WAS TALKING TO a man before dinner who had recently returned from England, and was full of information about the harm which he thought the socialist government had done there. For one thing, he said, the dog-boxes have disappeared from English trains. This rattled me, I confess. Not long ago there used to be special holes between the carriages of English trains, in which dogs rode; they were happy in there, and they passed their journey in sleeping and trying to look out of a small window which other dogs had licked and blown their noses upon. But such dog-boxes are no more and dogs ride in the carriages with the people, whether Labour supporters or not. This man said that he had ridden fifty miles in a carriage with a dog as big as a calf, which stood on his feet, stuck its nose into his pockets, and beat noisily upon his newspaper with its tail.… This suggests to me that the Labour Government depends heavily upon the dog-lover vote, a very powerful political group in England where dogs are regarded as semi-sacred, along with such totems as crumpets, Brussels sprouts and umbrellas. “The voice of the people is the voice of Dog,” say these zealots.

  • WHY CANADIAN MEN ARE RESISTABLE •

  WITH HEAVY HEART I went last evening to see a movie called Bel Ami, based on Maupassant’s story. I had read several criticisms of it, all of which said it was bad. But I was in that mood which sometimes overtakes the true movie-enthusiast; I had to see a movie, however poor it might be. I was delighted to discover that the critics were wrong. It was an excellent picture, and also one of the dirtiest pictures (using the word “dirty” in its Ontario sense, meaning “with sexual implication”) that I have seen in many years. I can only believe that its suggestions and innuendoes were too recondite for the nice, simple souls who compose our censorship boards.… It concerned a man who was irresistibly attractive to women. I believe that such fellows exist, but I have never met one, though I have met many who thought they belonged in that category. Women who are attractive to most men are common enough; men who are attractive to most women are rarities, in this country, at any rate. I think that it is because a man, to be attractive, must be free to give his whole time to it, and the Canadian male is so hounded by taxes and the rigours of our climate that he is lucky to be alive, without being irresistible as well.

  • OF ONTARIO’S BACCHIC REFINEMENT •

  I FOUND MYSELF yesterday by some mysterious chain of circumstances in the Cocktail Lounge of a large Toronto hotel. Although it was full of people, an awesome hush hung over the place, and there were three superior waiters at the door, to make sure that no undesirable guest (the kind of person for instance, who shouts, “Well, here’s looking up your address!” to his female companion whenever he takes a drink) gained admission. I saw three low fellows in their shirtsleeves come to the door and the waiters closed into a solid barrier of indignant flesh and would not let them pass. After some palaver a sub-waiter was sent away, and soon he reappeared with three seersucker jackets; the lowlifers, now thoroughly cowed, put these on, and were shepherded to a table.… I approve of this sort of thing. It is very refined, and if there is one thing about which Ontario is particular, it is refinement. Fastidiousness was apparent everywhere in the Cocktail Lounge; all the men wore their coats, all the women wore gloves, and the only really loud sound was the silvery chinking of the waiters, as they ran to and fro with their pockets full of tips. My drink was not as good as I could have made at home, but it was worth the money to sip it in surroundings of such mortuary restraint.

  • PHYSICIANS’ PROGRESS •

  I WENT TO SEE my doctor today, and while I lay upon his little table, waiting for him to finish off another patient, I passed the time by picking him out in the graduation photographs which hung about the walls. It is always instructive to survey the progress of one’s doctor through the years in this manner. There he was as a young man—a lad, really—when he took his degree in Arts. Here we have him, a few years later, when he became an M. D. Smaller photographs show him with the eminent specialists with whom he did post-graduate work. And in each picture he looks older until the door flies open and the man himself, now gray-haired and with fingers a foot long and made of tempered steel, dashes upon one and begins to probe, pinch and squeeze. I think doctors must get their wonderful finger-development by tearing telephone directories apart.

  • OF THE JOYS OF THE SMITH •

  ISEE THAT A War Assets shop quite near my place of business is selling a lot of interesting things, including several forges. It occurs to me that a forge is just what I need, for I have long wanted a constructive hobby. I could set it up in my cellar, get a few bars of iron, and amuse myself during the long winter evenings by making beautiful and acceptable gifts for my friends. The upper chambers of Marchbanks Towers would resound with the merry ring of my hammer on the anvil, my loud Yo Hoes (is
it blacksmiths who cry Yo Ho?), and the hiss as I plunged a white-hot book end or umbrella stand into the water to temper it. I would develop the biceps of a blacksmith, and the jolly greathearted disposition of a blacksmith. The homes of my friends would be enriched with ornaments which I had beaten out at the forge with my own hands—wrought iron garden furniture, wrought iron cocktail sets, wrought iron spitoons—the possibilities are illimitable. And any time anyone wanted a sword beaten into a ploughshare, I would be just the man to do it (though I have often thought that a sword would make a pretty measly ploughshare). I shall ’phone tomorrow, and tell them to wrap up a forge for me.… Do you know that a smith is so called because he smites? … No, I am not sure that that is etymologically correct; I just made it up myself this minute.… Well, if you dislike guesswork, why don’t you do some of the talking yourself.… Nonsense, madam, I am not “hogging” the conversation, as you so disagreeably put it.

  • OF QUAINT AND CURIOUS DISHES •

  A MAN I MET today tells me that frog’s legs are collected by Indians hereabout and sold by the hundredweight to restaurateurs, who put them in cold storage and sell them in the winter-time to the kind of people who simply cannot live without frog’s legs. Let us ponder on the number of frogs which would be required to provide a hundredweight of legs; reckoning ten pairs of legs to a pound, I make it 500 frogs.… I have never eaten frog’s legs, but I am told that they are a great delicacy, much appreciated by the high-livers of Toronto, and similar centres of luxurious abandonment. I have never eaten snails, either. But to prepare snails for the table they must be boiled for several hours to rid them of their slime, and from childhood I have associated snails with puppy dog’s tails—another delicacy which I have hitherto avoided.

  • OF RECLAIMED INEBRIATES •

  A MAN WHOM I had never seen before turned up in my office today and seated himself in the uncomfortable chair which I keep for guests with the air of one who bears a great message. Indeed, he wore the dedicated look which I have learned to associate with magazine salesmen and agents for worthless encyclopædias. “Mr. Marchbanks,” said he, “I saw by a recent article of yours that you have been absent from your work undergoing treatment for an illness; you assured your readers that you were not taking the Gold Cure, but that may have been an attempt to pull the bull over their eyes. Now, Mr. Marchbanks, I represent an organization of which you have doubtless heard—the Nameless Drunks, we call ourselves—and if we can help you, we certainly will. You too, can overcome your habit, Marchbanks! You too may become a Nameless Drunk if you so choose!” I allowed him to talk for an hour or so, during which time he imparted to me the secret sign of the Nameless Drunks: you raise an imaginary glass, but instead of putting it to your lips, you pretend to pour it into your eye; you then make motions as though shaking a drink out of your right ear. By means of this simple, hardly observable sign, Nameless Drunks can recognize each other anywhere.

  • OF THE DEPRAVITY OF BEES •

  THIS IS THE SEASON of flowers, and everybody I meet is either boasting about his garden, or groaning because it has not come up to his expectations. I can be philosophical about flowers, and I conduct my own garden on strict philosophic principles; if flowers grow, I am pleased but if they do not grow I will not permit my life to be darkened by their absence. I do not blind myself, as many gardeners do, to the fact that flower gardens are cultivated principally for the pleasure of bees. A bee gets more fun out of a single iris than a human being can get out of a vast herbaceous border. The bee drags its feet in the flower, rolls in it, takes a bath in it, swigs the nectar out of it, and revels in the sound of its own voice while doing so, just as we sing in our resonant bathrooms. Sometimes as many as three or four bees enjoy mixed bathing in the heart of a rose, and The Dear knows what goes on in there when they are all plastered with nectar, and think that they are out of sight. Flowers are just bagnios for bees, and while I take a broad view of these things, I feel no impulsion to wear myself out providing for insects who would not do a thing for me if they could possibly help it.

  • OF FEMININE ALLUREMENTS •

  I SEE THAT QUEBEC is getting worked up over two-piece bathing suits again, and an ardent do-gooder has declared that they threaten all that is best in French-Canadian life. I remember that after the last war it was rolled stockings which were nibbling at the foundations of the universe. What fascinated me at the time was that the evil power lay in the female patella itself, and not in any beauty which it might exhibit. Men’s knees were not harmful, and Scotsmen were, as always, encouraged to show off their gnarled joints. But any female knee, however like a cabbage or the skull of a goat it might be in appearance, was charged with vice, and the male who beheld it was in danger of being turned to stone, as if he had beheld the face of the Gorgon. Since those days knees have become an old song—indeed a weariness of the flesh—and it is that comparatively undistinguished portion of the female anatomy comprising the lower ribs and the diaphragm which is now the focus of holy horror. If women showed their navels, with texts from the Song of Solomon tattooed around them, I might see some sense in all this fuss, but they don’t, and I don’t.

  • A CURIOUS CHARITY •

  LOOKING THROUGH a catalogue of rare books last evening, I found one written in 1806 by a William Turnbull called Manual Containing General Rules & Instructions to Those of Both Sexes Who Are Afflicted With Ruptures and Prolapsus Ani. This work was published under the auspices of The Society for The Relief of The Ruptured Poor, of which the Archbishop of Canterbury at that time (the Rev. Dr. Charles Manners-Sutton) was honorary patron. I yearned for this fascinating volume, but I am much too poor to buy all the books I want. But a flame of curiosity devours me; does this benevolent body still exist, and does the present Archbishop still visit among the poor, his little basket of trusses upon his arm?

  • PREDICAMENT •

  SOME WORK THAT I was doing kept me in a room today which adjoined one in which a service club was meeting. I was thus made privy to their mysteries, and very odd they were, too. For instance, one member was congratulated on a wedding anniversary, and immediately afterward they all sang The Old Gray Mare, She Ain’t What She Used To Be, which I thought was somewhat pointed, under the circumstances. Perhaps nothing was intended except a general reflection upon the flight of time, however. I also suffered the puzzlement which always comes upon a man who is alone in a room when God Save The King is being sung next door: should I stand up and feel foolish, or sit down and feel unpatriotic? The same problem arises when I hear somebody praying on the radio: should I stop flogging my dog, or forging cheques, or whatever I am about, or should I pretend not to notice?

  • OF TIMEPIECES •

  THE DAY OF THE ornamental clock seems to be done. This morning I poked about in an antique shop and saw two: the first had a large brass woman on it, holding a harp which had four uncommonly thick strings; the other had a man in the dress of the early 19th century sitting on its top, holding a pen in one hand and a scroll in the other, and surrounded by globes, papers and mathematical instruments. I cannot guess who he was; some great figure in the horological world, no doubt. Such clocks are rarities now. Even marble clocks with brass lion’s heads poking out of the ends of them are rarely seen. Modern interest centres upon watches, and watches which tell time, date, year, phase of moon, and forecast the weather are not uncommon. But I like strange clocks, and particularly those which have moving figures on them. Most of these are of ancient workmanship, but I think the idea might well be brought up to date. A clock upon which, every hour, a figure identifiable as a taxpayer was pursued by a figure with a pitchfork and a sheaf of Income Tax forms would command a good price at Marchbanks Towers.

  • OF PHOTOGRAPHS •

  I HAD SOME photographs taken today, an experience which always leaves me limp, with my ego quivering and bounding like an uncoiled spring. “Take a natural, easy pose,” says the photographer, and when I do so he winces and says, “Oh, no, not all slumped, like
the leavings of a torso-murder.” So then I strike a pose which seems to me to suggest dignity and vast stores of reserve power, and the photographer laughs merrily and says that I’m not to make faces. The fact of the matter is that I cannot be at ease when a man is pointing a machine at me, and jumping and ducking about the room, pulling curtains, flashing lights and looking at my face as though it was something on a butcher’s bargain counter. “I am trying for a characteristic likeness,” says he. But that is just what I do not want. I want a picture which looks the way I should like to be, not the way I am. I can face facts in the mirror whenever I choose. I do not see why I should pay good money to have my nose rubbed in the bitter realities. “You don’t mean to say you want to be flattered?” he asks, and as I nod my head wildly he clicks the shutter. In the picture I shall probably appear to have a broken neck, like the body just before the police cut it down.

  • OF PIGEONS •

  I WAS TALKING TO a young person who attends the kindergarten, and she gave me some interesting details about the teaching of music, as it is done at her school. All the children must sing, and are divided by the teacher into canaries (the best singers), robins (fairly good singers), blue birds (definitely not choral material) and pigeons (creatures who croak moodily upon one note). The young canary with whom I spoke expressed deep scorn for pigeons. It seems to me that this name has been well chosen. I once lived in a house which was very popular with pigeons, and their croaking was a great nuisance, and caused me to look up a recipe for pigeon pie. Poets have affected to find a pleasing melancholy in the note of the pigeon, but poets are notoriously heavy sleepers, and are not wakened by these pompous, detestable, strutting birds in the early hours of the morning. I never made the pigeon pie, for the labour of skinning and cleaning enough birds daunted me. But to this day I never see a pigeon waddling in the street, eating something disgusting, without wanting to let it have the toe of my boot. Have you ever kicked a pigeon?