The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

by Robertson Davies

  • OF ILL-TIMED CALLS •

  I WAS CALLED to the telephone during my lunch today, and sat listening to quite a lot of bad news while my food congealed on my plate and my digestive organs protested. It was one of the maxims of my old school nurse, Miss Toxaemia Dogsbody, Reg. N., that nobody should ever discuss disturbing topics at the table. Indeed, she made me learn a round, to the tune of Row Your Boat, which went thus:

  Chew, chew, chew your food

  Gaily through the meal;

  The more you eat, the more you laugh,

  The better you will feel.

  But Miss Dogsbody reckoned without that miracle of modern ingenuity, the telephone. It is the conviction of every man that if he has dined, all the rest of the civilized world has dined also; conversely, he assumes that if he has not yet eaten nobody but a low-bred oaf will be at the table. Consequently, anybody who is not eating is quite likely to call up somebody who is eating, and pour the leprous distillment of his sorrows and frustrations into the ear of the interrupted eater. This causes the interrupted eater (if he has an inside like mine) to suffer the conflicting emotions of sympathy and rage, short-circuitting his esophagus for the rest of the day.

  • AN ACADEMIC DISILLUSIONMENT •

  I ATTENDED AN ACADEMIC festival today, and as several hundred young people were awarded degrees of one sort and another, I wondered idly where they would all find jobs.… I greatly enjoyed the Principal’s address, which was not only good in itself, but was spoken in one of the best Canadian accents I have ever heard—neither English nor American, nor the depressing whine of Ontario, but a good clear, expressive and distinguished utterance.… Throughout the afternoon my eye wandered again and again to a richly wrought silver trophy, about the size of a baby’s bath, which stood at one corner of the platform; it looked heavy, expensive, and impressive, and when it was at last presented to a young man who was both a scholar and an athlete I clapped as loudly as so rare a prize demanded. But judge of my surprise when, as the ceremony ended, a lewd fellow of the baser sort (a janitor, I assume) hurried to the platform, flung his hat into this treasure, picked it up by one handle and bore it off to the cellars. The effect was similar to the circus trick in which the strong man’s bar-bell, marked “500 lbs.” is carried away by the puniest of the clowns.

  • OF DISCIPLINARY MAYHEM •

  A FRIEND PLAYED ME a gramophone record of a song called “Little Sir William” yesterday, which is about a small boy who was murdered by his school-teacher. When his mother calls piteously for him outside the school he replies:

  How can I pity your weep, Mother

  And I so sore in pain?

  For the little pen-knife

  It sticks in my heart

  And the school-wife hath me slain.

  This song is obviously a relic of the good old days when teachers were not forbidden to inflict corporal punishment on troublesome pupils. If we had the school-wife’s side of the story we should no doubt find that little Sir William had been throwing spit-balls, or pinning signs saying “kick me” on the seat of the school-wife’s gown. Many a teacher has fingered her knife reflectively under such circumstances.

  • OF A NICE POINT IN LAW •

  THE CROSSROADS at which I live has recently treated itself to a few score parking meters; the hitching post having gone out of fashion, the parking post has become the mode, and rude fellows have been referring to them as pay-toilets for dogs. A more seemly attitude was shown today by two Wolf Cubs whom I observed from my window. “Let me show you how these things work,” said one of the lads, pulling a cent from his pocket and putting it in the slot of a meter. When the indicator swung into view his small friend was suitably impressed. Now, I should be interested to know the legal position of that boy, who had bought twelve minutes worth of parking time, but who had no car. Would he be within his rights if he stretched himself prone beside his meter, and took a twelve minute nap? And if so, would it be legally possible for me to unfold a deckchair by one of these gadgets, buy an hour’s time, and sun myself in the street, in the Mexican fashion? What would happen to a man who parked his trailer by one of the things, and kept his rent paid by stuffing the meter with money? There are some pretty problems of jurisprudence inherent in this question of parking meters.

  • OF DANTE •

  A NEW TRANSLATION of Dante’s Divine Comedy came to hand today, and I took a quick look at it before putting it on the review shelf. Reading Dante is a valuable corrective to too much reading of American political philosophy, for Dante had no use for the Common Man, although he was one of the great democrats of the ages. People who had done nothing in life were of no interest to him, and he states plainly that such people are of no interest to either God or the Devil, and are condemned to spend eternity in a nasty, cold place (like the recent Spring) outside the gates of Hell.… What fun, what deep, marrow-warming satisfaction Dante must have had in the composition of this mighty poem! Putting all his enemies (including the reigning Pope, Boniface VIII) into Hell, and attributing various unsuitable and undignified sins to them, doling out praise and blame, and vicariously spitting in the eye of anyone who disagreed with him! Nowadays of course the law of libel (that cloak of scoundrels and and ruffians) would restrain his hand.… Dante’s name may very easily have been Durante, but the tradition which says his pet name in the courts of Italy was “Il Schnozzolo” is of doubtful validity.

  • OF THE HORSE SENSE OF CHILDREN •

  A CHILD ASKED me today to explain a picture it had found in a magazine, which showed some mailed warriors walking toward a castle carrying branches of trees in front of them. It was an advertisement for Scotch whiskey, and the picture was Malcolm’s forces advancing upon Macbeth’s castle—Birnam Wood moving toward Dunsinane, in fact. I explained this to the child, and gave a rough and expurgated version of the Shakespeare play, in which I happened to mention that the Witches had told Macbeth that this very thing was likely to happen. “If a witch had told me that, I’d have cut down the forest right away,” said the child. I agreed that this would have been a wise precaution, but that if Macbeth had done so there would have been no tragedy, and the whole course of Scots history would have been altered. She looked up at me searchingly and said: “That’s silly.” Sometimes I think that the reins of government should be put in the hands of children. They have remarkably direct minds, and when a witch tells them something, they pay attention.

  • THE BYRONIC ENDING •

  I SAW IN A PAPER today that Hollywood is going to make a film based on Byron’s poem The Corsair. My guess is that the movie boys will take their cue from the lines:

  His heart was form’d for softness—warped to wrong;

  Betray’d too early and beguiled too long;

  and will turn the whole thing into an exposure of juvenile deliquency, altering those lively scenes in the Pasha’s harem to a sequence in which some rough boys with pea-shooters have fun in the lady’s section of a Turkish bath.… It is a matter of surprise to me that Hollywood has not yet attempted a film on the life of Byron. True, the facts are too lurid for the censors, but the movie makers could always use one of their tried-and-true stories about poet meets girl, poet loses girl, poet gets girl. The truly Byronic conclusion—i.e., poet, having got girl, kicks her into the street—would not suit Hollywood’s customers.

  • OF SHORT SKIRTS •

  I READ IN THE fashion news that the Handkerchief Skirt is coming back; this garment, fashionable in the twenties, is short and hangs in rags, as though the wearer had been fighting a particularly sharp-nailed wolf. I hope that this is not true, and that the Handkerchief Skirt will remain in Oblivion, where it belongs. I do not like short skirts; I like long skirts which swish and whirl. A short, tight skirt on a girl is ugly enough, but on an older woman to whom life and her metabolism have been unkind it is a cruel joke. Some men whose notion of Fashion is to bring women as near to utter nakedness as possible like short skirts because they reveal a lot of leg; but to my min
d a really graceful woman is shown to greatest advantage in a skirt which compliments the poetry of her walk, instead of revealing the muscular action of her gluteus maximus. And though I yield to no man in my admiration of the female leg, I do not want to see all the legs in the world: there are thousands which I am ready to take for granted as useful, sturdy servants. Let us be spared Nature’s rougher handiwork.

  • OF HIS POLL •

  I WENT TO THE movies last night and on the newsreel saw the Hon. George Drew welcoming some immigrants. I started a clap for him, in which only one other person joined. I do this whenever I see a politician on the screen, to test his popularity; I am President, Statistician and only field-worker of an organization called the Marchbanks Poll of Worthless Public Opinion. If I raise a big clap for a politician I know at once that (a) it is payday, and the audience is in a generous mood; (b) the audience consists chiefly of married couples, who are not holding hands. If the response is small I know (a) that the hands of most people in the audience are otherwise engaged; (b) that the audience does not expect the feature picture to be any good and only came to the movies to get away from home; (c) that the audience consists chiefly of people who have never heard of George Drew, and think the figure on the screen is Eva Peron, or the Pope, or some other distant dignitary. I am compiling a large volume of my findings, and will shortly sell it to industrialists who will be impressed by the price and the word “Poll” in the title.

  • OF RADIANT GRANDMOTHERHOOD •

  I WAS LEAVING an hotel this afternoon just as three noble old Mothers in Israel tumbled out of the beverage room, arm in arm. Two of them had one eye tight shut, but all three wore enigmatical smiles, like the Mona Lisa. They eyed me with unabashed interest, and one of them gave me, quite unmistakeably, what Shakespeare calls “the leer of invitation.” People have accused me of being a reactionary, but thank God I know how to behave toward my elders: I raised my hat politely. Two of the beldames bowed in return, but the third was awe-stricken. “Jeez, it’s Saint Paul!” she gasped. At that moment a taxi man, who was waiting for her, seized her and bundled her into his cab. Her companions rolled toward the revolving door, got a compartment each and marched solemnly round and round; I joined them, and hurried the pace a bit, which caused them to grab the handrails and cry “Whoa!” I escaped from what seemed likely to become an endless and fruitless procession, and as I passed out of sight they were still spinning. “Like a white candle, in a holy place, So is the beauty of an aged face,” I murmured, turning for a last look.

  • OF THE GREATNESS OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT •

  A HEALTH NUT assailed me today. “Are you getting plenty of water?” said he. “You know, surely that you are about 70 per cent. water?” “You astonish me,” said I, determined not to encourage him. “Yep, maybe that’s why so many of your ideas are all wet,” he rejoined, and paused to guffaw foolishly at his own miserable witticism. “Your brain alone is 79 per cent. water,” he continued, “and 90 per cent. of your blood is water. Obviously you must take care to get lots of water.” “If you didn’t get enough water, is there any chance that you would dry up?” I asked, but he was too full of facts to be affected by sarcasm. “Really you are just a big lump of carbon, with a few salts and minerals thrown in,” he continued, “I could buy all your ingredients at a drug store for about sixty cents, and get enough free water out of a tap to mix them up.” “Vain man,” I cried, “in the hereafter we shall see what I am—a dollar’s worth of slops and condiments, or one of the Sons of the Morning. Go, pinhead, lock yourself in a room, and stay there until some inkling of the greatness of the human spirit dawns upon you, then see if you can buy THAT in a drug store.” He fled, hustling his sixty cents’ worth of chemicals and his water down the street at about 15 m.p.h.

  • OF THE VIRTUES OF ARTIFICE •

  I SAW A MOVIE of Oscar Wilde’s play An Ideal Husband last week, and enjoyed it greatly. The movie reviewers had assured me that the piece was slow and dull, but I did not find it so. The plot and the dialogue were artificial, of course, but so are the plot and dialogue of all other movies; more artificiality on the Wilde level would improve the movies immensely. I have never understood why people object to artificiality; almost everything that has raised man above the beasts is artificial in some respect. I am an exceedingly artificial creature myself; my teeth are preserved artificially, and I have artificial aids for my eyes; I wear artificial coverings of cloth and leather upon my body; I eat no food which has not been artificially treated. And, unlike a great many of my hypocritical fellow creatures, I like frankly artificial entertainment.

  Last night I went to a private showing of a Russian film Ivan The Terrible, which was one of the best films I have ever seen. True, I have never looked up the nostrils of so many Russians before, and I hope that it will be some time before I do so again, but it was a film after my own heart—full of poisoned wine, spies peeping around pillars, and people wearing trains approximately twenty feet long. This was artificiality on a grand scale. Ivan in the film bore no resemblance to the Ivan of history, who was as mimsy as a borogrove and spent his time alternately in doing unpleasant things and repenting, but it was a fine bit of propaganda and not more distorted than the films we see about Lincoln and George Washington.… I was much impressed by the scene in which Ivan was cured of a severe illness by having a prayer book placed over his face. I shall try this on myself when next my ulcers go back on me.

  • OF FESTIVAL AWARDS •

  LAST WEEK END I made my way to Toronto, to be present at the Dominion Drama Festival, an event which combines the pleasures of the most catholic of the arts with the thrill of horse-racing. The last day of the Festival was the best and there was wild excitement everywhere. After the adjudicator had announced the usual awards, I was called to the stage to make the Marchbanks Special Awards. These were:

  THE MARCHBANKS SHIELD FOR THE BEST COUGH IN FRENCH OR ENGLISH TO BE HEARD DURING THE FESTIVAL: In spite of strong competition from some sharp Western coughs, this went to a fruity old Eastern cough, like coal sliding down a chute, from the Eastern Ontario region.

  THE MARCHBANKS TROPHY FOR THE MOST SUCCESSFUL LATE COMER: Won by a lady from Quebec whose gown was caught in the doors just as they closed on Friday night, and who sat out the performance in her chemise, to the envy of the remainder of the spectators, who were overheated.

  THE MARCHBANKS SCOLD’S BRIDLE FOR THE MOST TACTLESS REMARK: Awarded to a lady from the West who approached the only Canadian playwright to have a long play in the Festival immediately after its performance with the query: “Well, and when are you going to write a novel?”

  • A SCHEME TO IMPROVE BUREAUCRACY •

  I PREPARED MY Income Tax form today, and reflected that it costs me just about as much to be a Canadian as it would to be an Englishman, and twice as much as it would cost me to be an American. This is a time of year when I think sourly of Government expenditures. I reckon that my Income Tax pays the salary of one minor official, such as the censor of books. What does this minor official do for me that I should support him? Can I march into a government office, seek him out, and say, “You’re my man. I pay you. What are you doing, and are you making a decent job of it?” No, I cannot. Frankly I think it would be a good idea if every taxpayer were told what government stooge he maintained. Small taxpayers would then feel that they owned an eighth of a charwoman; modest taxpapers like myself would own petty officials; wealthy men, who pay a lot of taxes, would be alloted ten or twenty clerks, or a brace of deputy ministers. With this knowledge we could go to Ottawa from time to time and chivvy and nag our hirelings. Such a scheme would give a taxpayer some pride in his taxpaying and would greatly increase bureaucratic efficiency.

  • OF WINES RUDELY MINGLED •

  I ATTENDED A BANQUET last night at which an appropriate quantity of wine was consumed. But there were a number of people present who were plainly devotees of hard spirits, for they drank little or no wine, leaving it in their glasses. Now when t
he affair was over I noticed one of the cleaners collecting these remains in a large jug. Sherry, claret, and port were poured without discrimination into the mixture, which had the murky, threatening colour of cough medicine. What did he intend to do with it? I am convinced that later, in some secret bower of his own—some sequestered broom closet or coenobitical lumber room—he drank the contents of that jug in which the conviviality of sherry, the sturdy manliness of claret and the episcopal blessing of port mingled in vinous kaleidoscope. I hope he had a good time, but I would not have his head on my shoulders this morning for a mine of gold.

  • OF ANCIENT PROFANITY •

  I WAS READING Ben Jonson’s play The Poetaster this afternoon, and found this passage:

  OVID: Troth, if I live, I will new dress the law

  In sprightly Poesy’s habiliments.

  TIBULLUS: The hell thou wilt!

  What, turn law into verse?

  I had not thought that this special use of “the hell you will” was so old, for The Poetaster was written in 1601… . Well Madam, I see no reason for you to make a fuss. I thought that you would take an intelligent interest in the antiquity of a useful piece of profanity.