• OF THE CAPRICE OF SYMPATHY •
MY HAY FEVER continues unabated. Several people have told me that I should go to the seaside—useless advice for I have no money for gallivanting. I am toying, however, with a new invention, Marchbanks’ Maritime Mask. It will be a respirator, filled with sea water, and worn over the face and mouth like a dog muzzle; every breath the wearer takes will be filtered through the sea water, and thus he will have all the benefits of the seaside, while living inland.
As I wept, sneezed and coughed my way through my day’s work, I reflected that the world judges diseases by unjust standards. Anyone who has a migraine headache, for instance, receives the keenest sympathy, for his ailment is heroic and—this is important—silent. But a man who has hives is a joke, though hives are desperately painful. Similarly it is heroic to suffer with one’s sinus, but a man who has catarrh, and who, in consequence, hawks, hoots, snorts, roars, gags and spits is thought to be making a great and disgusting fuss about nothing. The healthy can endure invalids only when the latter are quiet and motionless. Let them but cough or scratch, and sympathy flies out of the window.
• OF AN AWKWARD PREDICAMENT •
AN UMISTAKEABLE ODOUR crept through Marchbanks Towers last evening and although I fought it off as long as I could, the conviction grew upon me that Chanel the skunk had hidden himself in the cellar. This created a very delicate situation. I have only seen Chanel at a distance, and he appeared to be a young, joyous, high-spirited skunk, but it is always possible to be mistaken, and I did not want to find out too late that Chanel was really of a malign and hunkerous disposition. I crept down the cellar stairs, and peeped behind the storm windows, in the coal bin and under the tubs, saying “Puss, puss, puss” in a high hypnotic voice. But Chanel did not appear, though his scent was as powerful as it had been in the upper chambers. I cannot decide which is worse: to find the skunk in one’s cellar, or to go on suspecting its presence. Perhaps, as in psycho-analysis, it is more destructive to the soul to remain in doubt about the worst. And what does one do when one finds the skunk? Carry it outside on a shovel, singing a lullaby to it? Sometimes I wish I lived in an apartment.
• OF SELF TORTURE •
WHEN I AWOKE this morning there was a smell of burning in the air, and for a moment I wondered if the northern bush fires had crept up during the night, in the hope of engulfing me and my neighbours. While dressing I wondered what I would do in such an emergency: would I form a firebreak by chopping down the puny hedge of Marchbanks Towers, order my dependents to go and stand waist-deep in the nearest lake, and take up a menacing position on the lawn with a soda syphon; or would I phone the fire department, shrieking, “Save me! Save me!”? Like all men whose work consists of dreaming, word-spinning and prophesying, I like to torture myself with these problems; nothing so entrances a man of words as to imagine himself in a situation in which words are powerless. It is this which keeps him humble. Men of action, I notice, are rarely humble, even in situations where action of any kind is a great mistake, and masterly inaction is called for.
• THE INNER VOICE •
I SAT ON MY verandah last evening, reading Winston Churchill’s new book, which I do very slowly, because I seem to hear that wonderful phlegmy voice declaiming every word. How many people, I wonder, hear voices as they read? I always do. I read American books with an American accent, and English books with an English accent, and Canadian books in the voice of a friend of mine who speaks the best Canadian I have heard. People have told me that I would be able to read much faster if I gave up this indulgence, and clutched groups of words and whole paragraphs with my greedy eyes, but I pay no attention to them. My method is the one I like, and it is an infallible touchstone for judging a writer’s style. The man who writes only for the eye generally writes badly; the man who writes to be heard will write with some eloquence, some regard for the music of words, and will reach nearer to his reader’s heart and mind. Of course, fools and clods will write like fools and clods, whatever means they use.… No, madam, I do not read the works of foreign writers in broken English.
• OF A WITTY POLITICIAN •
I REFRESHED MYSELF today by reading a few chapters of Peck’s Bad Boy, a book which delighted my childhood. I wonder if children read it now. Re-reading with the eye of bawdy eld supplanting that of dewy innocence, I was astonished to discover what a suggestive work it is. George W. Peck, who wrote it, was a Milwaukee journalist, and he became so popular as a funny-man that he was elected mayor of that city, the first and last time in history that any city ever elected a consciously funny man to be its chief magistrate. He scaled even dizzier heights, however, and was Governor of Wisconsin before he died. Let this be a lesson to our Canadian politicians; wit and politics are not mutually exclusive.
• OF AN INJUSTICE •
THE MEDICAL profession had some fun with me this afternoon. They extracted blood from me at various strategic points, and did strange things with such of my by-products as they could obtain. They took pictures of my insides, and put me in a machine which rendered me transparent. They gouged and banged me to see if I would scream, but I remembered that I had once been a Wolf Cub, and kept a stiff upper lip (though why I should have done this when my underlip was trembling like a blanc-mange in an earthquake I cannot say). But the final injustice came when they decided to weigh me. I craftily left off my coat, hoping thereby to gain a slight advantage, but the doctor who had just used the fluoroscope to see through me saw through me again and ordered me sternly to put it on. This I did, and consequently the weight of two books which I had in my pocket, as well as $2.35 in silver, was entered on the charge-sheet against me. This is the kind of unfairness which drives men to rash acts. However, it will be easy for me to make a good impression next time I visit my doctor, for I shall simply leave my books and money at home, and he will think that I am losing weight.
• OF THE FOLLY OF KNOWING BETTER •
NO THANK YOU, I will not have a cigarette.… No, no, I do not mind if you smoke, Madam, but I shall wait until later and have a pipe when we go into the drawing-room.… Yes, I know I am old-fashioned but I do not approve of people who smoke pipes at the table. The other day, by the way, a lady asked me how often I removed the dotterel from my pipe. “I have never had a dotterel in my pipe,” I replied merrily, and went on to explain to her that a dotterel is a foolish bird, and that she meant to say dottle. She did not seem to think this very funny and was cross with me because she was in the wrong and I had corrected her. Sometimes I think it is better to let people wallow in their ignorance; to Know Better is a sure way to offend. I well recall when I was about eight years old correcting a schoolteacher who called the Cambrian Hills “the Caymbrian Hills.” I was right and she was wrong, but I was not smart enough in those days to know that the errors of Authority should be pointed out and enjoyed on the sly, and not in public. She hated me for the rest of the year that I was in her class. … Yes, indeed, Madam, it is a fatal mistake to attempt to further the education of a professional educator.
• ART AND ARTIFICE •
I HAD AN OPPORTUNITY to spend an hour looking at the collection of silver and goldsmith’s work which has been presented to Hart House by Lord Lee of Fareham. In a world where so many things are made quickly and cheaply and in great quantities it is balm to the soul to see so many things which are unique, and which have obviously cost thousands of hours of the most patient and skillful workmanship. I was particularly struck by a seventeenth-century figure of Diana riding a stag, a golden toy with clockwork in its base which is made to run about a dinner table on invisible wheels. Furthermore, it is so designed that as it approaches the table’s edge it turns back again toward the centre—a trick which modern toymakers have only just begun to work into children’s toys. I lingered also over three beautiful illuminated books. No doubt our modern system of printing books by the hundred thousand on thin sheets of squeezed tree is very good for popular education, but it is ugly to the eye and the fing
ers. These books were to be caressed and wondered at, as well as read.
• OF THE STRANGE POWER OF WOMEN •
YES, THANK YOU, my cold is improving. I went to the movies last night; they always cheer me when I have a cold although I expect that I spread germs in a thoroughly anti-social manner. The newsreel was another instalment in the United States’ long, passionate love-affair with itself; this is one serial which never ends. The film was Anna Karenina, and I liked it greatly. Some girls sitting near me appeared to find it funny. Will any of them, I wonder, ever discover themselves in a situation comparable to that of the heroine? Often I look at women on the streets, or in restaurants, and wonder if anybody has ever loved them to distraction, or if they have ever wrecked a man’s life. Most of them have not done so, of course, but a few must have lived out some passionate story, or will do so before they die. The curious thing, of course, is that it is by no means always the beautiful or attractive ones who have caused these upheavals. Little mousy women, or fat, cow-like women, have often inspired ill-fated romances, driving men to suicide or murder, or simply to that living death which is worse than either. Statistical records show that women commit suicide rarely, as compared with men; are they more philosophic, or merely more stupid and unfeeling?
• OF HIS RHEUM •
ALL THIS WEEK I have had a cold. At least, I hope it is a cold. My head feels like a pumpkin, and when I breathe my left lung makes a noise as though a kitten were playing in a basketful of crumpled paper. I dare not go to my doctor, for he will send me to bed, and I want to save my usual Autumn holiday-in-bed for later on, when the weather is not so fine. But the man who occasionally sells me a little benzine with which to clean my clothes diagnosed my case today. “You’ve got muck in your bronikkles,” he said, as I gave an agonizing cough. “There’s only one thing that’ll do you any good and that’s mustard tea. Just get a pint of stout, heat it nearly to the boil, and put a couple of good tablespoons of mustard in it and drink it off quick. That’ll fix you!” I thanked him and went away, thinking that it would fix me indeed, and probably for good. I suppose in the dear dead days beyond recall, when doctors were scarce, thousands of people were killed every year by wholesome home remedies given to them by sadistic old creatures with a taste for experiment.
I have suffered from extreme stupidity all day, which I attribute to my cold. I would begin a piece of work, and twenty minutes later would recover consciousness to discover that I was staring into space with my mouth open, making a noise like a sleeping bulldog—snuffle, snuffle, glrrk, woof, snuffle. Is this sort of Hypnosis by the Common Cold well known to medical science, or will I get my name into the medical books under some such heading as “Marchbanks Symptom (Hypnogogia Marchbankensis)”? … Very well, madam, if you are not interested, let us talk of something else. Is that all your own hair?
• OF FAIRY-TALE FATHERS •
A YOUNG WOMAN whom I know, who is just learning to read, kindly undertook to read me a story from her schoolbook today. It was one of those pieces about a king who promises his daughter’s hand to any man who can make her laugh. It is this sort of promise which makes me wonder about the psychological makeup of fairy-tale characters; they seem to be ready to marry their daughters to anyone at all, for the most extraordinary reasons. I have never known a Canadian father who would permit a young man to marry his daughter, merely because he could make her laugh. (And I may say in passing that to make a really well brought up Canadian girl laugh is no easy task.) Canadian fathers don’t care whether their sons-in-law are funny or not; all they want to know about is their prospects and how much money they have in the bank, and whether they drink. In fact, I have received the impression that Canadian fathers prefer sons-in-law who do not laugh. No doubt this attitude explains why Canada has no body of native fairy-tales. Many a Canadian father might justly say: “If you can get a laugh out of this sourpuss, you can have her.” But he doesn’t.
• OF THE SUBTLETY OF CATS •
NEXT WEEK, I see, will be observed as National Cat Week. It is a good thing to do honour to this noble, dignified and beautiful animal, but I don’t imagine for a moment that the cats will co-operate. Cats don’t mind being worshipped, but they refuse to be organized. They have always insisted that their lives are their own, to be lived as they see fit, and their attitude toward everything which is symbolized by the American passion for “weeks” of one sort and another is contemptuous, contumacious, and insulting. Can anyone imagine cats walking in a parade? Does anyone seriously think that cats are interested in civic betterment? When have cats ever shown a united front on any subject whatever? The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil-may-care attitude toward responsibility, their disinclination to earn an honest dollar. In a continent which screams neurotically about co-operation and the Golden Rule, cats are disdainful of everything but their own immediate interests and they contrive to be so suave and delightful about it that they even receive the apotheosis of a National Week. Smart work, cats!
• OF PRECOCIOUS CHILDREN •
I MET A MAN today who boasted intolerably about his child. It is eighteen months old, I think he said, and he asserts without a blush that it has a vocabulary of three hundred words. I believe that I was expected to show awestricken admiration, but as I have no idea what vocabulary may be expected in a child of that age I held my peace and nodded as though prodigies were an old story to me. Frankly, I do not care how large a vocabulary any child has; I am only interested in what it says, and not always in that. What is the use of a large vocabulary of words, if the child has only a small range of ideas? … Every now and then I meet grown-ups who are taking some vocabulary-stretching exercises, having fallen victim to the delusion that the more words they know the more valuable their opinions will be. But nonsense is nonsense, whether expressed in polysyllables or in grunts and snorts. Three hundred words! Pah!
• OF COMPLACENCE •
OF LATE PEOPLE have been picking on me because I am what they call “complacent.” By this they mean that I refuse to share their hysterical fears about another war, about Russia, about the atom, about the commercialization of Sunday, about divorce, about juvenile delinquency and whatnot. Because I do not leap about and flap my arms and throw up all my meals when these things are mentioned, they assume that I am at ease in Zion. As a matter of fact I have my own well-defined field of worry, which I exploit to the full. But it seems to me that a little complacency would do nobody any harm at present and I am thinking of incorporating complacency into the platform of the Marchbanks Humanist Party—a retrograde movement of which I am leader and sole support. “Tired of Clamour? Try Torpor!” How’s that for a campaign cry?
• OF NOSES •
I SAW A MAN today walking along the street with his son and grandson; the grandfather, who came to this country over forty years ago, had a large honest English nose with an honest red blob on the end of it; the son had a lesser nose—an unremarkable nose; the grandson had an insignificant pug. I have observed upon several occasions this progressive diminution of the Canadian nose as the true British stock accommodates itself to North American conditions. Are we fated, in a few hundred years, to be a noseless people? Do our noses shrink because for so many months we breathe a frosty air which inhibits growth, so that our noses are virtually in cold storage? Or is it a failure of character? Wellington, we know, picked his staff officers for their noses; a man with a wealth of beezer was, in the opinion of the Iron Duke, a man of character and a fellow who could be trusted to bear heavy responsibilities. Is it the advance of social security and cradle-to-grave pensions which have given us our timid, state-subsidized, egalitarian noses? Give me a man whose nose is like the blade of a scythe, and whose blowings are like the note of a trumpet sounding to battle!
• OF REALISTIC SPORTSMANSHIP •
MY MORNING PAPER expects me to sympathize with a man who shot a bear cub, and then was charged by the mother bear; he and his companion fired eleven shots at her be
fore they finally killed her. But before I congratulate him on his escape, I would like to know why he shot at the cub in the first place? Had he never heard that bears are strange, unpredictable beasts, likely to chase people who shoot their young? And what is the fun of shooting a bear, large or small? Is it the pleasure of seeing it fall down? Or does a shot bear leap comically into the air, shouting, “O my goodness!” thus providing the hunter with a hearty laugh? It seems to me that I once read in an old musty book (very much out of date, probably) that it was unsportsmanlike to shoot the young of any animal, or to shoot a female who was running with her young. But it is plain from the reports which appear in the papers every season that ideals of sportsmanship have changed, and that the tactics which, in political circles, are called “realistic” are now in fashion.
• OF CALVINISM •
I WAS EATING a peach today when a pink worm about half an inch long with an evil black head, crawled out of the stone and began to explore. I hastily disgorged everything that I had in my mouth, and watched the worm with a beady and hostile eye, like a bird. It is this quality in nature—worms in peaches, faithless hearts in pretty girls, and headaches in delicious drinks—which gives rise to Calvinism in religion and skepticism in philosophy. After a few nasty setbacks a man is likely to get the idea that there is a disappointment in every pleasure and a blackamoor in every woodpile. From this conclusion it is a simple step to the belief that everything which seems fair and delightful is evil, and should be forbidden. The easiest way to spare yourself disappointment is to go through life expecting the worst. But with praiseworthy courage I refused to fall into this intellectual trap, and chose another peach, which was wormless and delicious.
The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks Page 17
