The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

by Robertson Davies

  • OF SILOS AND SILAGE •

  I WENT TO THE country to see the autumn colours yesterday, and reflected for the thousandth time on the difficulty of finding any place in Ontario where a man can walk without being warned off as a trespasser. In England the walker’s rights are protected by Footpath Societies and local use: here the landowner is as tyrannous as he pleases, and particularly so in the neighbourhood of lakes. I saw a good deal of wild aster and hawthorn berry, but not much leaf-colour yet. I collected a little more material for my book Silo Architecture in Canada and Its Relationship To the Campaniles of Southern Europe. So far as I know there has been no extended treatment of the æsthetic side of silo-building.

  The word “silo” comes, I find, from the Greek “siros,” meaning a storage pit, and the use of silage as fodder was known to the Greeks and Romans, and to the Spaniards, from very early times. The first silo I ever saw was a very grand concrete one which reeked of sour corn so powerfully that it seemed to tear at the lungs as one peeped into it. Cows which were fed on its silage never drew a sober breath all winter, but leaned against the sides of their stalls, hiccuping; their udders ran pure eggnog. Every Spring they were driven reluctantly to the meadows to take a kind of agricultural Gold Cure, and everyone remarked on the change in the milk. What Alcoholics Anonymous might have done for those cows I cannot now say.

  • OF HIS TREATMENT •

  (A Boring Account)

  AFTER A TRAIN journey at an ungodly hour I presented myself at the palatial offices of the eminent Dr. Aesculapius, and was told to seek him at the hospital. I went there, and asked for him. “Is it about a Growth?” asks the clerk, in a ghoulish whisper. “Heaven forfend!” I replied, and was pushed into a waiting-room, branded as an uninteresting fellow who had no Growth. But my companions in this sink of human misery all looked as though they had Growths, and for an hour and three-quarters I sat among them, wondering if I looked as ghastly to them as they did to me. At last I reached Dr. Aesculapius. “Tut tut,” said he; “they should have kept you at the office, Mr. Marchbanks; you are to be an ambulatory patient.” … And so, later in the day, I engaged the attention of the great man once again, and he said Hum and Aha, and was so much more mysterious than any other doctor that I can readily understand his eminence in his profession. But at last he shoved me into an immense Atomic Frier which he kept in the back of his premises, and as I cringed under its blast I thought of the boys in the Fiery Furnace.

  An ambulatory patient, I discover, is a fellow who would be in a hospital if there were room for him, but who is otherwise permitted to amble aimlessly about the streets when the doctor doesn’t want him. The Atomic Frier made me feel thoroughly miserable; I was nauseated when I lay down and faint when I stood up, and so I crept about bent into a right angle, and moaned whenever anyone touched me or offered me food. This response to the treatment was apparently good, and Dr. Aesculapius was pleased with me.

  Later I returned to Toronto for more treatment by Dr. Aesculapius. I sped toward his office in a taxi, and as I rounded a corner a woman spat at me. True, it wasn’t much of a spit; she barely cleared her bosom, but it was an intentional insult, and was plainly aimed at me. Or was it at my taxi? Was she, perhaps, the wife of an employee of a rival taxi company? Was she a woman who, in her thoughtless youth, once took an irrevocable step in a taxi? What ancient bitterness, rising from deep in her breast, found its expression in that ineffectual spit at the car in which I rode? Long after I had reached the offices of Dr. Aesculapius and was prone beneath the Atomic Frier, I turned this problem over in my mind. Was she some humble Communist who had invested her life’s savings in The Tribune, and whose bitterness over the failure of that paper was vented in this fashion upon my taxi, as a symbol of capitalist degeneracy? I shall never know. And yet the incident made a deep impression upon me, and if I were to meet that woman again I should recognize her instantly.

  • OF THE PROPERTIES OF MYRRH •

  FOR YEARS the firm for which I work has given a money bonus at Christmas. This year, I understand, the custom is to be suspended, as it tends to commercialize the sacred occasion. Instead of the usual gift the firm will present each employee with a small packet of frankincense and a little pot of myrrh, to remind them of the Gifts of the Magi. This seems to me to be a thoroughly enlightened idea. We are all too greedy and grabby, apt to demand as our right what began as a gift, and eager for possessions when we should be acquiring the treasures of the soul.… In China cows are fed small quantities of myrrh to increase their yield of milk. Is there a hint for industry here? If each employee were given a stick of myrrh-impregnated chewing gum each morning, would his man-hour production be greater? Or would the result merely be an embarrassing anatomical confusion? I can’t tell, but I offer the idea to the efficiency experts, absolutely free.

  • HE ANIMADVERTS UPON DOGS •

  A DOG ATTEMPTED to end it all under the wheels of a car in which I was riding this afternoon. The suicidal instinct seems to be strong in all dogs, but amounts to an overmastering passion in collies and Airedales. My theory is that dogs go mad from the boredom of being dogs and seek to take their lives in consequence. The much advertised intelligence of dogs is mythical. A recent article in Saturday Night, written by a scientist, asserts that dogs have even less intelligence than chickens, which is a strong statement. A dog can’t begin to compete with a monkey, the writer says, and horses simply laugh at the pretensions of dogs to be sagacious. A pig can learn more tricks than a dog, but has too much sense to want to do it. All this supports my lifelong contention that Man’s Dumb Chum is a fraud, and has only wormed his way into the hearts of dog-lovers by undignified self-abasement. The dog is a Yes-animal, very popular with people who can’t afford to keep a Yes-man.

  • OF ILL-DIALED NUMBERS •

  THE WRONG-NUMBER was my special affliction today. At lunch there came a long-distance call; “Hello, Maw,” said a voice when I picked up the receiver. Black rage swept over me. Abdicating my manhood by an effort of will, I forced my voice upward to a senile quaver: “Hello, son,” said I. “I’ll be over for the weekend after all, Maw,” the voice went on. “That’s too bad,” I replied; “doesn’t the warden know any better than to let you loose?” “Hey?” said the voice, and then it began to speak to me in a very different tone from that which it had used to Maw. I listened for a while, but my unknown visitor had little skill in the art of abuse, so I hung up before he was finished.

  • A HINT FOR THE WEALTHY •

  I WAS DELIGHTED to read of the great good luck of Dr. Williamson, the Canadian who has discovered the biggest diamond mine in the world, and is now one of the world’s richest men. I am afraid that Dr. W. is in for some annoyance, though. The South African government will want its slice, quite rightly, but I am betting that the Canadian Ministry of Finance will want a bit, as well. The idea of a Canadian having all that money will drive Ottawa crazy unless they can devise some way of getting at it. If I were Dr. W. I should pay my Income Tax in cash—copper cash—and go to the tax office every year with a procession of Negro porters, each one carrying a big bag of pennies. I should then stand by and make insulting remarks while the clerks counted the boodle, and demand a receipt in full. When leaving I should toss a huge diamond (with a huge flaw in it) among the herdsmen of the Golden Calf, and watch them scramble, claw, kick and bite for possession of it. What’s the good of money unless it gives you some real fun—preferably of a vindictive nature?

  • OF HIS ALLERGIES •

  I DELIVERED MY body into the hands of Learned Physicians this morning confiding that they may discover why I have hay fever. As soon as they got me out of my clothes I ceased to be a man to them, and they began to talk about me as though I did not understand English. “My guess is that his heart is too small,” said the 1st L.P. “I’ve read some of his stuff, and I’ll bet his heart is a little, shrivelled black thing, like a prune,” said the 2nd L.P. Whereupon they whisked me into a dark room, and made me stand in
a machine which revealed my heart, which they observed with unflattering interest. Then they handed me over to a young woman who removed blood from me and sent me on errands which modesty forbids me to specify in detail. Then the Learned Physicians got me again, and poked tickly things up my nose and peeped down my throat, and wrote cryptic notes on pads. At last I was released, completely demoralized, and sent to a technician whose job it was to test me for allergies.

  I was fastened in a chair with thongs, and various substances were brought to me. First of all, a vacuum cleaner was emptied right under my nose, and I sneezed. “Allergic to House Dust,” wrote the clinician. Next a flock of geese waddled by, under the care of a pretty Goose Girl. “Kerchoo!” cried I. “Allergic to goose feathers,” was the comment. Then a farmer rushed in, carrying a truss of weeds (“truss” in the sense of “bundle,” of course, and not one of those light-weight, comfortable affairs you see advertised in magazines) which he brandished in my face. “Allergic to English Cockleburr, Golden Rod, and Old Man’s Nuisance,” wrote the clinician, as I nearly burst my bonds asunder with sneezing. The next thing to parade past me was a beautiful girl in a lowcut evening gown, which I blew off with my sneezes. “Allergic to musk and orris root,” was the notation. And so it went until I was completely exhausted, and I didn’t miss a single allergy. I am allergic to everything, it seems. Why, when I looked in the mirror this evening, I sneezed violently.

  • OF UNKNOWN PERILS •

  LOOKING THROUGH my pocket notebook today I discovered that it contained much valuable information which I had overlooked, including a list of antidotes for common poisons. I jumped slightly when I discovered “hartshorn” listed as a poison, with an antidote of vinegar in water. My amazement was caused by the circumstance that as a child I could never distinguish between “hartshorn” and “horehound” and until this day I imagined them to be the same thing. But hartshorn is a nasty ammonia extracted from the horns of deer, whereas horehound is a nasty flavouring extracted from a harmless herb. As an infant I was wont to trot into drugstores with five cents in my chubby palm to ask for hartshorn candy; what would my amazement have been if the chemist had taken me at my word! I would soon have been writhing upon the floor pleading—perhaps in vain—for vinegar and water. What unsuspected perils beset us, all the days of our lives!

  • OF THE FLABBERED GASTER •

  “YOU FLABBERGAST ME!” said the man sitting beside our hostess to whom I had imparted a slightly surprising piece of information. His word caught my fancy, and I hunted it up in a dictionary which said that it was probably a combination of “flabby” and “aghast.” I doubt this. I am a bit of an etymologist myself, and I well recall the Greek word “gaster,” which the Elizabethans used to mean the stomach and digestive organs. Now when a man is amazed his stomach and digestive organs bear the brunt of it; sometimes they tremble violently; the word “jellybelly” has been coined to describe this condition of tremulousness. Therefore, when a man is flabbergasted, it means that someone has flabbered his gaster. And what is “to flabber”? Does not the word explain itself? To flabber means to flap or violently agitate something which because of its saponaceous or oleaginous nature does not flap readily—the middle section of a human being, for instance. Therefore when my friend said that I flabbergasted him he meant that I wobbled his tripes, which was interesting if true, and I know many people upon whom I would be happy to produce this effect.

  • AN ILL-CONSIDERED EXPERIMENT •

  JOHN L. LEWIS, is, in my opinion, the greatest single argument in favour of oil heating, and as he is on the warpath again I have decided to give oil a try. I do not want to take a leap in the dark, however, so I experimented with oil today. I got a pail of sludge and engine drainings from a garage where I am known, and I poured some of this rich mixture into a pan, laid it in the bottom of my furnace and set it alight. It worked beautifully, and soon my house was uncomfortably hot, even though it was getting dark outside and a storm seemed near. It was at this moment that the neighbours began to call: one accused me of heathen rites and burnt offerings, and others hinted that I was cremating someone whom I had murdered. I ran outside and found that my chimney was belching fire and dense black smoke and that the storm I had anticipated was of my own making. I hurried in and doused the blaze with a pail of water, just as the fire department drove up. I am convinced of the excellence of oil heat, but I must find some more gradual method of feeding in my fuel.

  • OF SUFFERING •

  THE COLD which has been hovering around me for the past month found a chink in my armour last week, and began its horrible invasion of my person. At 7:15 P.M. precisely on Monday, I gave up the unequal struggle and went to bed, permitting the germs to work their wicked will without further resistance on my part. My colds do not follow the usual pattern; they begin with a cough instead of ending with one, and by 8:35 P.M. I had a beauty, which raised me right off the bed, in a horizontal position, every time I gave it vent. I began to wonder if this was good for me, and tried holding on to the bedstead whenever a cough was imminent but that only made matters worse; my lungs and midriff were jerked forcibly upward by the cough, and sometimes it seemed as if they would be jerked clear of my suffering form, fulfilling a threat of playmates of bygone years to “rip the stuffing right out of me.” At last exhaustion overcame me, and I fell into a catarrhal slumber.

  I passed the next day in bed—confined to my rheum, so to speak. The mail brought its usual yield of junk, including a catalogue of what were described as “Rare, Exciting, Unusual, Entertaining Books!” Among them were Famous Hussies of History, The Book of Torture, and Thrilling Tales of Pep and Spice. The one which interested me most, however, was one called The 7 Keys to Power which promises to teach me many useful things such as “How to gain the mastery of all things,” “How to banish all misery,” “How to cast a spell on anyone, no matter where they are,” and “How to gain the love of the opposite sex.” As it retails at the modest price of one dollar, I do not see how I can go wrong on that one. If I could cast a spell on anyone I would not really need another book in the catalogue, on Lightning Ju Jitsu, which has a special chapter called “The Answer to Pawing Hands.” Nor, if I could compel love at will, would I need the book called How To Write Love Letters. I might risk fifty cents on the book which teaches Ventriloquism, and thus, for a mere $1.50 become one of the choice and master spirits of my age. I might even discover how to cure a cold.

  • A FOOLISH QUESTION PARRIED •

  I TYPED A LETTER today, and was annoyed to find that I had put the carbon under it in such a way that it printed on the back of my original instead of making a copy. But a boob who saw me do this said, “Why did you do that? Is it for some special kind of filing system?” I replied, “No; the man to whom this letter is going is the most cross-eyed man I have ever known, and if he happens not to have his glasses on when he gets this letter he won’t be able to read it. But if he turns it over and reflects this backward copy in a mirror, he will be able to read it perfectly.” “Oh,” said the boob, looking mystified, “I never knew that before.” … As the Good Book says, “Answer a fool according to his folly and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

  • NO TRUCK WITH ANGELS •

  I LISTENED TO THE opera broadcast this afternoon for the first time in a long spell. It was Hansel and Gretel, to my immense delight, but I cannot help feeling that children who had fourteen angels to guard them all through the night should not have got themselves into such dreadful trouble as soon as they woke up. Probably that is the moral of the opera: if you depend on guardian angels, your moral fibre and common sense will rot, and you won’t be able to look after yourself. It is essentially a strong Protestant work, and was probably commissioned by the Free Church Council.

  • BRUTALITY IN THE CIVIL SERVICE •

  I HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING with deep interest a controversy in the press as to whether garbage-collectors are really careful with the garbage-cans. Two or three garbage-men hav
e even written letters in defence of themselves, an action which I deplore, for I am a firm believer in the tradition that the Civil Service should never engage in public disputes. As a matter of curiosity I stalked a couple of garbage wagons last week and found that the defence was justified; the men were very gentle with the cans, handling them like Venetian glass goblets, in most cases. But I also spied upon an ash-cart, and was horrified by the brutality of the ash-men in their dealings with ash-cans. Luckily I had a tape-measure with me, and was able to compute the average throw of an empty can, which is 20 feet, 9 inches. Here is a splendid subject for a sociological thesis: why are ash-men so much more brutal than garbage men?