Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack

by Robertson Davies

  THE SEX WAR / Walking home from my work this evening I passed a group of children who were busy, as children so often are, in taunting and torturing one of their number. “Teddy’s got a gurr-ul! Teddy’s got a gurr-ul!” they screamed, while Teddy, who appeared to be about six, denied the charge with a remarkable command of blasphemy and obscenity. I pondered upon this scene for some time. Why is it considered disgraceful for little boys to play with little girls, though a little girl who can get herself accepted in a gang of little boys gains prestige by doing so? The equality of the sexes, about which there is so much futile blather in the adult world, is unheard of among the young. Women’s suffrage, and equal-pay-for-equal-work would never have come into being if children had had any say in the matter. I toyed with the idea of going back to the children and saying: “My pretty dears, the fact that Teddy has a girl shows that he is more mature than the rest of you; do you not know that girls will grow up to be the equals, in all respects, of men? Don’t you know that girls will sit on the juries which will condemn you to hang, which, if I may judge by your language, is the fate to which you will all come?” But I was rather busy, and went home instead.

  THE YO-YO / A child of my acquaintance was displaying her skill with the yo-yo for my benefit. She did the Elevator trick, Spank the Baby, Walk the Dog, Round the World, and the whole repertoire. I borrowed her yo-yo and attempted to recapture the skill of my younger days; as I never had any skill whatever with a yo-yo, I suppose I may say that I did so. The truth is, I was a great theorist of the yo-yo, but a poor practitioner. I could explain what made a yo-yo work, but could not persuade one to work for me. I read all the available literature on the subject; L’Art du Yo-Yo, by Charles Marchand, Der Yoyokunst and Die Yoyoweltanschauung, by Dr. Hermann Wurst, and The Lives of a Bengal Yoyoist, by Sir Roger Rattlebotham. I formed a collection of historic yo-yos and gave it to the Royal Ontario Museum which promptly put it in the basement. But I could never work a yo-yo. It demands the kind of skill shown by people who can play cat’s cradle, and fold pieces of paper into lifelike birds. The mystical relationship between the yoyoist and his yo-yo, which enables him to call forth the best from the apparently inanimate object, is one of the miracles of the world of Unimportant Things.

  *

  • FROM MY FILES •

  To Genghis Marchbanks, ESQ.

  Dear Cousin Genghis:

  I don’t understand what all this fuss over Einstein’s theory is about, or why so many people think it hard to understand. It seems to me that it is merely a statement in mathematical terms of what you and I and a number of thoughtful people have known all our lives—that there are a lot of funny things in the universe, and that they are all hitched up in some incomprehensible way to a central Funny Thing, and that you never really know where you are about anything. You remember Mr. Curdle in Nicholas Nickleby, who talked about “a completeness—a kind of universal dovetailedness with regard to place and time—a sort of general oneness, if I may be allowed to use so strong an expression”; that sums it up perfectly. Those Indian fellows who sit with their legs curled up and say they don’t want to go anywhere because every place is just the same as every other place have the right idea, but they lack the insight into the matter which is possessed by such great mystics as ourselves. We are quite happy to go anywhere and do anything, because it is all the same, at bottom. All that Einstein has done is to express this in a somewhat different way.

  Yours cosmically,

  Sam.

  *

  To Raymond Cataplasm, M.D., F.R.C.P.

  Dear Dr. Cataplasm:

  My memory, which as you know has never been my best feature, is rapidly growing worse. Is there some sort of degenerative disease of the brain which makes people forget things? If there is not, you can ensure yourself of a great place in medical history by discovering it. If you are going to discover it in me, I insist that it be called Marchbanks’ Malady; if you use some inferior specimen you can call it Cataplasm’s Spasm.

  The chief symptom is a kind of seizing up of the intellect when I try to recall a name, or a bit of information; I can distinctly feel my brain contract, like a snail that has been given an electric shock; sometimes this happens in the middle of a sentence, and I forget what I was going to say, and even forget to close my mouth for some time afterward. A secondary symptom is my tendency to go upstairs for something, and bring down something else, making another trip necessary.

  Do you think that anything can be done about this? I see that the insane are sometimes treated by chopping out a piece of brain: do you think it would help to open my skull and give my brain a refreshing whisk with a toothbrush?

  Your perennial patient,

  Samuel Marchbanks.

  *

  To Mouseman, Mouseman and Forcemeat.

  Dear Mouseman:

  Get busy at once and apply for a patent on the greatest of my inventions—the Marchbanks Alert Mask for the Weary Face.

  Thumbing through a magazine yesterday, I came upon an advertisement for a rubber mask which, pulled over the face, makes the wearer look like Boris Karloff in his role as Frankenstein’s Monster. A toy, Mouseman: a trifle meant to enliven an evening party. But it touched off an explosion in my mind. Why not a rubber mask which makes the wearer look like himself—yet not himself as he usually appears, but himself at his best—alert, kindly, intelligent and yet also non-committal and reserved?

  Think what a boon this would be to judges on the bench, newspaper editors, psychiatrists, university tutors, and others who have to spend hours every day listening to tales of woe, boring accounts of boring events, and threshing of old straw in general. Under the mask the wearer could relax, allowing his jaw to slacken, his lips to curl, his cheeks to slump and his dewlap to throb like a frog’s, while to the observer he would seem a model of solicitous goodwill.

  This will crown my career as an inventor and philanthropist. You may have stock in it to cover the amount of your bill, thus getting in on the ground floor.

  Yours triumphantly,

  Samuel Marchbanks.

  *

  To Amyas Pilgarlic, ESQ.

  Dear Pil:

  You know where I stand on dogs: I am not a person in whose life Man’s Dumb Chum has played a leading role. But a day or so ago I had to attend a dog show, and as I watched the eager crowd I was visited, for perhaps the fiftieth time in my life, by the reflection that if people had to meet the rigorous standards of physical appearance which are set for dogs and other show animals it would go hardly with most of us.

  The judges at the show, for instance, would have cut poor figures if the dogs had been judging them. The most important of them had a really shocking head—coarse muzzle, apple-domed skull and, so far as could be seen, a poor coat. The other judge had a narrow, splayed front, a snipey muzzle, and ears set far too high. The third judge was a woman and, though I hate to say it, a poor mover, being cow-hocked and badly spaced between her shoulders, hips and stifles. None of the judges had a bright eye nor, I should say, an affectionate nature. They did not answer readily to words of command, and showed a strong tendency to turn right when it was necessary for them to turn left. Poor creatures, useless for breeding; it would have been better to drown them as puppies.

  Have you observed that a miserable-looking dog is regarded, quite rightly, as a poor-spirited creature, probably in need of worming, whereas a miserable-looking man is usually taken to be a philosopher, or at the very least, an economist? There is food for profound reflection in this.

  Yours,

  Sam.

  *

  To Raymond Cataplasm, M.D., F.R.C.P.

  Dear Dr. Cataplasm:

  May I ask you, as a psychologist, to explain something which I observed recently at a wedding where I was a guest. At the wedding breakfast the centre of attraction was a huge cake upon the topmost tier of which stood little effigies of a bride and groom, made (I suppose) of sugar. After the cake had been cut and slabs of it had been distributed
among the guests, it came the turn of the happy pair to partake. The groom offered the bride a piece of cake on a plate, but she shook her head, smiling a secret smile. And then this girl, who for weeks had been as meek as Moses, plucked the sugar groom from the top of the cake, crunched it up in her strong white teeth, and swallowed it at a gulp.

  Please, Dr. Cataplasm, what does this mean?

  Your inquisitive patient,

  Samuel Marchbanks.

  *

  To Mrs. Morrigan.

  My very dear Mrs. Morrigan:

  Because, for many years, there has been confusion in the popular mind regarding the terms which are used to describe periods of sleep which are enjoyed with the clothes on, I have prepared the following definitions, which I am sending to the editors of the Great Oxford Dictionary. I thought that you might like to see them, my dear friend:

  1. nod: a “nod” is any brief period of informal sleep, enjoyed without benefit of bed. e.g. “I had a nod in my chair.”

  2. doze: a “doze” is a nod which one takes when one should not—as for instance when somebody important is talking. e.g. “I was just dozing—I heard every word you said.”

  3. snooze: a “snooze” is an extended nod, accompanied by sound effects, gagging on accumulations of spittle, murmuring, moaning, neighing, bad dreams, and being cross when one wakes up. e.g. “Sh! Grandpapa is having his snooze.”

  4. swoon: a “swoon” is an illicit snooze, enjoyed in one’s office, in church or at the movies. Skilled swoonsters can do it with their eyes open (though obviously sightless). e.g. “He did not mean to snarl at the preacher; he was swooning.”

  5. doss: any sleep enjoyed in a reasonably upright posture, lasting for more than an hour. e.g. “He had a nice doss from lunch till tea.”

  6. 40 winks: the deepest kind of upright sleep, with noises, loosening the shoes, cushions, and a handkerchief over the face, e.g. “Now I don’t want to hear a sound out of you children all afternoon: Daddy is going to have 40 winks.”

  Yours in all admiration,

  Samuel Marchbanks.

  *

  To Haubergeon Hydra, ESQ.

  Dear Mr. Hydra:

  It will hardly come as a surprise when I inform you that the pace of modern life is increasing. A statistician of international repute (myself, if you want to know) has reckoned that every adult now gets through three times as much in a day as his grandfather; we are not measuring achievement, naturally—only activity. But when it comes to running about, meeting one another, hurrying from town to town, and taking papers in and out of brief-cases, our generation is vastly superior to any of which we have record. Even the building of the Tower of Babel (which was probably on a laughably small scale) could not compare with it.

  This remarkable increase in activity could not have been achieved without a great deal of hard work, and I think that we owe much to the organizers, heads of speakers’ committees, pep and ginger groups, and others who have made it possible. And in order that they may meet frequently and exchange ideas on how to goad the rest of the population into even greater activity I am organizing an international association for them alone, to be called “The Friends of Thrombosis.” The emblem of the association will be a small wire wheel, with a demented squirrel in it.

  I am sure that there are many potential members of this association in the ranks of the Civil Service, and you, as Expediter of Needless Activities, will know best who they are. Will you get them together, therefore—I beg your pardon, I should say “alert them”—and lash them into frenzied activity in preparation for our inaugural meeting.

  I intend to be Perpetual Past President of this as yet unorganized society. It is said that at the exact centre of a vortex there is utter calm. If you should want me, you’ll find me at the centre of the vortex.

  Yours for earlier thrombosis,

  Samuel Marchbanks.

  *

  To Samuel Marchbanks, ESQ.

  Dear Wee Sammie:

  The other day, while pursuing my peaceful rounds as a junk man, I was in the house of a lady who had a good many odd bits of rock and a wheen auld jugs in a glass-fronted cupboard. “And what would ye call those, madam?” said I. “That is my collection of Chinoiserie,” said she; “those pebbles are pieces of jade, and the jugs are fine old porcelain.” “And why Chinoiserie?” said I. “That is the proper word for Chinese curios,” said she.

  As you well know, I have a cupboard of my own, in which I keep a scrap of Marchbanks tartan found in a thorn bush after the Massacre of Glencoe; our ancestor Auld Nosey Marchbanks was there as a war correspondent. And I have the sporran of our Great-great-grandfather, Close Jamie Marchbanks, which is believed to contain a bawbee, but as it is rusted shut I have never been able to get it out. And I have an empty bottle, thrown at our forbear, Fu’ Charlie Marchbanks, by Robbie Burns. And as well I have a stomacher belonging to our ancestress, Sonsie Meg Marchbanks, given to her by Bonnie Prince Charlie; it is heavily encrusted with cairngorms. I am going to refer to these in future as the Marchbanks Collection of Scotchoiserie.

  Your affct. uncle,

  Gomeril Marchbanks.

  *

  • FROM MY NOTEBOOKS •

  A LASTING CHARM / I listened recently to some gramophone records of a woman called Yma Sumac, a Peruvian who has an astonishing voice with a range of a little more than four octaves. She can tweet like a bird, sing like an ordinary woman (an ordinary woman with a very good voice, that is) and roar and rumble like the voice of Fate itself. It is a fascinating and uncanny performance. One of her songs is about the Xtabay—supposedly a poisonously alluring and beautiful woman who attracts men with her voice; once that voice has been heard, a man is her slave until he dies. I reflected that such women are uncommon in our great Dominion. Our women are not lacking in their share of good looks, but they will never attract international attention by the beauty of their voices. And yet what a potent charm a lovely woman’s voice is! I would rather hear an Irish girl say something nasty to me, than hear most Canadian girls say “Take me, Mr. Marchbanks, I am yours.” A man likes his eye to be refreshed, but beauty perishes. A beautiful voice, however, goes on until death, and it can call up the ghost of vanished physical beauty more readily than any other spell. Let the Canadian Female ponder this in her heart, and remedy her customary dispirited croak, caw or screech.

  THOUGHTS ON LEONARDO / Had to take a bag of potatoes into the cellar of the Towers, and as I heaved and struggled with the formless monster I reflected that it is now a little over 500 years since the birth of Leonardo da Vinci who, if he had been asked to take a sack of potatoes downstairs, would undoubtedly have rigged up some ingenious machine to do so for him. Although we know him chiefly as a painter, Leonardo was one of the great engineers of all time, and never lifted anything personally, because he knew all about hoists and levers. No doubt (I reflected as my arms were dragged from their sockets and my heart was moved four inches to the left) this was why he lived to be 67 in an age when most people thought they had done well if they hung on till 40. I think it is shameful that boys are not taught a little elementary engineering at school—enough to teach them how to get a bag of potatoes into a cellar, for instance. When at last the task was done I prepared a restorative cordial and drank it, and remembered that Leonardo was a teetotaller. But then, he never lifted anything; we toiling peasants have some justification for our vices.

  WILLS AND THEIR WAYS / I have been pondering about my will. As a literary document it lacks interest and surprise. Recently the wills of a number of notable Canadians have been printed in full in the metropolitan press and I have read them with interest and a degree of envy. Not that I thought much of their style; I am sure I could write a fancier will; but I was impressed by their length and complication. How can I complicate my few miserable bequests? Shall I make them conditional upon the prolonged bad conduct of my heirs? Shall I leave my library—which, at the usual second-hand dealer’s price of ten cents a volume, would bring close to
$20—to a university, conditional upon their erecting a million-dollar building, with a big statue of me in the rotunda, to house it? Shall I give the Towers, with all its bills for back-taxes, to the community, to be preserved in perpetuity as a memorial to myself? Who is to get my wheelbarrow, which I coated afresh with aluminum paint last week? Shall I leave my silver tray (a splendid piece of electro-plate, nine inches in diameter in all directions) to the Ontario woman to have the greatest number of children within ten years of my demise? My present will simply won’t do.

  A SHOCKING DISCOVERY / At a friend’s house I picked up one of those books about the Scottish clans, which explained not only which clans were which, but what families were associated with each. And, to my surprise, there was no mention of the Marchbanks, or even the Marjoribanks, anywhere! Can it be, then, that my family, which has always considered itself to be Scots in a mild and non-partisan way, and which has been resident in Scotland for so many years—a couple of centuries, at least—is not really Scots? Are we Marchbanks Irishmen? Or are those Marchbanks who may be found in North Wales really on their native heath? Or are we Englishmen who, for some masochistic reason, have chosen to live in Scotland? Poor indeed is that Scot who cannot scrape a connection with some clan or other, but if the Marchbanks are among these outcasts I shall bear it philosophically. I may even found a clan of my own, with the slogan “Hoot toot, Marchbanks!” My badge, the thistle. My tartan, any convenient motor rug.