Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack

by Robertson Davies

  • FROM MY ARCHIVES •

  To the Rev. Simon Goaste, B.D.

  Dear Pastor:

  Don’t you think it is high time that the Americans had their own translation of the Bible? Recently I saw Cecil B. DeMille’s film of Samson and Delilah, and afterward I re-read the story as it is written in Judges 13–16; it was clear to me what DeMille had gone through, trying to turn Samson and Delilah into good, respectable Americans.

  Consider: in the Bible version Samson carelessly allowed twenty years to pass between his strangling of the lion and his adventure with Delilah. Such a lapse of time would have made him at least forty when the film ended—practically an old man by Hollywood reckoning. In a new translation this period of time could be tactfully left out. And it is recorded also that Samson had an adventure with a lady about whose virtue the Scriptures, in their coarse way, leave no doubt. In fact, it appears that Samson was not A Nice Clean American Boy but a rowdy old delinquent. This blot on his character could be glossed over in a new translation, as it was in the movie. And there is also the flat statement that Samson set fire to the tails of a lot of foxes; the SPCA would certainly not have tolerated that if it had been shown in the film.

  What the USA needs is a translation of the Bible all its own. It is now the dominant Western power, and should avail itself of the traditional privilege of a dominant power to impose its religion, or its version of an existing religion, upon the rest of the world. There is much in the Bible that is undemocratic and un-American. Indeed, I put it to you that the implication that the Supreme Being was not democratically elected to that position casts grave doubts upon the moral magnitude and spiritual significance of the Constitution. It is time to abandon the King James Version, with its seventeenth century cast of thought and its strongly English slant, and to adopt something more in keeping with the Gospel according to Washington.

  Your expectant parishioner,

  Samuel Marchbanks.

  *

  To Samuel Marchbanks, ESQ.

  Dear Mr. Marchbanks:

  One of the things that is wrong with the world today, but which nobody ever complains about, is that children are not as religious as they used to be. No doubt about it, a religious child is a good example to its elders, and children have a duty in this respect which they are neglecting.

  Two fine examples of youthful piety have come up in the course of my reading this past week. Consider Katherine Philips, the poetess, who was born in 1631. John Aubrey records of her that “She was when a Child much against the Bishops, and prayd to God to take them to him, but afterwards was reconciled to them. Prayed aloud, as the hypocriticall fashion then was, and was overheared.” And then consider Edmund Gosse, as a Victorian child. When his father told him that he intended to marry again, and that the lady did not belong to the strict evangelistic sect of the Gosses, young Edmund, who was then eleven, shook a finger at him and said, “Papa, don’t tell me that she’s a paedobaptist?” He records that this affected his father painfully, as well it might. What modern child has the gumption or the learning for such an enquiry?

  If the world is going to the dogs, it is the children’s fault as much as anybody’s. Sometimes I receive the impression that modern children are living solely for pleasure.

  Yours,

  Simon Goaste.

  *

  To Samuel Marchbanks, ESQ.

  Dear Sam:

  The other day I was looking at the Modern Library edition of Boswell’s Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, and in the Preface it was said that the inclusion of that book in that particular library of reprints awarded it “an accolade of modernity.”

  What a base passion our age has for pretending that whatever is good is necessarily “modern.” What a depraved appetite we have for mere contemporaneity! How old Samuel Johnson would have snorted at the idea that a classic—particularly a classic about himself—was in some way ennobled by being declared the contemporary of the Wettums Doll, sliced, wrapped bread, and the singing telegram! This is an age without humility.

  Your aggrieved

  Amyas Pilgarlic.

  *

  To the Rev. Simon Goaste, B.D.

  Dear Pastor:

  I have spent part of this week reading The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis. If you haven’t read it, I recommend it as an excellent book about Heaven and Hell. But without illustrations. I feel that this is a real lack.

  When I was a child there was in my home a strange book, the name of which I have forgotten, devoted to a detailed description of what evil-doers and worldly choosers might expect in the hereafter. It was bountifully and imaginatively illustrated with pictures of the damned being fried, grilled, toasted, fricasseed, barbecued, boiled and pressure-cooked by nimble little black devils with tails and disagreeable expressions. Since then I have read many speculations about Hell, including those of Dante, but none has impressed me so deeply. Another childhood book of mine was a Bible with Doré’s illustrations including some which I think he made originally for Paradise Lost. And Doré’s Devil will be my Devil forever—the humourless, malignant, infinitely sad winged creature; if we should ever meet he will not, I am sure, understand me at all, and to be misunderstood in Hell would be more terrible than to be understood through and through. This is a mighty persuasion to grace, and accounts for my lifelong circumspection.

  Yours apprehensively,

  Samuel Marchbanks.

  *

  To Mervyn Noseigh, M.A.

  Dear Mr. Noseigh:

  I am enchanted by the thought that you wish to do a full-scale PH.D. thesis on my work. Of course I recognize your name immediately as that of the writer of essays already famous in the very littlest magazines:

  Oh Marmee, What Big Teeth You Have: A Study of the pre-Oedipal mother in the works of Louisa May Alcott—(Peewee Review: Vol. 1, pp. 23–47)

  Withering Depths: A Study of womb-frustration in Emily Bronte—(Wee Wisdom: Vol. 1, pp. 22–46)

  Codnipped: A Study of impotence-fantasy in the adventure novels of Robert Louis Stevenson—(Microscopic Quarterly: Vol. 1, pp. 24–48).

  These splendid studies are daily reading in the Marchbanks household. I cannot wait to see what you will make of me.

  Tremulously yours,

  Samuel Marchbanks.

  *

  To Amyas Pilgarlic, ESQ.

  Dear Pil:

  I had an enlightening experience yesterday, when I went to the exhibition of pictures at the Ontario Art Gallery with my friend Crosshatch, the artist. I had rather dreaded the visit, for Crosshatch knows a great deal about pictures: I know nothing of them. Crosshatch is widely admired for his taste: I am often told that my taste is all in my mouth. I am afraid of Crosshatch and shrink from displaying my ignorance when he is around.

  When we entered the gallery, therefore, I was ready to put on an act as an Art Connoisseur. I had determined to pause for at least ninety seconds before every third picture, and to nod approvingly at least once in each room (but not at any special picture, for fear of showing ignorance). I reminded myself to stand at least eight feet from the pictures when looking at them, and to squint a lot, so as to look discerning. I worked up a little repertoire of remarks, such as “Interesting treatment,” “Character there,” “Nice feeling for colour,” which I could murmur if Crosshatch liked a picture. I was loaded for bear when I entered the art gallery.

  Judge of my amazement then, when Crosshatch whizzed around the rooms at a fast walk, neglecting whole wallfuls of pictures; he marched right up to others and glared at them, and tried the paint with a fingernail to see if it was dry; often he sniggered and sometimes he burst into a loud, derisive laugh; once he swore sharply, and made several people jump. We covered the show in half an hour flat, and he said, “Come on, let’s get out of this,” loudly enough for several obvious Art Lovers to hear him. But they whispered, “That’s Crosshatch” in reverent voices, which seemed to make it all right.

  Next time I go to an art show I shall know how to b
ehave. Maybe somebody will mistake me for an artist.

  Yours in the pride of enlightenment,

  Sam.

  *

  To Haubergeon Hydra, ESQ.

  Dear Mr. Hydra:

  Enclosed find a cheque for $2.16; this, added to the $11.26 already deducted from my salary in weekly portions by my employers, completes the full sum of $13.42, the total of my Income Tax for the past year. It is also, if you care, almost an exact quarter of my yearly earnings, and I hope that you, as Deputy Confiscator-general, will take the utmost care of it.

  Are you aware, sir, that when Captain Cook went to Australia in 1770 one of his men pointed to a kangaroo, and said, “What is it?” A native, standing by, said, “Kan g’aroo,” meaning “I don’t understand you.” But the sailor thought that it was the name of the beast, and it has stuck to this day.

  Now a similar error occurred when Jacques Cartier first set foot on the soil of our country. “What do you call this place?” he cried to a native. “Canada,” cried the Indian in return, and Cartier took it for the country’s name. But the Indian—one of the Crokinole tribe—actually said in the remarkably economical language of his people, “Take my advice, gentlemen, and go back where you came from; the taxes here are well-nigh insupportable.” That is what Canada really means, but the time for turning back has passed.

  And so, Mr. Hydra, as you press my $13.42 into the hand of a career diplomat who is going to fly round the world in order to see whether it is round or merely egg-shaped, or as you send it to a Western wheat-grower who needs it to enable him to go to California for the winter, remember how hard I had to work to earn it.

  Yours maliciously and grudgingly,

  Marchbanks the Tax-Serf.

  *

  • A GARLAND OF MUSINGS •

  SACRED TO WHOM? / This evening I heard The Rosary (the work, if I recollect aright, of the ineffable Ethelbert Nevin) announced on the radio as a “sacred song.” This caused me to laugh uproariously, for The Rosary is a love-song of a particularly gooey sort, in which the hours the lovers spent together are compared to rosary beads, and the final bust-up (probably when he deserted her for a girl who didn’t wear her rosary to bed) to the embrace of the Cross. True lovers of the devotion of the rosary might fittingly shriek in protest every time this song is sung.

  MONOTONY OF DIET / This evening to the movies and saw Fabiola, an Italian film about the goings-on of Christians under the Caesars—in this case the Emperor Constantine. It concluded with a grand mass martyrdom in which, at a rough guess, eight or ten thousand head of Christians were fed to a total count of six lions. Afterward I consulted Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in which he says he can find no record of more than ten Christians being turned off at a time, so I dismissed Fabiola as what Gibbon himself calls “holy romance.” But the statistics and dietetics of the film still bother me, for even the most anti-clerical lion must weary of an unrelieved diet of Christians, consumed under circumstances of hustle and bustle.

  THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS / While I was away from home today a man brought a load of sand needed for some cement work; instead of dumping it where it was meant to be, he dropped it all in my driveway, making it impossible to put the car away. I presume that it is such thinking as this which makes sand truckers what they are, instead of eminent biologists, respected theologians, or the scented darlings of elegant boudoirs. With a heavy heart I set to work to heave the sand off the drive, and as it was wet I soon found that my heart was giving audible crunching sounds, as though somebody were crushing apples in my breast; my spine developed a hairpin bend and my knees shook; large black specks floated slowly before my eyes, my liver turned completely over, and bells tolled in my skull. The sand, however, was not without interest. In one shovelful I found what I believe is called a garter-belt. Who, I wondered, could have discarded her garter-belt in a sand pit, and why? Was I, all unwillingly, turning over the grave of some fleeting summer romance? And if so, was a sand pit not a somewhat gritty place for extra-mural amours? I shall never know. Crept into the house like a horse with the heaves, and took cordials suitable to my many ailments.

  PRIMEVAL FILM / To the movies, to see Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressier in Tilly’s Punctured Romance, which they made in 1913. In my younger days I was an ardent follower of Charlie, but as I watched this relic from the Old Red Sandstone Period of the cinematic art, I realized that time had bathed the humour of another day in a golden but untruthful light. It was the most restless film I have seen in years. Nobody stood up if he could possibly fall down. Nobody fell down without at once leaping to his feet in order to fall down again. Nobody entered a door without slapping somebody else in the face with it. Food was never eaten, it existed only to be thrown. Liquid was not taken into the mouth in order to be swallowed, but only that it might be squirted into somebody else’s face. The usual method of attracting a lady’s attention was to kick her; she invariably responded with a blow. The life of man in the comedies of the silent films was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. And viewed from this distance it does not appear to have been especially funny, at that.

  *

  • CULLED FROM MY ARCHIVES •

  To Mrs. Kedijah Scissorbill.

  Respected but Unloved Madam:

  Walking along the street today I passed an organ-grinder; I gave him ten cents. I write to you of this because you are a dominating figure in many charities, and I often receive unpleasantly mimeographed, badly worded letters signed with a facsimile of your niggling signature, asking me for money. These letters always stress the deserving nature of the cause, and the care with which the money is administered by a staff of competent, well-paid officials. I usually respond to your letters with a donation, for your causes are genuinely good, and I am sure that you use the money wisely. Nevertheless, my heart does not go with them. My heart was with the organ-grinder’s ten cents, even though he was unable to give me a slip entitling me to deduct my gift from taxable income.

  Charity is infinitely better conducted nowadays than it was a century ago. It is thorough, economical, informed—everything but charitable. It does incalculable good to the receivers; it does nothing whatever to the givers—the answerers of form letters who never see the objects of their benevolence. For there is no merit in giving money, if one has it: the merit is in the charitable impulse and the cleansing of the spirit which compassion brings.

  Modern charity is wonderful for the receivers, but it is useless to the givers. And I remind you that they also have souls to save. Charity is something greater than organized pillaging of the haves on behalf of the have-nots.

  Yours with qualified approval,

  Samuel Marchbanks.

  *

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

  Dear Dr. Cataplasm:

  At breakfast yesterday I watched a small boy sprinkle salt on his grapefruit. When I asked him about it, he said it made the fruit taste sweeter. A lady at the table said, “Mark my words, that child will die of hardening of the arteries.” “Oh come, madam, surely that is an old wives’ tale,” said I. “Who are you calling an old wife,” said she, and her wattles wobbled. “You,” I rejoined, flicking a gob of marmalade at her and scampering from the room.

  Tell me, Doctor, can salt harden the arteries? I have heard this threatened in connection with other household substances. For years I have followed each meal with a strong chaser of baking-soda and water, as an aid to digestion, and various people have told me that this will harden my arteries. Nevertheless my arteries are still capable of balloon-like expansion.

  It seems to me that if anything were going to harden the arteries it would be excessive iron in the blood, which would coat the arteries with rust, like old hot-water pipes.

  Your perennial patient and amateur adviser,

  S. Marchbanks.

  *

  To Samuel Marchbanks, ESQ.

  Honoured Sir:

  Unexpected tidings, Mr. Marchbanks, sir. Your case aga
inst Richard Dandiprat will not come before the Autumn Assizes as we had planned. This is the result of a legal complication of a type incomprehensible to the lay mind, but I will try to explain it.

  The papers in the case went, as usual, to Mr. Mouseman, Senior, for his consideration before they were taken to the court house. Knowing that the case would be tried before Mr. Justice Gripple—an old law-school companion of Mr. Mouseman’s—he made a pencilled notation on the document giving notice of the case, which said: “Don’t let this come up any day when Old Gripple has lost heavily at bridge the night before. You know that he really needs a murder or a rape case on such days as a relief for his spleen.” This was intended as a private direction to the sheriff, but some foolish clerk transcribed it on a document which reached Mr. Justice Gripple himself. He said several things which convinced our firm that it would be better to ask for a delay, and bring the case up again in the Spring, when we are confident that Mr. Justice Gripple will be in another part of the Province.

  Oh, the law, the law! What a fascinating study it is, Mr. Marchbanks. You laymen cannot comprehend the subtle psychological elements which may sway the judgement of the courts! But patience—patience must be the watchword of the successful litigant.

  Yours with infinite patience,

  Mordecai Mouseman

  (for Mouseman, Mouseman and Forcemeat).

  *

  To Mervyn Noseigh, M.A.

  Dear Mr. Noseigh:

  I am overjoyed by the news that you have really decided to do a PH.D. thesis on my work, and am especially tickled by your title—Skunk’s Misery to Toronto: a study of spiritual degeneration in the work of Samuel Marchbanks. The questions you ask fill me with delightful new importance. Number 7(a) for example: “What were the first books you remember reading and what influence do you consider that they have had on your later style and symbological system?”

  The first books I remember reading were called Mother Hubbard’s House Party, and Chuck and Cooney Caught in the Corn; the first of these was about a Christmas party assembled by Mother Hubbard (a kind of Magna Mater or Demeter-figure, as I now realize) at which Jack and Jill, Mary Mary Quite Contrary, Tom Tom the Piper’s Son, Georgy Porgy, Little Jack Horner and Little BoPeep acted out, in a high mimesis, various pseudo-Arcadian romances, culminating in a mass bedding at the end of the day. Although the writer had badly botched this conclusion, I assume that the Primal Scene was enacted by all these characters in turn, in every conceivable combination, under the obscene prompting of Mother Hubbard, who had assumed a Hecate-identity with the coming of darkness. I now realize that the book was a pseudonymous work by Frank Harris.