The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

by Robertson Davies

  • SATURDAY •

  Have received many letters relating to my recent fearless attack on the Salted Nut Traffic—that spawning-ground of juvenile delinquency and broken homes. A typical missive today from an apologist for the nut-growers: “Surely you are intolerant in your desire to take salted nuts from us all; the moderate nut-eaters far out-number the nut abusers.” This is merely specious. Another writes: “My father, as good a man as ever lived, always kept nuts on the sideboard, and we children saw him eat them, though I never saw him debauch. When I was 21, he took me into the dining room, and said, ‘Jasper, you’re a man now; there they are—cashews, brazils, filberts, everything; use nuts, but don’t abuse them; the nut is a good servant, but a bad master’. I consider your nut-prohibition plans fanatical.” But I am not to be deterred in my war on salted nuts by such letters as these, or the insidious propaganda of the nut-gorged press. I shall not sheathe my sword until we have a nut-free Canada.

  -VIII-

  • MOTHERING SUNDAY •

  It is at this time of year that I begin to think seriously about suicide. My interest in the matter is not practical; I never reach for the bread-knife or the poison bottle. But I begin to understand what it is that people see in suicide, and why they do it. They have seen too many Februaries; they have lugged too many cans of ashes; they have shivered on too many bus stops. Rather than face the remaining two months of official winter, and the likelihood of a bitter May, they commit the Happy Despatch. The rest of us, the cowards, live on and see the summer come once more.… Snow and ice have backed up somewhere on my roof and water has begun to leak down an inside wall, to the serious detriment of the wallpaper. Shall I send a man up there, and pay his widow $50 a week for life if he falls and breaks his neck, shall I risk my own neck, or shall I pretend that it is not happening until the strain becomes too great and I go crazy? Canada’s high rate of insanity is caused by just such problems. Meanwhile water comes down my stairs like the rapids of the Saguenay, and I shall not be surprised to see a salmon leaping upward from step to step.

  • SMOTHERING MONDAY •

  Yesterday’s suicidal mood persists. Contemplated throwing myself from my office window, as so many despairing men did during the Great Depression. But it is only one storey above ground, and at worst I would break a leg, and look foolish. Anyway there are storm windows, and I can’t be bothered to remove one of them. What Canadians need in February is a painless, simple, and definitely retractable method of suicide.… At one time I used to see a man every day who had tried to cut his throat several years before; it had left him with a wry neck and a livid, weeping scar. After making such a mess of himself it was clearly his æsthetic duty to finish himself off, and get himself out of the way, for he was a public eyesore. Failure to succeed in suicide is the ultimate ignominy, but criminologists tell us that hundreds of people try to shoot themselves every year, and miss; inability to concentrate their energies, which brings them to the verge of death, inadvertently yanks them away from it.

  • BOTHERING TUESDAY •

  Was chatting with a man who knows a lot about the coal situation. He tells me that things are now so bad that people are asked to come and cart away their own supplies. This frightens me. I do not drive a car myself, and I am quite certain that nobody would lend me one if he thought that I was going to put half a ton of coal in the back seat. I doubt if I could get a taxi to help me with a few hundredweight of coal, even if I did it all up in brown paper packages and held it in my lap, pretending it was bananas.… I crept down into my cellar, and viewed my dwindling bin with new eyes; I looked at my furnace, which seemed to wear a malignant leer on its ugly iron face; I did futile sums in my head about cubic footage divided by square shovelage, multiplied by backward springage. I wildly contemplated pulling up the floor of my cellar, on the off-chance of discovering a private peat-bog. I tried to recall something I had heard about tightly wrapped newspapers, dipped in molasses, making excellent fuel. By this time my teeth were chattering, and I went to look at my indoor thermometer; it said 70, and I felt better at once.

  • WEDNESDAY •

  To the movies this evening, and saw yet another of those films in which a young married couple, for no reason which would impress anyone outside Hollywood, see fit to behave as though they were an unmarried couple. By this feeble device it is possible to slip scenes past the Censors’ Office—scenes in bedrooms, bathrooms and hotel rooms—which would otherwise be deemed salacious. Why the spectacle of a young unmarried woman brushing her teeth should be considered inflammatory and lewd, whereas the same scene is merely cosy and chummy when she is married, I cannot understand, but such is the power of the wedding ring to anæsthetize and insulate the passions according to the Censors.… The mess concerned a young couple who met, married and laid the foundation for a posterity in four days, after which the husband went to war and faced the foe for a year and a half. He returned to find his wife a stranger, with a baby which looked, and talked, like Charles Laughton. This dreary incident, which was unfolded at a turtle’s pace, failed to grip my attention, and my right knee got a cramp; my right knee is an infallible critic.

  • THURSDAY •

  Travelling again today, but not toward the fleshpots of Toronto this time. Instead I travelled upon a line which, if it does not already hold the title, I nominate for the worst in Ontario. Ancient and smelly rolling-stock, a roadbed laid out by a drunken manufacturer of roller-coasters, an engine with the disposition of a love-crossed billy-goat—it has all these and lesser iniquities which I shall not enumerate. Worse, there was a train-sick child aboard, for whom I was very sorry, for she was plainly in great distress. But her mother, like many other mothers, had got hold of a wrong idea and would not use her common sense, if she had any. “There’s only one thing to do,” she kept on saying, “and that’s to keep washing her stomach out.” So she poured the child full of water, orange juice, and soft drinks at five-minute intervals, and the child promptly threw it up again, noisily and agonizingly. I wondered how long it would be before I followed suit, but they got out somewhere in the wilderness, and the trainman threw a few old copies of the Globe and Mail over the shambles.

  • FRIDAY •

  Talked for a couple of hours to a group of young people today, and enjoyed myself very much. But I was amazed to find them so solemn; they approached every subject, however trifling, with knit brows and a high moral attitude; they obviously thought that seriousness and solemnity were the same thing. I made a few little jokes in an attempt to cajole them into happier mood, but they looked at me with pain, and pretended not to notice these excesses of ribald eld.… Met some of them tonight at a party, where jelly-doughnuts made up a part of the fare. It takes a high degree of social accomplishment to hold a cup of coffee in one hand, and eat a jelly-doughnut from the other, and this cannot be done by anyone who wants to indulge in deeply serious conversation at the same time. In consequence many of my heavy-minded young friends squirted doughnut-blood on themselves because they did not approach their food in a realistic frame of mind. A jelly-doughnut is deadlier than a grapefruit in the hands of an unwary eater.

  • SATURDAY •

  Was talking today to a man quite High in the Civil Service about the censorship of books and put my question to him: What do the censors know about literature and, specifically, how can they decide whether a book is fit for me to read or not? I expected him to confess that the censors knew nothing, but instead he told me that the censors have a long and special training: first of all they attend a series of lectures on Sin, delivered by unfrocked clergy of all denominations, then they pursue a course of reading which comprises most of what is to be found on the Reserved Shelves of university libraries (the books you can’t get unless you know the librarian or his secretary); then they travel widely, taking in the spicier entertainments of Naples, Port Said and Bombay; then they are brought back to Canada, and if they still wear bedsocks, and blush deeply whenever they pass a cabbage patch or
a stork in mixed company, and are able to tame unicorns, they are decorated with the Order of the Driven Snow and given jobs in the censorship department.

  -IX-

  • SUNDAY •

  I meant to get up early this morning and cleanse my soul with hard work and godly reflection but a profound torpor settled upon me and I did not waken until a crash outside put me in dread that the chimney had fallen off the house. But it was no such thing; several large chunks of ice had dislodged themselves from the roof and had fallen to the ground. Dare I take this as the first hint of Spring?

  • MONDAY •

  A day of dissolution and thaw, and very welcome to me, for if all this winter’s snow were to melt at once, my cellar would be flooded, and my furnace might get wet feet, and a cold in the head, and be even uglier than it is.… During lunch the phone rang, and I galloped to it, chewing vigorously; it was a wrong number.… Mentioned my passion for bathtub reading to a lady of my acquaintance, who told me of an ingenious scheme devised by an aunt of hers, who hung a framed chart of Kings of England, from Egbert, son of Ealhmund (827–839) down to Victoria (1837–1901) in the bathroom in full view of the obligatory seat, with the result that all her children and visitors, over a period of years, gained a fine knowledge of the skeleton of British history, and were even certain of where such obscure kings as Stephen and Henry II came in. The shortest reigns, she informed me, were those of Ethelbald, Hardicanute, Harold II and Edward V; the longest, of course, was that of Queen Victoria with George III hot on her trail.… Phone rang at 7:30 and at 9:25; wrong number both times.

  • TUESDAY •

  Was asked today to look over a large manuscript volume of poetry by a lady who suffers from a poetical seizure two or three times a week. In a life almost entirely devoted to embarrassing situations, I have found that nothing is more embarrassing and difficult than complying with such requests. The best of poets are touchy; the worst are basilisks and scorpions. As long as that book of verse stays in my possession I shall feel like the sailor who had an unexploded shell in his thigh; one false move and I am a goner.… Two more false alarms on the phone today. This is getting past a joke.…

  • WEDNESDAY •

  Decided to take a firm line with wrong numbers today; in the past I have feebly said, “I’m afraid you have the wrong number,” though in actual fact I am not in the least afraid; usually the boob at the other end of the line, who dialled the wrong number in the first place, grunts nastily as though it were my fault. So when my first call came today, it was, as I had expected, a wrong number, and a voice said, “Is Mrs. Blank at home?” “Not to the likes of you!” I roared in a feigned Irish accent. My next chance came in the afternoon; “Can you send me out a dozen fresh eggs?” asked a voice; “Sure thing; right away, lady,” I promised. At 7:30 the phone rang again; “Is Effie there?” inquired a mouse-like voice, “She is,” said I, assuming the tones of a schoolgirl, “but she’s too drunk to come to the phone; shall I ask her to call you when she can stand up?” … Altogether it was a most successful day, and I shall adopt this procedure in future with all wrong numbers.

  • THURSDAY •

  Observed a young lady of my acquaintance using a man’s handkerchief to stanch her cold. This seems to be the final and decisive piece of evidence that women have emancipated themselves from the superstitions which have surrounded them for centuries. A generation ago no woman, whatever her needs, ever carried a handkerchief larger than four inches square, with nose-abrading lace at the edges. This was tucked in her bosom, from which insecure rest it usually descended inside her clothes to the region of her stomach, so that she could not get at it without unseemly self-exploration. If she had a cold and really wanted to blow her nose, she had to retire to a private place and blow on a duster, or a torn-up piece of nightdress; sometimes, in moments of extreme stress, petticoats were thus violated.

  • FRIDAY •

  To the movies tonight and saw yet another picture about a girl who marries a soldier on short acquaintance. In this particular Hollywood nugacity the girl was a multimillionairess, who tested her suitor by pretending to be a secretary, to discover whether he loved her for herself alone; of course, he did so, and I think this was a fault in the plot, for money, especially in very large quantities, is so much more desirable than the average young woman that no man of real wisdom would hesitate for an instant between the two. Of course, money will not bring happiness to a man who has no capacity for happiness, but neither will the possession of a woman who has no more brains than himself. But money will greatly increase the happiness of a man who is already happy (like me). Wisdom is the greatest possession in the world; money comes next; the intimate caresses of Hollywood stars come a long way down the list.… The hero of this movie was noticeably fat; he was greasy, too. Is the fat, greasy man to be the Adonis of the future?

  • SATURDAY AND SEPTICÆMIA •

  Took advantage of the thaw this afternoon to dig a few drains; every spring I am seized by the idea that I would have made an excellent engineer, and I construct an elaborate system of drains to prove it. The effect is not always what I intend, but bona fide engineers have told me that my schemes are far ahead of the times; my attempts to make water run uphill have been particularly admired. The streets are so clear these days that when I go out in my overshoes, I frequently feel as though my feet were muffled in rags (which is partly the case, of course). To discard overshoes is to court influenza; to wear them is to cultivate the shuffling gait of a hobo. This is a pedestrian’s crossroads.

  -X-

  • SUNDAY •

  Did some tidying in my cellar this morning; it has long been my custom to do some work of this kind on the seventh day, meditating meanwhile on the beauties of humility and simplicity. The occupational disease of people in my line of work is infallibility, complicated by loquacity and carbonic acid gas in the blood. The proper corrective for the mental ills of the man who deals primarily in words is a brief spell of dealing with things; the contrariness and obduracy of such things as dirt, boxes and old potato bags, which he cannot charm into subjection with his honeyed tongue, bring humility to the writer’s heart.… Contrariwise, of course, men who spend their lives dealing with things ought to try to clarify their thoughts on Sundays; the fault is as great on one side as on the other. The impotent man of thought: the bonehead man of action—what is there to choose between them? … Then wrote some letters. I am one of the few people who uses sealing wax on private correspondence; I like it, for it makes the letter gay and gives it a decidedly personal air. I have a couple of very pretty seals; the one I use most frequently is a goddess (or a nymph or a dryad or some such young woman) in puris naturalibus kneeling by a stream. Postmen love it; it feasts their eyes, they tell me. I have never thought highly of the modern custom of sealing letters with horse-hoof glue and spit.

  • MONDAY •

  A man I know happened to mention on the bus this morning that he was suffering from a trifling complaint—an ingrowing hair. Immediately he was bombarded with tales of horror about ingrowing hairs; one man had known of a case in which such a hair grew three feet into the flesh, and was removed only after major surgery; another knew of a case in which an ingrowing hair developed a hard ball of gristle on its root and left a crater when extirpated; a third had heard tell of an ingrowing hair which, when removed, proved to be a continuation of the patient’s spine, so that he was left with nothing to connect his vertebrae.… I was reminded of the stories women tell any other woman who is going to have a baby.… To a meeting tonight, and reflected upon the excessive hardness, smallness and shakiness of folding chairs which, combined with speechmaking, always reduce me to the lowest depths of melancholy. Why are all good causes inextricably bound up with folding chairs? Is there no virtue in springs and cushions?

  • TUESDAY •

  To the movies tonight to see a film dedicated to the exposition of one of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Hollywood Faith, to wit, that a fellow who ch
ews gum, wears his hat in the house, and rapes the English language every time he opens his mouth is a better matrimonial choice for a nice young girl than a suave fellow who has lots of money and has been successfully exposed to education. The Apotheosis of the Yahoo is one of the primary objects of Hollywood.

  • WEDNESDAY •

  The movies last night—an organ recital tonight! It seems to me that I just stagger from one hotspot to another, wallowing in the pleasures of the senses.… To a party afterwards, where I met several ladies called Mrs. Mumbledemum; this Mumbledemum family must be very large, for I am introduced to members of it everywhere. The name is hard to hear, and not too easy to pronounce, and it seems to fit almost anyone, so there must be a lot of people who were born Mumbledemums, or who have become Mumbledemums by marriage. Nowadays when anyone smiles at me whose name I don’t know, I just smile in return, and say, “How do you do, Mrs. Mumbledemum?” in a low, indistinct voice, and they always reply. On occasion I have been addressed as Mr. Mumbledemum myself, and I always grin and pretend that I am a member of that fine old family.

  • THURSDAY •

  An Indian I know (a chief of the great Swivel Chair tribe) was pointing out sun-dogs in the sky to me tonight, and prophesying stormy weather from them. I had never heard of sun-dogs before, but it appears that they are the roots of a rainbow, of which the arch is invisible. It is an impressive sight to see a Swivel Chair Chief, sitting as straight as an arrow on the back of his Buick, gazing into the setting sun and forecasting the weather.… But this evening I happened to be with this same Indian (we had been sitting around the campfire with a friend, a medicine man of the Long Bill tribe, chewing the pemmican) and on our way back to our tepees we met a third Indian of the Bifocal tribe, who looked up at the sky and said, “By the look of the stars we should have fine weather,” and my Swivel Chair Chief agreed heartily! I never know what to make of these Indians when they start looking into the future. Stars, sun-dogs, stray dogs, dogcatchers—everything they see has a deep meaning for them, but I have to take the weather as it comes.