The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (15 page)

W
HILE FETCHING
in my garbage can today I slipped on a bit of ice, did a neat somersault in the air, and landed smack on my can, crushing it right out of shape; heavy work with a crowbar will be needed to open it again, and I may be driven to the extremity of buying a new one. It is to this degree of ineptitude that winter depression has brought me.… I did a shameful thing today; I own several elegant fountain pens, the gifts of kind folk who wished to ease my labours. Some of them have flashlight attachments for writing in the dark; one will write on the bedsheets, so that I can make notes in the night if I please without getting my hands cold; the very meanest of them will write under water (so that I may scribble bright ideas on the floor of the bath tub), But, cranky wretch that I am, I do not like any of them,
for their nibs are not flexible enough to suit me, and so today I rushed forth and bought a cheap pen with a nice squishy nib, and am happy at last. People who merely sign their names to typewritten documents don’t need flexible pens. But I do.

I
YIELD TO NO MAN
in my fanatical loyalty to the Crown and my devotion to the person of my sovereign and I always fling my glass into the fireplace after drinking the Royal Toast (even when I drink it in water at a service club luncheon). I am also very fond of music, and agree with Beethoven that our National Anthem is a noble air. But even I can get too much of
God Save The King
, particularly when played at the end of movie shows by bands which look as though they were suffering from creeping paralysis. It is my belief that there would be a great sigh of relief through the country, and far less Communist activity, if we gave up the custom of playing
God Save The King
upon every conceivable and quite a few inconceivable occasions. Throw away all the rotten old films of bands, smash all the scratched old records, splinter all the vile libels upon the Royal Countenance painted by drunken sign-painters, and let us have
God Save The King
only when it is needed, and when it can be decently performed.

I
HAD TO MAKE
a train journey yesterday. In an advertisement for a mystery story I read a testimonial from Miss Hedy Lamarr, in these strange words: “It made my blood curl.” … On the train were four happy extroverts who drank copiously from flasks, and were bosom friends in less than an hour; in ringing voices they discussed their investments, private fortunes, the
Palestine situation and the difficulty of getting any wearable underpants. When any woman under seventy passed down the car they whistled after her, to show that they were full of hormones. They rushed to and from the lavatory, shouting as they went. As train lavatories have direct access to the roadbed, I hoped that they might fall through, but none of them did so.

I
PUT MY
Christmas tree out for the garbage collection today. The custom of setting up an evergreen in the house and worshipping it is a pre-Christian Teutonic one, and there are times when I wonder if it might not be permitted to lapse. Could we not have synthetic Christmas trees, which fold up like umbrellas, and which can be stored away in the attic when the Yuletide is over? Every year I struggle with one of these gummy monsters, which scatter their needles about the house and make the place smell as though someone were trying out a new cold cure. Give me a chromium tree, which will collapse like a music stand.

O
NCE AGAIN
, after a pause of many years, catalogues are beginning to reach me from sellers of old books in England. If I had any strength of character I should throw these into the garbage pail as soon as they arrive but I am a weak creature, and I always risk a peek. This is fatal, for in no time at all the concupiscence of the book-collector bums hotly within me. I send off an order, and in the course of time a new treasure is added to the cupboard at Marchbanks Towers.… Real bibliophiles do not put their books on shelves for people to look at or handle. They have no desire to show off their darlings, or to amaze people with their possessions. They
keep their prized books hidden away in a secret spot to which they resort stealthily, like a Caliph visiting his harem, or a church elder sneaking into a bar. To be a book collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope-fiend with those of a miser.

O
UR HOST REMARKED
to me before dinner that the days are already drawing out. It is true, and I disapprove of it heartily. If I had the ordering of such things, it would be dark every winter day at five o’clock and every summer day at seven. Day should be day, and night night, and the present careless mingling of the two is distracting and annoying. As a matter of fact I think that time was much more sensibly dealt with in the Middle Ages when everybody got up at about 4
A.M.
, worked during the hours of daylight, and was in bed by 7
P.M.
Midnight in those days was really the middle of the night, and not the hour when most people begin to think about bed. But for some inexplicable reason we now compound our normal day out of half the light and half the dark hours. And I stoutly maintain that when a man has done his day’s work it should be dark. This is sheer cantankerousness, and I glory in it.

T
HE AUSTRALIAN LADY
on my right has been telling me of her labours to rid herself of her native accent under the tuition of an elocution master. She had to say “How now, brown cow?” over and over again, as apparently this greeting is a very hard one for an Australian to utter with complete purity. This amused her greatly, for it appears that in the Antipodes the word “cow” is applied to any unfortunate person, male or female, and a set of disagreeable circumstances or a distressing personality
may also be called “a fair cow.” Only in Australia, so far as I know, could a man be a black sheep and and a fair cow at the same time. It seems to me that a Canadian who wanted to improve his speech would probably have to say:

as this bit of Ogden Nashery contains the sounds which most commonly overthrow us.

I
WENT TO SEE
an exhibition of modern Canadian paintings this afternoon, and liked them very much. But there were a few people present who appeared to consider the pictures an insult to themselves—a kind of aesthetic hot-foot. They muttered and mumbled, but none of them seemed able to explain just what it was that bothered them. My own guess is that the pictures disturbed their ideas about nature, and made them reconsider certain notions which they have cherished, but not examined, for years. Music and pictures are able to churn the soul without using the medium of words, and as most people are quite at sea when they have to transform feelings into words they were affronted and gagged at the same time.… Most people, too, appear to think of Nature as a dear old lady with steel spectacles and a bonnet, mouthing platitudes. To have Nature presented to them as a wanton, decked in gayest colours and obviously not wearing a foundation garment, hit them smack under the Moral Sense, which is to a Canadian as its shell is to a tortoise.

T
HE LADY ON MY LEFT
was complaining to me about the foolish caricature of King Charles II which appeared in the film
Forever Amber
; the Merry Monarch was shown as a man surrounded by silly little dogs, to whom he cried “Come children!” from time to time.… I replied that I had been annoyed by the same thing, and also by repeated film caricatures of Henry VIII as a gross monster, gorging, swilling, burping and pinching the bottoms of court ladies. Charles and Henry were two of the ablest kings ever to occupy the British throne, and it is not wise to forget it. They would never have become Sunday School superintendents, of course, but they had many excellent, and indeed admirable qualities as statesmen. For some reason the British rulers who have been chosen by common consent for adulation are Alfred the Great (about whom we know nothing save what is told us by his personal chaplain, who was on his payroll), Charles I, who was pious, but had no tact and owes much to the fact that Vandyke was his court painter, and Victoria, who carried goodness to a point where it became indistinguishable from self-indulgence.

I
PASSED LAST EVENING
in the company of some people who have bought a lovely old house, and are having great fun fixing it up. Of course the furnace is not in very good condition and shoots most of its heat up the chimney, and none of the sashes fit, and there are cracks in the foundation, but it is a dear old place all the same. Admittedly they have to burn their own garbage in the furnace (which makes a smell) and they have to bury their tin cans privily at dead of night,
and the water supply is capricious, but it has lovely high ceilings (some of which need replastering). Yet, in spite of their woes, I see what they are after. They are in rebellion against the modern vogue for houses which our ancestors would not have accepted as almshouses, and which are undoubtedly the nastiest human habitations ever to be built since man emerged from the Mud Hut Period of architecture. An old house is a nuisance, but it is obviously intended for men and women to live in. Much modern housing would be better called kenneling.

A
SCHOOLTEACHER
confided to me today that there is nothing so useful for sticking things to a blackboard as shaving cream. It holds as well as glue, and yet it does not harden, and it imparts a delicious scent to the schoolroom, slightly ameliorating the customary effluvium of chalk, Vapex and wet sweaters. This lady told me that she used approximately a tube a term for this purpose.… What she said reminded me of my childhood, when I used to get my hair cut in the tonsorial parlour of an elderly barber called Murphy; in front of his two chairs were mirrors elegantly framed in walnut, and on these mirrors it was his custom to write improving sentiments in lather, such as “Treat Your Wife and Your Hair Right and They’ll Never Leave You” or “God’s Finest Gift—A Mother; A Man’s Best Asset—A Fine Head of Hair.” Murphy’s spelling was not always equal to the demands of his philosophy, but he wrote a flourishing hand with the lather brush, and surrounded these profound reflections with curlicues and even flowers delicately executed in lather. The art of lather work has died out, I fear.

I
BOUGHT SOME ROPE
today, for the first time in my life, I think, and was amazed to find that it is sold by the pound, like cheese. Who would think of going into a shop and asking for two pounds of nice fresh rope, suitable for a suicide? Yet the request would be a perfectly sensible one. I bought twelve feet, or about an eighth of a pound, and it cost me seven cents.

I
LISTENED TO THE NEWS
on the radio last night—a thing I rarely do, as it is my experience that good news always seems better the following morning, whereas bad news at night disturbs my sleep. The news consisted of a list of people who died during the day in a variety of distressing circumstances. Such harping on death annoys and depresses me. What the C.B.C. needs is a newscaster with second sight (they could probably import one from the Highlands of Scotland) who would give the names of children who had been born each day who would, in twenty-five or thirty years, be either great leaders and benefactors of mankind, or notable scoundrels. What we want is not news of who has left the earth, but something resembling the passenger list of an ocean liner, telling us who is joining the human race and what we may expect of them. There is no news about a death; one of the few certain things in life is that we shall all die. But if the radio could, now and again, announce the birth of a philosopher, or a great artist, or a nasty little baby who will grow up to be a Hitler, I would pay for my yearly licence in a somewhat more sprightly manner.

A
N ACTOR FRIEND
of mine left a copy of Variety in my
office today, and as I looked through it I was amazed to find a full-page advertisement which said, “Gabriel Pascal and Bernard Shaw wish all their friends a Successful New Year.” I wonder if Mr. Shaw really paid for half of that insertion? It doesn’t seem like him to deliver good wishes in that wholesale manner.… The magazine also contained an article headed, “Is Radio Burdened with Young Fogies?” It seems to me that the probable answer is “Yes.” The whole world is burdened with young fogies. Old men with ossified minds are easily dealt with. But men who look young, act young, and everlastingly harp on the fact they are young, but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution which would be excessive in their grandfathers, are the curses of the world. We have a good many young fogies in Canada—fellows who, at thirty, are well content with beaten paths and reach-me-down opinions. Their very conservatism is second-hand, and they don’t know what they are conserving.