The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (24 page)

Y
ES, THANK YOU
, my cold is improving. I went to the movies last night; they always cheer me when I have a cold although I expect that I spread germs in a thoroughly anti-social manner. The newsreel was another instalment in the United States’ long, passionate love-affair with itself; this is one serial which never ends. The film was
Anna Karenina
, and I liked it greatly. Some girls sitting near me appeared to find it funny.
Will any of them, I wonder, ever discover themselves in a situation comparable to that of the heroine? Often I look at women on the streets, or in restaurants, and wonder if anybody has ever loved them to distraction, or if they have ever wrecked a man’s life. Most of them have not done so, of course, but a few must have lived out some passionate story, or will do so before they die. The curious thing, of course, is that it is by no means always the beautiful or attractive ones who have caused these upheavals. Little mousy women, or fat, cow-like women, have often inspired ill-fated romances, driving men to suicide or murder, or simply to that living death which is worse than either. Statistical records show that women commit suicide rarely, as compared with men; are they more philosophic, or merely more stupid and unfeeling?

A
LL THIS WEEK
I have had a cold. At least, I hope it is a cold. My head feels like a pumpkin, and when I breathe my left lung makes a noise as though a kitten were playing in a basketful of crumpled paper. I dare not go to my doctor, for he will send me to bed, and I want to save my usual Autumn holiday-in-bed for later on, when the weather is not so fine. But the man who occasionally sells me a little benzine with which to clean my clothes diagnosed my case today. “You’ve got muck in your bronikkles,” he said, as I gave an agonizing cough. “There’s only one thing that’ll do you any good and that’s mustard tea. Just get a pint of stout, heat it nearly to the boil, and put a couple of good tablespoons of mustard in it and drink it off quick. That’ll fix you!” I thanked him and went away, thinking that it would fix me indeed, and probably for good. I suppose in the dear dead days beyond recall,
when doctors were scarce, thousands of people were killed every year by wholesome home remedies given to them by sadistic old creatures with a taste for experiment.

I have suffered from extreme stupidity all day, which I attribute to my cold. I would begin a piece of work, and twenty minutes later would recover consciousness to discover that I was staring into space with my mouth open, making a noise like a sleeping bulldog—snuffle, snuffle, glrrk, woof, snuffle. Is this sort of Hypnosis by the Common Cold well known to medical science, or will I get my name into the medical books under some such heading as “Marchbanks Symptom (Hypnogogia Marchbankensis)”? … Very well, madam, if you are not interested, let us talk of something else. Is that all your own hair?

A
YOUNG WOMAN
whom I know, who is just learning to read, kindly undertook to read me a story from her schoolbook today. It was one of those pieces about a king who promises his daughter’s hand to any man who can make her laugh. It is this sort of promise which makes me wonder about the psychological makeup of fairy-tale characters; they seem to be ready to marry their daughters to anyone at all, for the most extraordinary reasons. I have never known a Canadian father who would permit a young man to marry his daughter, merely because he could make her laugh. (And I may say in passing that to make a really well brought up Canadian girl laugh is no easy task.) Canadian fathers don’t care whether their sons-in-law are funny or not; all they want to know about is their prospects and how much money they have in the bank, and whether they drink. In fact, I have received the
impression that Canadian fathers prefer sons-in-law who do not laugh. No doubt this attitude explains why Canada has no body of native fairy-tales. Many a Canadian father might justly say: “If you can get a laugh out of this sourpuss, you can have her.” But he doesn’t.

N
EXT WEEK
, I see, will be observed as National Cat Week. It is a good thing to do honour to this noble, dignified and beautiful animal, but I don’t imagine for a moment that the cats will co-operate. Cats don’t mind being worshipped, but they refuse to be organized. They have always insisted that their lives are their own, to be lived as they see fit, and their attitude toward everything which is symbolized by the American passion for “weeks” of one sort and another is contemptuous, contumacious, and insulting. Can anyone imagine cats walking in a parade? Does anyone seriously think that cats are interested in civic betterment? When have cats ever shown a united front on any subject whatever? The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil-may-care attitude toward responsibility, their disinclination to earn an honest dollar. In a continent which screams neurotically about co-operation and the Golden Rule, cats are disdainful of everything but their own immediate interests and they contrive to be so suave and delightful about it that they even receive the apotheosis of a National Week. Smart work, cats!

I
MET A MAN
today who boasted intolerably about his child. It is eighteen months old, I think he said, and
he asserts without a blush that it has a vocabulary of three hundred words. I believe that I was expected to show awestricken admiration, but as I have no idea what vocabulary may be expected in a child of that age I held my peace and nodded as though prodigies were an old story to me. Frankly, I do not care how large a vocabulary any child has; I am only interested in what it says, and not always in that. What is the use of a large vocabulary of words, if the child has only a small range of ideas? … Every now and then I meet grown-ups who are taking some vocabulary-stretching exercises, having fallen victim to the delusion that the more words they know the more valuable their opinions will be. But nonsense is nonsense, whether expressed in polysyllables or in grunts and snorts. Three hundred words! Pah!

O
F LATE PEOPLE
have been picking on me because I am what they call “complacent.” By this they mean that I refuse to share their hysterical fears about another war, about Russia, about the atom, about the commercialization of Sunday, about divorce, about juvenile delinquency and whatnot. Because I do not leap about and flap my arms and throw up all my meals when these things are mentioned, they assume that I am at ease in Zion. As a matter of fact I have my own well-defined field of worry, which I exploit to the full. But it seems to me that a little complacency would do nobody any harm at present and I am thinking of incorporating complacency into the platform of the Marchbanks Humanist Party—a retrograde movement of which I am leader and sole support. “Tired of Clamour? Try Torpor!” How’s that for a campaign cry?

I
SAW A MAN
today walking along the street with his son and grandson; the grandfather, who came to this country over forty years ago, had a large honest English nose with an honest red blob on the end of it; the son had a lesser nose—an unremarkable nose; the grandson had an insignificant pug. I have observed upon several occasions this progressive diminution of the Canadian nose as the true British stock accommodates itself to North American conditions. Are we fated, in a few hundred years, to be a noseless people? Do our noses shrink because for so many months we breathe a frosty air which inhibits growth, so that our noses are virtually in cold storage? Or is it a failure of character? Wellington, we know, picked his staff officers for their noses; a man with a wealth of beezer was, in the opinion of the Iron Duke, a man of character and a fellow who could be trusted to bear heavy responsibilities. Is it the advance of social security and cradle-to-grave pensions which have given us our timid, state-subsidized, egalitarian noses? Give me a man whose nose is like the blade of a scythe, and whose blowings are like the note of a trumpet sounding to battle!

M
Y MORNING PAPER
expects me to sympathize with a man who shot a bear cub, and then was charged by the mother bear; he and his companion fired eleven shots at her before they finally killed her. But before I congratulate him on his escape, I would like to know why he shot at the cub in the first place? Had he never heard that bears are strange, unpredictable beasts, likely to chase people who shoot their young? And what is the fun of shooting a bear, large or small? Is it the pleasure
of seeing it fall down? Or does a shot bear leap comically into the air, shouting, “O my goodness!” thus providing the hunter with a hearty laugh? It seems to me that I once read in an old musty book (very much out of date, probably) that it was unsportsmanlike to shoot the young of any animal, or to shoot a female who was running with her young. But it is plain from the reports which appear in the papers every season that ideals of sportsmanship have changed, and that the tactics which, in political circles, are called “realistic” are now in fashion.

I
WAS EATING
a peach today when a pink worm about half an inch long with an evil black head, crawled out of the stone and began to explore. I hastily disgorged everything that I had in my mouth, and watched the worm with a beady and hostile eye, like a bird. It is this quality in nature—worms in peaches, faithless hearts in pretty girls, and headaches in delicious drinks—which gives rise to Calvinism in religion and skepticism in philosophy. After a few nasty setbacks a man is likely to get the idea that there is a disappointment in every pleasure and a blackamoor in every woodpile. From this conclusion it is a simple step to the belief that everything which seems fair and delightful is evil, and should be forbidden. The easiest way to spare yourself disappointment is to go through life expecting the worst. But with praiseworthy courage I refused to fall into this intellectual trap, and chose another peach, which was wormless and delicious.

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.

A
FTER 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.