The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (26 page)

I
HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING
with deep interest a controversy in the press as to whether garbage-collectors are really careful with the garbage-cans. Two or three garbage-men have even written letters in defence of themselves, an action which I deplore, for I am a firm believer in the tradition that the Civil Service should never engage in public disputes. As a matter of curiosity I stalked
a couple of garbage wagons last week and found that the defence was justified; the men were very gentle with the cans, handling them like Venetian glass goblets, in most cases. But I also spied upon an ash-cart, and was horrified by the brutality of the ash-men in their dealings with ash-cans. Luckily I had a tape-measure with me, and was able to compute the average throw of an empty can, which is 20 feet, 9 inches. Here is a splendid subject for a sociological thesis: why are ash-men so much more brutal than garbage men?

I
WENT TO SEE
Donald Wolfit in
King Lear
last week. He is advertised as the greatest actor since Henry Irving; unless everything I have ever read or heard about Irving is wrong, this is a somewhat over-confident statement. He had very fine moments, but the shabbiest scenery and costumes that I have seen since the days of the Marks Brothers (not to be confused with Groucho, Harpo and Chico) did nothing to help him. Charles Lamb said that
Lear
could not be acted, and all sorts of people have parroted that foolish remark ever since; it is as sensible as saying that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony cannot be played. Wolfit acted Lear admirably; if he had had more nobility and more pathos he would have been wonderful. Somebody said to me in the interval that it was unbelievable that any man would be so stupid as to do what Lear did—put himself at the mercy of his children. I don’t know about that: I have seen at least three cases in which parents did the same thing, and with not dissimilar results.

O
N THE TRAIN
again yesterday I was travelling with a number of men who were obviously Senators and
members of the Commons on their way to Ottawa for the opening of Parliament. They wore that dedicated, holy look which is only to be seen on the faces of men who are travelling on passes and expect to be wearing their best suits within twenty-four hours. The members of the older parties gravitated naturally toward the chair-car; the socialists rode in the coach, ate box-lunches, and occasionally exclaimed, “God pity the poor engineer on a day like this!” whenever there seemed to be a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Men within earshot. I did a good deal of spying and eavesdropping in all parts of the train, but learned nothing.

I
WENT TO MY
dentist today in a high state of apprehension. None of my teeth were hurting me, but I know from bitter experience that a tooth of mine can have a cavity as big as the Grotto at Lourdes before it informs me of the fact. As I had feared, the dentist found plenty of work to keep him busy for several appointments. When he settled down to business I began to talk. This is an old technique with me; if I can fascinate the dentist with my merry quips he may forget to do anything to me—such is my foolish reasoning, born of terror and despair. But there always comes the moment when he says, “Open, now,” and I gape swooningly, knowing that the jig is up and that I shall have to take whatever is in store for me.

I
SHOVELLED SNOW
yesterday afternoon. As I laboured, a passer-by said, “Considering the dispute that has been going on about Sabbath observance I’d think you would be afraid to be seen doing that.” Leaning on my shovel, and holding my poor bent back, I replied, “Sir, if
Providence sees fit to send snow on Saturday night, Providence will have more sense than to condemn me for clearing it away on Sunday. If I am not greatly mistaken, it is pleasure-seeking on the Sabbath which gives pain to the godly; shovelling snow is not a pleasure to me, but a penance, a mortification of the flesh, and a Lenten misery. I offer this labour—which I heartily detest—as an expiation for all my sins of pride, lust, covetousness, greed, sloth, anger and envy during the past six days. And now will you please go away before I sin further by washing your face in this snow bank?” He hurried away, tut-tutting.

S
EVERAL LARGE
and dangerous icicles hang from the roof of my house, and I decided that I had better get them down before they fell on the milkman and clove him to the brisket. So I spent quite a long time heaving snowballs at them, this afternoon, trying to knock them off the eavestrough. Throwing things is not one of my accomplishments; I can hit a dog with a baseball bat at ten feet, but picking off icicles with snowballs is quite another thing. However, I threw and threw, until my right shoulder became numb and my appendix gave notice that it was going to burst, but very few of the stalactites (or are they stalagmites?) came down, and those that did smashed uncomfortably near me.… The result of all this stretching is that my right side is now several inches longer than my left side, and I walk with a hippety-hopping gait, like a dwarf and a giant tied together for a three-legged race.

T
HE PAPERS ARE
full of hullabaloo about Edison, who appears to have been not merely an ingenious fellow,
but also a major philosopher and saint (as well as the only man who could write the Lord’s Prayer on a piece of paper the size of a dime). Edison’s chief impact was made upon me by means of his phonograph. My great-aunt Lettice had an early model, and as soon as I was strong enough to lift the records (which were as thick as manhole covers and about the same weight) I played it frequently. As a result of this early training, I am still able to recite large portions of a monologue called
Cohen On The Telephone
, and sing all the hits from a forgotten musical comedy called
The Yokohama Girl
. Edison’s admirable autograph appeared on each record, and I am surprised that in all the praise of him there has been no word of his genuine skill as a calligrapher.

I
CRAWLED FEARFULLY
through an upstairs window and attempted to push some of the snow from the roof of my verandah this afternoon. I quickly discovered that the snow had turned to ice, and in order to loosen it I had to chop at it with the edge of my shovel, rather like somebody working an old-fashioned churn. When I had chopped away a sufficient quantity of ice chips, I had to heave it over the edge of the verandah, giving quite a lunge in order to throw it clear. Nature never framed me for such enterprises; I am nervous of heights, and my strongest desire on a verandah roof is to lie prone and shut my eyes and scream for the fire-department to carry me down. Nor am I much of an ice-loosener. However, I persisted in violating my deepest instincts for about half an hour, and then crawled back through my window and took a strong sedative pill. When I looked at my work from the ground, my achievement appeared to be pitifully insufficient. I would gladly leave such work to experts,
but I find that they tear off my shingles and make holes in my roof. At least I am in no danger of doing that.

I
HAD AN OPPORTUNITY
to examine a rather fine stamp collection today. As a usual thing stamps leave me cold; I regard them simply as dirty bits of paper which foreigners have licked. But I had to admit as I turned the pages, that some of the stamps were pretty; the pre-revolutionary Russian ones, for instance, had great charm, and the Japanese stamps were delicately beautiful. The possessor of the collection assured me that it was a great aid in learning history and geography, which is probably true, but the kind of history which can be learned from stamps is of no particular interest to me, and I have no desire to learn any geography under any circumstances. The fact that I am never sure where any place is gives a special charm to my consideration of the daily news and if I shattered my ignorance another of my retreats from reality would have been ruined. I think that all this dabbling in geography is rather bad-mannered and nosey, like peeping through people’s windows.

T
HE LAST OF THE
opera broadcasts was on the air this afternoon, so I settled down in my armchair with a bag of peppermints to enjoy it. But luck was not with me; things kept cropping up which had to be done, and people kept calling me to the phone who wanted taxis and other things which I couldn’t give them, and altogether the union of Mozart and Marchbanks was incomplete and unsatisfactory. By the time the broadcast was over I had a headache and a peppermint hangover. Nevertheless, opera broadcasts exercise a powerful
fascination over me, and every winter I try to hear as many as I can. There is a childlike, unsophisticated quality about opera which commands respect in this wicked world. All that hooting and hollering because somebody has pinched somebody else’s girl, or killed the wrong man, or sold his soul to the devil! These are commonplaces in daily life (particularly the latter) and it is astonishing to hear them treated with so much noisy consideration.

I
MADE A TRAIN
journey yesterday. As always I was impressed by the amount of rude staring that goes on when a train is standing in a station. The stay-at-homes on the platform gawp rustically at the people in the cars, while the urbane and world-weary travellers stare back, down their noses. As in an aquarium, it is impossible to say who is staring and who is being stared at.… When the train reached my stop I wrestled my own suitcases to the door, for the porter thought I was going to Toronto, and had fallen asleep. Yet, I gave this neglectful blackamoor a quarter—an act of sheer cowardice; I should have stared into his chocolate eyes like a lion-tamer, and kept my money. But in such matters I am contemptibly lacking in resolution. My face is perpetually ground by those who are, in a purely technical sense, the poor. I shall welcome the Revolution, after which I shall not be expected to tip anybody.

A
LITTLE GIRL
was telling me about a bad dream that she had last night: “A witch was chasing me, and she had germs all over her fingers,” the child said. This is a good example of the way in which superstition keeps abreast of science, instead of being displaced by
it, as foolish people believe. In my childhood I sometimes dreamed that witches were chasing me to tear out my liver and lights, or to bake me in a pie, but never to infect me with germs. The next generation, I suppose, will dream that witches are after them to make them radio-active. The fashion in scientific horrors may change, but the witches will go on, and on, chasing generations of horror-stricken children down the shadowy labyrinths of sleep.

I
SAW A CHILD
whizz across the road on her tricycle today, directly in front of a car; when she grows up she will be the kind of woman who darts across streets against the red light, holding back traffic by sheer power of the human eye. In India it is regarded as a good idea to dart in front of an oncoming car, for the car is sure to kill the evil spirits who are pursuing you, and all the rest of your life you will have good luck. There are a lot of Canadians who seem to be trying to get the best of their evil spirits by this dubious method. Of course, if you are a little out in your calculations, and the car reduces you to a large splash of tomato sauce, your evil spirits may be said to have won the final trick.

I
SAW A LARGE
shell in a friend’s house the other day, and for old times’ sake I held it up to my ear and heard the familiar roaring which is supposed to be the sound of the sea. When I was a child I listened to this sea-noise eagerly, and believed in it. But now I am of a less easily satisfied disposition; the Scientific Spirit has got hold of me and it gives me little peace. If I hold an empty beer bottle up to my ear I hear a noise, too;
am I to believe that it is the sound of a brewery? And when I hold an old marmalade jar to my ear, must I believe that the suspiration which I hear is the whisper of the zephyrs through orange-groves? No. As a modern poet has put it:

I
h
HAVE A PARTICULAR
affection for the city of Toronto; the mere contemplation of its moral sublimity puts me in good humour for days at a time. The latest outbreak of virtue in the Queen City takes the form of a declaration on the part of one of the city controllers that the Public Libraries of Toronto have been circulating dirty books, including
The Decameron
. At first I was a good deal startled by the thought that a Toronto alderman had been reading
The Decameron;
I had not imagined that they read anything more taxing than the portions of the
Reader’s Digest
which are printed in large type. But I now discover that the alderman had not read the book; he had simply been told by somebody else that it was not a proper book for anyone to read.… Censors tend to be like that. I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when somebody tells them that the book is unfit to read.… The first indecent book I ever read was
Quo Vadis
, which I got out of a Sunday School library; I found the descriptions
of Roman highlife deeply stirring. Later I became very partial to
The Song of Songs
(which is Solomon’s) which was sold to me by an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in a plain wrapper.