My annual duel with my furnace has begun. Perhaps “duel” is not the right word, for it suggests a contest of lightninglike thrust and parry, and my fight with the furnace is much more like medieval jousting—a slow but hideously powerful and destructive combat. At present my aim is to keep a fire low enough to warm my house without dehydrating me and all my possessions; this I do by throttling the furnace, keeping all air from it, and treating it with ostentatious contempt, as though I did not care whether it went out or not. It retorts by belching its hot breath all through the house, cracking the surface of the furniture, and making the floors groan and pop in the night. There is a tank in my furnace into which I pour water every day, and the superstition is that this water mingles with the hot air and produces a balmy climate all through my house. But in actual fact gremlins drink this water, and the mice in my cellar commit the Happy Despatch in it, and the air from the furnace is like the parching simoom of the East Indies. Frankly I hate furnaces, and would far rather have a big Quebec heater, upon which I could spit when I was disgusted with it. Spit on a furnace, and it doesn’t even hiss.
Whenever I win a bout with my furnace, it always retorts by producing a particularly large and dirty supply of ash. In twenty years, I suppose, furnaces like the one which I now harbour in my cellar will be antiques, and we shall look back laughingly at the era of the bi-weekly ash collection. But at present it is a stern reality. The ashes have to be taken out of the entrails of the furnace, sifted by hand, and then conveyed in tubs and buckets to the street. After I have done this, I look as though I had been working in a flour mill, and smell as though I had been travelling from Montreal to Toronto in a smoking car. It is enough to put me in a bad temper for a whole evening.… Some day I am going to have a house heated by the rays of the sun in the most modern manner. Or perhaps I shall enjoy the luxury of a furnace man, and while he struggles and fights with the furnace, I shall sit upstairs dressed like Mr. Capitalistic Interests in a C.C.F. cartoon, laughing and drinking cherry bounce, and shouting “More heat, more heat!” in a tyrannous voice. I have always thought that I should like to be a tyrant, but it costs money.
My furnace had its first ugly fit of the season today. When I opened its front door this morning for the usual health inspection, I noticed that it had a bad breath and a nasty, coated back-draft. However, it took its food without much complaint and I thought no more about it. By this evening, however, it had dyspepsia, and the usual cures did no good at all. So for the first time in the Furnace Season I sat up with it, coaxing its appetite from time to time with tiny shovelfuls of coke, a dainty which it much enjoys. I have grown so used to sitting in the cellar that I hardly notice it any more. But I must put a stronger globe in the light socket; the present one is too dim for pleasant reading. And I might knock up a bookshelf over the preserve cupboard to hold a few appropriate favourites such as Orpheus In Hades, The Light That Failed, The Sacred Flame, The Stoker, and, of course, Man vs. Machine.
This afternoon I tried to rake my lawn clear of leaves, but felt like Hercules cleaning the Augean stables, and soon gave it up. It would be easier to climb the trees in September and pick the leaves than to try to scrape them up from the ground, and I think that I shall do so next year. “What are you doing in that tree, Mr. Marchbanks?” the neighbours will cry, their suspicions aroused. “I am harvesting my leaves,” I shall reply, with pardonable superiority. After that, of course, everyone will take it up.
A lady suggested a scheme to me this evening for improving the standard of education in Canada, and all Canadian standards with it. The plan is beautiful in its simplicity: (1) quadruple the present salaries of the teaching profession; (2) insist that all teachers be worth what they are paid; (3) make the teaching profession the hardest to enter of all professions. Another lady had another suggestion, which was that all teachers be paid the same high salary; obviously a teacher should be as skilful and as learned to teach beginners as advanced students. But I fear that Canada cares too little about real education for either of these schemes to gain acceptance.… A gentleman then joined me in a prolonged complaint about Canada’s high tax on books; it is precisely the same, he said, as putting a tax on a university education.
A friend who was interested in my observations on famous Last Words draws my attention to this passage in George Santayana’s Persons And Places: “On one of the many occasions when he (Santayana’s father) thought, or dreaded, that he might be on his deathbed, he felt a sudden desire for some boiled chicken, without in the least giving up his asseveration that he was dying; and as his deafness prevented him from properly modulating his voice, he cried out with a shout that resounded through the whole house: ‘La Uncion y la gallina!’ … which is to say ‘Extreme Unction and a Chicken’ ” Undoubtedly these are noble Last Words, combining as they do a prudent regard for both worlds, but as the elder Santayana did not die on this occasion, they are not Last Words in the true sense.… Very irritating Last Words would be, “I forgive you all,” which would leave one’s relatives in a condition of baffled and angry stupefaction.… Charles I had a brilliant inspiration when, on the scaffold, he turned to the attendant bishop and said, “Remember, Juxon.” Since then hundreds of people have puzzled their brains as to what it was that Juxon was to remember. If it was an adjuration (very natural under the circumstances) to put Rough on Rats in Cromwell’s soup, it is obvious that Juxon forgot, unforgivably.
More furnace martyrdom; cold today, and the fire which I have nursed so lovingly was inadequate. I have kept it low, yet not dangerously low, and it refused to burn up when the need arose. So, in an unwise fit of temper, I gave it a severe poking, and went out for a couple of hours. When I came home again the thermometer was just at 90 degrees F.… Set to work to bring the monster under control, opening all checks and even shovelling ashes through the fire door to quench the flames. I was afraid that the furnace would be consumed by its own heat, and suddenly subside in a mass of molten metal.… I have deceived myself about my furnace; I thought that I had the upper hand of it, and that its proud spirit was broken. But no! The Old Nick is as active in its iron bosom as ever. Some day I shall destroy that furnace or it will destroy me.
Was talking today to an irate father whose little boy had recently joined the temperance movement. It appears that an agent of the temperance interests (it is known that they have all kinds of money at their command, because they are heavily subsidized by the soft drink cartel) had attracted a number of children into a church hall after school and had shown them movies of the inside of a drunkard’s stomach in technicolour; this impressed the tots greatly, and after the temperance agent had plied them with chocolate milk, they all signed a pledge to taste not, touch not, nor yet smell of the cork, and received certificates establishing their membership in the Wee Wowsers’ Total Abstinence Fraternity.… What annoyed this man was that his particular Wee Wowser had come home armed with the sword of the spirit, and had lectured him on the evils of beer; I gather that the Wee Wowser was told that what looked like soul-saving to him looked much like infant impudence to his father, and his membership in the Wee Wowsers terminated at that instant.
A friend of mine lost confidence in himself today because he discovered that he had put the garbage can carefully in the luggage compartment of his car, and had stood his wife’s dressing-case on the curb to await the offal officer. I assured him that I had been doing things like that for years, and attributed it to abstraction of the kind from which Professor Einstein suffers.
My brother Fairchild paid me one of his infrequent visits today, and asked to watch while I stoked my furnace. This was unfortunate, for Fairchild is a bigoted Back-to-Fronter, while I am a determined Middler. That is to say, Fairchild stokes his furnace by raking the live coal from the back to the front, and putting his new coal in the resulting trough, whereas I make a bed of coals with the poker, and put my new coal in a heap in the middle. I was brought up a Back-to-Fronter, but I changed to Middle-ism when I married my furnace. The feeling which Back-to-Fronters have for Middlers is comparable to that which Roman Catholics cherish for adherents of the Greek Orthodox Church.… However, while Fairchild stood by I stoked the furnace in my usual way, and I noticed his jaw tighten and his temples throb. In a low voice, he asked me whether I expected to make a good fire that way? I said that I did, and to spare him embarrassment, I leaned toward the fire-door at that moment. I think it was the big poker he used when he struck, but luckily I caught the blow on my shoulder, and was able to push his head in an ash-bucket while I screamed for help. When the police came we were locked in a deathgrip on the cellar floor.… We parted fairly good friends, but my furnace went out in the night. The slightest thing upsets it.
Tonight on the radio Maggie Teyte sang Oft In The Stilly Night better than I ever expect to hear it sung again. Beauty of tone, intelligence and poetic feeling—all were there. I must have heard the song murdered a score of times by male quartettes, female vocalizers and other assassins. And of course I recall it from schooldays when it was usually rendered thus:
Off in a stilly NIGHT
Ere Slummer’s chainuz BOWN me
Fon memry bringza LIGHT
Uvuther dayza ROWN me.
I often wonder if school teachers know what a crime they commit by giving children fine verse to murder. Children are savages, and do not like any verse except gems of their own compostiion, such as:
Julius Cæsar
Was an old geezer
Who froze his feet
In an ice-cream freezer.
True poetry should be left to adults; school lessons kill whatever taste for poetry the average child may have.
Thought I would go to the movies tonight, but when I arrived at the place I found a long queue, and neither Greer Garson nor Gregory Peck is a person whom I will stand in line to see. So I went for a country walk instead, and as it was a fine moonlight night, I enjoyed myself very much.
For a brief drive in the country today; was amazed by the number of farm dogs who seem anxious to quit this life and join their ancestors in whatever future existence a discerning providence has provided for dogs. They rush at every car, attempting to hurl themselves under the wheels, and when they fail (which they do quite often, being slow and stupid) they bite at the tires, hoping to cause a puncture. In the World of Tomorrow dogs who want to commit the Happy Despatch will present themselves before a Government Board, explain their reasons for wishing to die, and if successful, will receive a cyanide bone, coated with synthetic beef gravy. The expense of this service will, of course, be borne by the taxpayers. Dogs who fail to make a case for themselves will receive the Order of Mother Hubbard (first class).
It was so warm today that I let my furnace go out; it thinks it went out of its own accord, but I know better; I starved it, and it expired.… Bought a new rake, and seized the opportunity to sharpen my penknife, free, on the various stones in the hardware store. Then set about tasks of raking leaves, emptying flowerpots, cutting back bushes, and preparing Marchbanks Towers for its long winter’s nap. I am still waiting for my winter wood, which is apparently marooned in a swamp somewhere and cannot be reached; it will arrive simultaneously with the first snow, I predict, and I will have my usual jolly weekend piling it. Otherwise no squirrel is better prepared for winter than I; I am looking for a cidermill in good condition, and will buy it if I can find it, though I understand that apples are going to be very scarce this year; but I have a scheme of my own for making cider out of oranges.
To a christening this afternoon, a ceremony in which I always take a large measure of innocent delight. At best it is a race between the parson and the infant, both gathering steam and momentum as the moment of immersion approaches; if the parson is still audible above the outraged screams of the child after this point, I award the victor’s palm to him. The shrieking of the child, of course, is merely the Old Adam protesting against an invasion of his property.… I understand that in most churches a first-aid box is kept in the vestry for the use of parsons who have suffered damage during a christening; I have seen men of God horribly clawed by infants who possessed extraordinary resistance to Grace.… Sometimes I have doubted the efficacy of the baptismal rite; so many children seem to be in full possession of the Old Adam, or, more accurately, the Old Nick is in full possession of them.
To the bank this afternoon, and was once again amazed by the nonchalance with which the young women behind the bars treat my balance. To me it is a matter of the most profound significance; to them it is a mere sum in addition and subtraction. Without being in the least aware of it, they can drive their cruel pens deep into my heart. That is, they are not aware of it unless I sink upon the floor with a despairing cry and attempt to disembowel myself with my pen-knife; then they call the assistant manager to throw me out. Banks hate suicides on the premises—looks bad.
To the movies tonight to see a piece written by Sir Arthur Pinero and produced with complete and humiliating failure on the stage in 1922, and now served up by Hollywood as something new and dainty. Its theme (which is the old and laughably untrue one that Love Conquers All) might have been handled acceptably by Barrie, but Pinero, who had all the delicate appreciation of human nature that one expects in police court lawyers and auctioneers, made a mess of it, and Hollywood has piled its own mess on top of the original. A pilot who has been injured and disfigured in the war marries a girl of remarkable ugliness, and in the throes of the Tender Passion they are transformed, and seem beautiful to one another; but they do not seem beautiful to anyone else, and this is supposed to be tragic, though it appears entirely normal and explicable to me. Pinero was no hand at such confectionery; he was happier with plushy Edwardian trollops such as Paula Tanqueray and the notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, who could sin, repent and have hysterics without disturbing their elaborate hair-dos or making their corsets creak more than was considered decent.
Saw some posters today, adjuring hunters to make sure that their cigarette stubs were doused before they threw them away; the solemn assurance was given that one carelessly thrown match might start a forest fire. I wish that the government officials who dream up these posters would come and light my furnace for me some time with one of their carelessly thrown matches, or a cigarette stub. Tonight I laboured fifty minutes cleaning out my furnace (which had passed quietly away at 8:30 a.m.) and putting paper and kindling in its maw, preparatory to re-lighting; then I put a few carefully lighted matches inside and awaited results. There were none. Remembering the posters, I threw a lighted match carelessly into the fire-door; it went out at once. Next I tried a cigarette stub; it went out too. So at last I made a torch of twisted paper, and that worked. I can only conclude that it is easier to start a forest fire than it is to light my furnace.
Suffered an acute attack of the humdudgeon today; the symptoms of this illness are a sense of failure, self-contempt and mental fatigue; there is no cure for it; application to the bottle merely brings on a crying-jag; a walk in the park suggests ideas of suicide; while the fit lasts all seems dross; sufferers from the humdudgeon should be left alone, though if they can be persuaded to lie down, with a pillow under the knees, it helps.… It was during a fit of the humdudgeon, on a Sunday afternoon in London, that De Quincey made his first experiment at opium-eating, to allay the pains of toothache. He never completely abandoned the habit, and lived to the ripe old age of 75, coked to the gills quite a lot of the time.
Everything is relative, I suppose, but I wish that the law, or a Chamber of Commerce, or somebody, would define the word “lifetime” as it is used by merchants. Fourteen months ago I bought a suit which was made of a cloth which I was assured would not—could not—wear out; the tailor jabbed pencils through it to show me how tough the fabric was. I have given it good care, and the sleeves and cuffs are undeniably worn through; the lifetime fabric is just wartime shoddy. A few years ago I was sold a Harris tweed suit, which I was assured would last my lifetime; I wore both elbows through in just over three years. And I have never had a pen with a lifetime guarantee which lasted five years. Yet the days of our years are three-score years and ten.
Long discussion this evening with a man who wants to revise our system of funerals and burial. The Vikings, he points out, lived in their ships and loved them, and when they died their bodies were laid out in their ships and sent off to sea. Ours, he points out, is an automobile civilization, and if we had any real respect for the dead, we would sit them at the wheel of the car in which they spent so much of life, and which they loved so dearly, and we would then allow the machine to dash along a special funeral speedway and eventually over a cliff. There is a poetic sweep about this notion which appeals to me strongly. For non-drivers like myself, of course, the plan might prove somewhat humiliating, but perhaps an arrangement could be made to whisk me into oblivion on castors, cunningly let into the heels of my burial boots.
Was reading some of the letters of Edgar Allen Poe today, and they confirmed me in my belief that a man’s private correspondence should never be published. He does not write his letters with a horde of snoopy strangers in mind, and he says things which he would never say for publication. Poe was a great literary artist, and we have all the poems and stories which he wanted the public to see; why publish letters in which he makes a fool of himself, drooling weakly to his child wife, and tearfully addressing his mother-in-law as “Dearest Muddy”?
Was talking to a most unusual physician tonight—a man who scorns vitamins and laughs uproariously at talk of allergies. Medicine, he said, was an art and not a science, and could only be usefully practised after deep study of human nature and of each individual patient. This attitude, he said, was commonplace among the great physicians of the past, but was out of favour with the modern school of pill-peddlers, who like to do their diagnosis by machine as much as possible, and prefer not to see the patient if they can possibly manage with a piece of him. Too many doctors are deeply interested in disease, but don’t care much for people, he said.… This all sounded like good sense to me, though I put in a word or two for the overworked physicians, whose patients always expect a bottle of medicine, and love to be treated for any disease under the sun, but hate to be accused of Original Sin, which is what is wrong with most of them.
To Toronto on some business, and found it noisier and dirtier than ever. Of course, visitors see Toronto at its worst. I had to fly around the business section, meeting this one here, and phoning that one there and my impression was all of tiresome noise, stench and rush. But native Torontonians rarely encounter this; they sit in their luxurious offices, with their feet on desks, smoking big cigars and wondering how long it will be before they can run around the corner for their hourly cup of coffee. At home their wives and children live in the pastoral surroundings of Bayview, where grass grows in the streets, in Forest Hill, where the wild maztoth blooms luxuriantly all the year round, or in Lawrence Park, where cows and sheep graze peacefully on the lawns. The calm, white, expressionless face of a real Torontonian is never creased with care, and his collar is never soiled with smuts from the chimneys. Those frantic, feverish, sweating wretches who run about the downtown area are all visitors from the country, rushing madly to do a week’s business in a few hours.
This afternoon bent to the task of carving a pumpkin face as a Hallowe’en surprise for some children I know; this is a neglected branch of art which I have made peculiarly my own. I scorn the mediocre pumpkin face with triangular eyes and nose, and a gash of a mouth: mine has a noble nose, a mouth full of teeth, eyes which search your soul when the pumpkin is illuminated, and a leer which sums up the whole spirit of Hallowe’en. The only proper way to illuminate a pumpkin head is with the stub of a candle; electric light is harsh and lacking in mystery.
Hallowe’en, and a fine windy night. There was a ring at my door, and when I opened it a frightful ghost, about three feet high, confronted me. “Who are you?” I demanded in a voice which trembled with fright. “I’m Charles,” whispered the spirit, and whisked my proffered orange into the folds of its ectoplasm.… Not long after the ghost of Charles had disappeared, I heard a groan, and went outside just in time to see a gang of hooligans running up the street, having ripped my gate off its hinges. I cursed them with a slow, lingering, horrible curse imparted to me by my grandmother, who was a witch. They will not feel the full effect of this curse for a week or so, but then parts of them will begin to turn black, and drop off, and they will be regarded as undesirable even in the circles of society in which they now move.… There was a good deal of writing on windows with soap, too, mostly confined to such comments as “Ha ha” and “Boo.” The world is so constituted that people who feel like writing on windows can never think of anything funny to write, while those who can think of funny things have too much brains to want to write them on windows.
The folk-spirit in poetry is not dead. Today I heard some children singing Sing A Song O’ Sixpence, the last verse of which runs:
The maid was in the garden
Lining out the clothes;
Along came a blackbird
And snapped off her nose.
But to this a youthful poet in the group had added a delightful sequel:
She went to the doctor
To get a wooden nose,
And when she came home,
She couldn’t blow her nose.
I hope to see this addition incorporated in the next edition of Mother Goose.
People make their livings in the oddest ways. I heard today about a man who has become wealthy through the manufacture of “slumber slippers”—soft little slippers like ballet shoes which are placed on the feet of corpses. All God’s chillun got special shoes.… And a man in Winnipeg has become well-off through the cultivation and sale of sunflower seeds, for the chewing trade. It seems that great numbers of immigrants from Middle Europe like to chew sunflower seeds, spitting out the husks and eating the tiny, oily kernel, which tastes like a nut.… I should like to get into one of these queer trades, and make my fortune: I wonder how neon false teeth would be, so that lovers could smile at one another in the dark? Or pipe-cleaners with blunted ends, so that they could safely be used as ear-reamers? Or a pair of stays that rings a bell when the occupant has eaten enough, for fat women on diets? The possibilities are infinite.
For years I have been known to a large circle of sports enthusiasts as the Nimrod of the Fly-Swatter; I take no interest in other blood-sports, but when it comes to swatting flies I admit few equals and no superiors. I prefer a swatter with a rubber flapper to the ordinary wire affair; the wire mashes the game, but the rubber slaps it into oblivion and leaves the carcass unmutilated, and suitable for stuffing or table use.… It is not generally realized that when a fly rises from a standing position, it jumps backward; it is necessary to allow for this jump when swatting. I have also noticed that amateurs, particularly women, swat at flies as though they were driving spikes; this causes a noticeable breeze, and the fly is warned. The way to swat a fly is this: grip the swatter firmly but not tensely, hold it six inches over the quarry, and then swat with a decisive but not vindictive motion. If the fly escapes, do not pursue it with yells and wild swipes of the swatter; wait until it lights again, and swat like a gentleman and a sportsman. With my rubber swatter, I can often stun a fly while it is in the air, but you had better not try this; only an Annie Oakley like myself has the finesse for such refinements.
Business called me to Toronto, where I found the lobby of the Royal York thronged with men in handsome blue uniforms which were richly ornamented with gold lace, gold rope and gold insignia; many of them wore impressive medals and ribbons, and I heard one of them address another as “General.” All of them carried swords, the scabbards of which appeared to be composed of gold and ivory, and one of them was accompanied by a lady of dominating appearance who wore a purple cloak of military cut, and a hat with a prodigious ostrich plume in it. I assumed that they must be foreign grandees, perhaps a government-in-exile, until I noticed that fighting men in ordinary khaki and blue did not salute them, but seemed indeed to look upon them with ill-concealed amusement; I saw one airman point them out to his dinner partner with what I can only describe as a contumelious gesture.… I made discreet enquiries, and learned that the gorgeous creatures were attending a convention of a fraternal order—the Ancient and Honourable Order of Poltergeists, I believe. There is a corroboree of some sort at the Royal York every week.
Every day I pass a beverage room in the course of my duties, and at least every second day an habitué of the place pursues me for a hundred yards or so, telling me in a low, compelling voice how badly he needs twenty-five cents. I have given him money several times, chiefly from a fear that he will fall dead at my feet, if I refuse, but I am beginning to be indifferent to his fate. What is more, an uncharitable suspicion dawns in my mind that he uses my money to buy beer. Now if he spends all his daily income, which is my twenty-five cents, on drink, he is obviously an improvident oaf, and the despair of economists, and the next time he appears trembling and muttering at my side I shall tell him so. If he were a true Canadian he would spend five cents of my quarter on food and drink, he would save five cents, and he would pay the other fifteen for Income Tax and the Baby Bonus. That is what I have to do. Why should he live a life of pleasure, spending his whole income on drink, when I have to slave and pinch to keep him and several thousand civil servants in luxury? This is the sort of social injustice which makes communists of white-collar workers like me.
When I was born good fairies clustered round my cradle, showering me with wit, beauty, grace, freedom from dandruff, natural piety and other great gifts, but the Wicked Fairy Carabosse (who had not been invited to the party) crept to my side and screamed, “Let him be cursed with Inability To Do Little Jobs Around The House”, and so it has always been. I cannot drive a nail straight, or mend an electric iron, or make a door stop sticking, or change a fuse. I do not glory in my inefficiency; I suffer under it. Whenever anything goes wrong with my household arrangements, I have to get a man in to mend it—no small task in these days—and I know that he despises me as he does the fiddling little job and takes away a dollar of my money. People who are good at odd jobs are blessed above common mortals; I have some trifling skill in swatting flies and shining shoes, but otherwise I am a nuisance in the house. If I were ever shipwrecked on a desert island with several thousand feet of lumber, a complete set of carpenter’s tools, and 100 cases of assorted foods, I should die in a week of exposure and starvation.
Attended a concert in the line of duty, and suffered agonies with my cough. There are coughers at every concert, but none like me; I am to ordinary coughers what the late Chaliapin was to a schoolgirl singing in her mother’s drawing-room; I am a virtuoso cougher, and when I cough at a concert it is like the trumpets of Joshua outside the walls of Jericho. Artists have been known to stop in midsong, and stare into the auditorium in horrified amazement; a circus man I once knew said it put him in mind of an elephant trumpeting. I cannot help it; it is my cross, and I must bear it as best I may. Hardly had the concert begun, until I felt horrid ticklings and heavings in my throat, and I knew at once that I was a goner. I hastily ate a Smith Bros. cough drop, but it was powerless against the rising fury of my cough; I held in by sheer power of will until the first song was over, and then I allowed my cough to drown the generous applause. This went on until the interval, when I was able to get a drink of water. Every song, for me, was a struggle with a cough which raged to escape. I heard the artist telling the head usher to find that dog and put it out, and I trembled in fear. But later in the evening the demon within me relented, and I was able to enjoy the music, though exhausted by my struggle.
Received a telephone call from a friend of mine, who wanted to know who invented the water-closet; he has had one in his house for years, but has only recently become curious about it. The answer is that it was first devised by the Elizabethan nobleman, Sir John Harington, who in 1596 described his invention, which he was certain would mitigate the plague, and what did the world do? It condemned him as a man whose mind dwelt on filth. Thus the very name of this great benefactor of mankind is known to about one person in 5,000, whereas the inventor of the zip-fastener was given an LL.D. by the University of Upsala. What a world!
Undertook to bathe a small child and put it to bed, in the absence of its mother; this is not a fitting pursuit for a man whose temperament is philosophical and whose habits are sedentary. Several times I under-estimated the elusiveness of a small creature covered from head to foot in soapsuds, and almost fell into the tub myself. The child took this for frolicsomeness on my part, and began to throw water on me; I toyed with the idea of stripping, in order to meet this situation on fair terms, but rejected the plan as undignified. When at last I had landed my fish and begun to dry it, the unforeseen problem of ticklishness obtruded itself, and then hair-brushing created a great hullabaloo. When at last it was in bed, and had had all the drinks of water and Kleenex it demanded, I was a nervous and physical wreck.
To the zoo this afternoon, just to see how the animals liked the cold weather. The bear looked restless and banged his cage resoundingly from time to time; the raccoon and the skunk had retired for the winter; the foxes looked as though the cement floor gave them cold feet. But the ducks were very hearty, and nipped at the toes of my boots in a spirited manner; a duck nipping at one’s boot is a good joke, but a duck nipping at one’s nether regions when one is in a bathing suit is something entirely different. The pheasants were moulting—a process which is chronic with them, though the Ringneck Cock was in his finest plumage and a glorious sight. Two owls had been added to the collection, and were resenting it; I know of no animal which has a capacity for dignified outrage equal to that of an owl.
A correspondence school has written to me, inviting me to take a course in writing; this is a type of criticism which I resent. “You do not have to be a genius to become a successful writer,” they say, in what is meant to be a reassuring manner. Then they go on to urge me to look in my own neighbourhood for subjects. “Dig below the surface of your home town,” they say; frankly I am afraid that this method would not win me “a big income and interesting friends,” as they promise, but merely a pack of lawsuits.… People who have taken the course write eagerly, “Last week I hit The Country Gentleman; this week I hit Mademoiselle; next week I hope to hit the American Mother!” Frankly I don’t think this course would suit me; I don’t want to hit any of those people, though I might toss a pie at the American Mother, just for fun.… But I like the promise the people make that they will teach me how to create tense moments, and how to play on the heart-strings; I have never been any good at either of those things. And I particularly like their offer to teach me how to be funny; any school which can make a man funny by correspondence must possess a secret which has been hidden from the rest of mankind for some thousands of generations. It would be nice to be unfailingly, perpetually, remorselessly funny, day in and day out, year in and year out until somebody murdered you, now wouldn’t it?
Walked home this evening in the dusk, and passed a surprising number of couples of High School age conversing in low, tense voices as they leaned over bicycles or huddled under trees. Poets insist that Spring is the time of mating, but personal observation convinces me that the austere, bright nights of late Autumn are equally favourable to romance. The interesting thing about these lovers’ conversations are the pauses. The lad asks some question which (to my ears, at least) has no amorous significance, and the girl then casts down her eyes, fingers her Latin Grammar in an agitated manner, and after a breathless interval (during which I try to keep on walking without getting out of earshot) replies, “Oh, I guess so”, or “Oh, I just as leave”, causing her swain to breathe hard and gulp.… Why doesn’t he throw himself on the ground, saying, “You are my Soul, my Better Self, be mine or I stab myself with this pair of protractors”; then she could reply, “Nay, press me not, I am Another’s.” In that way they could really have some romantic fun and store up things to tell their grandchildren. No style, no breadth, that’s the trouble with the modern High School set.
An unseasonable warm spell forces me to reverse my tactics with my furnace; instead of begging the thing to give me a little heat, I am now imploring it to relax its efforts. Perverse as always, it huffs and puffs and frizzles me with its breath.… However, I have got a load of wood, with not more than a fair amount of soft stuff, punk and limbs in it, and I shall conduct Marchbanks’ Annual Wood Bee on Saturday. Hard cider and doughnuts will be served to all helpers.
Was talking to a woman who has just had a baby, and who passed her period of recovery in a public ward in a Great Canadian City. There were nine other women in the room with her, and she said that they talked all the time—mostly about names for babies and the peculiar behaviour of their husbands. When these husbands came visiting one piece of dialogue was invariable:
HUSBAND: “Do you want anything to read?”
WIFE: (patting her bedside table) “No, no; I have MY BOOK.
… My informant was burned up with curiosity to know what these books were which were spoken of in such a portentous manner; she was able to discover that in all nine cases the “book” was a magazine of true love stories, or of confessions. This is an interesting sidelight on Canadian reading habits. Furthermore, she said that she never saw one of her nine companions open her “book” upon any occassion.… My informant read several books during her recovery, to the amazement and ill-concealed indignation of her room-mates. It was their opinion that too much reading was a sign of being stuck-up, and furthermore liable to harm the baby’s eyes—by sympathetic magic, I suppose.
Was in a music store, buying more gramophone records, when a man came in and asked for a ditty called Just a Rose From My Mother’s Grave. He expressed great admiration for this lugubrious piece. I was reminded of an earlier song on a somewhat different theme, entitled We Shall Miss Her Old Gray Hairs, or Let’s Drive A Nail In Dear Old Mother’s Face. This in turn led my thoughts to an even more affecting ballad, called They’re Moving Father’s Grave To Build A Sewer, which I last heard rendered with the most moving pathos and delicacy of expression by a high official of the National Film Board.
This afternoon hove wood into my cellar and piled it; the heaving was a wild, brutal ecstasy, but the piling was a weary penance. It was necessary for me to grab up as much wood as I could hold, and scuttle under the rafters and furnace-pipes in a crouching position, rather as an ape rushes through the forest with a stolen bunch of bananas. After an hour or two of this my back began to hurt, and my philosophy took a violent turn toward pessimism. It was at this time also that my woodpile began to slip and slide, and drop on my feet. After some very delicate engineering I got it to stay in place, and decided not to tempt fate by putting any more on it, so I retired to an upstairs room and settled down with a book and a foaming glass of burdock blood-bitters.… During the night a mouse tramped rather heavily on the cellar floor, and I heard a thunderous roll as my woodpile sank into ruin.
Woke with an aching head and a vile taste in my mouth—the consequence of piling wood yesterday; the pursuit of pleasure always leaves me in splendid condition (a fact which puzzles and irritates the Moral Element among my friends) but hard work gives me the most intolerable hangovers. Obviously Nature is evolving a new type of man, geared for a life of pleasure, and I am the first model.… But on the principle of “a hair of the dog” I went out and heaved and piled the rest of my wood, having reconstructed the woodpile which fell down yesterday. By the time I was finished, I was on the verge of physical and mental breakdown. Though thousands of people indulge themselves in it regularly, and even develop a taste for it, there is no doubt in my mind (and that of scientists whom I employ to prove it) that Work is a dangerous and destructive drug, and should be called by its right name, which is Fatigue.
Attended a concert in a collegiate auditorium tonight, and sat in the front row in order to have room for my legs; in the ordinary concert-hall seat (designed by and for dwarfs) I have to sit side-saddle, while numbness seizes first one haunch and then the other. But being in the front row I had a fine view of the empty orchestra pit, and during a rowdy rendition of Chopin’s Scherzo in B Minor a tiny mouse crept from under the piano in the pit and began to dance, lightly, elegantly and charmingly. When the music twiddled, the mouse twiddled: when the music bounced, the mouse bounced; there was no arabesque of sound which the mouse was not able to transmute into an arabesque of movement. When it was all over I applauded the mouse vigorously, assuming that it was a protégé of the Board of Education. I learned later, however, that the concert committee had been put out by the fact that the mouse got in, somehow, without a ticket.… Why are school mice always so fat and sleek? Is it because they have access to unlimited floor-oil?
There is a special grubby joylessness about life these days which oppresses the spirit. As I look out of my window there is not a green leaf or a flowering plant to be seen; dust blows everywhere; a woman passes, and pulling at her arm is a little boy dressed in a snow suit, in which he is hot and fretful; a man with a paunch stalks by, looking as though all his meals in the last fifteen years had soured his stomach; a girl goes by wearing an elaborate hairdo, a pea-jacket and a pair of short slacks, from which her dirty legs emerge; she is pigeon-toed, but she holds her head proudly; an elderly woman in an ill-chosen hat waits for a bus; she breathes through her mouth and stares at the passers-by. Is there any hope in these people? Could immortal souls inhabit such frames without showing some spark through the eyes, or in a smile? November is a month to breed pessimists.
Was discussing wart-cures with a physician this evening. He says that in his experience the best one is this: rub the wart with a slice of bacon, then go outdoors on a night when the moon is full, throw the bacon over your left shoulder and then, as the bacon rots, the wart will vanish. “But what if a cat eats the bacon?” I asked; “The wart will vanish that much sooner,” said he.… Naturally this led to talk of magic, and a lady present spoke of an old woman known to her grandmother, whose custom it was, (when her luck was bad) to bind her churn with willow-withes, and beat it with a stick; then whoever it was that was wishing her ill would come to the door and beg forgiveness. This was in Canada, about 1850–60. Our pioneer ancestors had a lot of simple fun that we miss.
Life, for a man of my temperament, is an endless procession of vexing domestic problems. Shall I have my storm-windows put on, or not? At present the weather is warmer than it was most of last May, and it is only by the most rigorous repression of my furnace that I keep my house liveable. But I know that Winter will come upon me like a thief in the night, blowing its raw breath through every chink, ruffling the carpets on the floors and whipping the pictures off the walls. God pity all the poor souls in Wartime Housing on a night like that! And then I shall not be able to get anyone to creep up a ladder in the icy blast, bearing 15 square feet of glass in his arms. Shall I do it now, or shall I wait a little longer? My indecision will be the ruin of me, I know it. But oh, the heat of storm windows in warm weather! I will.… I won’t.… I will.… I WON’T. Come then, Boreas, and be damned! It is better to tarry than to burn.
Waiting for a bus today, I listened to the conversation of two women who were waiting also; they were exchanging symptoms. Such tales of nervous breakdown, bad dreams, uncontrollable crying, pains in the legs, bladder weakness and general debility I have never heard: although they stood side by side they shouted as though they were conversing in a hurricane, and as their symptoms grew worse and worse, their voices grew louder and shriller. They talked so loudly that I had no need of my formidable powers of eavesdropping. To my unskilled eye they looked healthy, though unwholesome and glum.… Most people like to be ill, and ask nothing more than a chance to rehearse their ailments. In some dark corner of their minds (I use the word loosely) there lurks the notion that if they ever admit that they feel quite well the gods will at once punish them with some direful malady.
Rain all day. What can a man do on a rainy day which is also his half-holiday? I am never at a loss for an answer to that question. Immediately after lunch, I went to bed, and bade farewell to the world for a few hours. The telephone rang. “It can’t be anyone of any consequence,” I thought: “every sane man is in bed this afternoon.” After a while the ringing ceased.… Later there was a knock at the door. “Nobody is up to any good this afternoon,” I said to myself; “that is doubtless someone wanting to sell me a ticket on a sanctified raffle, or a dozen repulsive Christmas cards, or a copy of the Christmas War Whoop, or a pillow stuffed with pine needles.—A pox upon them.” The knocker went away.… “If everybody spent one half-day in bed,” I reflected, “there would be no need of a United Nations Organization; world peace would come as a matter of course, the divorce rate would be cut in two, and even grim-visaged labour leaders would become creatures of light and spirit.” At this point Oblivion claimed me.
Was looking through a book today which had a good deal to say about prayer as a mental exercise. Prayer, it said, was not a formal thing, and could be indulged in anywhere; pray on the bus, while eating your dinner, or while taking a bath, it said; it was particularly scornful of the notion that prayer should be done on the knees; much better to say one’s prayers lying in bed.… Now this may be all right as mental exercise, but it entirely neglects the function of prayer as physical exercise. Most people, if they don’t kneel to pray, never kneel at all, and kneeling is good for you. The Moslems understand the value of prayer as exercise, and several times a day they prostrate themselves with their heads toward Mecca; I once knew a Moslem who said that this kept the most sedentary of his sect in good physical trim. The Chinese, before the revolution, made a great point of the kotow, in which you kneel gracefully and touch your forehead to the ground when in in the presence of your superiors, or in temples; this kept them admirably supple and healthy, and when the revolution put an end to the kotow the Chinese went straight to the bad. The present decline of Christianity may be traced to this habit of praying in bed, which is bad for the Christian liver.
A doctor tells me that he has observed a number of cases of poultry diseases among middle-aged women in the last few weeks; apparently the women are regular attendants at Bingo games, where they absent-mindedly consume large quantities of the corn which is used for counters; then they go home and drink several cups of tea, and the trouble begins. Sometimes he says, it is simple distension of the crop, and can be cured by purchasing a set of celluloid Bingo counters, but often the disease has gone too far for anything but severe measures. He mentioned one patient of his (whom he referred to as a White Wyandotte type) whose wattles had turned greyish and whose eyes had filmed over simply from a prolonged surfeit of Bingo corn. Another woman he mentioned (a table Plymouth Rock) showed every symptom of pip, and waddled about his office uttering pitiful squawks and occasionally falling over on her side. Still another was far gone in fowl-convulsions, and he did not think she would last for the Christmas trade.… I tried to cheer him up by pointing out the sturdy character which the Scotch built on a diet of oats; he said that he was afraid that Bingo corn would turn Canada into a nation of sick hens.
The Russians are acclaiming Robbie Burns as a genius—a sort of primeval, pre-Marx Communist. This proves only that the Russians are not reading Burns’ works complete. His dislike of aristocracy pleases them, no doubt, but his hatred of orthodoxy and bureaucracy cannot go down very well. Probably the Russian editions of his works are carefully expurgated, and such verses as The De’il’s Awa Wi’ The Exciseman are omitted. By judicious expurgation I could prepare a Shakespeare which would be an eloquent plea for Communism, and I daresay that I could prepare a cipher which would show that Shakespeare’s plays were written by Joe Stalin.… My advice to the Russians is that they should give thanks that Burns is dead, and not alive in Russia today. He would be a great bother to the commissars of literature and popular thought, before they decided to kill him.
Was introduced to an elderly lady today who offered me two fingers to shake; they were cold, damp and blue, like uncooked sausages. Her conduct in this matter did not please me greatly, for I would much have preferred to have no hand at all, rather than half a hand. It was the custom in the last century to give a few fingers—three, two, or in extreme cases, one—to people whom one regarded as social inferiors, or in some way undesirable. I only know one man who still does it, and as he does it to everybody I assume that he has a high regard for himself. The story is told that the late Arthur Balfour once offered a man one finger to shake, and the man vindictively shook it to such a degree that Balfour was unable to write for a week. Moderation in the handshake is highly desirable; neither the blacksmith grip, which crushes the hand into the semblance of hamburger, nor the chilly extension of two or three fingers. I think handshaking is overdone, in any case; why do we not compliment our friends by shaking hands with ourselves, like Chinamen, or boxers who have won a match?
Was talking to a woman today who kept giving out strange squeaks and groans, as though she had mice in her corsage; I soon diagnosed her trouble; her corsets were creaking, and whenever she moved the stresses and strains of her underpinning were audible. This reminded me of one of my earliest business ventures, when I patented and attempted to sell Marchbanks’ Patent Stay Oil, a scented unguent which was rubbed well into the corsets before putting them on. It rendered the stays supple, without weakening their repressive powers. I was unlucky in the time I chose to market my invention; it was just when rubber corsets were coming into fashion, and the heavier corset of canvas, steel, whalebone and leather thongs was falling into disuse. But there are still a few women who need my Stay Oil, and I am thinking of getting one of the big cosmetic houses to try it on the public again.
Was talking to a young woman today who informed me that she had no soul. I think she hoped to shock me by this declaration, but it was old stuff to me. The world is full of bright young things and cynical old things who think they have no souls. They appear to regard the soul as a part of their personalities upon which the Christian Church has established squatters’ rights, and they very properly resent such intrusion. As to defining the soul, they never attempt it, though I gather that they regard it as a sort of vapour floating about the heart—not unlike gas on the stomach. For a belief in the soul, and the deity of which the soul is a reflection, they substitute belief in such chimaeras as Progress, General Education, Single Tax, cold baths, colonic irrigation, free love, women’s rights, vegetarianism, the Century of the Common Man, the infallibility of radio commentators, social security, and their laughable congeners and equivalents. As a result, their souls become anæmic and debilitated, and their faces have the unlit look of vacant houses.
Quite a heavy snowfall today, and I decided that it was time to prune my hedge for the winter; there is no sense in being hasty about these things. Pruned, and got thorns in my hands; then put on a storm door. Exhausted by these labours, retired to bed and read a book which the critics insist is very funny, but which impressed me as a melancholy affair.… One of the great lacks of our time is a body of really comic literature; when I want a good laugh, I am forced to turn to the writings of Dorothy Dix.… Lay at ease, thinking how nice it would be if I were to receive a telegram saying that I had been left a million dollars, free of tax; then reflected that there is really nothing that I want, which I could buy with a million dollars. I should like to travel and see the world, but no millionaire can do so today. Decided that what I really ought to do is to give away the $37.72 which I have in the bank, and declare myself destitute; then governments and benevolent societies would vie with each other to give me money and assure me of “social security.” The day has arrived at last when the poor are going to inherit the earth.
Impossible to postpone any longer the tidying of some attic closets, so faced the task with a heavy heart. Under the debris of the years discovered an astonishing quantity of old wallpaper. I have never seen an attic yet which did not contain a lot of old wallpaper, and this makes me wonder why it is that a paperhanger doesn’t feel safe unless he has a lot more material than he really needs. I learned how to calculate the amount of paper needed for a room when I was at school: you multiply the square footage of the walls by the cubic contents of the floor and ceiling combined, and double it; you then allow half the total for openings such as windows and doors; then you allow the other half for matching the pattern; then you double the whole thing again to give a margin for error, and then you order the paper. Result: every attic contains enough extra wallpaper to print a complete Sunday edition of the New York Times.
Peeped nervously from behind my lace curtains today to see if the Offal Officer would really take away all the assorted junk which I banished from my attic yesterday; he did, and he even wore some of it as he drove down the street.… Christmas draws near, with its desperate challenge to every man to buy presents for people whose taste he does not know, or who have no discernible taste of any kind. I buy a few Christmas cards as a beginning, knowing full well that they will not be enough for my needs. The Christmas spirit has not yet taken possession of me.
In the course of a conversation about drinks this evening, a man told me that I am wrong in supposing that no joy goes into the making of Ontario wines. Vintage time in the Niagara Peninsula, he says, is a season of Bacchic revel and riot; the merry Niagara farmers and their plump, rosy-cheeked wives roll up their blue jeans and tread out the grapes in an elaborate ritual dance, singing this song the while:
Io, Father Bacchus, Io, Io!
And hurrah for the Chairman of the L.C.B.O.!
Merrily we sing
As we dance in a ring,
Banishing our troubles
With gulps of gas and bubbles!
Io, Father Bacchus, Io, Io,
And hurrah for the Chairman of the L.C.B.O.!
When night falls, they all drape exquisite garlands of flowers about the priapic statues of the Chairman of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario which stand in every vineyard, and then depart into the woods in pairs. It is very dangerous to follow them.
A year ago today I was in a motor accident—not a large one, but big enough to make me nervous of cars even yet. Without wishing to do so I still press hard on the dashboard of any car I am riding in, mumble warnings to the driver under my breath, and cringe and scrunch whenever another car comes within spitting distance. For peace of mind I should really ride with my back to the engine, and sometimes I do, but on a long drive I get tired of kneeling on the back seat, and besides it gives people in other cars a wrong impression.
To Toronto, the Ontario Babylon, on business. In a restaurant a notice asks me not to whine for more sugar or butter “to spare the staff embarrassment”; later I am in a shop where a sign urges me to show all my parcels at the desk “to avoid possible embarrassment!” People must embarrass awfully easily in Toronto.… Passed hastily through Toyland, and saw children being introduced to Santa Claus. Two or three harrassed men were busy shooing the tots away from S. C. down a ramp; they all wanted to turn around and barge back into the crowd whence they had come, disarranging the queue. This is an instinct deep in the childish heart. What does Omar Khayyam say?—
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
A Santa Claus to Toyland yearly sent—
Then turned, and vainly tried to butt my way
Outward by the same path as in I went.
Saw also a toy train big enough to pull children and a few adults. Would fain have had a ride on it, but I had no child with me, and feared that I might excite remark and even rebuke if I tried to pass myself off as a nursery-school type. The train had an excellent whistle which sent me, just as Sinatra sends the bobby-sockers. Whoo! it went, mellowly and invitingly: Whoo! Whoo!
Toronto is already in the toils of Christmas, and from several windows the hollow Ho Ho! of a mechanical Santa Claus may be heard. Children watch these creatures with hard calculating eyes, wondering if the old man is really crazy, or only pretending to be, like Hamlet.… Everywhere I went Christmas preparations were going on, but they all seemed to be of a secular nature. Gnomes, elves, giants and Disney oddities abounded, and there were a few angels, but even they had been Disneyized, and made cute, rather than spiritual. A Man from Mars would never know that Christmas was a religious festival from what he sees here. Is it the final triumph of Protestantism that it has pushed the sacred origin of Christmas so far into the background that most people are able to ignore it?
Dashed out this morning to get some more Christmas cards; I am not what could be called a greeting-card type, but at Christmas I bow to the general custom. Saw a great many which inspired me with nausea, being depictions of jolly doggies hanging up their stockings, or pretty pussies doing the same thing; several cards were in what is called “the semi-sacred manner”, showing the Holy Family with figures and postures strongly recalling the kewpies who used to appear in the advertisements of a famous tomato soup. St. Nicholas, too, appeared on many cards as a frowsy old drunk in a red ski suit, fingering his bulbous nose. In short, everything possible had been done to rob Christmas of its beauty, dignity and significance. It was not in this spirit that Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, and it is not in this spirit that I, personally, shall celebrate Christmas. I can stand almost anything except vulgar infantilism, and against that I shall war as long as there is breath in my body.
My brother Fairchild is my guest today, and as there is always something of an unusual nature going on in Fairchild’s vicinity, I kept a close watch on him, and soon surprised him in the act of shaving himself with a little electric machine which he kept in a leather case. It was, he said, a razor, and not a miniature sheep-shearer, as I thought; held close to the face, it chewed the whiskers off with tiny teeth; he passed it over the rugosities of his countenance with a great air of virtuosity, and I must admit that the little machine seemed to work. I asked him if it did not excite his face too much to have electricity applied to it? Was there no tendency for the skin to loosen and hang in folds? He denied this with more heat than was really necessary, for my question was purely academic. Later I crept off to the bathroom and cut myself with a razor I have used for years; I have a fear of new-fangled contrivances. Fairchild is the daring member of the family.
This Christmas shopping leads a man into the most alarming situations. Decided today to get a bottle of toilet water for my Great-Aunt Lettice, and sought out a shop which had a big display of unguents, balms, lotions, electuaries and the like. Asked for a bottle of scent, and a young woman with more curves than the Burma Road brought out two or three, and poured drops from them on her wrist and arm. Then to my horror she invited me to sniff them! I did so, tentatively. She rippled her muscles like a wrestler. “Young woman, have you any idea where this may lead?” I cried, but she smiled in an oblique manner and said that it was impossible to tell anything about perfume if it were not applied to flesh. At that moment my pastor passed her, and muttered something in my ear about the Temptation of St. Anthony; I blushed to such a degree that I scorched a handkerchief in my hip pocket.… At last, after what seemed ages, she sold me a bottle of something at four dollars an ounce, which I fear Aunt Lettice will have to wear in the privacy of her own chamber, for if she ventured into a drawing room with it on she would immediately become the object of embarrassing attentions, and might have to make a run for shelter. I really wanted some lavender water, but this stuff is called Très Ooomph, and is guaranteed to rouse the dead.
Addressed Christmas cards tonight. There was a time when I used to hunt for the most suitable card for everyone on my list. I chose cards covered with lambs and reindeer for children, snow-scenes for friends who were wintering in Florida, High Church cards for friends of a ritualistic tendency, Low Church cards for evangelicals, Thick Church cards for those whose religion impressed me as a bit thick, cards with coaches and jolly drunken Englishmen on them for my jolly drunken American friends, and so forth. It was a lot of work, and I gave it up long ago. Now I buy my cards in large inexpensive bundles, and send them out in whatever order they happen to come.… Like everybody else I am sending cards this year to people who sent me cards last year, but whom I forgot last year, and who will not send me cards this year. This desperate game goes on for decades, and there seems to be no way of stopping it.… On several cards I put messages such as, “Why don’t you write?” or “Am writing soon”, which is a lie. I have no intention of writing them, but in an excess of Christmas spirit I pretend that serious illness, or the press of affairs, is the only thing which keeps me from sending them a long letter every week.
Was driving with a motorist today who nearly ran down several pedestrians who persisted in crossing streets against the traffic lights; he thought they did it on purpose, and I really think they were trying to commit suicide; some had a hopeless O-God-let-me-die look on their faces, while others wore the fixed grin of idiocy. It seems to me that when people dearly want to die, motorists should be encouraged to assist them.… This evening read in Nellie McClung’s autobiography that a properly licensed dog has the same right to use the street as a citizen. I am glad that citizens do not exercise their rights as freely as dogs do, however.… Not long ago a clergyman said to me, apropos a scruffy dog he had with him, “Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if there were nothing but dogs? No wars, no racial discrimination, all friends.” Was so stunned by this idea that I said “Yes, indeed” before I knew what I was about. Hurried home and washed my mouth out with soap.
To the government liquor store today, to lay in a Christmas stock. Wartime shortages turn the celebration of Christmas into a matter of makeshifts. Still no Chinese Rice Wine, which I like to burn on the top of my Christmas pudding, in the real old English style; will have to do the best I can with brandy, but it will not be the same as Fow Mu Chung Guk. Chinese Rice Wine, I understand, is made by stewing a whole duck in a large pot of rice and water; then the duck is thrown away, and lichees are added to the mixture, which is left on the back of the stove until it blackens, and begins to emit low sneering noises and greenish gas. It is then bottled (in old birds’ nests) and buried in a graveyard for a few years until it is ready for export. The vintage years are those in which the ducks are most torpid. There is an old Chinese vintner’s proverb which is roughly translated as:
Don’t use a giddy duck
To make Fow Mu Chung Guk.
I can tell at a single sip whether the duck used in a bottle of this delicious beverage has been sufficiently dormant.
My Chinese laundryman, hearing that I have been unable to get any Rice Wine to burn on my Christmas pudding, turned up in my office today with a flagon of the precious distillment. “O brilliant-hued chrysanthemum of Eastern Ontario,” he said, kotowing deeply, “this utterly contemptible one entreats you to accept his laughably inadequate tribute to your sublime genius; drink, O Marchbanks, and gladden the heart of your wash-worm.” I uncorked the bottle, and the room was filled with the heady bouquet of dragon’s bones. “This ineffectual trifler with the written word is choked by the copiousness of his thanks, O magical rehabilitator of world-weary underpants,” I replied, bowing graciously and pouring out a couple of glasses of the liquor; we drank, ceremoniously, and exchanged a few more polite observations. Before he left I reached into the bottom of my desk, and presented him with a pound of opium which I happened to have; he bit off a quid and chewed it with evident satisfaction as he put on three sweaters, two suits of pyjamas, a buffalo robe and a rain-cape, before leaving. It was what we Sinologues call “A three-coat cold day.”
A few friends in this evening. Wanted to give them mint julep, though this is the wrong season for mint. But the scientific knowledge of a Marchbanks laughs at such trifling difficulties. Prepared the other ingredients, then brought down a bottle of Oil of Peppermint, which I sometimes take for indigestion: on the label it said “Adult dose: 5 to 30 drops”, so I put 30 drops in each glass, never having been one to skimp on hospitality.… Guests looked rather strange, and showed a tendency to suck in air through their teeth. One, standing by the fire, belched suddenly with such force that his toupée fell into the grate and was badly scorched; his wife remarked sourly that at least it helped to kill the smell of humbugs.… I drank my julep to the dregs, just to show them that it could be done. The only trouble with me is, I’m ahead of my time.
A small girl of my acquaintance sang me a Christmas carol which she had learned in school. It was the familiar one which begins:
Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen—
and I expressed my appreciation of her performance warmly. This was a mistake on my part, for she began to cross-examine me about the words. Why was Stephen feasting outside in the snow? If Stephen had enough food for a feast why didn’t he give some of it to the poor man who was gathering winter fuel, instead of leaving it all to King Wenceslas? I tried to explain that a Feast did not really mean a feast, and that Stephen was not really there, but I saw disbelief and scorn rising in her eyes. No wonder children think that all adults are crazy.
Woke this morning with a sense of sick shock, realizing that Christmas is near at hand and I have not done any shopping. Worried about this until at last I rushed out and made a tour of the shops, and was depressed to find how much stuff there was for sale which I would not give to a relative, let alone a friend. Decided finally that the hardware merchants had the nicest things, and bought an adze for my little nephew Gobemouche, a spokeshave for my brother Fairchild, a maul for my brother Hickathrift, and three files, a crow, two jemmies, four lock-picks and a dozen hickory axe-helves for other members of the Marchbanks tribe, as well as gift bottles of TNT for their wives. I toyed with the idea of giving them all panes of glass in handy sizes, but recalled the tendency of Christmas family gatherings to get out of hand, and broken glass can be nasty stuff, when one is doing Sir Roger de Coverley in one’s bare feet. Better be on the safe side, and stick to edged tools.
Alack the day! Christmas gifts are not what they were. Was looking through the diary of my uncle, the Rt. Rev. Hengist Marchbanks (who lived to be 96 and was Bishop of Baffinland when he died) and discovered that in December, 1845, when he was a lad of thirteen, he made his own presents. This is what he says: “Made dear Mama a trunk today, for I know that she wants one sorely. Cut down a sturdy oak this morning, and hollowed out the body of it with my adze; hewed the solid block into a charming lady’s travelling trunk. Slew and skinned a Shorthorn bull, which showed symptoms of mumps, and stretched the skin tightly over the wooden casing; it makes a truly handsome covering. Tomorrow I shall line the case with clean copies of The Christian Guardian, and my surprise for Mama will be complete. Am giving Papa the usual jug of corn whisky, which I drained from the bottom of the silo this evening. Tested it to make sure it was good, and fell into a profound swoon. Popped a few prunes into the jug, to give the liquor body.” Those were the days of really thoughtful, personal gifts.
Met a small boy today—a sinister child with a stern jaw and a brooding hot eye—who had just mailed his letter to Santa Claus. “I told him what my minimum demands were,” he said, “and I’m giving him till the 25th to come across—or else—” I blinked, and asked him to explain. He continued: “Claus has been in the driver’s seat too long; everybody has always lickspittled to him and made him think he’s a big-shot; well, the time has come for Organization; he thinks we can’t get along without him, but we’ll show him that he can’t get along without us; he expects a year’s good conduct for a few gew-gaws at Christmas; from now on there’ll have to be a Christmas every month, and an eight-hour day for good conduct, with all statutory holidays and two weeks vacation in the summer; Claus has been exploiting us.” He marched off, and as he turned to give me a knowing leer he inadvertently fell down an open manhole. I watched it for a few minutes, but he did not reappear. Walked home slowly, thinking about Fate.
I see that a rich fellow in the U.S.A. has bought a fine tapestry as a Christmas present for his wife. I like tapestries, and have thought of weaving a few myself, in the grand manner, but with modern subjects. For instance, Dr. Brock Chisholm, with his foot on the recumbent body of Santa Claus, holding aloft a volume of The American Journal of Psychiatry, from which streams forth a golden light, would make a very pretty tapestry, suitable for a dentist’s waiting room. Or a large piece depicting the inventor of the fountain pen meeting the inventor of the typewriter, and each of them scowling horribly at the other, would be suitable for a tycoon’s office, as would also a depiction of the inventor of the rubber hotwater bottle, shielding himself from the onslaught of the inventor of the electric pad, while plunging a dagger into the breast of the inventor of the china hotwater bottle (or “stone pig”). Or how would it be if I did a really immense tapestry, showing industrialists and union leaders dancing on the prone form of a Consumer, while in the background Inflation snatched them up to the skies, by the hair? It could be hung in the Union Station at Toronto, to take away that bare look it has.
A man asked me today if I had heard of the theory that the North American Indians are of partial Welsh descent, stemming from a pre-Leif-Erickson Cymric explorer? I have gone farther; I think I have proved the theory to be correct. About two years ago I chanced to meet an Indian in a woodland walk, and I facetiously addressed him thus:
MARCHBANKS: “Dyna gapel y Bedyddwyr, onid e?” (Translation: “Look you, are you not the son of Mrs. Jones the Gas?”)
INDIAN: “Nage, nage; dyna gapel y Methodistiad Calfinaidd.” (Translation: “Indeed to goodness no! I am the love-child of Rev. Hopkin Hopkins.”)
MARCHBANKS: “Ple mae’r Ficerdy?” (Translation: “Pless my soul, whateffer! do you understand me?”)
INDIAN: “Dyna fe; dyna’r Ficer hefyd.” (Translation: “Yes indeed, whateffer.”)
MARCHBANKS: “Dyna deulu’r gof yn cerdded gyda mama modryba chwaer y crydd.” (Translation: “Then let us sit down here and refresh ourselves with elegant conversation.”)
INDIAN: (Speaking Indian for a change) “Golliwogagog, hoganogagog egganoggagog.” (Translation: “I am all agog.”)
In the course of the conversation the Indian told me that his ancestors came to North America, inspired by the example of a Welshman named, I think, Jonel Oowis, who was reverenced as a god by the simple North Americans.
Visited a friend this evening who had procured a bottle of a very special tonic called Noilly Prat; in the interest of temperance, we experimented to see how much of the tonic it was necessary to put with a jigger of gin in order to kill the horrid taste. After several tries we got the measurements exactly right.… Driving home, passed through a small town where Saturday Night was in full swing. Farmers shouted conversation from buggy to buggy; their wives stood in the general store, gossiping and criticizing the goods; girls walked up and down the street, arm in arm, pretending not to notice the young men who leaned on door-posts, haw-hawing and passing remarks. It was all rather idyllic and rural, and reminded me of my far-off youth in Skunk’s Misery, before I was tarnished by the fetid breath of city life. I suppose everybody has these softheaded spells, when they think it would be fun to live in a small town. They pass quickly, of course.
A man was lecturing me on the benefits of deep breathing this evening. “Fresh air cleanses the bloodstream and keeps the mind alert,” he said, sucking in deep draughts of cigar smoke which undoubtedly polluted his bloodstream and fogged his brain. “When you’ve got pneumonia—gasping for breath—you pay a pretty penny for oxygen out of a tank; but all day, every day, the precious stuff is everywhere around you, begging to be breathed, and do you breathe it?” He puffed in my face, ferociously. “No, you don’t. You’re a shallow breather, a thorax-man, like millions of others. Well, don’t say I didn’t tell you.” I promised that I would never say he didn’t tell me, and felt rather guilty about the whole matter. Walking home, I breathed as deeply as I could for several blocks. It made me dizzy. I am a poor creature unworthy of the fresh air which Providence has lavished upon me.
My brother Fairchild has been having rather a difficult time with magic. Hoping to ingratiate himself with his children, he bought them some magic tricks, with which he thought that they might mystify their little friends. Having made this false step, he was soon involved in the appalling task of teaching the children to perform the tricks. Teaching a child to do even the simplest sleight-of-hand is like teaching a hippopotamus to embroider pillow-slips. The result of the whole mad scheme was tears, bad temper, and frustration for Fairchild.… I sympathize with him. Once, in the bleak past, I cherished a desire to be a magician; I would have been quite content if I could have achieved the modest skill of, say, Thurston or Blackstone. I laboured before a mirror with coins, cards, eggs, handkerchiefs and billiard balls for weeks, my arms aching, until one bitter day when I came to my senses and admitted that nothing short of psycho-analysis and blood transfusions could make a conjuror of me. For the same reasons that I cannot carpenter shelves, fix leaky taps or tend a furnace, I was unable to pluck fifty quarters out of the air or pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Passed a bank this evening which was being re-modelled. Workmen were taking down the iron cages in which the tellers used to be kept. If anything marks the decline of belief in private property, it is this. Not so long ago, putting a teller into his cage was a solemn ceremony; the manager locked him in, and there he stayed until the manager let him out; while he was in the cage he spoke in a hushed voice, like a man who had swallowed a bomb, and he handled money with a kind of religious awe. In some English banks he did not even touch the money: he pushed it around with a brass scoop. Whenever he was handed a cheque, he held it up to the light, crackled it at his left ear, and sniffed at it before he cashed it. And when he was let out of the cage he had to strip before the manager, and prove that he had not secreted any doubloons about his person. But the modern teller is a carefree soul, able to run all over the bank if he likes, and ready to hobnob with Tom, Dick and Harry. It is all part of the breakdown of the monetary system.
Two different manifestations of the same attitude toward women forced themselves on my notice this afternoon. On the street I passed a young couple just as the boy wrenched the girl toward him by the shoulder. “Aw, yuh little nincompoop, yuh!” he said, as he gave her a shake; she replied with a spirited, but uncultured, reflection on his legitimacy. Five minutes later I opened a magazine at a luridly coloured advertisement for perfume. In it another young man, in evening dress, was gazing at the shoulder of his female companion with glowing eyes, like a vegetarian about to bite into an onion; his hands hovered in the air behind her, as though he might suddenly snatch her, just as the boy in the street had snatched. The caption of the picture was “Potent Essence of Desire to Touch”.… I shall never understand life, but I suppose the lesson of this is that if young men do not grab you and call you a little nincompoop, you need a perfume which will force them to do so. The girl in the advertisement was cool, exquisite and beautiful; the girl in the street was tousled, and had been barking her shins on rocking-chairs for weeks, I should judge. But both of them, apparently, were able to rouse men to wild flights of shoulder-madness.
Heard a lady greeting her physician this afternoon.… “Well, doctor,” she said, breezily, “I hope you’ve been keeping well?” He gulped a couple of times and staggered a little, but his presence of mind did not desert him, for he immediately turned the conversation to a less ticklish subject. Of course it is terribly bad form to ask a doctor how he feels; it is almost the same thing as giving him a dig with a surgical scalpel, or telling him that he would not puff so much if he got more exercise. Doctors like to give the impression that they have no fluctuations of health, and are always in the absolute pink of condition. Nevertheless, in spite of the bad manners it would show, I should love to put a doctor on the spot about his health. “Let me see your tongue,” I should like to say; “Oh, dear me, doctor, how did you ever let your tongue get in that frightful condition? Have you been licking the carpet with it? How’s the pulse? Good heavens, it feels like a boogie-woogie bass! Take off all your clothes and lie down on this cold leather couch while I hit you all over with this little hammer. Aha! makes you jump, does it? That’s bad! Let me tickle the soles of your feet. Don’t giggle! This is serious! You’re on the skids, doc; better give up eating, drinking, smoking and anything else you happen to like.” … But this is idle daydreaming.
Did some more odds and ends of Christmas shopping today. Bought fifteen dozen handkerchiefs for female relatives. I don’t know what women do with their handkerchiefs; every year I give away a car-load of them, but I have never known a woman who had a handkerchief on her person at any time when she needed one. Older women always keep their handkerchiefs upstairs so that they can send their younger relatives after them. Young women never have handkerchiefs, and when they cry (which they do very frequently during courtship, and usually for no good reason) they always borrow a handkerchief from the man in the case. When they marry, they appoint their husbands Handkerchief Bearer in Chief for the rest of his life. Sometimes they carry boxes of paper handkerchiefs, when they have colds, but never the cloth variety. And why are women’s handkerchiefs so small? What a woman really needs is a handkerchief as big as a table-cloth, pinned to her bosom with a blanket-pin.
The pest who was nagging me last week about deep-breathing was at me this evening on the subject of water-drinking. “How much water do you drink a day?” he asked, finishing a glass of my beer. “About half a paper cupful,” I replied, knowing that it was not a satisfactory answer. He made a great show of disgust. “Four gallons a day is the minimum—the bare minimum,” he said, when he could speak. “That would be about two pails,” I said mildly; “I don’t think I could drink that much in a day—not if I expected to do anything else, that is.” “It would flush your system,” he persisted; “you’re probably a mass of crystallization inside. Try it tomorrow”.… Later he phoned me. “By the way,” he said, trying to be casual, “I made a slight mistake. Should have said four quarts—not four gallons.” Poor boob! he really means four pints, which is too much, anyway. He is reading a health book, and giving all his acquaintances the benefit. It is one of the mistakes of democracy that it teaches such people to read.
Rummaging in some of my personal debris today I found two Christmas cards which I bought in 1939 and forgot to send out. They will be very handy this year if I can find envelopes to fit them.… I was really searching for pen nibs, of which I have a large but unsatisfactory store. In these days when people write with ballbearings and solid ink, and at the bottom of the lake while swimming, and otherwise miraculously, I am an embittered reactionary scraping away with a wooden pen which I dip after every eighth word. I do this because I like a particular sort of flexible nib which cannot be obtained in any fountain pen that I have ever owned or tried. But alas! such nibs are now very hard to find, and in despair I buy every nib I see, hoping to find a substitute for my unobtainable favourites. Consequently I have enough nibs to open a stationery store, none of which really pleases me. I know that I am at anchor in the stream of progress, but I don’t care. It has pleased God to make me a dipper man, and who am I to struggle against the Divine Will? (This is the same line of argument which sustained my late uncle, the Rt. Rev. Hengist Marchbanks, Bishop of Baffinland, in his lifelong struggle against the heathen abomination of blotting-paper; he always sprinkled sand on what he had written, to dry it).
I get the strangest stuff in the mail. A letter turned up this morning which began “Dear God—”, but what followed was so confused that I could not make out whether this was a cry from the writer’s heart, or a somewhat elaborate compliment to myself. The same post brought an invitation from the Book-of-the-Month Club, asking me to bestow the benediction of my presence upon its membership. The pamphlet by which this invitation was conveyed was beautifully printed and ornamented with finely reproduced illustrations from Alice In Wonderland. The richness of the printing, however, was not balanced by the literary quality of the matter printed, which was, for a book club, rather poorly expressed. This added to my conviction that Americans are especially susceptible to things which appeal to their eyes, like pictures, rather than things which appeal to their ears, like pieces of prose. In the same way they like fruit which looks delicious, rather than less impressive fruit which really tastes delicious. No book clubs for me today thank you.
Somehow or other the rumour has spread among some children I know that I am a conjuror and they are always teasing me to do magic. My skill is not great, but their standards are very low, and usually I manage to satisfy them. This afternoon a little girl demanded that I should do something miraculous, so I swallowed a fork, and, after feigning indigestion very laughably, I produced it from the sole of my boot. She was impressed, but not completely satisfied. “There’s no blood on it,” said she.… Children have disgustingly literal minds, and hearts of stone.
Thought a good deal today about games for a Christmas party. There are plenty of dull games, of course, in which one is given a piece of paper and put off in a corner to write the names of all the rivers one can think of beginning with “G”, and there are embarrassing games in which one is tied back to back with a total stranger of the opposite sex and instructed to get free without breaking the strings. But between boredom and ribald lunacy there are some excellent games; the kind I particularly like are those in which one runs all over the house, hiding in the bathtubs and the coalpile, and jumping at people in the dark; the nearer a game approximates to the plot of a Boris Karloff film, the better I like it. There are also games in which the whole company passes judgment on the intelligence, charm and youth of each player in turn; the delight of such amusements is the narrow path they tread between good humour and malignance; many a beautiful friendship has been ruptured by such shenanigans.
At last it seems that I have a Christmas gift for everybody who has a right to expect one from me, and for a few who have none. I see no signs whatever that anyone has a gift for me, but I am used to that; I have always found it more pleasant to give than to receive. (Advt.).… A man was complaining to me today about the agonies he goes through with Athlete’s Foot; apparently his wife and his daughter suffer from this ailment also. He seemed to think that there was something rather distinguished about having Athlete’s Foot as badly as he had it; he ranked it with such noble maladies as Coronary Thrombosis and Paralysis Agitans. I was not impressed. At one time in my life I mixed a good deal with shepherds and sheep-breeders, and a lot of their sheep suffered from Athlete’s Foot, only they called it foot-rot, pronounced “fut-rot.” The sheep got it by standing around in damp grass, staring at one another. Futrot was treated with a nasty substance called Stockholm Tar; if it brought no relief, the sheep was knocked over the head with a club. I think I shall suggest to my friend that he and his wife and daughter try Stockholm Tar for a few weeks, and if they do not improve, the next step is obvious.
Frantic wrapping of parcels. Through some idiosyncracy of character, I always seem to give people things which are hard to wrap. The adze for my nephew Gobemouche, for instance, keeps bursting through the gold paper which I bought to wrap it, paying an exorbitant fifteen cents a sheet. And Fairchild’s spokeshave keeps spokeshaving its way through thickness after thickness of tissue; it was a mistake to take it out of the burlap in which it came. I refuse to put my gifts under the Christmas tree unwrapped, for part of the pleasure of Christmas is watching the faces of the recipients of one’s gifts as they tear off the concealing folds. Sometimes the objects of my benevolence have been moved to tears; often they are so thunderstruck that they cannot speak. The time I gave my Aunt Lettice the turtle nicely wrapped and in a jeweller’s box, she fainted dead away; if I had just hung the turtle on the tree unwrapped it wouldn’t have been the same thing at all.
Christmas Eve, and a great deal of scurrying hither and yon, and lending one’s forefinger to people who want to use it in tying knots. Having wrapped my gifts in the attic, I have to carry them down to the foot of the Christmas tree. As I did all my Christmas shopping in a hardware store this is no easy task, and a couple of adzes and some axe-helves slipped out of my arms and tumbled down the stairs with deafening crashes at every step: tried to cover the noise by singing Silent Night, Holy Night lustily.… Later joined my relatives for an impromptu Christmas concert, and was moved to tears when my little nephew Gobemouche recited ’Twas Christmas Eve in The Workhouse; later he offered to recite a piece called Eskimo Nell, but was not allowed to do so for some reason which was not made clear to me.… When the others had gone to bed, crept down to the Christmas tree and read all the tags on the parcels, by the light of a candle-end: very few for me. Heard a thumping in the fireplace and thought for a wild moment that it was Santa Claus, but it was my brother Fairchild, covered with soot; he too had been peeping and had taken refuge up the chimney when he heard me coming. We retired to the kitchen, and ate pieces of cold plum pudding.
Christmas Day: hurry-scurry, hamper-scamper, tohu-bohu and brouhaha. The happy excited voices of children sounding like the laughter of angels at 8 a.m. and sounding rather more like the squeaking of slate pencils or the filing of a tin can at 5 p. m. Conversations conducted in yells, and the incessant rustling of tissue paper. Everyone lays claim to a Dickensian appetite, but shows signs of latter-day squeamishness when faced with a third helping of plum pudding. In some cases, torpor and somnolence have their way; in others, excitement rises to the point of acute Anxiety Neurosis. But it is all very happy, with occasional surface irritations.… Christmas is best for children, and for those who are growing old; in middle life one’s capacity for enjoyment is under the constraint of a thousand responsibilities.
Boxing Day. There is a tradition that one will have a happy month in the coming year for every mince pie one eats on this day. In deference to tradition I did what I could, but choked on the first bite of October, and had to lie down with a cold cloth on my brow for some time afterward.… While in this melancholy condition reflected that the joy of Christmas has been rather heavily overlaid by the necessity to cope with immense meals, spend a lot of money giving people things they don’t really want, and subdue children who have been driven to the uttermost pitch of neurasthenia by the excitement and over-indulgence of it all. Perhaps this was merely the result of the gastro-intestinal megrim from which I was recovering.
Was reading the funnies today (just to keep in touch with what the common people are thinking) and was struck by the change which has taken place in what may be called the dynamics of humour. When I first began to read the funnies this subject was simple; the great professor of humorous dynamics was Bud Fisher, the creator of Mutt and Jeff. When Mutt hit Jeff with a spittoon, the noise which came out of Jeff’s head was “Pow”, which was clearly printed at the appropriate spot; if Mutt threw Jeff out of a window, the trajectory of his flight was labelled “Zowie.” Jiggs never made these noises; nothing ever came out of his head except stars and comets. But nowadays this dynamic field is vastly expanded. When a boxer is given a knockout blow his chin emits the word “BLAM” in big letters; when a man is kicked by a horse or a mule his afflicted part says “Zok!” Two of the dynamic sounds greatly used in Barney Google, have vanished from my ken; they were “Plop” (for falling on the floor) and “Wham” for being struck with a broom. There’s no doubt about it, science is on the march in every sphere.
This morning was compelled to listen to a long distance call. The telephone company was, as usual, quick and polite in getting my office, but then I became involved in a sparring match with the caller’s secretary, who was determined not to let me speak to him until his full impressiveness and executive splendour had been paraded before me. This involved many repetitions of “Are you ready to speak to Mr. Squealy?” “Just a moment please,” “Are you ready at your end, Mr. Marchbanks?” “Hold the line, please, Mr. Squealy isn’t quite ready yet.” This went on for quite a time and was punctuated with sounds like “Bzzzzt” which I think the secretary caused by blowing a raspberry into the phone. All this nonsense begot a somewhat morose attitude in my mind, and when at last Mr. Squealy burst upon me in all his glory, I was surly with him. Secretaries who seek to build up their bosses by such means merely make their Mr. Squealies detested by all honest men.
A bus driver was telling me today about how he had been robbed of his underwear and a package of pork chops while driving his bus. Unfortunately a traffic snarl cut him off in the middle of the story, and I did not find out whether he was wearing the underwear at the time or whether it was in the parcel. I have seen a conjuror take off his shirt without removing his coat, and I suppose a clever thief might strip a man in the same way. I brooded on this problem for some time, and was reminded of my cousin Manfred Marchbanks, the organist who once shocked the daylights out of a lady pupil by telling her that he was going to show her how to change her combinations without taking her feet off the pedals.… Later was in a hardware store when a man knocked over several dollars worth of window glass; he showed the most admirable self-possession, though I thought he breathed rather more powerfully through his nose than a man would do who was utterly unmoved. When I do something like that I shriek and moan like one of the tragedians with the Habimah Players, and have to have feathers burned under my nose before I am fit for anything.
I see by the papers that Paramount is going to make a film called Coming Through The Rye in which the chief part of Bobby Burns will be played by Bing Crosby. It is to be “a semi-biographical story”, I observe. I can just imagine it. Young Bing Burns is the child of poor but talkative parents who have terrific Scots accents. As Bing grows to manhood (or what passes for it in the movies) he discovers that he has The Gift Of Song. One day, when he is coming through the rye, he meets a body, and thinks that it is a sheep, and nonchalantly kicks it out of the way; it proves to be Highland Mary (Linda Darnell) who has a terrific Brooklyn accent, and who has disguised herself as a sheep in order to keep warm. Bing tells her that his Love is Like A Red, Red Rose. But there is an impediment; she is loved also by a birkie ca’d a lord, wha struts and stares, and a’ that; though thousands tremble at his word he’s but a coof for a’ that. Bing rouses the tenantry against him, and personally brains him with an oat-cake. George Washington, who happens to be visiting Scotland, recognizes that Bing Burns is a true democrat and invites him to America. Bing and Linda marry, and get tight on Scotch whisky; they are na’ fu’, they’re nay tha’ fu’, they’ve but a drappie in their ee’. They are last seen on a boat bound for America, and Bing is singing a special number composed by Eli Feitelbaum, called The Star-Spangled Briar-Bush.
The last day of the year, and I passed part of the evening in melancholy reflection upon the waste of time which has always been my greatest sin. If only I could drive myself to do physical jerks for an hour a day, read improving books for an hour a day, practise on the piano for an hour a day, philosophize and ponder on life for an hour a day, eat less, drink less, sleep less, work harder, eat wholemeal bread, drink eight gallons of water a day, stop smoking, and overcome my ribald disdain for nice simple people who, whatever their short-comings, Mean Well—if only I could do all these things, what a wonderful fellow I should be! This line of thought made me so discontented with myself that I had not the heart to toast the New Year, and midnight found me crouching by a dying fire, glumly eating a bowl of breakfast food and wondering if suicide might not be best for me and for my fellow-men. Roused myself at last to make a final entry in this diary, which I leave with something of the feeling experienced by Gibbon when he completed the Decline and Fall.… To the reader who has read thus far, Adieu.