• OF SCIENTIFIC REVELATIONS •
I SEE THAT Professor Kinsey has published the first volume of his study of sexual behaviour in the human male.1 This emboldens me to publish a study of a somewhat similar subject on which I have long been engaged, to wit: how many men wear only the tops or bottoms of their pyjamas? Of course, speaking to you on a social occasion like this I cannot be completely frank; children, or young girls tottering upon the threshold of womanhood might accidentally overhear me and be brutally awakened to an aspect of life hitherto undreamed of by them. Therefore I shall only say that my investigations reveal that 47.3 per cent of adult males wear only the t-ps of their p-j-m-s, and 32.9 per cent (usually thin, muscular men) wear only the b-tt-ms thereof. And in summer 83 per cent of adult males (excluding only university professors, clergymen, chartered accountants and people who habitually sleep in their underwear) wear no p-j-m-s at all; they describe this custom by a revolting expression, to wit, “Sl–ping r-w.” I hesitate to tell you this, but science knows no bounds, and the spotlessness of my own private life is well attested.
The lady on my left, to whom I whispered my comment on the Kinsey Report, and on my own researches regarding the wearing of the t-ps and b-tt-ms of p-j-m-s replied to me thus: “A curious use of the p-j-m- is illustrated by a married couple of my acquaintance; Mrs. A. wears the p-j-m- t-p and Mr. A. wears the b-tt-m and thus they make one pair do. Do you think that this sort of thing is widely prevalent in Ontario?” Frankly, my investigations lead me to believe that anything can happen behind the pressed brick, lace curtains, and phoney leaded glass of an Ontario home.
• OF TWANGLING INSTRUMENTS •
EVERY NOW AND THEN I am seized with the notion that my life would be transformed if I had a new hobby, and I passed an hour this morning considering the possible consequences of my learning to play the guitar. Nobody plays it much nowadays except the radio cowboys, and they use it only to accompany themselves while they sing miserable songs about their mothers’ graves or their own imminent (but too long deferred) deaths. The guitar has slipped sadly in the social scale. During the nineteenth century it was a favourite instrument of the nobility and gentry, and no picnic was complete without at least one girl who could play the thing. Of course, that was the Spanish guitar, an instrument of some artistic respectability. The present guitar is likely to be the Hawaiian model. The Spanish plunks, the Hawaiian yowls. Tunes can be played on the Spanish guitar if you have long, strong fingers and immense concentration; the Hawaiian guitar will yield nothing but shuddering wails. The mandolin (which did not so much plunk as plink) has also fallen into disrepute, though Mozart and Schubert thought well of it.
• OF THE MOCKERY OF ANIMALS •
I WENT TO THE movies last night and saw a short about wild life which made me angry, for it made fools of a lot of handsome wild creatures. A moose appeared, whom the commentator felt impelled to call “Elmer the Moose”; the moose’s mate was called “his mooing momma.” A fawn was referred to throughout this tiresome piece as “Junior,” and when the fawn was being suckled by its dam there was a lot of facetiousness about cafeterias. A fine owl was seen blinking in the sun, and the commentator shouted wittily: “Hey, I gotta get my sleep!” The whole thing was on the lowest level of taste and vulgarity, and the commentator had a voice which would have seemed needlessly uncultivated in a baseball umpire. God knows I have little interest in animals, but I do not like to see them insulted. I used to feel the same thing in the days when I was a frequent visitor at the London Zoo; in the lion house there were always ninnies who mocked the captive lions. I often wished that the bars would turn to butter, and that the great, noble beasts would practise their particular form of wit upon the little, ignoble men.
• OF THE LONELINESS OF WISDOM •
I TALKED THIS AFTERNOON to a university professor who told me that he recently had the job of overseeing a large group of students who were writing an examination in psychology; at least half of these young sophisticates, he said, had lucky pennies, or rabbits’ feet, or ju-ju dolls, or other good luck charms on their desks as they wrote. This strengthens my belief that education does not really alter character, but merely intensifies it, making foolish people more foolish, superstitious people more superstitious, and of course wise people wiser. But the wise are few and lonely.
• OF INORDINATE SMOKERS •
IT IS A CURIOUS fact that some people can create a great deal more stench, fog, dirt and annoyance with a single cigarette than most people can make with a bonfire. The common cigarette smoker is not much of a nuisance; he keeps most of his smoke to himself, and what he spreads about is not too offensive. But there are fellows who blow out cubic feet of rank gas after a single inhalation, infecting the air around them for several yards. They also cough, rackingly and nauseatingly, until you wonder if they are getting ready to throw up. They blow ashes over everything, and when they have done with a cigarette they allow the butt to smoulder. What is more, their smoke has not the ordinary smoky smell; it is sour and bitter, and their clothes smell like ash-heaps. I had to do some work today in a room with one of these people, and for a time I watched him fascinated: he sucked in a third of his fag at one gasp, gulped, looked sick, and then blew out a great greenish cloud; when this had dispersed he was racked with coughing; then the whole dirty, noisy business was repeated. What could such a man not do with a big pipe? He would be a secret weapon in himself.
• OF A TAXING POSITION •
I MET A MAN TODAY who exhibited such unusual social grace and savoir faire that I was immediately curious about him; I learned that he was the chief Inspector of Income Tax for a large district. This explained everything. Such a man would be forced to develop a winning manner in order to overcome the social handicap imposed by his position. In the same way an habitual strangler of children, or a man who was known to have his pockets full of rattlesnakes, would have to develop remarkable ease and brilliance if he hoped to have any social life whatever. In his office, too, he would constantly have to meet trying situations, such as enraged taxpayers armed with fire-axes, hysterical taxpayers who wanted to tear off their clothes in the Doukhobor manner, or ice-cold taxpayers with soft voices and a mad light in the eyes, who obviously had revolvers in their overcoat pockets. To charm and soothe such visitors, while at the same time dipping deep into their jeans, would demand an unusually polished address.
• OF SONG •
I MET A FELLOW TODAY who is very fussy about the spoken word, and he was groaning that the radio provides little for persons of his kidney, although it serves those of musical taste very well. He was particularly critical of the people who speak on the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and became quite wild because Milton Cross2 pronounces “Mignon” as though it were “minion” and pronounces “Wilhelm” with an English instead of a German “W.” He moaned also about the poor speech of the Opera singers who speak in the intervals, and who call a tune a “toon” and in other ways assault the sensitive ear. As a matter of fact I myself have often marvelled at the ability of many singers to divorce speech from song, though it seems plain enough that song is a kind of glorified speech. But then, my views on singing are unusual and unpopular, for I am always amazed by people who announce that they cannot sing at all; it seems to me that anybody who can speak can sing, though he may not sing very well. There are even children who say that they cannot sing, though for a child it should be as easy to sing as to spit. How did this cleavage between speech and song arise, I wonder? … You are going to sing after dinner? And what sort of singer are you, madam? A real singer, or a musical gargler?
• CHILDREN AND POLITICIANS EQUATED •
I WATCHED A LARGE GROUP of children skating this afternoon, and was impressed once again by the shameless boastfulness of the young. One little girl kept falling down on her behind, and each time she did so she would shout, “I did that on purpose!” to the spectators; I reflected that if her thinking becomes fixed in this channel the only career open to her will be politics, for her technique is precisely that of some of our most eminent statesmen, who never execute a pratfall without declaring that they had some subtle design in doing so.
SOME OF THE MEN here were discussing the late Victor Emmanuel of Italy before dinner, and they all agreed that he was a weakling and a peewee, and should have “stood up” to Mussolini and told him “where he got off.” I would not dream of contradicting these experts, deeply versed in statecraft and familiar with court procedure, but I wondered what would happen to H.M. George VI if he were to say: “No, I refuse to appoint Sir Stafford Cripps3 as one of my ministers; he has repeatedly advocated the abolition of the Throne upon which I sit, and I detect seeds of tyranny and oppressiveness in him which I refuse to encourage.” The King would, I am sure, be invited to abdicate, just as his brother was when he revealed a mind of his own. Not kings, but politicians, are the rulers in our day, and no king dares thwart a politician. Indeed, I can imagine no worse fate today than to be a king, and also a man of independent, humane and agile intellect. When he encouraged Mussolini poor Victor Emmanuel was encouraging The People’s Choice, and the voice of the people, as we all know, is the voice of God. The Aristocratic Principle is a puny babe; the Demagogic Principle rages unchecked.
• OUT OF THE MOUTHS … •
A LITTLE GIRL OFFERED to read to me out of a book of Bible stories this afternoon, and announced the title of the one she had chosen as “Ruth, the Frightful Daughter-in-Law”; I was somewhat drowsy, and this sounded so normal—so in accord with everyday experience—that it did not occur to me until she was well launched on the tale of Ruth and Naomi that she had misread the word “faithful.”
• OF MELANCHOLY REFLECTIONS •
A GROUP OF professional floor waxers invaded The Towers today. They brought with them a great deal of equipment including several large wheels which appeared to be covered with the skins of whole cows. Their first move was to pile all the furniture in every room in a heap in the middle of it, and I was saddened to see how quickly the old home could be made to look like a junk shop. If I were to choke on a crumb, or collapse while shovelling snow, or be struck by a falling icicle, or fall backward down the cellar stairs while struggling upward with an armful of wood, or perish through any of the hazards of daily life, it would only be a matter of a few days before the auctioneers would invade the scene of my sloughed-off existence, and pile up my furniture in exactly this way; and when people came to the sale they would despise my furniture, and conclude that I was a sordid fellow, who had lived shabbily. These reflections depressed me so much that I itched all afternoon to get the waxers out of the house, so that I could set it right, and reassure myself.
• PERSONAL AND REMINISCENT •
A DISTANT RELATIVE of mine sent me a genealogy of part of my family today. I passed the evening reckoning the ages at which my ancestors died; save for a few who pegged out miserably in infancy the average age is eighty-seven years and a few months. Now this seems to me to be thoroughly praiseworthy. These primeval Marchbanks without the aid of vitamins, central heat, balanced diets, or any medical care save bleeding, purging and mustard plasters, managed to survive to an average age of eighty-seven, and usually died by falling off roofs, being gored by bulls, or otherwise violently. They ate till they were full, drank till they were drunk, hated fresh air, and thought tomatoes were poisonous, yet they lived valiantly, God rest them.
• OF TAILORS AND THEIR MYSTERY •
AS IT MUST to all men, the realization came to me today that I must order a new suit. I am sorry for men whose work demands that they present an appearance of neatness and prosperity; I rejoice that I belong to a traditionally frowsy trade. But even the vilest rags must be refreshed from time to time, and I went to the tailor’s with a heavy heart. Soon I was fingering little squares of cloth and trying to imagine what they would look like if swollen into suits and hung upon my frame; this is the sort of job at which my imagination boggles, and when my imagination is boggling, my mouth drops open, my tongue lolls out foolishly, and a film creeps over my eyeballs. “This is a nice thing,” I say, trying to curry favour with the tailor, “but I think I like this even better”—as I pick up my own pocket handkerchief or perhaps a penwiper from the desk. At last the tailor puts me out of my agony, and measuring begins. Here I exhibit devilish cunning, sucking myself in where I am too big, and blowing myself out where I am deficient, in a Protean manner, so that the record gives a completely false impression of my figure. “You sit a good deal at your work, Mr. Marchbanks?” says the tailor. “When I’m not lying down,” I reply. “We’ll allow a little extra for that,” says he, and makes marks on his chart which he will not allow me to see. In time I escape into the street, shaking like a leaf.
• OF ANIMAL DEFENDANTS •
I SEE IN THE PAPER that a dog has been destroyed because it knocked down and frightened an old woman. In the Middle Ages such a dog might have received a full-dress trial; animals were often tried for serious offences. The court records before the Reformation are full of cases in which a dog was tried for preventing someone from going to church, or for biting somebody important, or for barking during a political speech. The animal was provided with a defence lawyer, and if he lost his case his client was likely to be hanged, or even tortured. Many a young barrister in those days got his start defending animals, and a court would as soon subpoena a herd of sheep or a couple of oxen as anybody else. This was because animals were thought to be easy hideouts for evil spirits—an opinion which I think modern jurisprudence has abandoned without sufficient thought.
• OF GUEST-ROOM BEDS •
I WAS TALKING to a lady before dinner who was shaken by an experience she had had with a bed in her guestroom. One night recently her spouse was sick of a salt rheum, and in order to escape infection and the sound of his coughs and moans she betook herself to the guest chamber, and tried to sleep upon one of the beds which her guests had been using for years. But to her horror the bed was too short, and too narrow, and was inclined to buck and throw the sleeper, so that she landed on the floor twice in the night. She was up at dawn, writing letters of apology to all her guests, and as soon as the shops opened she rushed forth to buy a new bed. Personally I think that everybody should sleep in their guest-bed once a year, to test it, and I am seriously thinking of giving the wretched palliasse at Marchbanks Towers a try-out one of these nights. Perhaps that bagginess of eye which I have observed in my guests at breakfast is in some way related to its deficiencies. Perhaps I should shove more hay into the tick.
• OF SOLEMN TIDES AND FESTIVALS •
I TRIED TO EXPLAIN the significance of Lent to some children this morning, but found it hard to make the principle of self-denial comprehensible to them. That one should refrain from doing something one wants to do as a spiritual exercise seems peculiar to a child, and as I agree with them with the heretical half of my mind, I cannot put my full weight into any theological dispute which may ensue…. I was asked what I myself was giving up for Lent. “Showy displays of personal prowess such as running upstairs, lifting heavy weights and walking great distances,” I replied, without batting an eye…. I have also been looking over the year’s Valentine displays, which are more degraded in verse, and more vilely spotted with doggies, pussies, and bunnies than usual. Modern love, as reflected in Valentines, is on a depressingly infantile level.
• OF BONHOMIE IN TRAINS •
I HAD TO MAKE a train journey yesterday. In an advertisement for a mystery story I read a testimonial from Miss Hedy Lamarr, in these strange words: “It made my blood curl.” … On the train were four happy extroverts who drank copiously from flasks, and were bosom friends in less than an hour; in ringing voices they discussed their investments, private fortunes, the Palestine situation and the difficulty of getting any wearable underpants. When any woman under seventy passed down the car they whistled after her, to show that they were full of hormones. They rushed to and from the lavatory, shouting as they went. As train lavatories have direct access to the roadbed, I hoped that they might fall through, but none of them did so.
• OF BIBLIOPHILY •
ONCE AGAIN, after a pause of many years, catalogues are beginning to reach me from sellers of old books in England. If I had any strength of character I should throw these into the garbage pail as soon as they arrive but I am a weak creature, and I always risk a peek. This is fatal, for in no time at all the concupiscence of the book-collector burns hotly within me. I send off an order, and in the course of time a new treasure is added to the cupboard at Marchbanks Towers…. Real bibliophiles do not put their books on shelves for people to look at or handle. They have no desire to show off their darlings, or to amaze people with their possessions. They keep their prized books hidden away in a secret spot to which they resort stealthily, like a Caliph visiting his harem, or a church elder sneaking into a bar. To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope-fiend with those of a miser.
OUR HOST REMARKED to me before dinner that the days are already drawing out. It is true, and I disapprove of it heartily. If I had the ordering of such things, it would be dark every winter day at five o’clock and every summer day at seven. Day should be day, and night night, and the present careless mingling of the two is distracting and annoying. As a matter of fact I think that time was much more sensibly dealt with in the Middle Ages when everybody got up at about 4 a.m., worked during the hours of daylight, and was in bed by 7 p.m. Midnight in those days was really the middle of the night, and not the hour when most people begin to think about bed. But for some inexplicable reason we now compound our normal day out of half the light and half the dark hours. And I stoutly maintain that when a man has done his day’s work it should be dark. This is sheer cantankerousness, and I glory in it.
• OF UNCOUTH SPEECH •
THE AUSTRALIAN LADY on my right has been telling me of her labours to rid herself of her native accent under the tuition of an elocution master. She had to say “How now, brown cow?” over and over again, as apparently this greeting is a very hard one for an Australian to utter with complete purity. This amused her greatly, for it appears that in the Antipodes the word “cow” is applied to any unfortunate person, male or female, and a set of disagreeable circumstances or a distressing personality may also be called “a fair cow.” Only in Australia, so far as I know, could a man be a black sheep and a fair cow at the same time.
• OF DAME NATURE •
I WENT TO SEE an exhibition of modern Canadian paintings this afternoon, and liked them very much. But there were a few people present who appeared to consider the pictures an insult to themselves—a kind of aesthetic hot-foot. They muttered and mumbled, but none of them seemed able to explain just what it was that bothered them. My own guess is that the pictures disturbed their ideas about nature, and made them reconsider certain notions which they have cherished, but not examined, for years. Music and pictures are able to churn the soul without using the medium of words, and as most people are quite at sea when they have to transform feelings into words they were affronted and gagged at the same time…. Most people, too, appear to think of Nature as a dear old lady with steel spectacles and a bonnet, mouthing platitudes. To have Nature presented to them as a wanton, decked in gayest colours and obviously not wearing a foundation garment, hit them smack under the Moral Sense, which is to a Canadian as its shell is to a tortoise.
• OF KINGS GREAT AND KINGS GOOD •
THE LADY ON MY LEFT was complaining to me about the foolish caricature of King Charles II which appeared in the film Forever Amber; the Merry Monarch was shown as a man surrounded by silly little dogs, to whom he cried “Come children!” from time to time…. I replied that I had been annoyed by the same thing, and also by repeated film caricatures of Henry VIII as a gross monster, gorging, swilling, burping and pinching the bottoms of court ladies. Charles and Henry were two of the ablest kings ever to occupy the British throne, and it is not wise to forget it. They would never have become Sunday School superintendents, of course, but they had many excellent, and indeed admirable qualities as statesmen. For some reason the British rulers who have been chosen by common consent for adulation are Alfred the Great (about whom we know nothing save what is told us by his personal chaplain, who was on his payroll), Charles I, who was pious, but had no tact and owes much to the fact that Van Dyck was his court painter, and Victoria, who carried goodness to a point where it became indistinguishable from self-indulgence.
I PASSED LAST EVENING in the company of some people who have bought a lovely old house, and are having great fun fixing it up. Of course the furnace is not in very good condition and shoots most of its heat up the chimney, and none of the sashes fit, and there are cracks in the foundation, but it is a dear old place all the same. Admittedly they have to burn their own garbage in the furnace (which makes a smell) and they have to bury their tin cans privily at dead of night, and the water supply is capricious, but it has lovely high ceilings (some of which need replastering). Yet, in spite of their woes, I see what they are after. They are in rebellion against the modern vogue for houses which our ancestors would not have accepted as almshouses, and which are undoubtedly the nastiest human habitations ever to be built since man emerged from the Mud Hut Period of architecture. An old house is a nuisance, but it is obviously intended for men and women to live in. Much modern housing would be better called kennelling.
• OF A LOST ART •
A SCHOOLTEACHER confided to me today that there is nothing so useful for sticking things to a blackboard as shaving cream. It holds as well as glue, and yet it does not harden, and it imparts a delicious scent to the schoolroom, slightly ameliorating the customary effluvium of chalk, Vapex and wet sweaters. This lady told me that she used approximately a tube a term for this purpose…. What she said reminded me of my childhood, when I used to get my hair cut in the tonsorial parlour of an elderly barber called Murphy; in front of his two chairs were mirrors elegantly framed in walnut, and on these mirrors it was his custom to write improving sentiments in lather, such as “Treat Your Wife and Your Hair Right and They’ll Never Leave You” or “God’s Finest Gift—A Mother; A Man’s Best Asset—A Fine Head of Hair.” Murphy’s spelling was not always equal to the demands of his philosophy, but he wrote a flourishing hand with the lather brush, and surrounded these profound reflections with curlicues and even flowers delicately executed in lather. The art of lather work has died out, I fear.
• OF A DISCOVERY •
I BOUGHT SOME ROPE today, for the first time in my life, I think, and was amazed to find that it is sold by the pound, like cheese. Who would think of going into a shop and asking for two pounds of nice fresh rope, suitable for a suicide? Yet the request would be a perfectly sensible one. I bought twelve feet, or about an eighth of a pound, and it cost me seven cents.
• OF YOUNG FOGIES •
AN ACTOR FRIEND of mine left a copy of Variety in my office today, and as I looked through it I was amazed to find a full-page advertisement which said, “Gabriel Pascal and Bernard Shaw wish all their friends a Successful New Year.” I wonder if Mr. Shaw really paid for half of that insertion? It doesn’t seem like him to deliver good wishes in that wholesale manner…. The magazine also contained an article headed, “Is Radio Burdened with Young Fogies?” It seems to me that the probable answer is “Yes.” The whole world is burdened with young fogies. Old men with ossified minds are easily dealt with. But men who look young, act young, and everlastingly harp on the fact they are young, but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution which would be excessive in their grandfathers, are the curses of the world. We have a good many young fogies in Canada—fellows who, at thirty, are well content with beaten paths and reach-me-down opinions. Their very conservatism is second-hand, and they don’t know what they are conserving.
• OF THE SIESTA •
I COMPOSED MYSELF after lunch for my noonday snooze, but was called three times on the telephone; in consequence my afternoon was ruined. It has long been my contention that the siesta is needed far more in our cold climate than in the languorous South. Southerners snooze at midday because they are lazy; Canadians should snooze at midday because they still have several hours of hard work ahead of them, including a certain amount of battling with the wintry blasts, and slipping and slithering on the ice. They need to prepare themselves for what lies ahead. But it happens far too often that when I compose myself for fifteen minutes of delicious torpor some fellow who either has high blood pressure or is in a hurry to develop it calls me. He never wants to tell me that I have inherited a fortune, or that a beautiful dark woman is anxious to make my acquaintance; he invariably wants me to do something right away, usually of a vexatious nature. By the time I have lied my way out of doing whatever it is he wants, the shy nymph Snooze has fled, and there is nothing for me to do but begin the afternoon’s toil.
• OF AN OPPORTUNITY MISSED •
I HAVE RECEIVED a great many letters relating to a radio broadcast in which I took part a fortnight ago. They all make the same complaint and if I may I will give you the substance of a representative letter, sent to me by an elderly clergyman in Sault Ste. Marie: “There you were, with a national hook-up, and what did you do? Talked in a smarmy, Nice Nellie way that nearly made me throw up! Why did you not do what any man of spirit would do if he had a chance to address the whole of Canada—shove your face as near the microphone as possible and shout a dirty word? Such as ‘— —,’ or ‘— —,’ or better still ‘— —’? It is such a chance as I have long dreamed of. You had it, and you missed it. — — you!” The others are in much the same vein.… But what was I to do? Naturally the idea occurred to me, as it would to any man worthy of the name. But there were a lot of big C.B.C. bullies watching me, and I knew that if I yielded to my impulse I should be dragged from the microphone, beaten with rubber truncheons, and shipped to Ottawa under guard, where I would be forced to wash out my mouth with soap in the office of the Minister of National Revenue. I know that I was weak, but try to understand my position. I am not of the stuff from which martyrs are made.
• OF A USEFUL DOG •
I SAW A DALMATIAN dog today—one of those curious spotted animals which used to be called “blotting-paper dogs” when I was a boy. They used also to be called Coach Dogs, presumably because it was the smart thing to have one bounding along the road after one’s coach, getting even more spotted from the spatter of the wheels. But of the three names I like “blotting-paper dog” best. It suggests that a Dalmatian has literary qualities not given to other dogs—that it lends itself to use as an auxiliary penwiper, or to rolling gently on large manuscripts. The average dog is a nuisance to a writer, as it lies on his feet, snuffling, coughing and having bad dreams, while he tries to collect his thoughts. No dog has ever whispered poems into its master’s ear, as was the case with Victor Hugo’s cat, but at least the Dalmatian has tried to make itself useful in the study.
• OF A MEDICAL CONSPIRACY •
I WAS TALKING this evening to an nineteenth-century Liberal who accused me of being an eighteenth-century Tory. This was because I had been holding forth at some length about the conspiracy against the home life of our nation on the part of the medical profession and the nurses. There was a day when a man took pride in the fact that he was born in the house in which he lived, and looked forward with confidence to dying in the same house, and perhaps even in the same bed. This gave a richness of association to a dwelling which has entirely been destroyed by modern medical usage. Babies are now born in hospitals, and there is a powerful and subtle move on foot to persuade everybody to die in hospitals. My desire is to die in my own bed, leaning back on a heap of pillows, wearing a becoming dressing-gown and a skullcap, blessing those of whom I approve, gently rebuking my enemies, giving legacies to faithful servants, and passing out clean handkerchiefs to the weepers; I should also like a small choir to do some really fine unaccompanied singing within earshot. But will I be able to stage such a production in a hospital? Never! I’ll be lucky if the nurse answers the bell in time to jot down my last words.
• OF AN UNACKNOWLEDGED AILMENT •
I READ IN A magazine this morning that gout is just as prevalent today as it was in the eighteenth century, although some doctors do not recognize it when they see it, believing the disease to be extinct.4 It seems to me that several other diseases are in the same ambiguous position. For instance, in The Anatomy of Melancholy Robert Burton makes frequent reference to a disease he calls “crudity,” the symptoms of which were distress in the stomach, wind, and a sensation of having swallowed hot pennies. Lots of people that I know have these symptoms; if they are poor they consume patent medicines; if they are rich they permit surgeons to do fancy whittling and knot-tying in their entrails. They give the ailment many names, but it is just plain crudity, and I should think that doctors would recognize it. A sure sign of crudity, says Burton, is what he calls “hard, sour and sharp belching.” Everybody knows how common this is; at service club luncheons you can hardly hear the speaker because of it. I have even heard it mentioned on the radio. Crudity numbers its victims by the millions, yet doctors refuse to acknowledge its existence.
I SEE BY THE PAPERS that the champion milch cow of Great Britain drinks twelve quarts of stout a day, and is habitually soused. Also there is a cat in California which never drinks anything but Scotch, is seventeen years old and has produced 111 kittens. These are fascinating bits of information, but I fear that brooding on them will only lead to the formation of socially unacceptable theories concerning Motherhood.
• OF THE PYTHAGOREAN NOTION •
EVERY DAY I SEE a dog which lies in wait for passing cars, and rushes at them, snarling. It is my theory that this dog is a reincarnation of a traffic cop. The belief of Pythagoras that the souls of men may return to earth in the bodies of animals, and vice versa, seems to me to be no more unreasonable than a lot of things we are expected to believe nowadays, and there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence to support it.
• OF HOT WEATHER •
YES, I THINK the heat wave reached a new level this week. I do not greatly mind the heat; I simply drink water by the pailful, and go about my business. But some of my friends are in a sad state. This leads me to wonder whether the use of the fan by men might not be revived in Canada. Men carried fans in the eighteenth century; Orientals carry fans to this day. Of course the modern craze for utility would make it impossible to revive the fan as a thing of beauty, but a fan which was also a notebook, or which had actuarial tables printed on it, or which bore a large advertisement of one’s own business would surely be permissible. Golfers could keep their scores on special fans, and preachers would write their sermons on them.
I SEE THAT THE U.S.A. is going to issue a stamp with the head of William Allen White of Emporia on it.5 I think that Canada is wise never to have created a stamp with the head of an editor on it; editors at best are disagreeable fellows, professional contradicters and sassers back. An editor of any degree of experience becomes incapable of complete agreement with anyone, and he reads the dictionary so much that he always knows more nasty names for any particular offence than the man who has committed it. Whatever an editor may be in his private life, he is professionally ferocious, and he can turn on his tap of belligerence at a moment’s notice. There was a time when the horsewhipping of editors was a common sport, and shooting their hats off in the street was regarded as mere pleasantry. Now the law forbids both these manly pastimes…. But glorifying an editor by putting him on a stamp is as inexplicable to other nations as is our Canadian custom of worshipping the beaver, that other unattractive, gnawing, surly mammal. To be obliged to lick even the back of an editor’s picture would be intolerable to a free man, though, an instant later, he could punch the picture in the face with his thumb.
• OF SCHOOLTEACHERS •
THIS IS SUMMER, unmistakably. One can always tell when one sees schoolteachers hanging about the streets idly, looking like cannibals during a shortage of missionaries. Of course, schoolteachers are not idle all summer long; no, no. Very soon the well-paid ones will be travelling, the poorly-paid ones will be sweating in summer jobs, and great numbers of others will be in summer schools, stoking themselves with knowledge which they will disgorge next autumn. Here and there a few mad eccentrics will be found reading and thinking, having somewhere received the impression that this indulgence is somehow connected with their work. But for a few days at the end of every school year teachers of whatever degree may be seen roaming the streets, slightly dazed and a trifle irresponsible, like the slaves immediately after Lincoln signed the decree of emancipation…. You are a school teacher? Then what are you doing in that attractive gown, you little skeezix!
• THE RITES OF PICKLEMAS •
I ATTENDED A PLAY which I myself had written and at the end of Act One two women hurried past me, making for the door. “I don’t care what happens, those pickles have got to be done tonight,” said the larger and more determined one. It is incidents such as this that keep authors from getting swelled heads. And indeed at this time of year pickles are the prime concern of every really womanly woman. The subtle alchemy which transmutes a mess of tomatoes and celery (which looks like something the police have swept up after a disastrous bus collision) into chili sauce cannot be understood by men; nor can the coarse male hand compound mustard pickles which do not scorch the epigastrium of the eater, and give him a breath like the monsoon of the spicy East. There are indisputably some jobs which women do better than men, and making pickles is one of them. Women cannot make wine—Sir James Fraser tells why in The Golden Bough—but they are priestesses of the pungent mystery of the pickle, and the 25th of September is their Picklemas.
• OF SALVATION BY WORKS •
OF LATE I HAVE been much in the company of some professional Canadian actors, who were engaged in the production of a play. Most Canadians still think of actors as gay, carefree souls and not quite respectable by our grisly national standard. (In Canada anyone is respectable who does no obvious harm to his fellow man, and who takes care to be very solemn, and disapproving toward those who are not solemn.) But my experience of Canadian actors is that they are intense and earnest folk who work very hard and spend the time when they should be asleep chewing the rag about a national theatre for Canada. For this reason I think that it is wrong to call pieces which are written for the theatre in Canada “plays,” for that word suggests lightness, fantasy and ease of accomplishment. Canada will only respect her theatre when plays are called “works.” Canada has a high regard for anything that involves toil. Therefore I think that in future I shall describe all my plays as “works,” and if they ever reach the apotheosis of print I shall take care to call them The Complete Works of Marchbanks. Let triflers talk of plays; Canada wants to be given the works…. Yes, madam, I entirely agree: all works and too few plays makes Canada a dull nation.
• NEW LIGHT ON HISTORY •
ON TWELFTH NIGHT my host offered me a drink of Drambuie; plainly marked on the bottle was a statement that this was the drink favoured above all others by Prince Charles Edward. It seems to me that this throws a light on the history of the 1745 rebellion which historians have unaccountably neglected. If Bonnie Prince Charlie was in the habit of drinking Drambuie freely he was in no state to lead armies, though it is obvious why he so grossly overestimated the size of his forces. That look of being delightfully fried which he wears in all his portraits is explained, too.
• OF DOG HAMS •
I SAW AN AMATEUR production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street last week; the audience had come to admire the actors (who were high school boys and girls) but were much taken by the goings-on of the spaniel who played the role of Flush. Dogs and babies are impossible creatures on the stage; they have only to gurgle or scratch a flea and the careful art of the human actors is set at naught. Somebody should write a play in which a dog has to do something difficult, and meet stern criticism. In Victorian England there was a popular version of Hamlet in which the Prince was accompanied at all times by a huge dog (a Great Dane, of course); in the Play Scene it was the dog’s duty to leap at the throat of King Claudius. Often the dog-actor missed his cue, or wagged his tail at the gallery, or licked Claudius affectionately; such doghams were given short shrift by the critics of the day and many a dog-actor disgraced himself by snarling over the footlights at the critic’s row, with bared teeth. This is only just; if a dog appears on the stage, it should be expected to do something difficult, and not loll about, stealing scenes from hard-working humans.
• OF DEATH BY GREED •
CONSIDERING THE AMOUNT of time and ingenuity which is devoted to making it hard for a man to get a drink in this country, I think it strange that nothing is done to keep people from digging their graves with their teeth. I have just finished two volumes of historical studies by Dr. C.H. MacLaurin, the celebrated diagnostician, in which he shows that a surprising number of the most eminent people in history have died of diseases which began in their habit of overeating. Drink is a spectacular vice, but comparatively few people have any inclination to drink to excess. But the quiet, day-to-day cramming, guzzling, stuffing, bolting and gormandizing which goes on is thoroughly alarming, when we consider its effect on the nation’s health. And everywhere we permit signs and advertising positively encouraging people to eat; little children are plied with cake and pie; the old are urged to eat “to keep their strength up” when in reality food will only sclerose their poor old arteries and blow the fuses in their shaky nervous systems. Frankly, I think that a move should be set on foot to limit the retail outlets for food, or perhaps bring it under government monopoly, making it too expensive for people to get much of it.
BY A COMPLEX SYSTEM of my own I cushion myself against the shocks of daily life, but today I was forced to face the fact that I must have a new winter overcoat, and a few discreet enquiries made it clear to me that prices have been going up, and that clothes cost more now than they did. I grudge money spent on clothes. But from time to time it is absolutely necessary for me to replenish my wardrobe, and then there is always a disquieting struggle between my need and my ingrained penuriousness. I cannot bear to spend money on anything except pleasure, and I do not consider the buying of new clothes as a pleasure. If I could have a red overcoat with a fur collar, that might be fun, but to face the dreary choice between grey and blue again at my time of life, and to have to fork out several months’ income in payment is more than I can bear. Still, I suppose that by a painful process of screwing up my resolution, I shall come to it.
• OF A QUAINT SIMILE •
THIS AFTERNOON I had a long conversation with a man who comes from Lincolnshire; he says that the peasants in his native shire have a pretty simile to describe a baby which has just awakened; they say it looks “like a louse peerin’ out o’ an ash heap.” It is such flights of untutored poesy as this which inspired Wordsworth.
• OF AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION •
I WENT TO THE movies last night. I always buy a stall, or loge, as I am by nature a snobbish fellow, and also because those seats give me more room for my legs. But the people who get to the loges before me all seem to bring provisions for a week, and attach themselves to their seats with cobbler’s wax and glue, so that I usually spend the first half of any film sitting in a cheaper seat, poised to pounce if any loge-squatter should be called out by the demands of nature or the death of a near relative. Tonight I sat next to a couple of spirited girls who were not content to follow the story on the screen; they acted it, as well. When the heroine bridled, they bridled; when the hero hit the villain on the jaw, they cut the air with desperate haymakers. When there was kissing on the screen, they squeaked with their lips and wriggled in their seats. It was fascinating but unnerving, this audience participation; I was never sure that they might not involve me in the game in some embarrassing way. But at last a slide was flashed on the screen: “Whole West End of the City Wiped Out by Tornado—Hundreds Killed.” One man rose and departed reluctantly from the loges, and I vaulted into his seat, beating an old lady by a nose.6
• OF A MALE DELUSION •
BEFORE DINNER I joined in a great discussion about the forthcoming rise in the price of bread, and I heard several men planning to have their wives make bread at home. I know this will not last long, for home bread-making, though not difficult, is a nuisance. Home bread is greatly superior to the purchased article, but it has to be made two or three times a week, and the average housewife would rather pay more for the customary ration of half-cooked dough than be bothered with it. Many men are speaking nostalgically of breads which their mothers used to bake—fancy confections with odd names, like Old Hoe Handle Bread, Barnyard Pandowdy, Corncob Bumblepuppy, and the like. They tell me that they always ate these luscious breads with baked beans. It is odd how all men develop the notion, as they grow older, that their mothers were wonderful cooks. I have yet to meet the man who will admit that his mother was a kitchen assassin, and nearly poisoned him. Yet there must be some bad cooks who are also mothers.
I WENT TO CALL on some people today and stumbled into a children’s party—a type of entertainment which I usually study to avoid. No sooner was I in the door than a young woman of about six pushed an apple core into my hand, saying “Here!” in a peremptory tone. I immediately assumed the guise of Marchbanks the Child-Lover and grinned at her forgivingly; I tossed the apple behind a sofa. Not long afterward I was called upon to umpire a game of Pin the Donkey’s Tail, and barely escaped with my life, but not before a small girl showed me her doll. It was one of those dolls which can be fed water from a feeding-bottle at one end, and shortly afterwards rejects the water through a sort of brass drain in its bottom. I am not easily embarrassed, but this doll made me blush; its lack of reticence was appalling. Live babies have drenched me, and I have borne it with good humour, but this awful effigy of a baby with its hideous painted smile! … “Don’t you think your dolly would like a rest?” I asked hopefully. “NO!” said the moppet, with iron decision, and began to ply it with water again. Whatever served the office of kidneys in the doll gave a gurgle, and I hurried away. Why not a doll which burps? Babies burp, and a doll with a bellows and a squeaker in it, which could belch like a sailor or an Indian chief, would sell like hotcakes. After refreshments the party grew rough; one lad kept jumping off the top of the piano, landing in a sitting posture on the keyboard; he did this a number of times—leaving no tone unsterned, in fact. As soon as was decently possible, I left; children were beginning to go upstairs to be sick, and I was willing to leave them in abler hands.
• OF YULETIDE DECORATION •
I WAS FACED TODAY with the necessity to decorate Marchbanks Towers against the coming Christmas, and passed many hours perched on a shaky ladder twisting paper streamers (which immediately untwisted), getting sharp pieces of tinsel under my nails, and arranging elaborate festoons which, as soon as I looked at them from the floor, proved to be miserable in conception and lopsided in execution. I also knocked down a good deal of plaster and made dirty marks on the wallpaper. The effect, when I was finished, was that of a cheap dancehall decorated by a drunken sailor. However, I had a great artistic success with the younger members of my family, who think my efforts greatly superior to Michelangelo’s decorations of the Sistine Chapel. This disposed me to be friendly toward them, and we ate a great deal of candy, which caused them no inconvenience, but makes me feel pensive even at this moment…. No, no more chocolate mousse, thank you.
• THE PLEASURES OF OFFICIALDOM •
I WAS A JUDGE at a county fair today: I was invited to give my opinion on the turnips and the cats. There were only three turnips exhibited and as all of them came from the farm of the son of the man who was my colleague in judging, we awarded him the prize with beautiful unanimity. There was only one entry in the cat show; it belonged to the other judge’s daughter, so we gave her the First, Second and Third Prizes, as well as the silver cup. I then strolled around the fair, with a large purple ribbon with “Judge” printed on it in gold adorning my bosom. It was an “Open Sesame” to all the treasures of the fair. I rode free on the merry-go-round, and the Dodge ’Em. I then judged the whole of the midway, poking the Fat Lady with a stick to see if she was genuinely fat or merely padded, patting the midgets, and accepting the gift of a cigar from the Turkey-Faced Man. Oh, it is a beautiful thing to be a Judge, to be honoured wherever one goes, to get things for nothing! If all life could be passed as a Judge at a fair, what a glad, sweet song it would be!
• HE CEASES TO BE A TENDERHORN •
I WENT ON MY first hunt last week with a group of friends; they were Old Hands, and I was what they call a Greenfoot or a Tenderhorn, so I kept quiet and tried to learn woodlore. We motored fifty miles, then crowded our eight selves, 400 pounds of equipment, four dogs and two Indians into a rather small boat, bringing the gunwales down almost to the water-line. We journeyed by water for a considerable distance and then debarked after sundown. Then we carried the junk a further five miles in the dark—at least, it was supposed to be five miles, but as none of the Old Hands knew the way and there was no road or path, it was more like eight. At last we found the camp and the guide, who had prepared a supper of salt pork and fried potatoes two hours earlier; it had congealed curiously, but we ate it. Then the Old Hands “turned in.” Being a mere Tenderhorn, I simply went to bed.
Next day it was raining cats and dogs, and the Old Hands complained that their feet hurt; my feet hurt too but being a mere Greenfoot I was ashamed to say so. We breakfasted on salt pork and fried potatoes. We decided that it was useless to try to hunt in the rain; it kills the scent, or depresses the dogs or gives the Old Hands colds, or something. The Old Hands did not seem to be feeling very woodsy, and talked about the merits of different kinds of cars all day. Dinner and supper were of salt pork and fried potatoes. One Old Hand produced a package of bicarbonate of soda, and we all had a snort. We went to bed early. The bunks were boards with marsh-grass strewn lightly over them, and I dreamed of Hell.
The next day was better, so we stoked ourselves with salt pork and fried potatoes and went out. I was put by a rock and told not to budge or fire at anything unless I was sure it was a deer. I gave my word…. Hours passed. At midday I cunningly buried my package of salt pork and fried potatoes, and ate some of the biscuits and things I had secreted in my pockets; I wouldn’t dare admit to the Old Hands that I have such babyish tastes. Nothing happened except that I grew to hate my rock and wished I were sitting in my swivel chair in my nice stuffy office. At last ennui became so great that I sneakingly smoked a cigarette—a hideous crime.7 When we reassembled at camp for salt pork and fried potatoes, I noticed that all the Old Hands had biscuit crumbs on their fronts, and smelled of tobacco. Two of the dogs were lost.
I was put in another place the next day, with a better view. I found a dead bear in the woods and performed an autopsy; it had been eating salt pork and fried potatoes. After some hours I saw an Old Hand approaching with a strange light in his eyes; he jerked his head at me, and I followed; he had picked up a trail. At last we crouched behind some scrub. He put his lips to my ear, and in a moist, tickly whisper said, “See his antlers?” “Her horns?” I enquired. “Tenderhorn,” he whispered; “a magnificent spread of antlers; a buck.” I peeped over the scrub. “A Holstein,” I whispered back, but already he had aimed. He trembled. His eyes bulged. Bubbles came out of his mouth. He fired. The cow squalled and fled. The milk was sour at supper, which did not help the tea with which we washed down our salt pork and fried potatoes. Being a Greenfoot, I said nothing. There seemed to be an air of depression in the camp; the Old Hands massaged their stomachs and brooded.
By the next day I had decided that I shall never understand this hunting business. I hadn’t even fired off my gun, and I had stood still for seventeen hours, and I had stomach ulcers from the food, saddle-galls from the bed, and to top it all we were going home! Nobody explained anything but the chief Old Hand was in a terrible temper, and had a bullet hole in his hat, and wouldn’t speak to one of the other Old Hands, who looked defiant and pouty, like a little boy who has broken a vase. The rest of us talked a lot and agreed that there were too many hunters in the woods, some of whom didn’t know how to handle a gun (the chief Old Hand and the pouty Old Hand both snarled at that) and that it was not our fault that we hadn’t killed eight or ten deer. We retraced our steps, but as we were short a pair of dogs the boat wasn’t quite so full this time. Motoring home we passed car after car with its engine smothered in deer. They trapped them, probably.
I was glad to be back at work. “My foot is on my native heath; my name’s MacGregor!” I kept exclaiming, while my colleagues stared. “Have a good hunt?” people asked me. “Capital sport! Capital!” I replied, knowing that the Old Hands would expect this of me. People pestered me for cuts of venison; I explained that I had sent all mine to the Hospital for the Deaf and Dumb.
But I received a brusque note from the chief Old Hand today, asking me for twenty-five dollars—my share in the price of the lost dogs. Those dogs must have had hearts of gold; their carcasses were not worth fifty cents apiece. But never mind; I have been on a hunt, and I shall never be a Tenderhorn again. From henceforth I am an Old Hand, and I shall boast and lie about my prowess in the woods, avowing that I am every bit the equal of Natty Bummpo, Robin Hood, and Frank Buck. I have even burned a hole in my hunting hat with a poker, so that I can pass as a genuine Old Hand. That is the sign by which they are known, I am told.
• A SYSTEM OF MARKING •
IN A WEAK-MINDED moment last autumn I agreed to serve as a judge of some undergraduate writing; today my Fate overtook me and I had to spend two or three hours reading ambitious pieces of all kinds—poetry, criticism, short stories and whatnot. I am a wretched judge of such things, for I am capricious, irresponsible, unmethodical, utterly without conscience and what my grandmother used to call “notionate.” Anyway, I wasn’t interested in any of the stuff I read. The right people to judge such contests are sober, keen-minded fellows who are ready to take all sorts of trouble to arrive at the right decision—not whirligigs like me. At last I put all the manuscripts on the floor, whirled round three times, and shook my fountain pen over the heap; the manuscripts with the biggest blots on them received prizes, the rest got nothing. I do not defend this method of judging; I merely explain it. I also recommend it to university professors and teachers who have a lot of troublesome papers to mark.
• OF ENERGETIC HISTRIONISM •
IT WAS FOGGY yesterday; I met several people who referred to it as “English weather.” It is a popular idea in Canada that England is under a blanket of fog about 300 days in the year. As one who has lived quite a while in both places, I can assure them that fog is about as common in Ontario as it is in England, though English fog tastes worse. I went to a play through the fog, the plot of which was the ancient one of the husband, presumed dead, who turns up again after his wife has remarried. This palsied wheeze was beaten to a pulp by the playwright and the cast, and the evening was somewhat exhausting. I was not sure whether the actors were trying to divert the audience, or just working up a good sweat; they rushed on and off the stage, they shrieked, waved their arms, and tumbled into chairs; they were diverting, but it wore me out to watch them…. Frankly, I don’t think many women would mind having two husbands, if they could get away with it, and therefore the play was founded on an unsound argument, so far as I was concerned.
• OF AMOROUS SELF-SUFFICIENCY •
A FRIEND OF MINE was showing me his aquarium this afternoon; he had some pretty tropical fish, and I looked at them with an intelligent expression and pretended to understand what he told me of their species and habits. But I woke up when he pointed out his Japanese snail, and informed me that this creature is its own mate, and produces young without entangling alliances. At first it seemed to me that this was carrying egotism too far, but then I began to reflect on the advantages of such a plan. It is cosy, to begin with, and love, which is for mere human beings an emotion involving painful dependence upon another person, is for the Japanese snail merely a period of delicious introspection. Moralists should make this snail their emblem, for it knows no divorce, no marital disagreement, and no triangle murders. And the Japanese snail, instead of keeping his wife’s picture on his desk, as so many men do, merely tickles himself when he feels uxorious and says “Ah, you slyboots!”
• THE ADVANTAGES OF MORALITY •
A JUICY BIT of gossip reached my ears today to the effect that a puritanical fellow of my acquaintance has been paying court to a lady who is not his wife. My informant expressed surprise that so straight-laced a man should err, but it does not surprise me in the least. Puritans are always thinking about sin, and consequently they are quick to see a sinful opportunity when one presents itself. A Poor Lost Lamb like myself, who never bothers his head about sin, is far less subject to temptation than a convinced Puritan. Furthermore, Puritans enjoy sin more than ordinary people; not only do they have the fun of doing whatever it may be that is wrong, but they have the fun of self-accusation, repentance, penitence, and similar emotional binges. A Puritan gets more of an emotional jag out of a miserable little sin like stealing a postage-stamp or kissing an hotel chambermaid than I would out of robbing the Bank of England, or, more profitably, the U.S. Mint. Consequently, Puritans lead gaudy lives, while mine is a life of bland respectability.
• RELIGION WITHOUT TEARS •
NEWS REACHES ME that in the kindergarten which my nephew Belial attends they recently gave point to the Easter lesson by acting out Our Lord’s Passion, and Belial was chosen for the coveted role of the Saviour. This was an egregious piece of miscasting, as Belial is much better suited to the part of a torturer, demon or tormentor. However, he was tied to a cross (made from a couple of yardsticks) with tape, and in due time he was taken down and laid in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea which was represented by the schoolroom cupboard. “And did you rise again on the Third Day, Belial?” his parents asked him. “Yes, I came out of the cupboard,” he replied. “And what did you do then?” they enquired. “I went to my seat,” said Belial, apparently without any sense of anticlimax…. The new system of religious education is working wonders in the land, and I hardly meet a child these days who has not been an angel, or the Virgin Mary, or the Paraclete, or Original Sin, or some other notable character from Holy Writ in one of these classroom epiphanies.
• OF COMPULSORY AFFECTION •
A MAN IN THE States proposes that a date be chosen for International Grandmother’s Day; I suspect that he is being egged on by the greeting-card cartel. The average grandmother is, I suppose, a worthy old party, and it has been my observation that grandmothers are kept pretty well stocked with sweetmeats, flowers, cocaine and bottles of gin by their loving relatives, without any social compulsion being exercised. But once grandmother-worship becomes official and obligatory a great many untrammelled spirits will rebel against it. Look what happened to Mother’s Day. From the dawn of civilization mothers, as a class, were held in reasonably high regard until Mother’s Day was established, with the purpose of compelling every man, under pain of social ostracism, to declare that his mother was the greatest woman who ever lived, and to give proof, in consumer goods, of his tremendous adoration of her. In consequence a lot of men—just to show that their souls are their own and without any ill-will toward the authors of their being—kick and buffet their mothers all over the house on Mother’s Day, although during the other 364 days of the year they take them to the movies, buy them bags of nut fudge, and provide them with lacy shawls and crime-story magazines. Men can be led but they won’t be driven; mice, of course, do what they are told.
• OF HYGIENE RESISTED •
CIRCUMSTANCES MADE it necessary for me to take a walk through town at half-past five this morning; I had the streets to myself and was able to look about freely. I was astonished by the fact that a great number of my fellow citizens appear to sleep in sealed rooms; if they get any fresh air, it is certainly not through their windows. I dread to think what my old school nurse, Miss Toxaemia Dogsbody, Reg. N., would have said about this; retrospective fear of that old harridan has compelled me to open my window on nights of bitterest cold, and because of her admonitions I still brush my teeth up and down, instead of crosswise which is much more fun…. Indeed, I must confess that fear of Miss Dogsbody (although she is now in Abraham’s bosom and is probably scrubbing it with carbolic soap) is the moving principle in my struggle for health. Like most people I have a natural tendency toward unhealthy practices which are pleasant, such as drinking with my mouth full, eating heavily before going to bed, and sleeping in an atmosphere of warm frowst.
• OF THE MISERIES OF ELEPHANTS •
I WAS LUNCHING with a person today who has travelled a good deal, and has had contacts with elephants, both wild and in captivity. I was astounded to learn that most elephants suffer to some extent with indigestion, as they eat a lot of damp grass and vegetable matter which gives them gas and bloating (like the people in the patent medicine advertisements). I didn’t like to be too curious on this subject, which had a slight tinge of indelicacy and was not entirely suitable for lunch-table conversation, but it explained a few things about elephants which I have pondered from time to time. That look of patient resignation, for instance, is familiar to all victims of indigestion. And the saggy skin of the elephant is probably Dame Nature’s way of providing the poor beast with plenty of stretch during periods of bloating. A full-blown elephant must be an astonishing sight. What hiccups an elephant must suffer! What apocalyptic belchings, what rumblings of that vast paunch, how sonorous those pachydermatous borborygmies!
• ANOTHER DRAMA ORGY •
I SPENT A GOOD DEAL of time last week making arrangements to go away. This is one of the curses of our over-organized modern life—nothing can be done simply. I cannot wrap a crust of bread and a rind of cheese in a bandana handkerchief and set out when the spirit moves me: I must buy several tickets, make reservations at hotels, redeem my collars from the Oriental who washes them, grapple with the confusion between Daylight Saving and Daylight Wasting, issue instructions in all directions and work myself into a frame of mind in which all travel seems hateful, and a six-by-eight prison cell, with no possibility of escape, the highest reach of human bliss. Oh to be a gypsy, with one shirt and no necessity to be anywhere on time!
Then at last, I reached Toronto, and went to the Big Pub, where I had reserved a room: but of course it was not ready, so I went to the home of some friends, and when I had eaten and drunk them poor I returned to the B.P. at 1 a.m.
Then on the next day I went to London, where the Dominion Drama Festival8 was in the throes of its final competition. This city has the windiest station in Ontario, and my hat blew under a train, acquiring an oily patina. At the hotel and the Grand Theatre hundreds of amateur actors and producers were milling around, addressing one another in the merry shrieks which theatrical people consider obligatory in conversation. I had not been in the hotel a minute before I was greeted by the front legs of a horse of which I had been the back legs in a pantomine in 1933. The years sat lightly upon these front legs, and we tried out our act then and there: nobody noticed, for everyone else was horsing around, too…. During the afternoon I engaged in several invigorating fights about a Canadian National Theatre—a sort of Loch Ness monster which rears its ugly head at every Drama Festival.
I was surprised and delighted by the number of pretty and smartly dressed women attending the Drama Festival. Though really there is no occasion for amazement: pretty women like to act and show themselves off, and acting and showing off tends to make women pretty. I am no admirer of the retiring violet, who forgets to powder her nose and straighten her stocking-seams, and who prides herself on being natural and unspoiled; if the human race had persisted in being natural and unspoiled we should all still be swinging from tree to tree by our tails. Women are the flowers of humanity, and I find it hard to be patient with poor bloomers, and worse still tiresome thorny shrubs that never bloom at all.
At a matinee performance I sat between two parties of elderly people who enjoyed the comedies in a somewhat moribund way. Their praise was all negative. “Glad this isn’t one of those gloomy ones,” said an elderly man, with a despairing face: “Yes, I don’t like those plays about death,” agreed his female companion, who wore false teeth made apparently out of bone buttons and red sealing wax, and whose gayest smile was a ghastly memento mori. The elderly usually crave comedies, even though they have no touch of the Comic Spirit: it is the young, the dewy, the not-quite-dry-behind-the-ears who applaud the grim plays…. A performance of Jane Eyre one evening suffered from the fact that theatrical wigs are virtually unobtainable in Canada; consequently Mr. Rochester wore a thing on his head which had apparently been made from a dustless mop, and gave him an unfortunate resemblance to King Kong.
• OF FESTIVAL AWARDS •
THE LAST DAY OF the Festival was the best and there was wild excitement everywhere. After the adjudicator had announced the usual awards, I was called to the stage to make the Marchbanks Special Awards. These were:
THE MARCHBANKS SHIELD FOR THE BEST COUGH IN FRENCH OR ENGLISH TO BE HEARD DURING THE FESTIVAL: In spite of strong competition from some sharp Western coughs, this went to a fruity old Eastern cough, like coal sliding down a chute, from the Eastern Ontario region.
THE MARCHBANKS TROPHY FOR THE MOST SUCCESSFUL LATE COMER: Won by a lady from Quebec whose gown was caught in the doors just as they closed on Friday night, and who sat out the performance in her chemise, to the envy of the remainder of the spectators, who were overheated.
THE MARCHBANKS SCOLD’S BRIDLE FOR THE MOST TACTLESS REMARK: Awarded to a lady from the West who approached the only Canadian playwright to have a long play in the Festival immediately after its performance with the query: “Well, and when are you going to write a novel?”
• OF DISCIPLINARY MAYHEM •
A FRIEND PLAYED ME a gramophone record of a song called “Little Sir William” yesterday, which is about a small boy who was murdered by his school-teacher. When his mother calls piteously for him outside the school he replies:
How can I pity your weep, Mother
And I so sore in pain?
For the little pen-knife
It sticks in my heart
And the school-wife hath me slain.
This song is obviously a relic of the good old days when teachers were not forbidden to inflict corporal punishment on troublesome pupils. If we had the school-wife’s side of the story we should no doubt find that little Sir William had been throwing spit-balls, or pinning signs saying “kick me” on the seat of the school-wife’s gown. Many a teacher has fingered her knife reflectively under such circumstances.
• OF A NICE POINT IN LAW •
THE CROSSROADS at which I live has recently treated itself to a few score parking meters; the hitching post having gone out of fashion, the parking post has become the mode, and rude fellows have been referring to them as pay-toilets for dogs. A more seemly attitude was shown today by two Wolf Cubs whom I observed from my window. “Let me show you how these things work,” said one of the lads, pulling a cent from his pocket and putting it in the slot of a meter. When the indicator swung into view his small friend was suitably impressed. Now, I should be interested to know the legal position of that boy, who had bought twelve minutes worth of parking time, but who had no car. Would he be within his rights if he stretched himself prone beside his meter, and took a twelve minute nap? And if so, would it be legally possible for me to unfold a deckchair by one of these gadgets, buy an hour’s time, and sun myself in the street, in the Mexican fashion? What would happen to a man who parked his trailer by one of the things, and kept his rent paid by stuffing the meter with money? There are some pretty problems of jurisprudence inherent in this question of parking meters.
• OF DANTE •
A NEW TRANSLATION of Dante’s Divine Comedy came to hand today, and I took a quick look at it before putting it on the review shelf. Reading Dante is a valuable corrective to too much reading of American political philosophy, for Dante had no use for the Common Man, although he was one of the great democrats of the ages. People who had done nothing in life were of no interest to him, and he states plainly that such people are of no interest to either God or the Devil, and are condemned to spend eternity in a nasty, cold place (like the recent Spring) outside the gates of Hell…. What fun, what deep, marrow-warming satisfaction Dante must have had in the composition of this mighty poem! Putting all his enemies (including the reigning Pope, Boniface VIII) into Hell, and attributing various unsuitable and undignified sins to them, doling out praise and blame, and vicariously spitting in the eye of anyone who disagreed with him! Nowadays of course the law of libel (that cloak of scoundrels and ruffians) would restrain his hand.
• OF THE HORSE SENSE OF CHILDREN •
A CHILD ASKED me today to explain a picture it had found in a magazine, which showed some mailed warriors walking toward a castle carrying branches of trees in front of them. It was an advertisement for Scotch whisky, and the picture was Malcolm’s forces advancing upon Macbeth’s castle—Birnam Wood moving toward Dunsinane, in fact. I explained this to the child, and gave a rough and expurgated version of the Shakespeare play, in which I happened to mention that the Witches had told Macbeth that this very thing was likely to happen. “If a witch had told me that, I’d have cut down the forest right away,” said the child. I agreed that this would have been a wise precaution, but that if Macbeth had done so there would have been no tragedy, and the whole course of Scots history would have been altered. She looked up at me searchingly and said: “That’s silly.” Sometimes I think that the reins of government should be put in the hands of children. They have remarkably direct minds, and when a witch tells them something, they pay attention.
• THE BYRONIC ENDING •
I SAW IN A PAPER today that Hollywood is going to make a film based on Byron’s poem The Corsair. My guess is that the movie boys will take their cue from the lines:
His heart was form’d for softness—warped to wrong;
Betray’d too early and beguiled too long;
and will turn the whole thing into an exposure of juvenile delinquency, altering those lively scenes in the Pasha’s harem to a sequence in which some rough boys with pea-shooters have fun in the ladies’ section of a Turkish bath…. It is a matter of surprise to me that Hollywood has not yet attempted a film on the life of Byron. True, the facts are too lurid for the censors, but the moviemakers could always use one of their tried-and-true stories about poet meets girl, poet loses girl, poet gets girl. The truly Byronic conclusion—i.e., poet, having got girl, kicks her into the street—would not suit Hollywood’s customers.
• OF SHORT SKIRTS •
I READ IN THE fashion news that the Handkerchief Skirt is coming back; this garment, fashionable in the twenties, is short and hangs in rags, as though the wearer had been fighting a particularly sharp-nailed wolf. I hope that this is not true, and that the Handkerchief Skirt will remain in Oblivion, where it belongs. I do not like short skirts; I like long skirts which swish and whirl. A short, tight skirt on a girl is ugly enough, but on an older woman to whom life and her metabolism have been unkind it is a cruel joke. Some men whose notion of Fashion is to bring women as near to utter nakedness as possible like short skirts because they reveal a lot of leg; but to my mind a really graceful woman is shown to greatest advantage in a skirt which compliments the poetry of her walk, instead of revealing the muscular action of her gluteus maximus. And though I yield to no man in my admiration of the female leg, I do not want to see all the legs in the world: there are thousands which I am ready to take for granted as useful, sturdy servants. Let us be spared Nature’s rougher handiwork.
• OF HIS POLL •
I WENT TO THE movies last night and on the newsreel saw the Hon. George Drew9 welcoming some immigrants. I started a clap for him, in which only one other person joined. I do this whenever I see a politician on the screen, to test his popularity; I am President, Statistician and only field-worker of an organization called the Marchbanks Poll of Worthless Public Opinion. If I raise a big clap for a politician I know at once that (a) it is payday, and the audience is in a generous mood; (b) the audience consists chiefly of married couples, who are not holding hands. If the response is small I know (a) that the hands of most people in the audience are otherwise engaged; (b) that the audience does not expect the feature picture to be any good and only came to the movies to get away from home; (c) that the audience consists chiefly of people who have never heard of George Drew and think the figure on the screen is Eva Peron, or the Pope, or some other distant dignitary. I am compiling a large volume of my findings, and will shortly sell it to industrialists who will be impressed by the price and the word “Poll” in the title.
• OF THE GREATNESS OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT •
A HEALTH NUT assailed me today. “Are you getting plenty of water?” said he. “You know, surely, that you are about 70 per cent water?” “You astonish me,” said I, determined not to encourage him. “Your brain alone is 79 per cent water,” he continued, “and 90 per cent of your blood is water. Obviously you must take care to get lots of water.” “If you didn’t get enough water, is there any chance that you would dry up?” I asked, but he was too full of facts to be affected by sarcasm. “Really you are just a big lump of carbon, with a few salts and minerals thrown in,” he continued. “I could buy all your ingredients in a drug store for about sixty cents, and get enough free water out of a tap to mix them up.” “Vain man,” I cried, “in the hereafter we shall see what I am—a dollar’s worth of slops and condiments, or one of the Sons of the Morning. Go, pinhead, lock yourself in a room, and stay there until some inkling of the greatness of the human spirit dawns upon you, then see if you can buy THAT in a drug store.” He fled, hustling his sixty cents’ worth of chemicals and his water down the street at about fifteen m.p.h.
• OF THE VIRTUES OF ARTIFICE •
I SAW A MOVIE of Oscar Wilde’s play An Ideal Husband last week, and enjoyed it greatly. The movie reviewers had assured me that the piece was slow and dull, but I did not find it so. The plot and the dialogue were artificial, of course, but so are the plot and dialogue of all other movies; more artificiality on the Wilde level would improve the movies immensely. I have never understood why people object to artificiality; almost everything that has raised man above the beasts is artificial in some respect. I am an exceedingly artificial creature myself; my teeth are preserved artificially, and I have artificial aids for my eyes; I wear artificial coverings of cloth and leather upon my body; I eat no food which has not been artificially treated. And, unlike a great many of my hypocritical fellow creatures, I like frankly artificial entertainment.
Last night I went to a private showing of a Russian film, Ivan the Terrible, which was one of the best films I have ever seen. True, I have never looked up the nostrils of so many Russians before, and I hope that it will be some time before I do so again, but it was a film after my own heart—full of poisoned wine, spies peeping around pillars, and people wearing trains approximately twenty feet long. This was artificiality on a grand scale. Ivan in the film bore no resemblance to the Ivan of history, who was as mimsy as a borogrove and spent his time alternately in doing unpleasant things and repenting, but it was a fine bit of propaganda and not more distorted than the films we see about Lincoln and George Washington…. I was much impressed by the scene in which Ivan was cured of a severe illness by having a prayer book placed over his face. I shall try this on myself when next my ulcers go back on me.
• A SCHEME TO IMPROVE BUREAUCRACY •
I PREPARED MY Income Tax form today, and reflected that it costs me just about as much to be a Canadian as it would to be an Englishman, and twice as much as it would cost me to be an American. This is a time of year when I think sourly of Government expenditures. I reckon that my Income Tax pays the salary of one minor official, such as the censor of books. What does this minor official do for me that I should support him? Can I march into a government office, seek him out, and say, “You’re my man. I pay you. What are you doing, and are you making a decent job of it?” No, I cannot. Frankly I think it would be a good idea if every taxpayer were told what government stooge he maintained. Small taxpayers would then feel that they owned an eighth of a charwoman; modest taxpayers like myself would own petty officials; wealthy men, who pay a lot of taxes, would be allotted ten or twenty clerks, or a brace of deputy ministers. With this knowledge we could go to Ottawa from time to time and chivvy and nag our hirelings. Such a scheme would give a taxpayer some pride in his taxpaying and would greatly increase bureaucratic efficiency.
• OF WINES RUDELY MINGLED •
I ATTENDED A BANQUET last night at which an appropriate quantity of wine was consumed. But there were a number of people present who were plainly devotees of hard spirits, for they drank little or no wine, leaving it in their glasses. Now when the affair was over I noticed one of the cleaners collecting these remains in a large jug. Sherry, claret, and port were poured without discrimination into the mixture, which had the murky, threatening colour of cough medicine. What did he intend to do with it? I am convinced that later, in some secret bower of his own—some sequestered broom closet or coenobitical lumber room—he drank the contents of that jug in which the conviviality of sherry, the sturdy manliness of claret and the episcopal blessing of port mingled in vinous kaleidoscope. I hope he had a good time, but I would not have his head on my shoulders this morning for a mine of gold.
• OF ANCIENT PROFANITY •
I WAS READING Ben Jonson’s play The Poetaster this afternoon, and found this passage:
OVID: Troth, if I live, I will new dress the law
In sprightly Poesy’s habiliments.
TIBULLUS: The Hell thou wilt!
What, turn law into verse?
I had not thought that this special use of “the hell you will” was so old, for The Poetaster was written in 1601.
I SHOVELLED A LOT of snow today, and rather enjoyed it, though I had had enough at least half an hour before the job was finished. But a friend of mine who sets up as a great authority on health tells me that snow shovelling is wonderful for sedentary workers, because it makes them use their Big Hinge. Apparently “Big Hinge” is what health maniacs call the waist, because it bends. If you use your Big Hinge a lot it squeezes your tripes, causes your juices to squish and slither about inside you, wrings out your liver and spleen, and puts accordion pleats in your vermiform appendix; it scrapes your epigastrium on your backbone and increases the traffic on your alimentary canal. No doubt this is all very fine, but I find that any prolonged use of my Big Hinge makes me extremely hungry, and by the time I have satisfied my hunger I have short-circuited all my inner workings, and my Big Hinge is incapable of moving more than a degree or two in any direction. My juices are solidified, my liver and spleen are like rocks; my appendix is throbbing like a Congo drum and my alimentary canal is closed to navigation. You can’t win in the fight for health.
1 Though in large international centres of population it had long been an open secret that the human male had some form of sexual expression, the publication of Kinsey’s study in 1953 put the matter on a scientific basis, and doubters were forced to accept the brutal fact.
2 Milton Cross (1897-1975) was famous as the commentator on the Saturday afternoon broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. The rich fruitiness of his voice struck awe into the breasts of the uncultivated, and his pronunciation of Italian words was Ultra-Italianate. His swooping, lyrical style of utterance was in itself an adaptation of the German Singspiel, but juicier.
3 Sir Stafford Cripps (1889-1952), British politician and one-time Chancellor of the Exchequer, was even more famous as exemplifying the cast of countenance known as Reformer’s Face, compared with which the mugs of the most determined Puritan divines seemed as jolly as Santa Claus.
4 Gout is far from extinct and has had a remarkable upsurge in recent years. It affects men only, but the Women’s Lib forces are agitating to have it made available to their sex. It is notorious that gout affects only men of superior intellect, and Marchbanks is humiliated that he has no faintest twinge of it, and feels at a disadvantage among his many gouty friends. It is a vulgar error to suppose that it is a consequence of high living; it is a deposition of sodium ureate and even the humblest and most poorly fed, such as university professors, may have it if they are sufficiently bright in the head.
5 White, who edited the Emporia Gazette from 1895, was recognized in journalistic circles as a fearless innovator. His most fearless innovation was his custom of writing his own editorials, instead of pinching them from other papers and then publishing them without attribution or else with “We agree with the Bingville Bugle which says …” tacked on top. This innovation was long in reaching Canada and there are still remote areas where it has not penetrated.
6 It may be asked why the sale of loge tickets was not governed by the number of loges available, but such a question reveals a pitiable naiveté. The proprietors of cinemas are rarely persons of iron principle.
7 Because it arouses an insatiable lust for tobacco among the deer, who slink up to the hunters, imploring a cigarette or two with their great, beautiful eyes, thus spoiling the sport, which consists of killing them treacherously, when they haven’t got their horns crossed.
8 The Dominion Drama Festival was a highly praiseworthy association of amateur theatrical companies that met every year for regional and Dominion-wide contests, which were judged and criticized by adjudicators brought in from Great Britain and the U.S.A. Its avowed desire was to render itself superfluous by bringing about a professional theatre in Canada and in this philanthropic aim it was wholly successful. Let us remember it, therefore, with gratitude. And let us remember also the spirit of pow-wow, palaver and corroboree which marked its meetings and made them immensely pleasurable.
9 George Drew (1894-1973) was a Canadian statesman of considerable celebrity in his time, who might have been Prime Minister if he had not tactlessly referred to our French-descended brethren in Quebec as “a conquered race.” This, of course, was unforgivable, just like suggesting that the English won the Battle of Waterloo. That was, long before our Bill of Rights, which guarantees that no minority, under any circumstances, can be wrong.