The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks Read online

  By Robertson Davies

  NOVELS

  THE SALTERTON TRILOGY

  Tempest-Tost

  Leaven of Malice

  A Mixture of Frailties

  THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY

  Fifth Business

  The Manticore

  World of Wonders

  THE CORNISH TRILOGY

  The Rebel Angels

  What’s Bred in the Bone

  The Lyre of Orpheus

  Murther and Walking Spirits

  The Cunning Man

  SHORT FICTION

  High Spirits

  FICTIONAL ESSAYS

  THE SAMUEL MARCHBANKS COLLECTION

  The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

  The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

  Samuel Marchbanks’ Almanack

  The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks

  ESSAYS

  One Half of Robertson Davies

  The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies

  The Merry Heart

  Happy Alchemy

  Selected Works on the Art of Writing

  Selected Works on the Pleasure of Reading

  CRITICISM

  A Voice from the Attic

  PLAYS

  Selected Plays

  The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

  ROBERTSON DAVIES (1913–1995) was born and raised in Ontario, and was educated at a variety of schools, including Upper Canada College, Queen’s University, and Balliol College, Oxford. He had three successive careers: as an actor with the Old Vic Company in England; as publisher of the Peterborough Examiner; and as university professor and first Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, from which he retired in 1981 with the title of Master Emeritus.

  He was one of Canada’s most distinguished men of letters, with several volumes of plays and collections of essays, speeches, and belles lettres to his credit. As a novelist, he gained worldwide fame for his three trilogies: The Salterton Trilogy, The Deptford Trilogy, and The Cornish Trilogy, and for later novels Murther & Walking Spirits and The Cunning Man.

  His career was marked by many honours: He was the first Canadian to be made an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he was a Companion of the Order of Canada, and he received honorary degrees from twenty-six American, Canadian, and British universities.

  The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

  New Canadian Library electronic edition, 2016

  Copyright © 1949 by Robertson Davies

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  First published in Canada by Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited in 1949

  First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus in 1951

  All rights reserved.

  e-ISBN: 978-0-7710-2798-7

  Electronic edition published in Canada by New Canadian Library, an imprint of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company, Toronto, in 2016

  McClelland & Stewart with colophon is a registered trademark

  Library of Congress Control Number is available upon request

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  THE NATURE AND USE OF THIS BOOK

  IT IS A frequent complaint of the sort of person with whom complaint is an ingrained habit that the art of conversation is dead. I do not believe this. I think that conversation is in a reasonably flourishing state and I assert furthermore that when I have the right company I am not a bad hand at it myself. I find that company most often seated around a dinner table. Encouraged, therefore, by the kindly reception which has been given to some extracts from my Diary which I published two years ago, I offer to the public these odds and ends from my Table Talk.

  In the hope that such an arrangement may call up the atmosphere of the dinner table, I have set out my paragraphs (for a good talker should speak in paragraphs and not in disjointed utterance) under headings which trace the course of a good dinner. I do not mean a great dinner, for such things are almost impossible in private houses in our day; I mean a simple seven course dinner, consisting of a Soup (I like a choice of thick or clear), a Fish (I am very partial to lobster for this course), an Entrée (where the cook shows her utmost skill with a soufflé or some other complex and ingenious dish), a Remove (which is the proper name for a really good joint of meat or possibly a fine fowl if the meal is a simple one), a Sweet (and if anyone is thinking of asking me to dinner I may say that I am always well content with a Sherry Trifle), a Savoury (but no unnatural unions of prunes and bacon, if you please) and a simple Dessert of fruits, nuts and bonbons. In the matter of wines I do not insist, as some greedy diners do, on an array of fine vintages: a little Sherry, an honest Claret, a sound, wholesome Burgundy (or Vin de Champagne if you simply must) and a glass or two of Port, or better still, Madeira, to top off, will suffice me. If the Hostess insists, a Salad may be interpolated between the Entrée and the Remove, but I have provided no conversation for it; one does not talk while eating Salad; one crunches.

  As to the use of this book, the reader may please himself, but I suggest that he may memorize pieces from it and cleverly pass them off as his own when next he dines out; in that way he will get a reputation as a talker. For the particular convenience of dull people I have inserted several long boring stories into the book, and these are clearly marked as such in the text. Those who wish to spare themselves the pains of getting passages by heart may take the book to dinner with them, and read aloud from it frankly. Those who, for one reason or another, are never asked to dine out, may create an agreeable illusion of society if they will read the book to themselves, as they regale themselves with soda biscuits and weak tea, sitting at a corner of their own kitchen tables. To all, under every circumstance, I raise a glass (or, if total abstainers, a loaded fork) and cry “My dear Sir, (or Madam) — your very Good Health!” SAMUEL MARCHBANKS

  The Deipnosophists Club

  September 1, 1949.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Soup

  Fish

  Entree

  The Remove

  Sweet

  Savoury

  Dessert

  • OF HIS GIFT FOR REMINISCENCE •

  BEFORE DINNER, I observed, everybody seemed to want to talk about the Good Old Days. I am, generally speaking, better at this than anybody else, for I am not bothered by details of chronology, and tend to regard as my own, reminiscences which have been imparted to me by the Ancients of my tribe. Thus I frequently tell people about how I taught Disraeli to play croquet, because my Great Uncle Hengist did so, and I also have a good story about how I sent Sir John A. Macdonald his first brief, though I have a hazy notion that it was my second cousin Bloodgood Marchbanks, who did it. Thus I embody in myself the whole Marchbanks Tradition, and possess what anthropologists call Racial Memory.

  • OF HIS ECONOMICS •

  A MAN WROTE to me today who says, “Why has Samuel Marchbanks no economic problem? To me no Canadian is real unless he is engaged in a death-grapple with his bank manager.” This is easy to answer; I have no economic problem because I do not believe in economics. I am an atheist and an infidel in all matters relating to Mammon. I have never had a bank account; I keep all my money in a tin box under my bed, and I never buy anything un
less I have enough money in the tin box to pay for it in cash. I am rarely tormented by the desire to own anything, and I would exchange the Towers for a tent tomorrow if tents were practical dwellings in Canada. I fight inflation by eating cheaper food, and wearing my clothes past the bounds of hygiene. I have no insurance, and have made no provision for my old age, as I am resolved to become a whining beggar outside church and beverage-room doors when I am past work. All my life I have defied economics and I shall go on doing so. What is the result? I look at the world with the clear, bright eye of a man who has a tin box, and bank managers love me and sometimes give me blotters advertising their establishments.

  • REVENGE •

  BEFORE I FELL ASLEEP last night a moth flew up my pyjama sleeve and tickled me excruciatingly. I overlaid the creature and slept on its corpse.

  • OF CHARACTER REVEALED IN DEPORTMENT •

  ON MY WAY to the dentist this afternoon, I was pursued by an elderly bum, who kept murmuring, “Hey Perfessor, wanna speakcha minute, Perfessor.” Indigents almost always address me as Professor, a title to which I have no claim. But I observe that men of very upright carriage are usually spoken to by beggars as “Captain,” whereas fellows whose spines are noticeably out of plumb (“Bible-backed” is the phrase in some circles) are called “Professor.” I suppose this is my fate, but I wish that once in a while a beggar would call me “Sport,” or something dashing of that kind, suggesting that he took me for a frequenter of race-courses, an habitual drinker of champagne, and altogether a knowing and dangerous character.

  • OF ONE SEEMINGLY RETURNED FROM THE GRAVE •

  I WAS IN TORONTO yesterday on business, and woke at 8 A.M. to the sound of the radio in the next room playing Strauss waltzes. Radios in hotel bedrooms are an abomination of desolation, and people who want to listen to waltzes before they have cleaned their teeth are, in my opinion, perverted.… I almost swooned at lunch when I saw a man at a table some distance away who had been killed, I thought, in the war. It was not possible to rush to him at once and say “Are you a ghost, or merely an Amazing Resemblance?” and so I was kept on pins and needles for an hour. But at last I buttonholed him, and it was indeed my friend. When I told him that I had thought him dead, mourned his loss, and filed him away in my memory, he laughed uproariously. Nothing amuses people under fifty so much as being told that you thought they were dead; after fifty the joke gradually loses its side-splitting character until, in the seventies, it is received with sour looks. Having established my friend’s corporeality we exchanged news, but I could not shake off my doubt at once, and for half an hour or so I expected him to come out with some interesting revelation about the Life Beyond.

  • HE CREATES A LEGEND •

  THE COMING OF summer has encouraged ants to invade my house, and this morning the bathtub was full of them. I drowned the lot, more in sorrow than in anger, and as they disappeared down the plug-hole, I reflected that I had probably started a Flood legend in the ant world, which in time will be recorded in ant Scripture.

  • OF LOST CAUSES AND IMPOSSIBLE LOYALTIES •

  I SAT DOWN today to rootle through a pile of mail which has accumulated during the week and which I have not opened, owing to its uninteresting appearance. I take my time about opening letters which look as though they contained unpleasant news, or information which I do not want. I discovered in the heap a copy of a magazine called The Celt, published in Britain and devoted to what the publishers presume to be the interests of fanatical Scotsmen, Welshmen, Irishmen, Manxmen, Cornishmen and Bretons; large chunks of it are printed in Erse, Gaelic, Welsh and Breton by fellows called Dmurphaidh and Na Dhoaileach, who used to be plain Murphy and Dooley before the Celtic bug bit them. All of these Celts seemed to be uncommonly vexed with the English, and did not hesitate to say that if the English could be got out of the way everything would be dheaochd (jake) with the world. Being possessed of a considerable degree of traditional Celtic wisdom myself, I soon committed The Celt to the flames.

  This seems to be my week to receive peculiar periodicals. Another paper called The Jacobite arrived from New Zealand, of all places; it was devoted entirely to that most lost of all lost causes. It boasted that a letter written by Mary, Queen of Scots, had recently sold for £1200, whereas one from Elizabeth had sold for a measly £500—an obvious victory for the Stuart cause. It spoke admiringly of Louis XVI as the man who had given the Americans their independence—an interpretation of history which was new to me. I once knew a Jacobite, and he wasted a great deal of time scheming to dethrone the late King George V, in order to supplant him with an obscure Bavarian prince called Ruprecht, who had no desire at all to press his claim to the throne of Britain, though he was the nearest thing to a Stuart to be found in the modern world.

  • HE IS EARTHBOUND •

  I AM BEGINNING to be a little bit touchy about the fact that I have never been up in an airplane. Not so long ago I was among the majority in that respect; now I appear to be one of a timid minority, classed with people who think tomatoes poisonous, or who refuse to use the telephone during thunderstorms. Everybody seems to fly everywhere. The real reason why I do not fly is that I am a coward, and have not even been on a Ferris Wheel for twenty years. But I am getting sick of inventing lies about how I prefer train travel, or motoring, and some day I may be forced into a plane by my fear of losing face.

  • HE DESCRIBES AN ILLNESS •

  (A Boring Account)

  YESTERDAY I finished the series of treatments which have occupied my time during the past month. “You’ve been a good patient, Mr. Marchbanks,” said the nurse as I climbed off the gridiron; “we’ve put 124,000,000 velocipedes through you and you haven’t batted an eyelash.” (She may have said something else, but I think it was velocipedes; these measurements of electricity are very confusing.) I said nothing. When one is praised by nurses it is best not to be too enthusiastic. They may like you so much that they insist on further treatments. I silently cursed the Atomic Frier, into which I have been slid like a roasting fowl for a month, and escaped to the cubby-hole where my clothes had been left. As always in doctors’ dressing rooms, the mirror in this place was hung to suit the needs of women rather than men, and gave me a fine view of my navel. I was on my knees, tying my tie, when the nurse came in again. She thought I was praying, and bent her head reverently. While she was thus occupied I escaped into the blessed light of day, and bought a pound of candied peanuts and ate them all at once, to celebrate my liberty.

  I set out for my place of business today and met two men. “Hello, I never expected to see you again,” said one of them. “Nope, heard you were a goner,” said the other. “Ridiculous,” said I, haughtily. “Well, you can’t blame us,” said the first man; “it was all over town that when you came back it would be in a box.” “Pooh, pooh,” said I, being unable to think of anything which properly expressed my feelings. “What was wrong with you, anyway?” asked the second man, screwing up his eyes as though he thought that he could produce X-ray vision in himself by that means, and look right into my inside. “Well, if you wish to know,” said I with dignity, “I had a slight case of cradlecap, and I have been taking treatment for it.” They went their way, muttering discontentedly. I reached my office and was greeted there with great friendliness, but during the morning a man stuck his head in at the door and said, “Well, well, wonders will never cease. I heard you were on your last legs.” I threw a heavy paper-weight at him, but he ducked.

  One of my temperance friends called on me today. “Do you think it is going to be permanent?” he asked, in the voice which doctors use when enquiring after one’s elimination. “Will what be permanent?” I countered. “The Gold Cure,” he whispered. “I have not been taking the Gold Cure,” I said, coldly. “That’s what they all say,” he replied; “but I heard from someone who knows a man who knows an intimate friend of yours that you had a nasty scare with pink elephants—teeny-weeny pink elephants about the size of cocktail sausages—which you saw crawl
ing all over your counterpane. And this man said that they took you to Toronto in a strait-jacket, and drained your crank-case, and packed you in dry ice for a week, and then put you in a furnace and evaporated all the beverage alcohol out of you.” “You have been misinformed,” said I. “Well, that’s what they’re saying, anyway,” he said, “and you’ll never persuade them otherwise.” “I shall not even try,” said I, pushing the secret button which opened a trapdoor at his feet, and dejected him smartly into a pickle-barrel in the cellar.

  “Well, well, so you beat the Grim Reaper after all!” shrieked another acquaintance on the street, seizing my hand and trying to break it off. “You are mistaken; I am a ghost; whoo!” said I, choking back my rage. “Always kidding!” said the creature, lurching on his way. I learned also that in my absence three people had applied for my job, thinking that I would never lift pen or strike typewriter again.

  My experiences of the past week convince me that the world is full of Intuitive Diagnosticians and Vicarious Undertakers. Every third person I meet seems to know what ails me, and a good many of them have buried me so deep that they take it as a personal affront that I am still walking about. I have made up my mind to outlive all of these vultures, just for spite, and every year I shall defile their graves in some new and outrageous way on Father’s Day. My family history is full of instances of Marchbankses who wouldn’t lie down; they all outlived their physicians by several decades, and in one or two instances their cantankerousness was so powerful that they did not die at all, but were removed from this earth in heavenly chariots. I have every intention of following their example.… No madam, I have not got anything infectious.