• SATURDAY •
As I was cutting my grass today, a passer-by said, “Hullo; are you cleaning up your yard?” By this I knew him to be a Canadian of at least three generations’ standing, for no other English-speaking race uses the word “yard” to describe a lawn, surrounded by flower beds. To me a yard is a small enclosed area, perhaps paved, in which clothes are lined. I looked the word up in my dictionary, and found that the use of yard to describe a garden was labelled as dialect. Presumably it came to Canada many years ago, and took root here. The true Canadian would describe the gardens of Versailles as “Louis XIV’s front yard”, without any sense of insufficiency.… The exact opposite of our national habit may be observed in England where any grassless, desolate, junk-filled bit of vacant ground is called “the garden”.… Another word which persists in Canada and the U.S. is “stoep” for a sitting-out place, although most of us now use the elegant Portugese word “verandah.” Thus a Canadian of the uncompromising old stock sits on his stoep and looks at his yard, whereas his more cosmopolitan children sit on the verandah and look at the garden. If the verandah roof leaks, it may also be called a “loggia.”
-XXXV-
• SUNDAY •
Attended a small gathering this evening where one of the guests went frankly and unashamedly to sleep and put in a good two hours on a sofa; I hasten to add that this was not alcoholic stupor, but fatigue, caused by giving aid and comfort at a children’s party earlier in the day. The incident reminded me of a shameful evening in my own life when I went sound asleep while Prof. Ralph Flenley was explaining some obscure aspects of the Napoleonic wars. To contradict a professor is enough to make him hate you, but to go to sleep while he is talking curdles the milk of human kindness in his breast.
• MONDAY •
Since the war the mortality among animals, domestic and wild, has surely doubled. Last Friday and Saturday I passed a dead hen, two dead cats, a groundhog which had been called home, and a spaniel which was noisily engaged in making its way toward Abraham’s bosom. Today I spied a brown shape on the road which I could not identify, and I asked the lady who was driving me to stop; she did so, and I found that it was a porcupine. I pointed out to her that the animal showed no sign of having died a violent death, and might have had heart-disease; she replied that it looked somewhat run-down to her. I ignored this cheap raillery, and examined the corpse; the porcupine is not a lovely object, and lacks dignity in death.
• TUESDAY •
Was talking to a man tonight who had seen service with the R.A.F. in Africa, in Sierra Leone. He tells me that in that part of the world a young woman’s dowry is likely to be reckoned in sewing-machines, which she buys with the pay which she received in return for special services rendered to the white troops. A girl with six or seven sewing-machines can afford to pick and choose among the eligible young men of her own race. The custom of the dowry has virtually died out among all except the most wealthy, in our Anglo-American civilization. A young man who takes a wife must choose her for her beauty of charracter, or of figure, alone. He stands to get nothing else with her except the expenses inseparable from housekeeping and raising a family. The average Canadian bridegroom cannot even count on six sewing-machines. It’s the man who pays, and pays, and pays.
• WEDNESDAY •
A hullabaloo has arisen because a Cabinet Minister told some union representatives to get the hell out of his club, where they were pestering him as he tried to eat a sandwich. The heart of many an industrialist has warmed to this man as they have longed to say the same thing themselves on many occasions, but feeling in labour circles is intense.… As a politician myself (leader, secretary and permanent executive of Marchbanks’ Humanist Party) I understand the Minister’s action perfectly. There comes a time in every man’s life when he wants to tell somebody who is pestering him to go to hell, and if he does not indulge the whim he is likely to get psychic strabismus, which, in its turn, leads to spiritual impotence. And spiritual impotence is the curse of our country as it is.
• THURSDAY •
I see that Alfred Hitchcock intends to make a film version of Hamlet, only he will change it about considerably, and will leave out the poetry; Cary Grant is to star in this masterpiece. I can just see it; Hamlet will no longer be a Prince, but a truck-driver in a small American town; he will be ultra-democratic, and everybody will call him “Ham.” His Mom will have bumped off his Pop in order to marry his uncle Claudius who thereby inherits the trucking business. Ham and his pal Horatio, and Ophelia (who is Ham’s sugarpuss), will uncover this dirty work by showing Mom and Claudius some home movies of a similar case. Ophelia will have comic scenes with an undertaker, but will not really die, because she will have to marry Ham in the last reel, and help him with his trucks. Ham and Ophy may even have a screwball sequence in which they both pretend to be crazy, because everybody thinks craziness is so cute these days. It’s a natural! … Of course the Hays Office could never permit a film version of the Shakespearean Hamlet, because its theme is too closely bound up with incest to be tolerable to the pure minds of moviegoers. The movies insist that a good boy must love his dear old Mom, but wisely, and not too well.
• FRIDAY •
This is the time of year when households are shaken to their foundations by the annual Pickle War. There was a time when the only limit on the amount of pickles “done down” each year was that imposed by the physical endurance of the sweating squaws. When women began to faint and fall into the seething cauldrons of Chili Sauce, the time had come to call a halt (unless you happened to like Chile Con Carne, and hired girls happened to be cheap). But with sugar rationed, the problem is now how much of each pickle is to be made? Personally, I favour Marchbanks’ Peach Pickle, which is made thus: put half a fine peach in the bottom of a brandy glass, add two fingers of brandy, two teaspoonfuls of sugar, and fill up with cream; drink at once. A simpler version is this: sugar a peach lightly, put it in a brandy glass, add two fingers of cream, and fill up with brandy; drink at once. Or here is a quick recipe for lazy cooks; eat a peach, and immediately drink a tumblerful of brandy. The last has the advantage of conserving the sugar, and is highly recommended for this reason, I understand. Marchbanks’ Peach Pickle is guaranteed to add zest to the simplest meal; it is also the quickest pickle you ever had.
• SATURDAY •
To the movies tonight, and was given a seat next to a woman who brought a baby, which was certainly not more than eight months old. It was suffering with gas on its stomach, so she had laid it upside down over her knees, and was rolling it to and fro as she watched the picture. The occasional high-pitched belches and moans of the suffering moppet worked upon my sympathies until I could no longer concentrate on Rita Hayworth, and as long experience has taught me that it is dangerous to come between a mother and her child—even when she is treating it cruelly—I moved. The child had been upside down for half an hour, and I began to fear that it might die; it smelled rather dead, though it still wriggled slightly.… Found that I had taken a seat next to an elderly woman who was enjoying the film in her bare feet; she had a pair of shoes, but she held them in her lap—to save them, I suppose. These incidents made me thankful for Rita Hayworth who was young, beautiful, clothed, right side up, and apparently in excellent health.
-XXXVI-
• SUNDAY •
Passed a large part of the day eating grapes. There are people who say that our Canadian blue grapes are harsh and prick the mouth with tiny barbs. To me, they seem matchless in flavour and colour, and I consume them by the basket, picking, chomping and spitting in a golden autumnal dream.… Once, years ago, I watched a chimpanzee in the London Zoo; the Latin name over his cage was Simia Satyrus, and truly he seemed like some bawdy, happy old satyr from the Golden Age when the world was young, and Rights, and Duties, and Social Problems were still maggots in the womb of time. He lay on his back with his arms folded under his head, and bit great mouthfuls of grapes from a bunch which he held in his toes.
Every now and then he looked out at me, spat seeds, and shook with silent laughter, as though to say, “If you had any sense, old boy, you’d join me; this is the life.” I have often regretted that I did not accept his invitation. A nice private cage and plenty of grapes—what more can life offer?
• MONDAY •
I see an advertisement in the papers for “Pre-Arranged Funerals.” If you want to, you can arrange your own funeral, and pay for it before you die. This scheme combines forethought with a special form of insurance, and I think I shall make arrangements for my own funeral this afternoon. Death has no terrors for me, but sometimes I break out in a cold sweat when I think what a preacher might say about me when I was no longer able to contradict him and check his facts. I shall write my own funeral oration, and I shall also decide what music shall lull my mourners. If strains of Maunder or Stainer were played at my defunctive orgies I should certainly rise from the dead and strangle those responsible.… If I can raise the money to cover expenses I think I shall arrange to have a sin-eater at my funeral, in the manner of my Celtic ancestors, and also a feast for the mourners, with cold meats, Stilton cheese, fruitcake, and plenty of sherry and port. I feel that nothing would make up for my absence so well as a sufficient quantity of good dry sherry.
• TUESDAY •
I see that an English movie studio is going to make a film of the life of Karl Marx. This should be a natural for films. Karl’s poor old Dad is a miner, see? And this rich guy who owns the mine is a so-and-so, see? And Karl’s Mom is the hired help in the mine-owner’s house, and one day the mine-owner throws a rice-pudding at her because it was burned, y’ catch on? And the same day a lump of coal falls on Dad Marx’s foot, and he can’t go down the mine no more. And the Marxes are treated bad because they’re Jews, see? And Karl’s sister is taken away by the rich mine-owner’s son and put in a Boudoir, see? So Karl gets this idea that Manhood is more than Money, and he organizes some kind of an old-time A.F. of L. or I.W.W., and the workers march to the mine-owner’s house and burn it and elect Karl boss of the mine, and his sister gets out of the Boudoir and marries Karl’s best friend, and in the last shot you see Karl as an old man with a bunch o’ whiskers writing this book about Capital. It’s in Technicolour, mostly red.… Of course the real story of Karl Marx would not do for the movies; he was too incorrigible a borrower, and too indifferent a father, to be worthy of the talents of Gregory Peck, or even Paul Muni. Anyway, he lived his whole life in the extreme of bourgeois dullness.
• WEDNESDAY •
A lecturer on health was somewhat embarrassed recently when a member of his audience rose and said: “What will become of the health of Canada with the coming generation of mothers drinking and smoking as they do?” Dipping into my immense knowledge of social history, I cannot recall any generation of mothers which has not had its own deleterious indulgences. The mothers of yester-year did not smoke and drink rye, but they consumed dangerous quantities of strong tea, and sought oblivion by imbibing freely of Peruna, a nerve tonic which contained about as much alcohol as a bottle of imported Scotch. And their mothers smoked clay pipes and drank the liquor from the bottoms of silos, just to keep off germs. In spite of these things, they lived to ripe ages, and were often very merry and entertaining old parties. We can overdo the health business. Remember the old song—“A little of what you fancy does you good.” A very sound philosophy, clearly expressed.
• THURSDAY •
To the movies tonight to see a highly coloured piece about some people called Frédéric Chopin and George Sand, though any resemblance between them and the historical characters so named was coincidental, and had been avoided pretty carefully. The voluptuous Lady Korda played George Sand, and when she appeared in masculine dress she looked far more like the historical Chopin than the young bruiser who had been given that part. The historical George Sand was so lacking in attraction of the physical kind that Alfred de Musset once described her as a cow, quite dispassionately.… The film had been constructed along the approved lines of Hollywood history: Chopin was insulted and oppressed by the rich (whereas in actual fact he was fawned upon by the nobility and gentry almost from birth); he was a revolutionary, and a great whooper-up for the Common Man (though in fact he never met any common men except occasional piano movers and preferred the company of the most brilliant group of his time); he let George Sand bamboozle him (though in fact they nagged each other tirelessly, and he could not stand the racket made by her swarm of children); he dearly loved his native Poland (though he was actually half-French and took care never to go near Poland once he got away from it). A strange film, brightly coloured, sweet and gassy, like a fruit salad.
• FRIDAY •
I am getting a cold. At present it is in what we medical men call “the period of incubation.” This means that there is nothing specifically wrong with me, but I am conscious of uneasiness in my throat, and my head feels as though somebody had pumped soda water (with pinpoint carbonation, of course) into my brains, causing them to go bubble-bubble-bubble in a ticklish way every now and again. My ears, too, have not their accustomed sharpness, and everybody who talks to me seems to have a mouthful of mashed potatoes.… To me the annoying thing about the cold germ is that it has such a poor sense of timing; when I am in perfect health, but would welcome a chance to stay in bed for two or three days, I could not catch a cold if I slept in a freezing locker; but when I am too busy to fuss over trifles I catch colds with the greatest ease, and have to go on working in spite of them. I know that physicians advise against this, but I have yet to see a physician take a few days in bed because of a cold. They generally keep going as long as they can be carried from patient to patient.
• SATURDAY •
In the night my cold passed from the stage of incubation to the stage of exasperation, and I woke with weeping eyes, a streaming nose, no sense of taste, and very little sense of hearing. Went to work, kicking dogs, swearing at children, and pushing old women under buses. There is a misanthrope in every man, and the cold germ usually brings him well to the fore.… In the afternoon visited some people, all of whom had colds, and we passed an agreeable hour or so exchanging symptoms.… Later at an informal birthday party, and had a slice of cake with real icing on it, a rarity in these times. I haven’t any sympathy with people who do not celebrate their birthdays; I like to see the utmost done in the way of cakes, gifts, and jollifications. To a philosopher the passing of another year is not a melancholy incident; he may be a year older, but if he is worth his salt he is also a year wiser.
-XXXVII-
• SUNDAY •
Took some photographs today, as I was lucky enough to get a reel of film yesterday. Amateur photography bears the same relation to the real thing that amateur theatricals bear to the productions of London or Broadway. When I take a photograph I usually manage to get at least one object into the picture which taste and delicacy would exclude from it; if I take a baby there is certain to be a puddle under it; if I take a dewy damsel in a winsome pose, she is sure to have a bottle of hair restorer or eradicator protruding from her pocket; let me train my camera upon a fragrant old lady in her lavender gown, and an ill-timed eructation will cause her to come out on the film looking like a bar-fly; nobody ever seems to be properly tucked in, buttoned up, or combed and washed when I take them. There are people who believe that Nature always provides a reverse, or opposite, of everything she creates. I am obviously the opposite of Youssuf Karsh; if I had photographed Churchill it would certainly have been just after a bottle had broken in his pocket.
• MONDAY •
A letter today from a reader who is in hospital with a broken leg; he tells me that he has at last discovered who I am. I would not be too sure of that; there are at least two men, I know, who pretend that they are Samuel Marchbanks, and as they are my employers I dare not expose them. I have actually seen one of these scoundrels address a meeting at which I was present, pretending to be me! I have also heard the suggestion that Samue
l Marchbanks is really a woman.… This gentleman wants to know if I have many readers of his own age (28). I don’t know, to be truthful, though I understand that I am widely read in Old Folks Homes, orphanages, asylums for alcoholics, and Refuges for Gentlewomen in Reduced Circumstances; in poorhouses, too, I am a general favourite. This is because I am always compassionate toward the weak and lowly, and scornful toward the rich, the book-learned and the privileged. Years ago, when I was a mere lad, I discovered that the way to win the hearts of the lowly was to tell them that they were the salt of the earth; this is a lie, but they love it.
• TUESDAY •
In the paper I see a picture of Shirley Temple buying her trousseau. Deary me, how time flies! Surely ‘twas but yesterday that this loveable mite held all the world in chubby thrall. Even the Dionne Quintuplets, five to one, could not get the better of her in the great battle of publicity. And now she is a grown woman, trying to find a few pairs of step-ins with real elastic in the top.… A Hollywood tycoon once explained to me that the whole of Shirley’s grip on the film public began and ended with the way in which she said “Oh my goodness!” This line appeared in all her films, and where the ordinary moppet would say “Oh my goodness!” with perfect, if nasal, articulation, Shirley said “Oh my gooness!” This bit of delicious juvenility reduced strong men to doting tears, and caused fond mothers to smack their young whenever the aforesaid young dared to sound the “d” in “goodness.” When Shirley said “Oh my gooness!” and flashed dimples like Neon signs, she aroused the essential jellyfish in us all; we were at her mercy, even when she sang The Good Ship Lollipop and clumped laboriously through a tap-dance. But Ichabod, Ichabod, the gooness is departed from Shirley.