Dear Dr. Cataplasm:
Cannot the medical profession do anything about the vast quantity of medical misinformation which is foisted upon the public under the guise of beauty hints? I am just as anxious to be beautiful as anyone, and I read in a magazine yesterday that it was a very good thing to lie down for half an hour with your feet higher than your head. The writer stated flatly that this would relieve bags under the eyes, blotchy complexion, sinus trouble, slumped abdomen, taedium vitae and all the other ills from which I suffer. So I tried it.
It was not positively unpleasant, though it produced an effect rather like slow strangulation. The article led me to believe that this was wonderful fresh blood swirling around in my blood-starved brain. But when the half hour was up, and I rose to my feet, everything about me which had been slumped before slumped again with such sudden force that for a moment I thought the shock would bear me to the ground. I was just able to stagger to a sofa, and lie down in a perfectly horizontal position until the fit had passed.
My beauty has not been noticeably enhanced by this experience. Why are such impostures permitted?
Yours in a condition of utter slump,
Samuel Marchbanks.
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To Amyas Pilgarlic, ESQ.
Dear Pil:
It is a bit thick, your rebuke to me for believing in ghosts, calling them “superstitions unbecoming a scientific age.” If there is one lesson science impresses on us all, it is surely that nothing is incredible.
Haven’t you heard about “neutrinos”? Apparently there are such things—little doodads of which sixty billion penetrate each square inch of our bodies every second and go on their way having done no harm whatever. But nobody has so far suggested that the neutrinos are, in their way, unaware of us. I put it to you that to a neutrino you and I probably seem like ghosts. And I put it to you also that we may, in our turn, be as neutrinos to other beings, whizzing in and about them without much awareness, but with an occasional intuition that things are not quite as simple as even our five wits lead us to suppose.
Multiply my bulk in square inches by sixty billion, and reflect that it is from amid that assemblage of unknown but active creatures that I now adjure you to bethink yourself, and stop talking nonsense. We are all much more ghostly than we know.
Your eerie comrade,
Samuel Marchbanks.
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• A GARLAND OF MUSINGS •
TECHNICOLOUR FLAUBERT / Picked up Gustave Flaubert’s Salammbo, a book which I read as a schoolboy and looked upon with wry smiles even then, as it appears to me to be written in Technicolour; however, as I read it in translation I would be wise to keep quiet, for any Frenchman can shout me down. But the tone of the book is exhausting; nobody ever says “Giddap” to a horse; they always “urge it forward with a hoarse cry.” Nobody looks at a woman; he devours her with his eyes. I prefer a quieter life.… Salammbo suggests that medical practice in ancient Carthage was on an equally irrational footing with war and the pursuit of love. One remedy which is described is “the blood of a black dog slaughtered by barren women on a winter’s night among the ruins of a tomb”; a druggist who had filled a few prescriptions like that in the course of a day might well think of going into some other business.… However, Salammbo is enthralling, in its strange way, and I read it for half an hour after lunch before I realized that I had work to do, and urged myself toward my desk with a hoarse cry, devouring several women with my eyes as I trudged through the snow. One of them was eying a black dog reflectively, and I concluded that she was at least on the Pill.
A MEAGRE DIET / For several weeks I have been following a diet prescribed by my physician, which includes a great deal of seafood. Yet I find that when I order lobster or jumbo shrimps at a meal, and explain that I must mind my diet, the people with whom I am eating snigger in an underbred fashion and hint that I am a luxurious rascal, and that my diet is a thing of the imagination. This is bitterly unjust, but I do not know what I am to do about it. I like seafood, and eat it with obvious relish; is it necessary that everything on a diet should be nasty? I don’t like spinach and broccoli, but I eat them, and get no pity for it. Why am I grudged a simple little thing like a lobster or a dozen oysters?
CHILDREN AND CERAMICS / Attended a little party where there was a type of pickle hitherto unknown to me, though I consider myself rather an expert on pickles. It was made of infant ears of corn, an inch or two long, preserved in some savoury embalming fluid; they were delicious. But as I looked at these tiny ears, plucked before they had grown to fullness and maturity, and arrested in their growth for our delight, I was strongly reminded of those children who, during the Middle Ages, were turned into dwarfs for the pleasure of people whose income permitted them to run to the luxury of a household dwarf. Gypsies kidnapped these children and encased them in pottery forms, so that they could not grow, and developed into wry shapes, regarded as funny by our strong-stomached ancestors. When they had reached adult years, the pottery form was broken, and there was a child, of a kind, with an adult mind, of a kind. I do not suppose this curious trade will ever be revived. I have watched some of the pottery classes sponsored by our recreational associations, but I have never seen anybody at work on a pot which suggested that it was for the jugging of a child.
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• FROM MY ARCHIVES •
To Raymond Cataplasm, M.D., F.R.C.P.
Dear Dr. Cataplasm:
I see that an eminent member of your profession has declared that in his opinion sleep was the original and natural state of all living things. The lower organisms still exist, says he, in a somnolent condition: great numbers of higher creatures pass months every year in hibernation—which is a kind of sleep: the most sleepless of all is the king of them all—Man, proud Man. He suggests that we might be better off if we slept more. But it seems to me that it might be argued to the contrary that we should be even more civilized if we slept less.
I write to you from a transcontinental train, upon which I am hastening toward our great Canadian West. As I bump and clatter across the broad and lumpy bosom of our motherland I find it impossible to sleep at all. Other people sleep, but not Marchbanks, the super-civilized. My eyelids feel as though someone had been striking matches on them, and when I push them down over the peeled grapes swimming in stewed rhubarb which are my eyes, hot balls of pain bounce around in my head.
But am I more civilized than in the days when I slept for the usual eight hours? I am certainly more fearful, jumpy and cross-grained, and these are the badges of civilization today. When I return, I want you to give me some medicine to uncivilize me. A barbiturate to make me barbarous, shall we say?
Your unbearably civilized patient,
Samuel Marchbanks.
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To Amyas Pilgarlic, ESQ.
Dear Pil:
Yesterday I was in Banff and its mountainous environs. Have you ever thought how romantically some mountains are named? The Three Sisters, for instance. If I had been asked to name it I should have called it The Three Jagged Snags, or, in a more poetic vein, The Hag’s Lower Denture. But no: The Three Sisters it is. There are cases, of course, where the names are well chosen. Several mountains are named after millionaires and bankers, and they have just the right unapproachable, frosty look. One is named after a missionary: it has a look of suspicious disapproval like the banker-mountains, but on a more spiritual plane, if I make myself clear. I like mountains, but I refuse to be patronized by them.
What really astonishes me here in the West is the superstitious awe which is extended toward the East. Whenever Westerners are behaving in a natural and jolly manner, somebody is likely to say, “Of course, we know you don’t carry on like this in the East.” It is rather a new thing for me to be in a place where Ontario is regarded as a gentle, old-world, tradition-encrusted civilization, but I suppose I shall get used to it. Indeed I am doing so right here in Banff. I am older than the rocks among which I sit, and my eyelids are a little weary. I am be
ginning to take pride in certain gracious old Ontario traditions, such as wearing a neck-tie in the morning and depending on braces instead of a belt. I have not, as some Easterners do, bought myself a white cowboy hat. Something—a life-long mistrust of cows, perhaps, and a conviction that their milk is the most over-rated drink known to man—prevents me. Tomorrow I press on dauntlessly to Vancouver.
Yours,
Sam.
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To Waghorn Wittol, ESQ.
Dear Wittol:
When I was at Banff yesterday my guide showed me, with utmost pride, a big heap of sticks, mud and dirt which was, he said, a beaver lodge.
In fact, it was undistinguishable from the big heap of sticks, mud and dirt behind the garage at Marchbanks Towers. I have been trying to get a man to come and haul this away, but I shall not do so now. If anyone asks me what it is I shall say airily, “Oh, a beaver lodge.” The word rubbish will not be uttered in its presence.—How travel broadens one’s outlook.
My regards to Mrs. Wittol, if you can find her.
Samuel Marchbanks.
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To Haubergeon Hydra, ESQ.
Dear Mr. Hydra:
As a citizen and taxpayer of this country I write to you, as Deputy Guarantor of Tourist Attractions, to complain about our prairies: they are not as flat as I was led to believe. People have assured me for years that the prairie is as flat as a billiard table. This, sir, is a lie put out to attract tourists. It is not nearly so flat as that.
There is much talk of conservation these days, but very little action. Let us not lose our prairies. Tear down the farmhouses at once: nobody wants them: the farmers are all in California spending their wheat subsidy. And then put a fleet of steam rollers on the prairies and get those unsightly humps out of them. Keep at it until they are, as advertised, flat as a billiard table.
Your indignant taxpayer,
S. Marchbanks.
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To Amyas Pilgarlic, ESQ.
Dear Pil:
Since last I wrote to you I have gone through what is widely believed to be one of the most moving spiritual experiences a Canadian can sustain—a jaunt through the Rocky Mountains. I enjoyed it, but spiritually I am exactly where I was before. I have seen them in full sunlight, which robs them of all mystery, and I have seen them in a rainy haze, which is much better. I have gaped at chunks of rock which are said to resemble the faces of Indians, though the likeness escaped me. I have looked shudderingly down into gorges over which the train was passing. I have been pleased, diverted and surprised, but I am not one of those who finds a sight of the Rockies an equivalent for getting religion at a revival meeting.
To make a shameful confession, the Rockies put me in mind of nothing so much as the first act of Rose Marie, a musical comedy of my younger days and the favourite theatre entertainment of his late Majesty, King George V. At any moment I expected a lovely French-Canadian girl to leap on the observation car, saying, “You make ze marriage wiz me, no?” Or an Indian girl, more lithe and beautiful than any Indian girl has ever been, to begin a totem dance on the track. The scenery was right: only the actors were missing.
Upon arrival in Vancouver, the first thing to meet my eye was a notice, signed by the Chief of Police, warning me against confidence tricksters. It told me in detail how I might expect them to work. I would be approached, first of all, by someone who would try to make friends: this would be “The Steerer” who would eventually steer me to “The Spieler,” who would sell me Stanley Park or the harbour at a bargain price. Not long after I had read this I was approached by a crafty-looking woman carrying a handful of pasteboards. “Juwanna buy four chances on the Legion car?” she cried, blocking my way. “Madam, you are wasting your time,” said I; “I know you for what you are—a Steerer.” She shrank away, muttering unpleasantly. Never let it be said that Marchbanks failed to heed a warning.
Vancouver has much to recommend it as a city; indeed, if it were not on the other side of those pestilent mountains I should go there often. Among other attractions it has a large and interesting Chinese quarter, where I ate the best Chinese food I have ever tasted. There are times when I think that I shall give up Occidental cuisine altogether, and eat Chinese food for the rest of my life. After lunch I wandered among the Chinese shops, and found one which sold a scent called “Girl Brand Florida Water.” There is a simplicity about that name which enchants me. In the same shop I saw the only piece of Chinese nude art that has ever come my way; the Chinese are believed not to care for representations of the nude: but this was plainly the result of Western influence; it was a Chinese girl, lightly draped, holding aloft a bunch of paper flowers. Her legs were short, her body long, and she seemed more amply endowed for sitting than Western standards of beauty permit. It was, I suppose, the kind of thing one finds in Chinese bachelor apartments, just as Occidental bachelors enrich their rooms with ash-trays held aloft by naked beauties in chrome, and drink beer from glasses into which libidinous pictures have been etched. East is East, and West is West, but bachelors are wistful rascals the world over.
Normally I do not mind cigars. I smoke them myself. But on a train—! Opposite me as I write sits a little bald man with a baby face and a head like a peeled onion who has, for the past 45 minutes, burned and sucked the most villainous stogie I have ever choked over. He has doused it with his drool, and re-lit it, five several times. He is just about to do so again and I must leave him to it, or strike him with the emergency axe, or be sick myself. If he made that stench by any other means, the sanitary inspector would condemn him.
Yours gaggingly,
Sam.
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• FROM MY NOTEBOOKS •
WHERE AM I? / Was driving through the countryside today with some people who insisted upon frequent recourse to a road-map in order to discover, as they put it, “Just where they were.” Reflected that for my part I generally have a pretty shrewd idea of just where I am; I am enclosed in the somewhat vulnerable fortress which is my body, and from that uneasy stronghold I make such sorties as I deem advisable into the realm about me. These people seemed to think that whizzing through space in a car really altered the universe for them, but they were wrong; each one remained right in the centre of his private universe, which is the only field of knowledge of which he has any direct experience.
DE GUSTIBUS LOTS OF DISPUTANDUM / Had a pleasant chat with Dr. Boyd Neel, the conductor of the celebrated chamber orchestra. I asked him if he meant to play any contemporary music while he was touring Canada. “Oh yes,” said he, “I expect we may play a few new tunes.” This reply delighted me, for I am sick of the cloud of mystery and fear which surrounds modern music. It is not all harsh to the ear—to any ear, that is, which does not regard the barrel-organ as the last word in harmony—and much of it is very jolly and enlivening. There are even tunes in some recent pieces, though not tunes that you can whistle. I strongly suspect that it is hard work to write a tune if you set your face against the aids of folk-song and the forthright spirit of the Salvation Army Band. But I admired Dr. Neel because he spoke of modern music without passion. I grow weary of those people who become super-charged at the mention of modern music, or modern poetry, or modern painting; these are topics of great interest, but why must one be expected to take sides, violently for or against? “There is no disputing about tastes,” says the old saw. In my experience there is little else.
NON-STOP CULTURE / A man was exulting to me today about the wonders of a gramophone which he had given to himself and his family at Christmas. The beauty of it, in his eyes, is that it will play for eight hours without a stop, and he can heap four or five symphonies on it and let them rip. Ah, well; each to his pleasure. I find one symphony about all I can cope with in a day; my emotional blood-pressure rises sharply if too much passionate symphonic music is forced upon me in a single dose. Anyway, I don’t like to have a huge orchestra roaring in my living-room when I am trying to rest. For the chamber, chamber music is the proper fare.
/> AN ILLUSION SHATTERED / Was in the country today, and coming over the crest of a hill was surprised to see a fox a few yards away; it did not see me, and the wind was in the wrong direction for it to scent me, so I watched it for what seemed a long time, but was probably two minutes. Then it turned, saw me, gazed for a few seconds, and trotted away grinning. This is not what I would have expected, and when I returned to town I called a naturalist friend and told him that the fox had not appeared to be afraid of me. “Oh no,” he said, “unless you shot at it, or shouted, it probably wouldn’t fear you; foxes are stupid creatures—any dog is smarter than any fox—and if it couldn’t scent you it probably didn’t realize even that you were a man.” This was a blow to the notion I acquired as a child, from countless stories, that foxes are brilliantly intelligent, and the masterminds of the forest world. And after all, what evidence have we that a fox is clever? When chased it runs away, and makes better time in country it knows than a dog does. Is that clever? But a fox looks clever, and with animals as with humans, that is more than half the battle.
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• TELLING FORTUNES BY MOLES (a bonus for readers of the Almanack) •
There are many ways of telling fortunes, and no Almanack is complete without some allusion to at least one of them: Palmistry is the favourite, but it has been done to death; anyhow, it is hard to learn and there are too many people whose hand-lines do not conform to any known pattern. Therefore Wizard Marchbanks will confine himself to Fortune Telling by Moles, which is easy and rather dashing. Of course, there are people who are sensitive about their moles, and you had better avoid them. Here are the five easily memorized rules which will enable you to practise this fascinating branch of White Magic.
Moles on the Face: if extremely numerous and whimsically placed, the subject is likely to be unlucky in love.
Moles on the Arms: do not really count.