• LEAR’S FOLLY NOT IMPROBABLE •
I WENT TO SEE Donald Wolfit in King Lear last week. He is advertised as the greatest actor since Henry Irving; unless everything I have ever read or heard about Irving is wrong, this is a somewhat over-confident statement. He had very fine moments, but the shabbiest scenery and costumes that I have seen since the days of the Marks Brothers (not to be confused with Groucho, Harpo and Chico) did nothing to help him. Charles Lamb said that Lear could not be acted, and all sorts of people have parroted that foolish remark ever since; it is as sensible as saying that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony cannot be played. Wolfit acted Lear admirably; if he had had more nobility and more pathos he would have been wonderful. Somebody said to me in the interval that it was unbelievable that any man would be so stupid as to do what Lear did—put himself at the mercy of his children. I don’t know about that: I have seen at least three cases in which parents did the same thing, and with not dissimilar results.
• TRAVEL AMONG STATESMEN •
ON THE TRAIN again yesterday I was travelling with a number of men who were obviously Senators and members of the Commons on their way to Ottawa for the opening of Parliament. They wore that dedicated, holy look which is only to be seen on the faces of men who are travelling on passes and expect to be wearing their best suits within twenty-four hours. The members of the older parties gravitated naturally toward the chair-car; the socialists rode in the coach, ate box-lunches, and occasionally exclaimed, “God pity the poor engineer on a day like this!” whenever there seemed to be a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Men within earshot. I did a good deal of spying and eavesdropping in all parts of the train, but learned nothing.
• OF BEGUILING DENTISTS •
I WENT TO MY dentist today in a high state of apprehension. None of my teeth were hurting me, but I know from bitter experience that a tooth of mine can have a cavity as big as the Grotto at Lourdes before it informs me of the fact. As I had feared, the dentist found plenty of work to keep him busy for several appointments. When he settled down to business I began to talk. This is an old technique with me; if I can fascinate the dentist with my merry quips he may forget to do anything to me—such is my foolish reasoning, born of terror and despair. But there always comes the moment when he says, “Open, now,” and I gape swooningly, knowing that the jig is up and that I shall have to take whatever is in store for me.
• OF SABBATH OBSERVANCE •
I SHOVELLED SNOW yesterday afternoon. As I laboured, a passer-by said, “Considering the dispute that has been going on about Sabbath observance I’d think you would be afraid to be seen doing that.” Leaning on my shovel, and holding my poor bent back, I replied, “Sir, if Providence sees fit to send snow on Saturday night, Providence will have more sense than to condemn me for clearing it away on Sunday. If I am not greatly mistaken, it is pleasure-seeking on the Sabbath which gives pain to the godly; shovelling snow is not a pleasure to me, but a penance, a mortification of the flesh, and a Lenten misery. I offer this labour—which I heartily detest—as an expiation for all my sins of pride, lust, covetousness, greed, sloth, anger and envy during the past six days. And now will you please go away before I sin further by washing your face in this snow bank?” He hurried away, tut-tutting.
• OF UNWONTED EXERTION •
SEVERAL LARGE and dangerous icicles hang from the roof of my house, and I decided that I had better get them down before they fell on the milkman and clove him to the brisket. So I spent quite a long time heaving snowballs at them, this afternoon, trying to knock them off the eavestrough. Throwing things is not one of my accomplishments; I can hit a dog with a baseball bat at ten feet, but picking off icicles with snowballs is quite another thing. However, I threw and threw, until my right shoulder became numb and my appendix gave notice that it was going to burst, but very few of the stalactites (or are they stalagmites?) came down, and those that did smashed uncomfortably near me.… The result of all this stretching is that my right side is now several inches longer than my left side, and I walk with a hippety-hopping gait, like a dwarf and a giant tied together for a three-legged race.
• EDISON THE CALLIGRAPHER •
THE PAPERS ARE full of hullabaloo about Edison, who appears to have been not merely an ingenious fellow, but also a major philosopher and saint (as well as the only man who could write the Lord’s Prayer on a piece of paper the size of a dime). Edison’s chief impact was made upon me by means of his phonograph. My great-aunt Lettice had an early model, and as soon as I was strong enough to lift the records (which were as thick as manhole covers and about the same weight) I played it frequently. As a result of this early training, I am still able to recite large portions of a monologue called Cohen On The Telephone, and sing all the hits from a forgotten musical comedy called The Yokohama Girl. Edison’s admirable autograph appeared on each record, and I am surprised that in all the praise of him there has been no word of his genuine skill as a calligrapher.
• OF A DANGEROUS TASK •
I CRAWLED FEARFULLY through an upstairs window and attempted to push some of the snow from the roof of my verandah this afternoon. I quickly discovered that the snow had turned to ice, and in order to loosen it I had to chop at it with the edge of my shovel, rather like somebody working an old-fashioned churn. When I had chopped away a sufficient quantity of ice chips, I had to heave it over the edge of the verandah, giving quite a lunge in order to throw it clear. Nature never framed me for such enterprises; I am nervous of heights, and my strongest desire on a verandah roof is to lie prone and shut my eyes and scream for the fire-department to carry me down. Nor am I much of an ice-loosener. However, I persisted in violating my deepest instincts for about half an hour, and then crawled back through my window and took a strong sedative pill. When I looked at my work from the ground, my achievement appeared to be pitifully insufficient. I would gladly leave such work to experts, but I find that they tear off my shingles and make holes in my roof. At least I am in no danger of doing that.
• GEOGRAPHY AN IMPERTINENCE •
I HAD AN OPPORTUNITY to examine a rather fine stamp collection today. As a usual thing stamps leave me cold; I regard them simply as dirty bits of paper which foreigners have licked. But I had to admit as I turned the pages, that some of the stamps were pretty; the pre-revolutionary Russian ones, for instance, had great charm, and the Japanese stamps were delicately beautiful. The possessor of the collection assured me that it was a great aid in learning history and geography, which is probably true, but the kind of history which can be learned from stamps is of no particular interest to me, and I have no desire to learn any geography under any circumstances. The fact that I am never sure where any place is gives a special charm to my consideration of the daily news and if I shattered my ignorance another of my retreats from reality would have been ruined. I think that all this dabbling in geography is rather bad-mannered and nosey, like peeping through people’s windows.
• THE NAÏVETÉ OF OPERA •
THE LAST OF THE opera broadcasts was on the air this afternoon, so I settled down in my armchair with a bag of peppermints to enjoy it. But luck was not with me; things kept cropping up which had to be done, and people kept calling me to the phone who wanted taxis and other things which I couldn’t give them, and altogether the union of Mozart and Marchbanks was incomplete and unsatisfactory. By the time the broadcast was over I had a headache and a peppermint hangover. Nevertheless, opera broadcasts exercise a powerful fascination over me, and every winter I try to hear as many as I can. There is a childlike, unsophisticated quality about opera which commands respect in this wicked world. All that hooting and hollering because somebody has pinched somebody else’s girl, or killed the wrong man, or sold his soul to the devil! These are commonplaces in daily life (particularly the latter) and it is astonishing to hear them treated with so much noisy consideration.
• HE YEARNS FOR the REVOLUTION •
IMADE A TRAIN journey yesterday. As always I was impressed by the amount of r
ude staring that goes on when a train is standing in a station. The stay-at-homes on the platform gawp rustically at the people in the cars, while the urbane and world-weary travellers stare back, down their noses. As in an aquarium, it is impossible to say who is staring and who is being stared at.… When the train reached my stop I wrestled my own suitcases to the door, for the porter thought I was going to Toronto, and had fallen asleep. Yet, I gave this neglectful blackamoor a quarter—an act of sheer cowardice; I should have stared into his chocolate eyes like a lion-tamer, and kept my money. But in such matters I am contemptibly lacking in resolution. My face is perpetually ground by those who are, in a purely technical sense, the poor. I shall welcome the Revolution, after which I shall not be expected to tip anybody.
• OF WITCHES •
A LITTLE GIRL was telling me about a bad dream that she had last night: “A witch was chasing me, and she had germs all over her fingers,” the child said. This is a good example of the way in which superstition keeps abreast of science, instead of being displaced by it, as foolish people believe. In my childhood I sometimes dreamed that witches were chasing me to tear out my liver and lights, or to bake me in a pie, but never to infect me with germs. The next generation, I suppose, will dream that witches are after them to make them radio-active. The fashion in scientific horrors may change, but the witches will go on, and on, chasing generations of horror-stricken children down the shadowy labyrinths of sleep.
• HOW TO DISCOURAGE EVIL SPIRITS •
I SAW A CHILD whizz across the road on her tricycle today, directly in front of a car; when she grows up she will be the kind of woman who darts across streets against the red light, holding back traffic by sheer power of the human eye. In India it is regarded as a good idea to dart in front of an oncoming car, for the car is sure to kill the evil spirits who are pursuing you, and all the rest of your life you will have good luck. There are a lot of Canadians who seem to be trying to get the best of their evil spirits by this dubious method. Of course, if you are a little out in your calculations, and the car reduces you to a large splash of tomato sauce, your evil spirits may be said to have won the final trick.
• GROWTH OF INCREDULITY •
I SAW A LARGE shell in a friend’s house the other day, and for old times’ sake I held it up to my ear and heard the familiar roaring which is supposed to be the sound of the sea. When I was a child I listened to this sea-noise eagerly, and believed in it. But now I am of a less easily satisfied disposition; the Scientific Spirit has got hold of me and it gives me little peace. If I hold an empty beer bottle up to my ear I hear a noise, too; am I to believe that it is the sound of a brewery? And when I hold an old marmalade jar to my ear, must I believe that the suspiration which I hear is the whisper of the zephyrs through orange-groves? No. As a modern poet has put it:
The noise
Which is so easy to explain to girls and boys,
Serves only to insult
The keener intelligence of the adult.
• OF CENSORSHIP •
I hHAVE A PARTICULAR affection for the city of Toronto; the mere contemplation of its moral sublimity puts me in good humour for days at a time. The latest outbreak of virtue in the Queen City takes the form of a declaration on the part of one of the city controllers that the Public Libraries of Toronto have been circulating dirty books, including The Decameron. At first I was a good deal startled by the thought that a Toronto alderman had been reading The Decameron; I had not imagined that they read anything more taxing than the portions of the Reader’s Digest which are printed in large type. But I now discover that the alderman had not read the book; he had simply been told by somebody else that it was not a proper book for anyone to read.… Censors tend to be like that. I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when somebody tells them that the book is unfit to read.… The first indecent book I ever read was Quo Vadis, which I got out of a Sunday School library; I found the descriptions of Roman highlife deeply stirring. Later I became very partial to The Song of Songs (which is Solomon’s) which was sold to me by an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in a plain wrapper.
• OF DOGS •
A BEAUTIFUL NEW dogproof garbage box was installed on the back stoop at Marchbanks Towers today. For several years all the jolly doggies of the neighbourhood have looked upon my back stoop as a rendezvous where they can drop in for a snack, a chat, a fight or to enquire after some dog of easy virtue with whom they can pitch a bit of woo; dogs create their own form of bebop, and discuss big deals involving dozens of bones on my back porch, and I make no secret of the fact that I am sick of it. Therefore I have caused to be constructed a large and durable chest, heavily ribbed and studded with brass screws, in which I shall keep my garbage pails in future, and the dogs can find some new Kasbah in which to carry on their raffish social life.… For a time I used to lie in wait in my kitchen until the dogs gathered for the evening, and then (choosing my time very precisely) I would rush out among them, striking to right and left with a broom, and uttering loud and terrifying cries, like a Japanese warrior going into battle. Then I would pick up the garbage and go inside, congratulating myself on a good job well done. But I found that the dogs looked upon me merely as the floorshow, or comedy act, of their evening’s entertainment.… Well, they’ll laugh on the other side of their muzzles when they see my new box.
• OF HAPPY PRIVACY •
ALL YESTERDAY’S papers informed me that this would be International Shut-Ins Day, and when I awoke I found that rain was descending in large greasy blobs about the size of marbles. This meant that I was a shut-in myself until this evening, for though I enjoy a walk in the rain a recent misadventure with my umbrella put such an amusement out of the question. Personally I do not greatly mind being a shut-in. I have often longed to have my sphere of activity sharply limited. Whenever I see an advertisement telling me that it is now possible for me to get to Britain in eight hours, or that the wonders of South America are within my easy reach, I recoil; when a speaker begins his remarks by saying that the world is shrinking, I shrink too. I shall end my days, beyond a doubt, as a happily cantankerous old shut-in, reading, eating and sleeping in one small room, with doors and windows sealed, and a hole in the ceiling for the entry and removal of necessities. At last my corpse will be dragged up through the hole, and only my memories will be left.
• OF NATURE’S MALICE •
IT LOOKED LIKE rain this afternoon, and I gave it every chance to do so. But nothing happened, so I girded up my loins and cut my grass, after which the heavens opened and the rains fell. The malignancy of Nature in these matters is past belief. If I am not to enjoy the beauty of my lawn when I have cut it, why should I bother with it? I often think that I should abandon the futile struggle and allow Nature to reclaim the pleasure grounds of Marchbanks Towers. Let the velvet lawns grow rank; let briars and thistles choke the Lovers’ Walk; let scum accumulate on the lily pond; let the grape arbour and the Temple of Diana fall into ruin. Let the place assume the aspect of Tobacco Road, and I shall sit happily on the decaying verandah, spitting tobacco juice at the passers-by.
• OF HIS UNCLE BRIAN •
THERE SEEM to be a good many advertisements for Irish goods about these days, and most of them give the impression that everything in Ireland is made by peculiar fellows in bobtailed coats, who wear bog beards and smoke clay pipes. If memory serves me aright the word “shantycraft” was used in one such billboard that I saw. It is a lucky thing that my great-uncle Brian Boru Marchbanks never lived to see those things. He was a proud man, and any suggestion that Irishmen kept pigs under their beds or habitually went about with holes in the seats of their pants (for the airiness of it) used to put him into a state of passionate resentment. It was his opinion that Irishmen were just the same as other people, and frequently in the street he would call loudly u
pon anyone who was with him to point out just one respect—only one—in which he could be singled out from the crowd as an Irishman. Often his protestations of ordinariness would draw quite a crowd, which he would offer to fight, man by man, until he was dragged away by his wellwishers.
• OF THE MANX SHAKESPEARE •
THE LADY on my right has just asked me if I remember the novels of Sir Hall Caine. I replied that with Hall Caine, as with Sir Walter Scott, I had never been able to read one of his books through. All of Caine’s characters lived in an atmosphere of agony and molasses, which was intolerable to my ribald mind. The lady then confessed to me that she, too, had no admiration for Caine, but thought that I might recall in which of his novels it was that the heroine dried her baby’s diapers by wrapping them around her own body, next to the skin. I could not recall the source of this astounding instance of motherlove but said that any heroine of Hall Caine’s was quite welcome to get rheumatism, so far as I am concerned. It was a little surprising, however, to hear that Caine ever acknowledged the existence of anything so closely related to the baser functions as a diaper.… You’ve never heard of Hall Caine! Sancta simplicitas!
• A WOMAN OF PARTS •
THE LADY ON MY left tells me that she wants a job in my Institute for the Re-Gruntlement of Disgruntled Persons. As qualifications she tells me that she is a bad cook and a terrible dancer; the latter circumstance she attributes to a Methodist upbringing, which still causes her to drag one leg. She says that she gets devilish ideas easily, and advances some very original notions for treating disgruntled persons with Epsom Salt. She seems to be the ideal appointee for the post of Matron. I have already put the Business Management of the institution into the hands of a man who was unfrocked by the Income Tax division of the Department of National Revenue for extortion above and beyond the call of duty.