Samuel Marchbank’s Almanack by Robertson Davies

Your affct. nephew,

Sam.

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To Amyas Pilgarlic, ESQ.

Dear Pil:

The closing of the universities has caused the usual number of charming young men and women, with the chalk of the lecture-room still in their hair, to visit me and offer to revolutionize my affairs through the exercise of their talents. When I say that I have no jobs for them they look at me with pity and disbelief. They know that I am lying, that I really have excellent jobs in my gift, but that I am afraid of their brilliance. They assure me that they do not want to work for me long; they just want to learn the trade, and then pass on to better establishments than mine. The young women are sure that I have a prejudice against their sex; they are, they tell me, capable of doing anything that a man can do. I have no doubt of this, but I conceal from them the fact that too many women in an office give me a sense of living in an aviary which I find uncomfortable.

Last week I picked up a magazine which contained an article advising college graduates on — of all things — How To Choose A Boss. I should not have read it, for I knew in advance that it would give me the trembles, but I did. And it did. The perfect boss, it appears, is unlike me in every possible way. He is a jolly extrovert, with a guilty sense that he is not quite equal to his job, and with a fine understanding of the frailties of youth. He is also rather stupid, and it is easy to cozen him in the matter of pay and holidays. His temper is quick, but soon dies down. Working for this Dream Boss, it appears, is hardly work at all. It is a great big romp from morning till night.

Do I wish I were a Dream Boss? No. Depressing though it may seem, I am quite ready to go on being my curmudgeonly, reclusive, grudge-bearing, suspicious, happy self.

Nevertheless, the article depressed me. It is always depressing when one has to disappoint people’s expectations.

Yours depressedly (though not to an intolerable degree),

Sam.

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To Raymond Cataplasm, M.D., F.R.C.P.

Dear Dr. Cataplasm:

Whenever I am near Death, I think of you. And I have been very near Death recently, for I have had a number of conversations with an Insurance Man, and he brought me very close to Death’s door on a number of occasions.

Now I am perfectly ready to subscribe to the Scriptural admonitions that all flesh is grass, that the body is but clay, and that my soul may be required of me at any moment. But I cannot say that I like to have my nose rubbed in these indubitable truths by a man whose business it appears to be to guarantee that my survivors shall live the life of Riley after I am gone. “We’ve all got to face it,” says he; quite so, but I prefer to face Death in the company of a few learned and picturesque old clergymen, with an unaccompanied choir singing in the distance; I do not especially like to face Death in the company of a fellow with sport shoes on his feet, a decorative tack through his necktie and a staggering number of pens and pencils in his bosom pocket. But then, I am an eccentric in such matters.

People of my temperament, in the days of the first Queen Elizabeth, quite often kept a skull on their desks; occasionally, for added effect, the skull had a bone stuck in its jaws. This object was called a “memento mori” and its purpose was to keep its owner reminded of the fact that he too, would die. But the modem memento mori is the insurance agent, with his pencils, and whenever I see one I mutter through the General Confession, just in case.

Your perennial patient,

Samuel Marchbanks.

P.S. Do you know why women, as a rule, outlive their husbands? It is because women have too much sense to let themselves be worried to death by insurance salesmen?

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To Mrs. Gomeril Marchbanks.

Dear Aunt Bathsheba:

Upon the whole I think you would be wrong to kill Uncle Gomeril. I recognize, of course, that mercy-killings are all the rage these days, and that any jury which knew him would probably compliment you on a good job well done, but there would be a lot of disagreeable publicity about the whole thing, and you don’t know what sort of people you might have to meet before the affair blew over. Newspapermen, and such riffraff.

Don’t think that I have not given a lot of thought to Uncle Gomeril’s condition. He has had acidity for years, and it seems to be getting worse. In fact, I think he is the sourest old man I have ever met. It would be a mercy to put him out of his misery, though the blow to the bicarbonate of soda industry might cause a sag in the stock-market. It is dreadful to have to watch him suffer, and it is even worse to hear him, but I suggest that you look upon this as a cross, and bear it as best you can. Mercy-killing, as a means of putting inconvenient people out of the way, has its attractions, but there is always the chance that there might be some crackpot on the jury who would ask toward whom the mercy was directed.

Therefore, dear aunt, I suggest that you order in another keg of soda, buy yourself a good book on Yoga, and put this tempting scheme out of your mind. The Marchbanks are a long-lived tribe, but it will get him at last.

Your affct. nephew,

Samuel.

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To Miss Minerva Hawser.

Dear Miss Hawser:

Your suggestion that a few people in Canada try to revive the lost art of letter-writing is a worthy one, and I am flattered that you should include me in your group. I am grateful for the copy of The Maple Leaf Letter Writer which you have sent me, and I have read it with great care. But there is one point on which I disagree with the book, and that is its insistence on absolutely conventional spelling. Although I am myself a fair speller, I have thought for some time that a reasonable amount of personal choice should be allowed in this matter. After all, the passion for spelling according to a dictionary is only about a hundred years old: every writer of any importance before that spelled a few words at least in his own way. If you doubt me, look at the letters of Keats, Byron, Shelley and others of that era. And during the eighteenth century and earlier spelling was a free-for-all.

Only the other day I was looking at a book of letters from the seventeenth century, in which one writer expressed himself thus: “As for Mr. A——, I esteem him no better than a Pigg.”

Consider that word “Pigg.” The extra “g” is not strictly necessary, but what power it gives to the word! How pig-like it makes poor Mr. A——! How vivid his swinishness becomes! And look at that capital “P.” It seems to enrich the sentence by calling special attention to the most important word.

I am not a spelling reformer. I am a laissez-faire liberal in matters of spelling. I do not care that our present system of spelling wastes time and paper. I firmly believe that both time and paper are of less importance than the perfect expression of the writer’s meaning. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a Pedantick Booby.

Yours for orthographicall freedom,

Samuel Marchbanks.

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To Amyas Pilgarlic, ESQ.

Dear Pil:

The Americans are a remarkable people, and I admire them quite a lot. But I never cease to be astonished at their powers of self-deception which are, like so many of their institutions, gigantic, colossal, mammoth, gargantuan, jumbo, atomic and merely large. Today I saw a book in a cigar store which was called Ballet — The Emergence of an American Art. Since when I wonder, did ballet become an American art? During the past years a number of American dancers have, by dint of the whole-souled energy which characterizes their nation, learned to jump as high, and twiddle as dizzily as dancers in other lands, and undoubtedly they sweat and puff more while doing so. But because ballet has gained what may properly be called a toehold in the usa, does that make it an American art? Ponder before replying.

It is always an interesting point in a nation’s history when it becomes so great that it does not believe that anything has real existence outside itself. The Romans reached it. The British kept it up during most of the nineteenth century. Will Canada, I wonder, ever achieve this delightful form of insanity? Ponder well upon this.

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