– XXV –
Sunday: As it was a fine day I sat on my verandah and permitted passers-by to stare at me. Staring is the great Sunday-afternoon pastime. People who go walking on the seventh day seem convinced that anyone who sits on a verandah is blind, deaf and silly. They wander along the streets, gaping like egg-bound pullets, and making remarks in voices which carry perfectly for a quarter of a mile in all directions. “That house needs a good coat of paint,” says one, and another replies “If that were my lawn, I’d rip the whole thing up and re-sod it.” ” Look at those vines,” someone cries indignantly; “they just ruin the brickwork and harbour vermin.” “You’d think those people would weed their beds once in a while, wouldn’t you?” counters his companion, while I sit upright and glare like a basilisk. But no passer-by ever pays any attention to me; they think I am a cigar-store Indian, or a stuffed souvenir of a hunting trip, probably. Some day I shall shout back. “Why don’t you wipe that child’s nose?” I shall scream, or “Did you buy that hat at a fire-sale?”
Monday: I am told that the strawberry crop this year will be a failure. I cannot remember a year in which this rumour has not been circulated. Probably it is like the rumours which fly about during the early part of December that Santa Claus has committed suicide. . . However, I bought a few sour, green, imported berries, and ate them, just to make sure that I experienced some approximation of that most delicious of all flavours this year.
Tuesday: To a movie tonight. It was a farce, and as often happens in the farce, the actors thought that everything they said was much funnier if they shouted it at the tops of their voices. The ladies also wore those peculiar lace negligees which are never seen anywhere but on actresses in farces. Women wear all sorts of garments when they want to be comfortable — magnificently cut housecoats, kimonos, flannel dressing gowns, and even old bathrobes which their husbands have discarded as unfit for further service — but they never wear those tight-fitting things with lace skirts split up the front, for the good reason that it is impossible to sit down in one, much less perform any of the feats appropriate to negligees. . . I like movie magazines, but I have never dared to subscribe to one. I had a friend once who did so, and it was apparent that the magazine lent its subscription list rather carelessly to its advertisers, for he immediately began to receive free samples of lipstick, and offers from people who wanted to develop his bust a new scientific way — money back after 30 days if not satisfied. His landlady began to treat him with marked hauteur and he had to move.
Wednesday: A letter from a furniture company reached me this morning which began, “Does your office proclaim you a man of action?” Well, to be frank, it does not. It proclaims me to be a man of sloth. It is the tradition of the modern tycoon, I know, to have his desk utterly clear at all times; if he has any letters or papers which are necessary to his work, he piles them on his secretary’s desk or hides them under the carpet. But my desk is a welter of trash, some of it necessary but most of it garbage of a high-class, literary kind. I am a great cherisher of the stubs of pencils, and I cannot bear to throw away a ruptured fountain pen; indeed, I keep one solely for the purpose of stirring my paste-pot, which solidifies in cold weather. I have also a ruler with a jagged edge, which is quite unusable, but I keep it as a reminder of a dear friend, now in Abraham’s bosom, who used to own it before I stole it. I like to pile books and papers on the floor, because then I can see where they are, and I file newspaper clippings by keeping the whole paper of which they form a part. I am not a man of action, and I don’t care who knows it. I work best in a mess — my own kind of friendly, logical mess. In my eyes the clean-desk boys are frauds.
Thursday: Was roused this morning by a loud cawing, and looked out of my window to see a large crow sitting on a branch with its mouth full of bread, making daybreak hideous with its cries. This recalled to me Aesop’s fable about the crow which was flattered into singing by a fox, and dropped its piece of cheese as a result. It was obvious that this crow could sing and hold on to a huge piece of food at the same time. So much for that old scoundrel Aesop, whom I have long suspected of being better as a puritan moralist than as an accurate observer of nature. Read Aesop’s Fables in the light of everyday adult experience, and what do we find? We find that the man who gives up the substance for the shadow is often richly rewarded, and admired by posterity for his vision. We find that the dog in the manger can always get a well-paid job as a union leader, and the more difficult he is to appease, the greater is his success. We find that the lion who assists a mouse usually has to listen to a lot of saucy talk from the mouse about Imperialism. It is my belief that Aesop was a simpleton who took good care never to look about him, for fear of finding that the world did not gibe with his theories.
Friday: I see by the papers that Scotland (or, more accurately, the Scottish Nationalist Party) is going to submit a brief to the United Nations on the unjust oppression of Scotland by England. Personally, I don’t think that England would ever give up Scotland without establishing a state of Pakistan for the protection of the Irishmen and Welshmen who contribute so much to the cultural and intellectual life of Glasgow, and the Englishmen and Jews who have won for the universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh the reputation for brilliance which they now enjoy. My own ancestors descended upon England from Scotland a century or more ago, pausing at the border only long enough to change their name from Marjoribanks to its present form. I don’t imagine that their descendants would want to be herded back to the bleak hillsides from which they escaped after the Great Capercailzie Famine of 1745. Nowadays you won’t find a Marchbanks in Scotland even during the grouse season; most of us just do our grousing wherever we happen to be. “A tussock wowsie’s nae doitit,” as Robbie Burns said, putting the whole thing in a nutshell.
Saturday: While I was cutting grass and weeding this afternoon I was greatly troubled by mosquitoes, flies and other nuisances, and in this way my attention was drawn toward the benevolent insects — bees, grasshoppers and the like. I recall reading in a book about insects that they evolve their own economic laws, and abide by them. Thus ants go in for full employment, while bees consider it worth while to support a monarchy and an aristocracy; grasshoppers are definite laissez-faire liberals, and dung-beetles are bourgeois capitalists. But what about accidents, I pondered? Ants are socialists, possessing a complete, nasty, compact little socialist state of their own; but what happens to their economic laws when I run my lawnmower over their anthill? They didn’t foresee that. And the bees get an unexpected handout from me when I put out honey boxes for them to clean; that boosts their economy unfairly. I am convinced that no insect sees me, except the mosquito, and yet in my garden I play Providence to the insect world without giving the matter a moment’s thought. I am the Unknown Factor, the Parcae in the lives of thousands of creatures with whom I am not even on nodding terms. A sweetly solemn thought.
– XXVI –
Sunday: Put out my hanging baskets yesterday, and woke this morning to find that the temperature had dropped to 42°. Just the sort of shabby trick that our Canadian summers are always playing. I well recall going for a picnic on the 24th of May in 1932, and returning home because it suddenly began to snow! It is this uncertainty of the weather which makes Canadians the morose, haunted, apprehensive people they are. The plays of Ibsen reflect the Canadian spirit admirably. For instance —
GERDA: Where are you going, Inspector?
INSPECTOR: Down to the waterfront to get a cod for supper. Don’t wait for me. I may commit suicide.
GERDA: God’s will be done. But in any case, wear your muffler, your rubbers, your ear muffs and your wraprascal. It may snow.