The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks

by Robertson Davies

In this collection of his newspaper pieces, mostly from the late Forties, Davies introduces us to his alter ego, a mildly irascible curmudgeon whose opinions and observations have been so popular in Canada that three volumes of his columns have been published there: The Diary , The Table Talk , and The Garland of Miscellania. Davies has re-edited them to produce a single volume and in the prefatory "A Drink with Marchbanks" even given us his own view of the journalist he created. A pleasant entertainment covering such diverse topics as politics, theater, and manners, this volume offers a humorous and insightful picture of postwar Canadian life as seen through the eyes of a delightful eccentric who reminds this reader of a boozeless W. C. Fields.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Canada, Canadian Literature, 20th Century, Essays

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

William Robertson Davies, CC, FRSC, FRSL (died in Orangeville, Ontario) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is sometimes said to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate college at the University of Toronto.

Novels:

The Salterton Trilogy
• Tempest-tost (1951)
• Leaven of Malice (1954)
• A Mixture of Frailties (1958)
The Deptford Trilogy
• Fifth Business (1970)
• The Manticore (1972)
• World of Wonders (1975)
The Cornish Trilogy
• The Rebel Angels (1981)
• What's Bred in the Bone (1985)
• The Lyre of Orpheus (1988)
The Toronto Trilogy (Davies' final, incomplete, trilogy)
• Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)
• The Cunning Man (1994)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertso...

Reviews

[Mitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a long collection of short humorous pieces, written by Robertson Davis through the persona of an old, thinly-disguised curmudgeon named Samuel Marchbanks.

I've read several books now by Robertson and as always, his erudition comes shining through- though sometimes here with an emphasis on 'rude'.

There were some laugh out loud moments along with a lot of 'I am amused' bits, and others that were unmemorable, but I think that's only reasonable. Marchbanks/Davies himself wrote a piece on relentlessly funny writing and he wasn't in favor of it.

You do kind of have to like kicking the dog/ saying rude things about children types of humor here, but of course told with culture and style- to enjoy this combination of actually three books.

I did.

[Jessica Pink · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Diary was brilliant and hilarious - Table Talk was much less so, and sadly the final section was nearly unreadable. Five stars for the Diary - then three, then a tragic one. Caveat Emptor.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gosh, I really had to push myself through this book. I don’t recall the last time I was so sorely tempted to just not finish a book. Perhaps someone recalling or interested in Canadian life from 1930 to 1960 would appreciate this imagined diary and collected papers. (I also thought it work of nonfiction when I first picked it up.) Maybe what Marchbanks needs is a skilled editor. I think a succinct abridgement of the 539 pages (!) could have left me thinking of Davies as the Mark Twain of Canada. For, it was the hilarious highpoints that kept me reading. Such as,

“Pedalezza is a variant, deriving something from frottage, that other delight of the refined sensualist, but managed with the feet.”…
“… I slipped off the elegant evening pump from my right or left foot—on a great night, I employed both—and stretching my silk-socked extremity beneath the table I would gently squeeze the thigh, or the sensitive area just above the knee, of a lady sitting on the other side of the table. This requires a prehensile quality of foot, which can be developed by picking up oranges from the floor for half an hour every day. The lady thus squeezed might squeak a little, but more often she blushed prettily and sometimes—if I were not quick—I would find that my foot was being given an answering squeeze. As a usual thing she showed a new warmth toward one or the other of her dinner partners, which pleasantly surprised him and gave me exquisite delight. I felt that I was playing the role of Fate in lives that needed a touch of fateful unpredictability.”
“And that was pedalezza?”
“It was. I wish I might say that it still is, but you will have observed that I walk with a slight limp. A lady whose virtue I had underestimated stabbed me in the foot with a silver fork. It was all I could do not to scream with pain, but the laws of pedalezza are rigorous, and I forbore.”
“But—allow me to ask—what was there in it for you, Sam?”
“I do not follow you”
“This pedalezza—the ladies never knew it was you?”
“But of course not! That was its ultimate refinement. Exquisite enjoyment wholly divorced from any personal involvement. What can Sex offer more?”

There is more proactive and even edgy material than I expected from something of this vintage.

OF WORDS AND THEIR EFFECTS •
I WENT TO the movies last night and saw, among other things, a film about soil erosion called The Rape of the Earth. The word “rape” was so irresistibly humorous to two girls and their escorts in my neighbourhood that I thought they would burst; their sniggers were like the squirtings of a hose when it is first turned on. Some people are affected by some words as slot machines are affected by coins; feed in your word, and the result is invariable. Feed “Communist” into an old gent with a quarter of a million dollars, and out comes a huffy lecture; feed “Booze” into a prohibitionist, and out will come highly imaginative statistics about accidents and insanity; feed “Rape” into girls and boys and you get this bromo-seltzer fizzing.

Some of the racy innuendo is maybe now closer to the truth. It’s not hard to imagine a female navel with a halo of tattooed Song of Songs quotations.

… it is that comparatively undistinguished portion of the female anatomy comprising the lower ribs and the diaphragm which is now the focus of holy horror. If women showed their navels with texts from the Song of Solomon tattooed around them, I might see some sense in all this fuss, but they don’t, and I don’t.

Many of Marchbanks’ criticisms of his modern times could be made today, like this one that I read of Helen Hayes making:

This was in the days when actors thought it part of their job to be audible and comprehensible. Many modern mummers, working on the principle that much conversation is inaudible, have altered stage speech to a point where only some of a play is heard, and varying amounts of the remainder are overheard.

Also, there are witty cynicisms I wish I thought of:

• OF COMPLACENCE •
OF LATE PEOPLE have been picking on me because I am what they call “complacent.” By this they mean that I refuse to share their hysterical fears about another war, about Russia, about the atom, about the commercialization of Sunday, about divorce, about juvenile delinquency and whatnot. Because I do not leap about and flap my arms and throw up all my meals when these things are mentioned, they assume that I am at ease in Zion. As a matter of fact I have my own well-defined field of worry, which I exploit to the full. But it seems to me that a little complacency would do nobody any harm at present and I am thinking of incorporating complacency into the platform of the Marchbanks Humanist Party—a retrograde movement of which I am leader and sole support. “Tired of Clamour? Try Torpor!” How’s that for a campaign cry?

And this, which reminds me of a conversation with my brother a month ago:

• OF IMPUDENT TRACTS •
AN ENVELOPE full of tracts came for me in the mail this morning. Tracts always ask foolish questions. “Are you on the way to Heaven?” said one of these. “Are you prepared to meet God?” said another. “Are you prepared for Eternity?” asked a third. “Are you going to a Christless grave?” enquired the last of the bunch. Really, I do not know the answers to these questions, and I doubt the ability of whoever writes the shaky English grammar of these tracts to answer them for me. I am not even prepared to meet Professor Einstein or Bertrand Russell; why should I vain-gloriously assume that God would find me interesting? And I really cannot claim to be prepared for Eternity when I have so many doubts about today. I wish that whatever God-intoxicated pinhead directs these inquiries to me would cease and desist. In the struggle of the Alone toward the Alone, I do not like to be jostled.

And a final memorable one that makes me think Marchbanks would have been bemused by Facebook:

• FRANKNESS DEPLORED •
THERE ARE TOO MANY people in the world who think that frankness is an excuse for anything; so long as a man is frank and sincere, say they, he may talk as he likes. They also cling to the stupid and mistaken notion that people like and admire frankness and respond well to it. For instance, I was standing on a street-corner today, when a man in a windbreaker approached me and said: “Lookit, I’m goin’ to give you no bull; I wanta get a coupla beers; will you gimme the money?” I looked deep into his eyes, and in low, thrilling voice I said “No.” … Now if he had given me some bull—some richly ornamented tale of poverty, of undeserved ill-fortune, of being robbed while on some errand of mercy—anything in fact which would have revealed a spark of imagination in him, I would have given him a small sum, knowing full well that it would be spent on beer. But to ask me, flatly and baldly, for money to buy beer—! Is that the way to appeal to a Welshman, a lover of the spoken word and the gem-encrusted lie? No, no. Let such ruffians beg beer-money from those who admire frankness. Anybody who wants a quarter from me must first produce a quarter’s worth of fascinating bull.

[Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Tony suggested, I found quite the companion in old Sam, one of the last "true" New Englanders who still does battle with the stove in his basement, and views the world with irony and honesty all at once. I still need to return it to the library -__-

[Davidg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compilation of three books compiled from newspaper articles Davies wrote in the late 1940’s. They are supposedly the diary, thoughts and letters of one Samuel Marchbanks, a curmudgeonly Canadian. It is difficult to know how much of Marchbank’s views are those of Davies, or if Davies is lampooning those conservative views at times as well. I suspect he is able to laugh at his own own foibles as well as those of others.

Not all has survived over 70 years. The cartoon Native Canadian is now simply racist, even if he uses this character to mock the Canadian government.

[Jacqueline · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have enjoyed many of his books, but this one was amazingly boring. Maybe you have to be a Canadian of a certain age to get it.

[Mindy Gough · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sad to discover that my re-read after several decades was marred by the racist and chauvanistic parts.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first two volumes more than the third, but all three were fun to read.

[Andree · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another 3.5 stars.

I really enjoyed it, a lot. It's basically just Robertson Davies being random, and making silly observations under the guise of Samuel Marchbanks. It's definitely funny, definitely worth reading. But there's nothing really memorable. I have general impressions, but no specifics. For one, it's not a continuous narraitive. It's diary entries, then random digressions on subjects, then random and often-unrelated samples of correspondence. Which is fun, but I was in no way emotionally invested.

It's 500+ pages of pure random nonsense, really. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there's a reason that this book took me months to finish. Good for reading 20 pages at a time though.

What was particularly interesting was reading a book set in Toronto a few generations ago. Particularly since some of the descriptions of the city (and its relationship to other Canadian cities) don't seem to have changed in many ways. I feel it's a fun snapshot of a Canadian writer, and definitely clever. But it's not nearly as good as Davies' novels, at least in my opinion.

I think I can best summarize this book by saying it reminds me of the Pickwick Papers, but with less continuous narrative.

[Ryan Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am unrestrained in my admiration for this book. The book itself is a collection of letters, diary entries, and fragments of table talk which were written ,and in the case of the table talk spoken by Davies alter ego Samuel Marchbanks. It is a book to read straight through but it is also one to dip into. Here is a favorite passage of mine

"Saw also a toy train big enough to pull children and a few adults. Would fain have had a ride on it, but I had no child with me, and feared that I might excite remark and even rebuke if I tried to pass myself off as a nursery-school type. The train had an excellent whistle which sent me, just as Sinatra sends the bobby-sockers. Whoo! it went, mellowly and invitingly: Whoo! Whoo"

Marchbanks is a curmudgeon and an eccentric a combination which makes for great company.

[Lynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a compiliation of 3 books by Samuel Marchbanks (Robertson Davies' alter ego - Davies actually wrote a column for a Toronto newspaper in the forties under this pseudonym), and edited by Roberson Davies: The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks, and The Letters of Samuel Marchbanks.

If you enjoy curmudgeonly observations of life, you'll love this. I feel like I know Marchbanks and would love to visit Marchbanks Towers for a glass of lemonade on the front porch sometime during the three hours of summer that he enjoys each year (remember, he lives in Canada).

Semper Rectus!

[Bill Peschel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have dipped back into this book again and again. This is a collection of brief essays published in a Canadian newspaper probably back in the 1950s or so. I find them charming, low-key, humorous and reflective of the character of Samuel Marchbanks, who comes off as a bit crotchety fellow when confronted with the dim, unable to meet the demands of daily life (including wrestling with his coal-fired furnace). I love Davies' novels, but I found this book first in a second-hand bin and bought it on a flyer, so perhaps a star can be devoted to that happenstance (impossible to find online) that led me to his greater works.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samuel Marchbanks, an alter ego of famed Canadian writer Davies, displays the full range of his wit, humor, curmudgeonliness, unreasonableness and charm in this collection of several earlier published books. Many people prefer Davies' novels; I like him in small snippets. This would be an ideal bed book if its size and weight weren't so hard on the wrists.

[Sheri-lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny stuff. I read the 'Garland' in conjunction with 'Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack' since it is excerpt from that with editorial commentary. The 'Garland' makes better reading in the 'Almanack' following the Zodiac signs. :) I have to say that 'Diary' and 'Table Talk' had many more laugh out loud parts though.

[Isabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read in my desperate effort to find more Robertson Davies to imbibe once his death made it obvious that there would be no more novels and trilogies, this collection of articles and columns he had written under his Samuel Marchbanks persona: cantankerous and funny, funny,funny!

[Frances Sawaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laughed myself silly over this extensive collection of diary entries from Marchbanks, the alter ego of Davies. Many years ago when the author was at UCLA for a signing he read a few of these. Quite funny, probably due to fact that Davies had such strong theatrical experience.

[Sherry Mackay · Rating 4 out of 5]

An oldie but a goodie. I have read this over and over and it is still delightful. I love the fiction that the author and the character are not the same I enjoy the insights into Canada of the 40s and 50s and I adore his curmudgeonly persona.

[Amelie]

Quite entertaining. Not the place to start with Davies, but very diverting reading (or browsing).

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun bits on everything from Historical Novels to Snow Removal. Dry and funny. Probably not the place to start with Davies

[Autumn · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my perennial re-reads. I like to take a nip or two from this book before bed. Not all of it has aged well, but overall, a fantastic read.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has to be the funniest book I've ever read. Marchbanks is a riot!!!!!

[Liz Lindsay · Rating 1 out of 5]

Never finished it.

[Ibis3]

RABCK from Dunzy.

[Jack Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hillarous commentary of on Canadian Life.
If this man doesn't make you laugh at least he will enrich your vocabulary.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is really funny stuff.