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Authors: Robertson Davies
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sounds more refined than “beer”; they are the people who never want more food—they always “wish” it. “Doyou wish further prunes?” they say, looking as though no one who was not a gormandizer could possibly want anything more to eat. “How warm I’ve grown,” they say, when they are drenched in sweat. They never go to bed—they “retire.” They spend their whole lives trying to be like characters in
The Ladies’ Home Journal.
In my opinion, anyone who finds the expression “gracious living” creeping into his mind, is in mortal danger of becoming a pantywaist or a stuffed shirt. Good manners, decent hospitality and comfort are the reality; “gracious living” is a shoddy, sugar-coated substitute.
• O F U NSAVOURY W HOLESOMENESS •
I SEE THAT Princess Elizabeth and Barbara Ann Scott have both been included among the “Six Most Wholesome Women of the Year” by the Women’s Research Guild of New York. A dubious compliment, if ever I heard one. In my callow youth, I was badly scratched several times before I learned that if there is one thing no girl wants to be called, it is wholesome. This word suggests that a girl eats a lot of turnips, laughs too loudly at clean jokes, wears too much underclothing of the wrong kind, and has not heard about depilatories. Wholesome is what one calls girls whom one cannot call beautiful, or witty, or charming without hurrying straight to the bathroom to wash one’s mouth out with brown soap. Even a girl who takes a lot of outdoor exercise, like Miss Scott, need not be wholesome because of it: even a princess, with the eyes of the world upon her, can avoid the curse of wholesomeness. What girl would be a slice of bread, when she can be a piece of cake? I think that both these maligned young women are thoroughly unwholesome, so there!
•A C REATURE OF H ABIT •
T ODAY I SAW a baker wearing a pair of plastic pants over his ordinary trousers, and pondered idly on the purpose of this strange garment. A baby-sitter might advantageously wear plastic pants; I have known babies who themselves wore plastic pants; but why does a baker need plastic pants? Some modern mystery, beyond my comprehension, no doubt, for I am a poor creature, bound by chains of habit. The first butcher I saw as a child had a wooden leg, and to this day I have an unreasonable feeling that butchers with two genuine legs are impostors. Such is the strength of an early impression on a mind ill-suited to the giddy changes of modern life.
• O F P OLICE I NEFFICIENCY •
I READ WITH INTEREST that agents of the R.C.M.P. have been searching the offices of a Canadian magazine in search of a manuscript. “They searched the safe,” says one report, “but found nothing in it except a stock of stationery.” This shocks me. The R.C.M.P. must really be very badly trained, or they would know that nobody keeps anything valuable in a safe any more, nor has anyone done so since 1910. The vault, or safe of most business offices contains all or some of the following:
(1) The accountant’s rubbers
(2) Some disused ledgers
(3) The stick with a hook on it which is used for opening the windows.
(4) Two or three tarnished cups won by the firm’s bowling team back in the days when it had a bowling team.
(5) A bottle of ink which has congealed but is too good to throw away.
(6) Vases in which the secretaries put flowers on the rare occasions when anybody gives them flowers. Valuables are kept in banks. Manuscripts are kept in confused heaps on desks.
• O F S EXUAL E XCLUSIVENESS •
I PONDERED AT LUNCH today on the fact that all waiters in good hotels are clean-shaven. Is this a reminiscence of the time—about a century ago—when all men-servants wore powder in their hair on great occasions (although their masters had long given it up) and were forbidden to grow their whiskers as a mark of their servitude? At the turn of the century the only clean-shaven men to be seen in the streets were
The Ladies’ Home Journal.
In my opinion, anyone who finds the expression “gracious living” creeping into his mind, is in mortal danger of becoming a pantywaist or a stuffed shirt. Good manners, decent hospitality and comfort are the reality; “gracious living” is a shoddy, sugar-coated substitute.
• O F U NSAVOURY W HOLESOMENESS •
I SEE THAT Princess Elizabeth and Barbara Ann Scott have both been included among the “Six Most Wholesome Women of the Year” by the Women’s Research Guild of New York. A dubious compliment, if ever I heard one. In my callow youth, I was badly scratched several times before I learned that if there is one thing no girl wants to be called, it is wholesome. This word suggests that a girl eats a lot of turnips, laughs too loudly at clean jokes, wears too much underclothing of the wrong kind, and has not heard about depilatories. Wholesome is what one calls girls whom one cannot call beautiful, or witty, or charming without hurrying straight to the bathroom to wash one’s mouth out with brown soap. Even a girl who takes a lot of outdoor exercise, like Miss Scott, need not be wholesome because of it: even a princess, with the eyes of the world upon her, can avoid the curse of wholesomeness. What girl would be a slice of bread, when she can be a piece of cake? I think that both these maligned young women are thoroughly unwholesome, so there!
•A C REATURE OF H ABIT •
T ODAY I SAW a baker wearing a pair of plastic pants over his ordinary trousers, and pondered idly on the purpose of this strange garment. A baby-sitter might advantageously wear plastic pants; I have known babies who themselves wore plastic pants; but why does a baker need plastic pants? Some modern mystery, beyond my comprehension, no doubt, for I am a poor creature, bound by chains of habit. The first butcher I saw as a child had a wooden leg, and to this day I have an unreasonable feeling that butchers with two genuine legs are impostors. Such is the strength of an early impression on a mind ill-suited to the giddy changes of modern life.
• O F P OLICE I NEFFICIENCY •
I READ WITH INTEREST that agents of the R.C.M.P. have been searching the offices of a Canadian magazine in search of a manuscript. “They searched the safe,” says one report, “but found nothing in it except a stock of stationery.” This shocks me. The R.C.M.P. must really be very badly trained, or they would know that nobody keeps anything valuable in a safe any more, nor has anyone done so since 1910. The vault, or safe of most business offices contains all or some of the following:
(1) The accountant’s rubbers
(2) Some disused ledgers
(3) The stick with a hook on it which is used for opening the windows.
(4) Two or three tarnished cups won by the firm’s bowling team back in the days when it had a bowling team.
(5) A bottle of ink which has congealed but is too good to throw away.
(6) Vases in which the secretaries put flowers on the rare occasions when anybody gives them flowers. Valuables are kept in banks. Manuscripts are kept in confused heaps on desks.
• O F S EXUAL E XCLUSIVENESS •
I PONDERED AT LUNCH today on the fact that all waiters in good hotels are clean-shaven. Is this a reminiscence of the time—about a century ago—when all men-servants wore powder in their hair on great occasions (although their masters had long given it up) and were forbidden to grow their whiskers as a mark of their servitude? At the turn of the century the only clean-shaven men to be seen in the streets were
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