Read Online The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks by Robertson Davies - Free Book Online Page B

actors, clergymen, servants and a few lawyers.… A women’s luncheon was going on near me. It looked deadly dull. Gatherings at which only one sex is represented are rarely enlivening. The only thing drearier than a pack of men eating together is a pack of women doing the same.… I quite agree with you, madam; the sexes are only tolerable when mingled.
• O F M ALE C OOKS •
    I WAS AT A GATHERING last night where I ate cookies made by one man, discussed the chemistry of cooking with another, and examined a gingerbread house made by a third. The gingerbread house was particularly fancy and appeared to me to carry the pastrycook’s art to considerable lengths.… More men can cook than is commonly thought, and I think that these male cooks are more concerned with the philosophy and mystery of cooking than are women. Women say, of course, that if men had all the cooking to do they would not like it so much. This is comparable to the frequent feminine comment that if men had to have babiesthere would soon be no babies in the world. Both remarks are equally untrue.… I have sometimes wished that some clever man would actually have a baby in a new, labour-saving way; then all men could take it up, and one of the oldest taunts in the world would be stilled forever.… I see that Shirley Temple has had a baby. Dear me, how time flies! Next thing we know that sweet little Mickey Rooney will be getting married.
• O F U NDESIRED I NFORMATION •
    I WAS EATING AN excellent slice of bread at lunch today, when I sensed a foreign substance in my mouth, and after some fishing and digging I found that it was a bit of paper. After I had cleaned it (by washing it in my tea, if you must know) I found that it was a union label, proclaiming that my bread had been made by organized bakers. I think, frankly, that I would rather have this information conveyed to me by other means than a label which I suspect had been licked by an organized tongue.… Many years ago I knew a cook whose father and brothers were bakers, and she told me that they always kneaded their dough with their feet, prancing rhythmically in the large wooden mixing tub, with their trousers’ legs rolled up.… Is there really any progress? A generation ago it was feet; today it is spit. I have a good notion to begin baking my own bread.
• W HAT M ANY W OMEN W ON ’ T A DMIT •
    I WENT TO A SCHOOL play last night and enjoyed it greatly. But I am always fascinated by the false whiskers with which young actors love to adorn themselves. They apply crêpe hair in quantities which could never, by any freak of nature, grow upon the human face, untilthey look like the Hairy Ainus who inhabit the northern reaches of Japan.… The play was
What Every Woman Knows
and the secret which every woman is supposed to know is that every successful man owes his success to a woman. I am not convinced of the truth of this, and would like to take a poll on it in the national capital. There are, I should think, quite a few men who have achieved a high degree of success in spite of the silly, inconsequent, pin-headed women they married in some unguarded, youthful moment. The Marchbanks Masculinist Party (of which I am the leader or Great Bear) seeks to undo the damage which has been done by such fellows as J. M. Barrie, who flattered women, basely, for money.… No, madam, I do not wish to qualify anything I have said.
• O F S UPERFLUOUS H AIR •
    I SEE A STRANGE gadget advertised—a special pair of circular scissors to remove hair from the nose and ears. Personally I regard hair in the ears as a sign of wisdom; the Chinese greatly esteem an elongated earlobe, and it seems to me that when such a lobe is allied with a splendidly hirsute ear, perfection has been reached, and should not be tampered with. As for hair in the nose, it is picturesque, and with a little practice it can be made to quiver, like the antennæ of one of the more intelligent and sensitive insects. Anything which gives