Marchbanks at the Breakfast-Table

Recent reading has included The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks, by Robertson Davies (1913- 1995) and The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes* (1809 - 1894). Both are the reported (comic) speech or writings of a slightly overbearing man of letters in their specific locale. Both were initially published in newspapers or periodicals; Autocrat in The Atlantic Monthly (as it then was) in 1857-58 and Marchbanks in the Peterborough Examiner (Peterborough in the Province of Ontario) in 1942. Holmes merely wrote for The Atlantic; Davies held various positions at the Examiner - both authors seem to have realised the possibilities of collection into a book fairly promptly.

Robertson Davies, 1982, according to Wikipedia.

A word on format and content: The Autocrat is a series of monthly columns collected into a volume. The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks (1986) contains The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947, compiling weekly diary material from 1945-46), The Table-Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949, collecting observations of Marchbanks organised as if they were all uttered at a seven-course formal dinner) and Marchbanks' Garland (1986, made up from material in Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack, 1967, which was apparently organised by signs of the Zodiac. The Garland contains letters and diary entries alike). Davies has continued the metafictional game in Papers by presenting himself as editor, making extensive footnotes contextualising or commenting on material from the 1940s and even preparing an introduction with an aged but still unmistakable Marchbanks. 

This isn't quite a review, of course, merely a collection of thoughts. Still, I shall say that while I enjoy both, they work in different ways. They are commenting on different times with different mores. A different tone, of course: the unmistakably Yankee voice of Holmes is different to the Canadian Davies (as to which sort of Canadian - "I am the usual Canadian cocktail: Welsh, Scots, quite a bit of Dutch, a dash of Red Indian, but no English. And all, of course, dominated by the old Empire Loyalist bias." From The Paris Review's Art of Fiction interview series, No. 107, published Spring 1989). The poetic Holmes is distinct from the playwright and novelist Davies; the audience of the Autocrat are largely more gracious than those confronted by the spiky Marchbanks - who is cantankerous and a little fogeyish, where the Autocrat is domineering but gracious.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I am reading both from books, of course, though The Autocrat may be found online. It would be interesting to see both in their original periodical context. If no-one has done so already, a coffee-table book of high quality pictures of chapters of (say) David Copperfield or The Three Musketeers as originally serialised and presented next to adverts or columns on goodness knows what else would be a fine thing. 

Rating or scoring either The Autocrat or The Papers is fairly pointless, to my mind, but I have taken to reading a chapter of The Autocrat in the early afternoon and a dozen pages of Marchbanks before bed. Davies was more the journalist. Indeed, he does seem to have played to the crowd more - a frequent theme of The Diary (later Marchbanks deals with slightly more literary material) is the struggles of Marchbanks with his stove and snow-shovelling - something with which, I take it, householders of Ontario in the 1940s could sympathise. 

Indeed, Davies does seem to have used Marchbanks as a means to vent. Marchbanks is more independent and pricklier than I think he could have been, either as editor of the Examiner or as Master of Massey College (discussed previously here). Of course, Marchbanks has a set of experiences and background roughly identical to Davies. Wish fulfilment? Well, Marchbanks doesn't have a beautiful wife, or a series of elaborate affairs (could one have even eluded to such in the Peterborough Examiner?) or a sumptuous lifestyle. But perhaps. 

It's interesting seeing Davies's footnotes to Marchbanks's material in The Papers. This was in 1986; Davies was in his seventies. Some elements are toned down, some are made more explicit. His introduction even discusses an outlandish fetish enjoyed by Marchbanks. But there's a definitely fogeyish element to it, particularly in Davies commenting on a proclamation of Marchbanks frequently to the effect of 'This has, of course, only continued and become more so, such that...." 

Has the cosmopolitan, loosely liberal Davies been suborned by his grouchy alter ego? You will find people saying that this happened to Evelyn Waugh, as if to say: 'How dare the author of Vile Bodies become a Catholic and try to live as a country squire!' Well, I believe that Waugh was probably more embittered and splenetic than Davies, but even Waugh had some self-awareness - witness his later novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Penfold, dealing with the hallucinations and paranoia of an elderly writer following a BBC interview (written not so long after Waugh's own BBC interview....). So I shall say that Davies is probably being a little indulgent, but I am not sure that this is a literary demerit. 

It occurs to me in writing this that columns of this kind have vanished - as far as I know from newspapers and periodicals. Humorous columns and comment remain, but generally at least nominally about something. If the desire for this sort of humour persists - and I think it does - where did it go? Into comedy as an independent entity, I suppose - the sitcom and the panel show. Ed Reardon's Week springs to mind. More specifically, I suspect that the most exact parallel to the Autocrat and Marchbanks might be online. The Blogger working under a nom-de-plume is a familiar enough presence. But the comic twists, the colourful griping, the conversations with fictional correspondents or sparring partners**, the chance to present yourself or an alter ego as rather neater and wittier - and dominating more conversations than you actually are - surely this is familiar? "In the future, we will all be The Autocrat for fifteen minutes." Of course, I suspect there is more self-discipline involved in creating and sustaining something like The Autocrat or Marchbanks than the common or garden Twitter account, which makes them worth revisiting. 

Anyway, a few items gleaned from The Autocrat and The Papers for your use and enjoyment.

Names of Samuel Marchbanks' correspondents include:

1. Haubergeon Hydra
2. Raymond Cataplasm, MD, FRCP
3. Minerva Hawser
4. Amyas Pilgarlic
5. Cicero Forcemeat
6. Mrs Kedijah Scissorbill
7. The Rev'd Simon Goaste
8. Apollo Fishhorn
9. Nancy Frisgig
10. Richard 'Dick' Dandiprat

Assorted encounters from the Breakfast-Table:

1. Frontiersman and woodsmen have taken to using knives patterned in replica of the short swords of an ancient empire. What could this portend?
2. A woman on a street-corner with a permanent lob-sided smile holds forth on the difference between the Albino Blonde and the Leonine Blonde.
3. You can hear the ticking of your own brain, the constant whirring of the human clockwork. What will make this stop? What will deafen the noise? Who has done this to you?
4. A group of pasty scholars have set up a sparring ring on the common. Their efforts to advance themselves in the Sweet Science appear sincere, but pitifully inexpert.
5. A wild-eyed gentleman starts explaining the process of divine revelation to you in terms of the pearly spiralling chambers of an infinite nautilus shell. It is unclear whether you are going in to the centre of the shell (and the heart of all things) or out into progressively larger and more wondrous spaces. Perhaps both.
6. Addressing an Assembly meeting, a veteran recently elected Consul stumbles over his words and uses some less than statesman-like expressions. His audience react with muted distaste to this, but are clearly willing to forgive him much on account of his scars. 

*Not to be confused with his son, the legal scholar and judge Oliver Wendell "You sure as shootin' better not be shouting fire in a crowded theatre down there," Holmes Jr.

**Who may not necessarily be Strawmen or Steelmen or what have you.