The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks Read Online Free PDF Page B

problem from the wrong end. It is not the frequency of divorce which makes the times wicked; it is the wickedness of the times which increases divorce. We live in an age when man is expected to waste and wear out as much as he can. Do we not call the ordinary citizen a ‘consumer’? He buys ‘lifetime’ fabrics and soon wears them out. He buys a ‘lifetime’pen and a ‘lifetime’ watch and in ten years he wants new ones. His books are not lifetime friends; they are the enthusiasm of a month. He is sneered at if he drives a perfectly good car which is ten years old. Is it any wonder, then, that he exhausts one ‘lifetime’ marriage and seeks another? Mind your economics, and your morals will take care of themselves.” This bit of Marxian sophistry shocked him, and he fled.… No madam, our hostess did not tell me that you were a divorcée. Tell me, are you a discard, or a discardee?
• O F D RABBERY AND S QUIRTDOM •
    T HE ENTERTAINMENT tycoons don’t seem able to let musicians alone. I see that there is now a musical show in New York purporting to reveal “the romance of Tschaikowsky,” though it has long been an open secret that Tschaikowsky had a neurotic dislike of women, and that much of the tragedy of his life arose from this cause. A new movie is based on the love of Robert Schumann for Clara Wieck, attributing his greatness as a composer to this inspiration. Bunk! Pure bunk! And yet I suppose it flatters a section of the public to think that the biological urges which they share with the great somehow reduce the great to their level. The points of resemblance between great people and paltry people are infinitely more numerous than the points of difference: they all eat, sleep, fall in love, catch cold, and use handkerchiefs. It is good business to pretend that no real difference exists, and Hollywood has long known how to exploit it.… But I am powerfully reminded of Théophile Gautier’s division of men into two groups, The Flamboyant and The Drab; my sympathies and loyalties are always with The Flamboyant, of whom Churchill is one, though his followers are mostly Drabs. But this is very much the age of theDrab—the apotheosis of The Squirt. The Squirts and Drabs are not worth much singly, but when they organize into gangs and parties they can impose Drabbery and Squirtdom on quite a large part of mankind.
• O F T RAGIC F LAB •
    P SYCHOLOGISTS , now maintain that human fat is a sign of misery, and that fat people are immature, frustrated and anxious for protection. I have known this for years. Indeed I am known to the medical profession as the first man to identify Tragic Flab, a lardlike substance which is secreted under the skins of unhappy people, and which may be observed as a characteristic of many great figures in literature. Was not Hamlet described by his mother as “fat and scant of breath”? I have long maintained that Charles Laughton is the ideal Hamlet. I have also suggested that Romeo and Juliet should both be shown getting fatter and fatter as the play grows more and more tragic, until they are barely able to shift their carcasses about the stage in the final act. King Lear, too, should obviously be an immensely fat old man, weighed down with Tragic Flab. I wish psychologists would stop coming out with my old notions as if they were new discoveries.
• O F H IS N URSING E XPERIENCE •
(A Boring Account)
    T HE DARK SHADOW of Disease hung over Marchbanks Towers this week. All members of my domestic circle wore a stricken look, and I feared the worst. I packed them off to bed, hoping that my fears were groundless. I have just escaped from the doctors myself, and dread to see my near and dear fall into their hands. But every last Marchbanks was abed next morning withchickenpox or mumps, and one had both; I felt like some rugged old oak, left standing in a forest which has been levelled by the wind. I summoned a doctor, who arrived and prescribed for all and spread an air of calm