Oh, Mr. Davies.

Without a doubt, one of my favorite authors of all time is the late great, irreplaceable Canadian literary behemoth, Robertson Davies. Seriously, who is like unto him?
Ribald. Saucy. Sassy. Ever-dripping with drollery. Arcane. Donning broad-brimmed hats, tooth-bitten spectacles, formal suit, pocket watch and fob chain, large dark rings, Gandalf-ish white beard.... ahh Rob! His work is MARVELOUS! I think of him as Canada’s Charles Dickens. But, on steroids! Then again... Huxley, without the hallucinogens. No, he is incomparable. He is himself.
Davies passed away in 1995.
I have read all but two of his eleven “major” novels, and I look forward to reading these, and then re-reading the works. [My favorite thus far is World Of Wonders]. Truly, he was a literary genius.
Witty. Racy. Brazen. On the edge. The wealth of incidental knowledge in every one of his novels.... legerdemain, Jungian psychology, medicine, hagiography, the afterlife... Davies used brilliant fiction to bring the esoteric into accessible terms for the common human.
He is remarkable. A wayward SNOWBALL charts the course of three full novels in his Deptford Trilogy.
Anyhoo, today’s Splash du Jour just got me to thinking of Davies all day.
I recall an incident recorded in his Letters (from the book For Your Eye Alone: Letters 1976 – 1995, selected and edited by Judith Skelton Grant).
This is sooooo classic Davies-ness! I love it.
Seems that back in 1981, a certain “Woman in Manitoba” wrote to Davies after reading an excerpt from his novel The Rebel Angels. She was apparently scandalized by the book and wrote to reprove Davies for presenting what she called “Barn Yard pornography,” which “stinks of syphilis” and is written “in terms of degradation, lies, sacrilegious slander and filth.”
I must credit Grant’s book here, for I am quoting directly from it, below. Rob's reply is simply wonderful:

[Dear Miss _______:]
Many many heartfelt thanks for your letter of September 25. Though it filled me with shame and remorse, I was grateful for the Christian impulse which moved you to stretch out a hand to me in my wretchedness. You say “We become that with which we busy our mind.” Too true! Alas, too true! I recall that as a boy the school chaplain said to my class, “If you tell dirty jokes you will grow to look like a dirty joke!” This has been my hapless destiny..... Would you do me a favour? Will you please send me a photograph of yourself, so that I may behold a countenance suffused with Christian love, and perhaps even yet repent?
[Robertson Davies.]

[End quote.]
Oh, Mr. Davies. The world is a lesser place since you have left us to ourselves.