A Celtic Temperament: Robertson Davies as Diarist

by Robertson Davies

TUESDAY, MARCH 1: Yousuf Karsh, the photographer, comes to lunch with an assistant, Monty Everett, and they photograph me from 2 until 5. It was interesting but exhausting. In the evening we saw on TV The Importance of Being Earnest with Dame Edith Evans, the 1952 film directed by Anthony Asquith. The box and the Ford ads ill became it but she is still great.

  THURSDAY, MARCH 3: Wrote a lead editorial, wrote a Star column, worked on the Governor General books, a full day. In the evening worked on the books again and a damned dull lot they are, in the main. Yearned for just one alive writer. H.t.d. in midst of night, surprising and good.

  FRIDAY, MARCH 4: Short morning at the office and then take the train to Ottawa at 11:30. Read Joseph Vance by William De Morgan.13 Usual wait at Smiths Falls, that mudhole. To the Château Laurier, a quiet dinner, and to the film Spartacus, surely world’s worst, and Room at the Top again, admirable. A restful, happy day.

  SATURDAY, MARCH 5, OTTAWA: Governor General’s Award committee meeting with Northrop Frye in the morning. Lunch at La Touraine with Norrie Frye and Douglas LePan. Full committee from 2 to 5. LePan makes difficulties by wanting to withdraw on conscientious scruples! He had not read some of the books! Drinks at Dr. Trueman’s,14 then dine at the Château with Norrie Frye, Duncan Grant, and LePan. A long chat about pornography and we drink till 12. Very genial, these professors, excellent company. Guy Sylvestre, on our committee, asks, Why are English Canadian writers all connected with universities? Why indeed? Frye and LePan and Duncan Grant nice chaps but all scholars rather than creators. Me too? Dire and inadmissible thought!

  SUNDAY, MARCH 6: Breakfast at 10; ’bus at 12:30; home 4:30. I sustain such journeys and such meetings better than I did.

  MONDAY, MARCH 7: Felt dull and took the day in a restful spirit. Lunatic letters from a woman in Philadelphia: am I especially attractive to madwomen? A father-figure, Ralph Hancox says, laughing.

  TUESDAY, MARCH 8: Continue to feel dull. Miranda comes home in the evening for a short rest. Brenda is unwell, as if ’flu. We are all fagged from winter; but I do a good deal of work all the same.

  THURSDAY, MARCH 10: Weariness lifts. In the evening played duets with Miranda: Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Handel, then hear Franck and Elizabethan songs: restorative.

  SATURDAY, MARCH 12: In the morning tinkered with a Star column. Afternoon, to bed with Brenda to sleep and h.t.d., most restorative and delightful. In the evening read in Heart of Jade by Salvador de Madariaga and began Mann’s Magic Mountain and at once am drawn to it. Brenda to a skating party at 10, and I hear music till she and Rosamond return, big with carnival gossip.

  SUNDAY, MARCH 13: Lie late. We drive to Toronto in the afternoon and dine with Claude and Christine Bissell15 in their handsome president’s residence to meet Jacques Barzun,16 Provost Derwyn Owen of Trinity College and Mrs. Owen, Dean and Mrs. Rogers (a battleaxe), and others. Very pleasant and rather grand—two manservants. How restorative to meet some people with minds. Chats with Barzun and Bissell were not remarkable for what was said but for all the good sense and knowledge that lay behind it. Barzun said to me, “The theatre will kill you.” No it won’t, but such assertions are depressing, coupled with Derwyn Owen’s that “Canadian things seem ill-fated on Broadway.”

  MONDAY, MARCH 21: Felt tired and unwell. Carpenters and electricians invade the house in the first blast of redecoration. At the office much work and temperament. I do some work against the grain, and in the evening work on the play. An excellent and restorative h.t.d., but wake in night terrified by dream in which Mother appears as a baby guarded by ghosts.

  TUESDAY, MARCH 22: Felt much better and worked well—a Star column on De Morgan in the morning and two editorials in the afternoon, and many letters and decisions. In the evening worked on Leaven of Malice and heard from Tony. Also, began a diary of the production of Leaven of Malice, and hope I have the heart to keep it up, but refuse to despair. If the play does not do well it is not the end of the world.

  LEAVEN OF MALICE: MARCH 23, 1960 TO JANUARY 1, 1961

  In 1959, William Gibson published an account of the writing and production of his very successful play, Two for the Seesaw, called The Seesaw Log. He found the procedure extremely painful, disappointing, and disenchanting. I hope to record here the facts and some of the experience of dramatizing, and seeing through production, the stage version of my novel Leaven of Malice, published in 1954.

  FIRST: Joseph Hayman wanted a dramatization, with one setting and the love story prominent. He tried several dramatists, and I tried, but he was not satisfied. This was 1956–7–8.

  SECOND: Manuel D. (Don) Herbert took an option on the book. I first saw him December 4, 1958, and met his partner Philip Langner. They get Tyrone Guthrie’s assurance that he will direct the play.

  THIRD: I go to Eire July 8–9, 1959, taking a draft dramatization, and work revising it with Guthrie July 10–30.

  Tomorrow, March 23, 1960, I go to Toronto to work with Tony Guthrie on casting and here, I suppose, the fun may be said to begin.

  The Theatre Guild was a theatrical society founded in New York City in 1918 by Lawrence Langner and three colleagues. Langner’s wife, Armina Marshall, also served as a co-director. Its original purpose was to produce non-commercial works by American and foreign playwrights, and its productions included plays by George Bernard Shaw and Eugene O’Neill. It differed from other theatre groups as its board of directors shared in the choosing of plays, management, and production. At the time of the Love and Libel production the Theatre Guild consisted of Lawrence Langner, Armina Marshall Langner, their son Philip Langner, and Warren Caro. The play was produced by Theatre Guild Productions Inc. and Don Herbert by arrangement with the Canadian Theatre Exchange, whose members were Tom Patterson, Robert Whitehead, Ernest Rawley, Jane Massie, and Ted Jolliffe.

  Davies’s novel Leaven of Malice is a social comedy set in the early 1950s in the town of Salterton, which has many similarities to Davies’s hometown, Kingston, Ontario, with its university, Anglican cathedral, and local newspaper. The plot follows the complications, revelations, and consequences that result from a false engagement notice that appears in the Salterton daily newspaper. The unwilling young couple, Pearl Vambrace and Solly Bridgetower, are quite uninterested in each other and deeply embarrassed by the announcement. But they are both frustrated by their lives and trapped by over-loving and overbearing parents: Pearl’s father, the self-important Professor Vambrace, and Solly’s mother, the smothering and perpetually demanding Mrs. Bridgetower. Several other characters find themselves, willingly or otherwise, involved in the hoax: Gloster Ridley, the much-put-upon editor of the newspaper; Swithin Shillito, a hopelessly old-fashioned journalist; the officious Dean Knapp of the cathedral; and a dubious newcomer to the town, Bevill Higgin. Three other couples demonstrate different versions of more-or-less happy married love: Humphrey Cobbler, the exuberant, pleasure-loving organist at the cathedral, and his wife, Molly; Norm and Duchy Yarrow, relentlessly optimistic social scientists; and the hearty vulgarians George and Kitten Morphew. The play, as it evolved, retained the plot and most of the characters of the novel but ultimately was structured quite differently.

  The play was revised by Davies for production at Hart House in 1973 and again for the Shaw Festival in 1975. It was published under the title Leaven of Malice (A Play) in 1982 and 2008.

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, TORONTO: Meet Tony at the Royal York Hotel and discuss casting. Esme Church has turned down Mrs. Bridgetower as the part repels her, which does not astonish me. She is elderly, Roman Catholic, and rather indisposed to like my work, but Tony advises further persuasion and we write a joint letter. His phone rings every ten minutes but he handles it all with ease. He has lined up some actors to be seen.

  THURSDAY, MARCH 24, TORONTO: H.t.d. on waking, which dispels fatigue. Work with Tony. We agree to circumvent, so far as may be, the nerve-wracking part of taking a play to New York, by working amicably together. He thinks the contracts are too long delayed. We have made advances to Ameli
a Hall (for Edith), Tony van Bridge (for Shillito), Leo Leyden (for Higgin), and Robert Christie17 (for Ridley) as well as John Milligan (for Solly).18 Tony always explains to the actors that the play is a dramatization of a novel, and they charmingly indicate that it is the one recent Canadian novel that—doubtless owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy19—has not come their way. Of course actors seldom read anything. But this has become a joke between us.

  In the evening we go to a Crest performance of Honour Thy Father (very bad) to see Charmion King (for Kitten). Tony thinks Charmion too well-bred and beautiful, in which I suppose he is right, but I still think she could do it well. He suggests a freer treatment of the public opinion theme and comes around to the notion of a chorus, which is what I wanted last summer. I am to work on this and we will continue with it in June. I see also Marie Day, who is to design the costumes, but as these are surely quite commonplace, it should be interesting to see what comes of this. Bought a bottle of Irish whiskey for Tony, who dislikes our Canadian “liquor lounges,” very properly. He tells me Alec Guinness20 is a bastard, but knows who his father is, and has a rather disgraceful, boozy old mum. Guinness is embarrassed by elderly wives who approach him to say: “Used to be a drinking-companion of your mother’s”—very hurtingly. Is this why Guinness became a Papist, searching for some certainty, some unfailing distinction or patrician note, in his personal life? Marie Day came all in black, with dead-white face and kohl round her eyes, and Tony thought her a slut and seductress, but I thought her just a girl trying to put her best foot foremost.

  FRIDAY, MARCH 25, TORONTO: Last night Tony and I supped in the coffee shop of the hotel here where many little ladies from a congress of the Order of the Eastern Star were, and amused ourselves casting Kitten from among them. Tony never reads the papers and did not know Leonard Warren21 was dead. Tony says Rudolf Bing, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera Company, hated Warren, who was not so fine an artist as his publicity asserted and was hard to work with. Tony thinks the O’Keefe Centre22 is a great mistake and refused to sign an approving comment on it prepared for him by Mary Jolliffe, the publicity agent. Herbert Whittaker says Mary Jolliffe hated doing it, and I can well believe it.

  This evening Brenda, Tony, and I dined with Clair and Amy Stewart to discuss the Crest: Tony thinks it can come to no good in its present theatre, which chimes with Clair’s eagerness for a new house. We went with the Stewarts to Tony’s touring production of Friedrich Schiller’s Maria Stuart with Eva Le Gallienne and Signe Hasso. It was bad and dull, racked to pieces on tour. But it is a bad play. Have the Germans any real drama?

  SATURDAY, MARCH 26, TORONTO: Wake ill—’flu. Take Tony and the girls to lunch at the Lord Simcoe Hotel, then drive home. I shiver and chatter and whisk into bed with hot-bottles and aspirin and sleep heavily: first cold in years and I think fatigue and excitement and the awful hot dryness of the Royal York brought it on—and sinus.

  SUNDAY, APRIL 3: Lay late; feel dull and achey. A dreary week; have not been so ill in years. Felt middle-aged and grey and unsuccessful and declining.

  SUNDAY, APRIL 17: Feeling much better and spring gives me new heart; but I dawdle over getting to work on the play. My chief weakness as an author is my hatred of revision.

  THURSDAY, MAY 5: Today I sent copies of all the revisions of the play to Willis Kingsley Wing, incorporating all Tony’s suggestions and also all those of Don Herbert. Can a playwright be more obliging, I ask? Have cut the Morphews substantially. Don Herbert phones to say that Dennis King23 is interested in playing Bevill Higgin, and he would be a strength, perhaps that great desideratum, a Name. Tony saw Maud Whitmore as a possible Mrs. Bridgetower and put her in a tizzy, but I fear he never seriously considered her. She has written me a letter, sad because courageous and not very hopeful, asking when she will know. I must write her and do not like to do it, for she is a good woman if not a good actress.

  SATURDAY, MAY 7: To Stratford. Governors’ meeting, very busy, then a cast reception at 5 where I see Tanya Moiseiwitsch,24 Christopher Plummer, etc. Drive to Toronto in rain and fog and have a bad dinner at Guelph. Lie with the Harrises, and chat pleasantly ’til 1.

  At Stratford learned from John Hayes that the Guild is moving: a scenery construction firm in Toronto has been approached, and Bruce Swerdfager has had a letter about playing George Morphew. So something is doing. A certain cordiality among the actors (those seaweed barometers of one’s theatre fortunes) also marks me as a man with a play and perhaps parts to give.

  N.B. A title? Of course Leaven of Malice won’t do, chiefly I think because it exists, is good, and can be had without any trouble, but they say that “Leaven” is a hard word and people won’t understand it.

  People insist that having a play done must be a Gethsemanic ordeal. At dinner at the Bissells’ on March 13 Jacques Barzun kept repeating, “It will kill you; it will kill you.” Today Julie Harris’s husband, Manning Gurian, whom I met at Stratford, said, “Your hair can’t get any whiter but you can still lose it.” What do they mean? Of course everyone knows this sort of thing is a nervous strain. But why this hysteria, this assumption that horror is inevitable? Even failure in its most complete form can be borne with some dignity.

  SUNDAY, MAY 8: Up at 9:30. Leave Harrises at 11:30 after splendid breakfast. Collect another load of Miranda’s junk at St. Hilda’s and home by 2. Slept in afternoon and wrote account of Leaven of Malice in my theatre diary. Brenda depressed by demands of approaching summer.

  SUNDAY, MAY 15: Up at 9 and do books in the guest-room and put records back in cabinet. In the afternoon we drive to Toronto and meet Mrs. Newbold25 at Malton airport. She is well and full of high spirits. At home we talk with her till 11.

  SUNDAY, MAY 22: H.t.d. on waking; rainy day and projected picnic impossible. Mrs. Newbold much freer-spirited now her mother26 is dead, but talks very confidently of what she has rearranged in her memory: truly, the world is her idea and her grip on fact joyously frail.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 3: Write a Star column. In the afternoon to a reception for L.B. Pearson.27 Politics fascinates me but what odd people compose local committees! There is a theatre strike in New York. If it goes on long this will certainly affect my production date. Redecoration and the fuss of proof-reading the book and writing the play make this a bad time to think or read. I live in the shadows of the spirit.

  TUESDAY, JUNE 7: To Kingston at 11:45, taking Mrs. Newbold: a superb day. We see some sights and dine with Grant Macdonald. Very good but rich. A Governor General’s Awards committee meeting. A good meeting and I suggest leather-bound books as prizes. Back to Grant Macdonald’s for chat and listen to records, and then to the motel: unwell in night; rich food.

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8: Return to Peterborough for lunch. A beautiful day and lovely drive. The painter has finished the bedroom which looks fine. But this roving, disturbed life and the constant visitors are hard on work. Corrected and returned last Knopfbook proofs.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 9: To dentist in the morning—political talk as usual. In the afternoon wrote two editorials and a Star column on the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Collier. The Star syndicate advertises me as “the bearded bard”—cheap stuff. In the evening much chat with Brenda, Mrs. Newbold, and Miranda. Slept very poorly. Six at every meal makes for jollity, but is also rather wearing. As a family we are so excitable and waste so much energy in mere talk and word-play: but it is life-enhancing.

  FRIDAY, JULY 1: The New York theatre strike in June somewhat delayed progress, but I have just returned from Stratford, where I saw Tony and he says all goes well. Rehearsals to begin October 10, open Toronto November 2, and in New York mid-December. Tony likes the revisions, and I have, I think, persuaded him that the piece is more than just funny. He likes the dreams and says they must emerge as the reality, the waking-life as the unreality—which is what I wanted. The last scene is to be revised to build up Cobbler and Mrs. Bridgetower, which should be easy.

  MONDAY, JULY 4: All day I collogue with Wilson Craw, man
aging editor, and Bill Garner, general manager, about appointing Ralph Hancox as assistant managing editor. Craw’s Scotchness and jealousy very apparent. Oh, Temperament! What a concealed nuisance in business! Consequently very tired by evening.

  THURSDAY, JULY 7: At 9:15 Brenda, Mrs. Newbold, Jenny, and Rosamond all left for New York to see Jenny off on a school tour to Europe. Jenny greatly excited. Hard work at the Examiner as Ralph Hancox is in Stratford. Home is dull and silent. In the evening I played Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Sorcerer and thought the recording dreadful and the voices bad: D’Oyly Carte at its lowest ebb.28

  FRIDAY, JULY 8: Busy day: wrote two leads and a Star column about Sullivan. Mrs. Pedak offers very good meals and not her usual stingy quantity. In the evening to the Summer Theatre’s production of The Glass Menagerie, well done and more poetic than I had remembered. Hot weather.

  THURSDAY, JULY 14: Another crowded day but Brenda, Rosamond, and Mrs. Newbold return and the house comes alive again. They had a good time in New York and Mrs. Newbold was thrilled. Admirable h.t.d.

  FRIDAY, JULY 15: An hour and a half in the morning with Craw and Bill Garner about office problems. After Craw leaves, Bill says, “There’s your problem.” I will have to be firm; a busy afternoon and write three editorials. Gay h.t.d.

  TUESDAY, JULY 26: To the Examiner and find the quarrel between Craw and Hancox worse and have to work on it. Do much work to small purpose and feel wretched—aches and sore throat.

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 27: Busy day at the Examiner: get Craw and Hancox in my office and make peace—I hope. Had an important dream, in colour: the Examiner was being restored at the front door corner (Hunter and Water Streets) and when the builders took down the modern building, they found walls and ornament of a Victorian one in red and gold—a naked-breasted caryatid, cartouches of nymphs and satyrs, and gold and scarlet walls and moulding. I remembered the Examiner building was once a hotel, but not, of course, like that. A girl in a raincoat appeared briefly, but only so that I could show her the discovery. Outside it was raining; inside, warm and handsome and exciting.