THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, TORONTO: I see Bissell again, at 3. He is reassuring, but it is clear the university wants control. As their vice-president in charge of finance, Frank Stone, puts it, if they “pick up the tab” they must virtually dictate policy. Bissell and I agree that the trustees of the Massey Foundation are not being very realistic about money. But Bissell thinks they will see the light. I hope so. The present state of affairs worries me and I am not sleeping well. Already, psychologically, I have allied myself with this venture more perhaps than is wise, and so has Brenda. We have discussed some of the things we could do, as a pair, to make the College a success.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 21: Some work on the third lecture in the morning; in the afternoon rest, then work and finish the lecture, and Brenda says it is good. Very tired, and sub-zero weather does not help matters. But I am glad the lectures are composed: delivery is not so wearing; ninety-seven pages altogether and close-packed stuff, most of it. Brenda is in low spirits: the children are away and she feels she has nothing to do and is worried about a lump in her breast. We discuss holidays. In Toronto she will have much to do. She says it is the ennui of middle age.
MONDAY, JANUARY 23: Felt unwell and took aspirin and a lot of water: ’flu symptoms. Rehearsed my no. 1 public lecture, which seems trivial and disgusts me. Why can I do nothing really well?
TUESDAY, JANUARY 24: In the afternoon to Toronto, a very cold drive as the Jag is not for sub-zero weather. In the evening give the first public lecture at Trinity and it is a success. A good audience, and they were pleased. I was nervous and suffered from the hot, dry hall. Afterward a party at the Harrises’—the Stewarts, Helen Ignatieff, Marion Walker, and Basil Coleman.5 Pleased it went so well.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, TORONTO: To Lionel Massey’s house and see the plans and drawings of the College.6 Like all such drawings, they make everything look much bigger than it can possibly be. Some parts look handsome—chiefly the facades of the Quadrangle and the appearance from Hoskin Avenue, but within much looks heavy and dowdily old-fashioned—a suggestion of Art Nouveau which is odd in a new building. The Hall and stairway leading to it are especially hideous. Library small, too small, and a foolish chapel, a mere doll’s chapel in Square Modern. The plan of the Master’s house seems good, though the kitchen is very small, but it is open to discussion. I say little, as the time is not propitious.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, TORONTO: At 4:30 to the National Trust offices to meet the only non-Massey trustee of the Massey Foundation, Wilmot H. Broughall, a trust lawyer. He is about my own age, a dark, wild-eyed man in whom the temperament of a lawyer wars with something vastly more wild and romantic. He is exasperated and fascinated by the Masseys and tells me more about them than is lawyer-like (but I find lawyers are great gossips). They know nothing of money, says he, and cannot grasp that talk of an independent college without some financial resources is mere gas. Vincent Massey never touches money: the National Trust pays even his household bills. Lionel has no independence: the Royal Ontario Museum pays his salary to the National Trust, which pays his bills and gives him an allowance. (No wonder he likes to chatter about being poor.) Talk of spending money alarms all Masseys, says Broughall, because they don’t understand it and think the world is trying to get it away from them by subtle means. (He says all rich people fear this, but my father does not—not to a serious degree.) He wants the trustees to make all the Foundation’s funds available to the College, which would take the place of an endowment. We discuss many matters of principle and detail and I like him. “I love all the Masseys dearly,” he says, “but they drive me crazy. And they all have a fabulous ability to create schemes and dream dreams, and turn them over to somebody else to make into realities.” According to Broughall, Vincent Massey is the brains and imagination of the Foundation; his brother Raymond a romantic, not really involved, nor Raymond’s son Geoffrey; Hart intelligent but detached; Lionel not intelligent (but a very sweet nature devoted to his father and consumed by him). So when Vincent Massey dies, who runs the Foundation? Broughall’s solution—let the Foundation exist to maintain the College. Can this be brought about? I promise to write him a letter restating some of the points we agreed on today.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 27: Get my letter to Broughall off today. My points: something in the nature of an endowment is absolutely necessary or the College cannot exist save as the university dictates; non-resident Junior Fellows very necessary, and a library for their use commensurate with College aims; an examination room for viva voce examinations of graduate students as the centre of the College and the focus of most of the Graduate School; a thorough understanding that learning and scholarship must be the foundations of the College (for the Masseys waffle a little about grand dinners in Hall, wine cellars, and kindred Oxonian pomps which are the ornaments and not the necessaries of what they want). I pitch it strong. If they don’t like it, I can’t go. I want to go, but I won’t be a slave to the university, or the doll on top of a weddingcake college.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 31: Lumbago very bad. To Toronto in rugs and hot-water bottles. Give second lecture at 8:15—a decided success and much better than last week.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, TORONTO: At 2 p.m. meet Vincent and Lionel Massey and W.H. Broughall in VM’S offices in the Shell Building on University Avenue. Quite simply, Bill Broughall has won the day and all my points are agreed to. The Foundation undertakes to give the College money each year, the sum not specified and probably variable so as to keep the university guessing. The Library to be made much more important and to include some of that space under the Common Room now marked for television viewing and ping-pong. The examination room to be given prominence. The chapel to go: I had advised this as there can be no chaplain and no regular services, and the Junior Fellows may be United Churchers, Jews, nullifidians, and infidels of all sorts, so the chapel would be a toy, for an occasional christening. The Masseys have just built a chapel at Upper Canada College which has cost them $45,000. So the chapel is out, and I hope that will make more space for the Library. In any case, I am to see the architect at the end of February, to talk to him about changes and possibilities. When these things had been discussed, VM wanted a final consent from me to accept the mastership and whether I gave it or not I do not quite know, but I think I did. We are to exchange letters at some future time, to make all secure. But if the finance of the College is secured, and I am to have a very free hand in so much that pertains to it, why would I demur? As Broughall says, the Masseys (or, one had better say, Vincent Massey) have fine, romantic dreams and this is why I admire him and am willing to work with him, though my temperament is contrary to co-operation, and I have been my own master for so long. But rich men and dreamers must have others to body forth their dreams, and I am no trivial dreamer myself. Indeed, is not this prospect and so much it includes part of a daydream I have cherished for years, and never seriously thought would come to realization? Such an out-of-the way dream, too, and so unlike Canada. But perhaps some changes can be made in some aspects of Canada, or rather, some aspects of Canada revealed of which Canada is not yet conscious.
After this meeting an odd struggle for power took place. VM wanted to see Claude Bissell on Friday, so Broughall made the appointment by phone. Result, Bissell is to visit VM at his office though VM had been fully prepared to go to Bissell. What fancy jockeying for prestige! I must beware in university circles. But I have my own techniques of establishing an easy or a difficult atmosphere, and I have learned to trust them.
Dinner at the University Club for our anniversary (tomorrow): Stewarts, Edinboroughs, Basil Coleman, Helen Ignatieff. To our flat afterward for drinks.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, TORONTO: Our twenty-first wedding anniversary, LAUS DEO! Lecture on Ben Jonson and humours. Lunch with Brenda and to Birks to buy pearls, very pretty, and to film Never on Sunday, Greek and naïve. Dine at La Chaumière and are entranced by the seduction conversation at the next table. Brenda to St. Hilda’s College for a drama workshop, and I begin work on my Massey Coll
ege record, and we get home at 1:15.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3: W.H. Broughall (H. = Haggerty, an old Canadian family, one a chief justice) phones at about 4 p.m. to say that Vincent Massey and Claude Bissell are drafting a joint statement about my appointment, from which I assume matters are going well between them. Bill was asked to find out what my degrees were. “Never mind about your matric,” said he, genially, from which I assume he knows what I have never thought it necessary to conceal—that I never passed that hateful examination,7 failing dismally in algebra, geometry, and, if I remember correctly, Latin composition. But if they had wanted a jewel from the diadem of Ontario conventional scholarship, I assume they would have chosen one. However, I wonder if Broughall is a man who makes a hobby of knowing something discreditable about everyone. He has said enough to me about the Masseys, on short acquaintance, to put me on my guard, and he has his knife into Frank Stone, the university’s money man, because he did not finish his course at Trinity. One must be careful with such a man, and though I am inclined to like and trust him, he has that strain of jealousy which can make a man a dangerous friend and a bad enemy. He tells me that VM is inordinately afraid of death. Bill is the son of a former bishop of Niagara and it amuses him that an Anglican should dread death. Of course the Masseys were originally Methodists and their churchmanship, like mine, is by choice rather than birth. Does one ever escape a cradle faith? My Presbyterianism often asserts itself.
I do not go to Ottawa for the Governor General’s Awards meeting because of lumbago: madness to sit four and a half hours in a ’bus in the cold. Wire Sylvestre and Frye my choices: Callaghan and Underhill and no prize for poetry. In the afternoon work on my Massey College record, and Bill Broughall calls to say things go well between Vincent Massey and Claude Bissell. In the evening, read several books and invite my soul: h.t.d. by fireside; most refreshing.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4: Bill Broughall phones in the morning to say he has run into further difficulties with the university solicitors; they are afraid of the word “covenant” as applied to the university’s agreement to pay the deficits of Massey College. This is lawyer’s stuff and does not concern me. But Broughall says he and I are to meet the university’s legal people in Claude Bissell’s office on Thursday next at 3 p.m. and we shall try to reach some final agreement which can then be taken to the Legislature. I look forward to this. Meanwhile I have begun work on my Proposal and shall try to get it under three heads: academic, housekeeping, and character. I wonder if the meals and cleaning could be done by contract, thereby keeping college staff to a minimum. Great advantages in farming out as many of the trouble-making departments as possible.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6: A good day’s work: arranged the Hart House speech,8 and lecture on Jonson, and rehearsed public lecture no. 3 for Trinity. In the evening, worked up lecture on Shakespeare comedy. Like a beaver, I chew through these tasks but long for time to think more and do them better; the weekend has greatly rested me.
Must take care of my health: poor sleep, lumbago, and lichen planus,9 all signs of overstrain. Brenda suggests a holiday in England this spring and I am attracted, though I dislike ’plane travel; but much pleasanter than a rushed week in New York.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7: To Toronto at 2:30. Flat tire at Bayview, third in 29,000 miles. Give third public lecture at Trinity at 8:15. A success but Derwyn Owen, the provost, made a dismal speech of thanks. The university atmosphere is curious and as Brenda points out, jealous as anywhere if not more so. Dull reception in the Trinity Buttery and then to the Stewarts for an excellent party.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, TORONTO: Bill Broughall lunched with me at the University Club. He tells me Vincent Massey says “a gentleman never takes soup with luncheon at his club” because Lord Curzon said it. I fear I shall run into many things a gentleman does not do, and which are unknown to me; but I am a writer, and therefore a bit of a bounder. We talked of the organization of the College and he thinks my idea that all members of the Foundation should be Fellows is a good solution to a difficult problem. And why not? It is their money; let them see what is being done with it. The Oxford principle of “founders’ kin” comes to my aid here. Also I want Broughall as our money advisor; who better? And the Massey family will be encouraged to maintain their interest and enthusiasm, and make the College the chief charge on the Foundation money. He explained one or two things in the agreement which had puzzled me. At 3:30 we went to Claude Bissell’s office. With him are Frank Stone (who looks inoffensive but I am assured he is dangerous) and Laddie Cassels, the university’s solicitor, whom I liked on sight. We toiled through the document, agreed that it satisfied us all, and sent it to Vincent Massey in Barbados for his signature. Then, a public bill in the Legislature and the College is legally in existence.10 Claude Bissell said to me at parting that when the Master’s appointment is announced on February 24, he will meet with me and Gordon Roper and the formidable Dr. Woodhouse11 at University College to discuss my professional appointment.12 I must be a full professor in order to sit on the board which directs graduate studies.
I met the university’s publicity man, Ken Edey, yesterday at 2, and under his direction was photographed on the College site by his man. I am warmed by the enthusiasm of such people as Cassels and Edey for the College and my appointment. I am so engrossed with details that the general outline escapes me. But it is gratifying that some people think my appointment will give lustre to the project. There will be detraction as well. Miranda tells me Dr. Arthur Barker of Trinity, just before taking off for an academic appointment in the U.S., declared it would be “just for a few Oxford snobs.” No, it won’t.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12: I think my public lectures went well but have had no repercussions. I must get used to lack of response in the university. It is part of their intellectual deadness and failure to get over to the young. But I did them as well as I could, and that is what matters.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22: To Toronto, lecture and lunch with English dons, then with Brenda to the museum and look at fine things in the Lord Lee of Fareham collection. To the Royal York for a rest, then to the J.K. Thomases’13 to dine with Morley Callaghan and Rosamund Merivale.14 Good talk.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, TORONTO: H.t.d. on waking. Lecture on The Alchemist at 11. We lunch with Basil Coleman at his flat. He is returning to England. To Broughall at 4 to discuss Massey College. Dinner at the club with Brenda. Work in office, meet her at St. Hilda’s, leave at 10:15 and home by 12:30.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24: My appointment as Master Designate is ratified and made public today. Luckily I am able to send out my Proposals for organization today, as well. They have meant a great deal of work, for I want to make them as complete and workable as possible; and if I am to have the job of organizing I must have the main voice in it. I called on Broughall yesterday at the National Trust; he is full of anxieties which I have already dealt with in my Proposals. He is as full of gossip as ever, and anxious that Vincent Massey be bound to the College with hoops of steel, for he fears caprice, and it appears VM is in love—with the widow of Major Edward Dudley (“Fruity”) Metcalfe,15 who was Lady Alexandra Curzon, youngest daughter of the great proconsul who never took soup at lunch at his club. Ah, to be Curzon’s son-in-law, even posthumously, even at seventy-four! But the lady is unkind, Bill says. He also tells me that the Foundation has about $4 million; if the College costs $2.5 million, we have an endowment of $1.5, less some obligations, and he thinks we might get $35,000 to $40,000 yearly, which would be handsome. Raymond Massey, he says, is all in favour of the Foundation devoting all its funds to the College. I am glad my appointment is now official and public, so that I can act more freely. The Toronto Star has given it a good deal of notice, identifying me as one of their writers, and I suspect in consequence the Globe has carried no mention of it whatever, which is small of it—but the Toronto newspaper world is a petty one. I shall have to be careful in dealing with the Toronto press, or I shall get the College, and myself, into hot water.
&nb
sp; On Wednesday, I was in the Royal Ontario Museum, looking at the Lord Lee of Fareham collection, and saw it contains about ten handsome illuminated books. Now, this collection belongs to the Massey Foundation and is on loan to the Royal Ontario Museum, so I suggested to Bill that these books would make a fine beginning to the treasures of the College Library. Rather to my surprise, he was immediately taken with the idea, and will see what can be done. The ROM complains of the insurance the collection carries, and on pretext of lowering the premium, we might get the books! But I shall believe this when it happens. Bill also suggests that the duties of College secretary and bursar might be combined in one capable woman; I wonder if my present secretary, Moira Whalon, would be up to it. The Thompsons and Porters to dinner and to see Canadian Players in Saint Joan and to a party at the Cherneys’. Bed at 2 a.m.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25: Nothing in the Globe and Mail about my appointment because I write for the Star: what small behaviour! Write a Star column in the morning and a critique of Saint Joan. In the afternoon, loaf and read Jung; Rosamond comes for the weekend, very lively; in the evening go through Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto” with her and read Rabelais.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27: Now that the news is out, and the world has received it with exemplary calm, and my Proposals are out of my hands, I feel a deep depression, a regression of the libido, what might be called the Hump. What have I let myself in for? What am I, a mere magpie of learning, and certainly no scholar, doing with a learned appointment in that collection of medieval schoolmen and learned but vulgar thrusters, the University of Toronto? My one desire now is to crawl into a hole and work on the novel which has been in my mind since before A Mixture of Frailties.
THURSDAY, MARCH 2, TORONTO: I meet Ron Thom, the College architect, a withdrawn, very likable bachelor16 from Vancouver: he lunches at the University Club with Lionel and me, and at 4 p.m. Brenda and I collect him at the Park Plaza Hotel and drive to Peterborough; we talk all the way, and as he sits in the back and speaks very low and inward it is not an easy journey. But after dinner we get down to serious business, and he explains the plans, materials, and above all his conception of the building, which is a fine one. We discuss the Master’s house, which will be “modern” but not too much or too modishly so, and now that he sees the creatures who will inhabit it, his ideas will be influenced, for this is the sort of man he is. We discussed the Examination Room very thoroughly and I suggest a circular room, with perhaps twenty desks surrounding it on a dais, and a place for the examinee in the middle—impressive but not inhuman. He likes it.
A Celtic Temperament: Robertson Davies as Diarist Page 14
