FRIDAY, JANUARY 4: Very pleasant drive to Toronto and to the Park Plaza: dress (full fig), and at 6 to the Stewarts’ and thence to the Royal York to the Crest Theatre Ball to celebrate ten years of the Crest, as guests of the Harrises. We sat at a table with them, the Stewarts, Bill and June Maclean, and the John Edisons. A very Canadian affair: head table guests brought in by a piper, the lieutenant governor and party by another piper. Nobody thinks this strange, but suppose I were a lieutenant governor and wanted to be preceded by a harper in green robes for Wales? What an outcry there would be! The usual Royal York bad dinner: tinned fruit salad, tinned consommé, chicken and veg, a common dollop of ice cream mounted in cherry jam, coffee in big thick cups. George Harris gave us good Pol Roger. Arnold Edinborough spoke tactlessly: the Crest “strangely begotten by a sister and two brothers”; then heavy play on the names of plays performed and on critics’ names—“the Star is not Cohen our way,” etc.; then a stupid attack on the O’Keefe, with Hugh Walker4 present. A strangely unrelated performance. I was asked to thank him and did so very briefly, and a lot of people thought I scored off him but such was certainly not my intention. There was a cabaret from 11 to midnight: Barbara Hamilton sang a witty song about the Crest, and suggested a new art-form. This proved to be a stripper, a pretty girl named Toasty Towne, who got down to a fringed bra and G-string and shook her bosom and her bum very fetchingly. But the orchestra went on too long, and when she had shaken her breasts, waggled her bum, and done a few grinds and bumps very well, she had exhausted all her arts of pleasing that the organizers would permit, and did it all over and over again, signalling vainly for them to stop. This should have been better managed. Also, the four nice girls (Dinah Christie was one) should not have been put in quite such shaming costumes to sell drinks; net tights and tiny drawers which showed them above the overhang of the buttock. Not a bad party but it notably lacked grace and ease or any feeling of good breeding. And very expensive for what it was.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 8: To Toronto by 3:30. Met Ron Thom at the College; he tells me it will not be finished till mid-May or June. I had suspected this, but did not like having it confirmed. He and Tanya Moiseiwitsch are agreed about the chapel, which can now go ahead; he will design and she do colour and decoration. See the Combination Room for the first time without the scaffolding in it, and it is at once apparent, as I had feared, that it is too small and low for any sort of assembly. We agree on what I have always wanted—a tall, pulpit-like lectern in the northeast corner of the Hall, for grace, speeches, and announcements. Ron is enthusiastic; wants it to be very tall, with a canopy, and what he calls “a big, decorative piece of junk.” He has succeeded in cutting the price of the carrels by $2,200.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, TORONTO: To the Frontenac and Kawartha radio and TV stations meetings with WRD and Arthur, then lunch at the University Club. Lecture from 2 to 4; then to the ROM committee from 4 to 6. In the evening to the Trinity College Dramatic Society play, Trumpets and Drums by Brecht after Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer. Miranda sings well in a jolly if rough production. She comes back to chat with us at the Park Plaza.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, TORONTO: Bill Broughall and Ian Montagnes of University of Toronto Press lunch with me to talk about Burgon Bickersteth’s5 memoirs, of which Ian Montagnes has a partial transcript; they think the very revealing complete manuscript should be in the Massey College library. I am depressed by their tales of Burgon Bickersteth—so deft, tactful, and so wonderful with young men, and so “in” with the great ones of the earth. In 1939, after George VI and Queen Elizabeth had toured here, Bickersteth was summoned to tea with Queen Mary: “How did the children behave themselves in Canada, Mr. Bickersteth?” she asked. No—I am not in that class. What class am I in? More and more I wonder if I am in any at all.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 13: The pressure of College work increases, and the nuisance of having to wait two more months to get into the building is particularly vexatious. Freud was right: artists hate to finish things.
MONDAY, JANUARY 14: Vincent Massey calls. He likes the notion of the Hall as our chief assembly-room. Says he does not insist on “Combination Room” as the name for the Upper Library. He is still angry with Ron and disturbed we have had no more applications as yet. This afternoon I wrote a piece about the College for Faculty Notes, which I hope may do some good, and Vincent Bladen has set February 8 as the date for his dinner, at which I shall be able to talk to some people who can be helpful. But I am nervous, and wish I had some assurance we would get a full house, or near it.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 15: Bill Broughall called with encouraging words about getting applications for the College: they will be attracted by me, he thinks! I wish I agreed, or even thought it likely. He says Burgon Bickersteth has written to him, asking that I should write to him. Bickersteth says he had great problems with Vincent and Alice Massey during the first five years at Hart House, as they would keep “bumming around”—an odd phrase to use of them. I wrote Bickersteth at length, unbosoming myself, and hope this was not wildly indiscreet. Also wrote VM saying I think it a great mistake to have the chapel Anglican. It should be non-denominational, but not greasily and United Churchily so. He won’t like it and will probably balk.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16: On January 10 we went to see John Gielgud’s touring production of The School for Scandal at the O’Keefe and again on January 16 because we were so impressed. We both remember his 1938 production as a high spot and his Joseph Surface as the finest high comedy playing I have ever seen. This was better, gentler, more easily elegant and with more due attention to the sentimental side of the piece. Also more human: none of Tony Guthrie’s restlessness, and less of John Gielgud’s frigid elegance. Delightful details: Sir Oliver’s costume very much in the Eastern taste, and old-fashioned; Moses not too Jewy but given to fur collars and earrings and side curls; the wine bottles the right shape; the closet where Sir Peter hides so small that he emerges doubled up; the screen placed so that we can see Lady Teazle’s response to the scene. One useful transposition: Act 5, Scene 1 played before 4.3; otherwise trivial cuts.
On our second view we sat in the second row and saw everyone very well from the knees up. The subtleties of the acting very clear, and also rather too much of the art of the sets to be seen. Contrast Gielgud’s very simple makeup with Ralph Richardson’s elaborate and not very effective one. Gielgud again plays Joseph in the finest high comedy manner—no obvious hypocrisy, the lightest possible touch, and now and then an artistic appreciation of his own villainy. Richardson plays Sir Peter broadly but never too much so—a good dash of eighteenth-century eccentricity, but never inhuman. Afterward to Gielgud’s room (he wrote to the university inviting us), and he talked most interestingly about the easy beauty of Sheridan’s dialogue—only one or two words in a sentence that need emphasis, and always perfectly placed—so that the writing dictates pace, and character. Showed us an intaglio a fan gave him, which he wears in place of one he had which belonged to Keats, and which he gave to a friend. Apparently he took it to Cartier’s to be cleaned, and they scorned it because it was glass! What is Keats to Cartier’s! Gielgud says they had a beastly time in Detroit—perhaps everyone does.
The productions I have seen which have most impressed me and formed my standards are the Habima Dybbuk, the Olivier-Richardson Uncle Vanya, the Evans-Gordon Country Wife, the Margaret Leighton Lady from the Sea, the Metropolitan Opera Eugene Onegin, the Paris Opera Oberon, and Gielgud’s Richard II, Three Sisters, School for Scandal, Love for Love, Importance of Being Earnest, Lady’s Not for Burning, and Winter’s Tale. Quite as powerful an influence on me as Tony Guthrie indeed!
THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, TORONTO: James Gow, the College solicitor, lunches with me and for a seemingly taciturn man talks a great deal. He is what Brenda calls a typical Canadian—concealing unusual abilities and shrewdness under a rustic guise. As I go on with this job I find more and more that all I need to do is listen. Everybody wants to talk: let them have the run of their tongues
and they will do much for you. We go at 2:30 to the Liquor Licensing Board of Ontario offices to talk to Judge Robb6 about a licence. The judge is a tiny, silvery old man, genial and delicately courteous. Gow plays naïve and asks advice; the judge gives it, frankly and freely. Upshot, we must form a club within the College and it must have been in existence, though not incorporated, for more than a year. This piece of legal contortion apparently smoothes the way. Was surprised by the judge, so gentle and seemingly simple but obviously full of crinkum-crankum. And why not, in a job which demands knowledge of so many irrational and contradictory laws? Gow will get to work at once.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 19: Colin Friesen comes at 10 and we spend three hours on College business. As I hoped, so much that puzzles me is easy for him and the kind of work he must do is the kind he understands and likes. He lunches with us and Brenda likes him, which I set store by for she is very intuitive about people. Rest and walk in the afternoon. Miranda home for the weekend and we sing and rejoice.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 20: To Batterwood through the snow for lunch. Beforehand Lionel tells of being taken last week to John Gielgud’s dressing-room, and he “never saw anything so evil” as Gielgud, his dressing-gown open, a cross on his naked breast; his daughters “shrank” from the sight. What tosh! I recall Lionel at Balliol, roaring drunk at a party, leaping on a table shouting, “Let’s all worship the Great God Bugger!”
We discussed the chapel matter and reached a compromise—a quiet consecration, Church of England, at Christmas. Suits me well; non-denominationalism is foolish. We hope to have at least a monthly celebration. Vexation with Ron Thom grows; there will probably be another bloodbath on February 5.
Vincent Massey was in excellent form: his book is finished and he wants me to read it (I have also to read a thousand pages of Montagnes’s transcription of Bickersteth’s conversations!) and to look over his contract. Home by 5, as it was snowing heavily. Before we left Lionel drew me into the drawing-room to tell me that he was revising his will to leave his pictures to the College and also that he meant to leave Batterwood to the College. He is forty-five to my forty-nine, so I am unlikely to have to make any decisions arising out of such bequests.
The gossip from Vancouver (from Mrs. Pedak through her daughter Senta) is that Ron Thom got drunk and was lured by a designing woman and carnally enjoyed, and his wife is divorcing him. Sounds silly but may be true.
T.H.B. Symons offers $27,500 cash for our house: $1,000 less than we asked, $1,500 above his first offer. The tiresome fellow objects to our having Ross Thompson as agent, but it would be foolish not to have an agent.
MONDAY, JANUARY 21: Ross Thompson in at 5:30 and we sign to sell the house to Symons; Brenda feels this, but I do not very much as I am never deeply attached to houses.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 25: In the morning worked on Montagnes-Bickersteth transcription; afternoon to Toronto and to the College, which progresses and offers shocks and charms. At 4 to the Graduate Studies meeting, as ill-run as usual. Home by 8:20 and early to bed. Joyous unforeseen h.t.d.
MONDAY, JANUARY 28: Have finished reading Montagnes’s conversations with Bickersteth with some dismay: he had every quality I lack. I have made some notes from the manuscript which may be helpful. Now—what sort of man emerges? Generous, kind, courageous; artistic side developed along visual lines, pictures and sculpture. No snob but not indifferent to the great. A wee bit of an old woman and dainty: i.e., candles in grapefruit and such tea-roomery. A genius with young men, drawing them out and encouraging all that was individual and distinguished. Does not seem to have liked women at all, though Ian Montagnes says this is unjust. None of any satiric, misanthropic vein but also, if I may say a word for myself, none of my literary cast of mind and high standards in that realm. In no way an original or unconventional thinker but a very good mind of the best, educated, liberal English stamp. I am a very poor specimen beside him, but I have a flash or two he lacked. I am grateful to have been given the benefit of his experience in this extraordinary fashion.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 3: Odd how many decisions I have to make now, but I am getting better at it; the secret is not to say too much and Jowett’s “Never regret, never explain, never apologize” has great merit, in principle.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4: To Toronto with Miranda by train. At 8:30 p.m. to Hart House to meet the ’49 Club, who are graduate geophysicists, and talk to them till 11. They are intelligently interested in the College and ask good questions. The matter of a chapel comes up: about even pro and con, and the general feeling seems to be that a college does not serve the whole man without a chapel and that it should be something—not non-denominational.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, TORONTO: At Eaton’s from 11 to 4 with no lunch, only sandwiches and coffee. Vincent, Lionel, Hart, Bill Broughall, Ron Thom, and the Eaton’s trio. They savage Ron rudely; VM began in this mood. Hart as negative as ever. I found it wearisome and destructive and was glad to get away.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, TORONTO: Meet in Lionel Massey’s office at the Royal Ontario Museum with a representative of the contractor. We make an attempt to pin Ron Thom down and at last got May 30 named as probable date of completion. Lionel was very distressed, as a girl had committed suicide in the washroom of the ROM yesterday. Then to the College, and Vincent Massey and Hart compel Thom to restore the stone baluster to the main stairway: he wanted wood, and they said they had never heard of the change, though I remember it. But Ron Thom’s muddle lets him in for such things. Then Hart killed the notion of having cork on the walls of the Senior Fellows’ Dining Room, dear to Lionel’s heart. Hart sourly protested that in the Club Room (new name of the Upper Library) there would be no place a man could take down a “current novel” and “browse.” I bit his head off: we have no budget for necessary books, let alone novels for browsers. Got away from them at lunch. At 4 meet Brenda and Ron Thom at the College and discuss our house7 and the plan of our garden, which could be exciting and delightful.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9: The McInneses8 stay with us, and we talk all day and greatly enjoy fresh company and fresh subjects. Joan and Graham are calmer and more self-knowledgeable. Success becomes Graham, but Joan cannot shake her need to justify herself at the cost of others and to run down Colin and Lance for the aggrandizement of herself and Graham.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10: More talk with the McInneses. We walk in Burnham Wood in the morning and in the afternoon put them on the train at Port Hope and collapse after a stimulating but exhausting weekend.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11: I meet the Guthries in Toronto to show them Massey College, which impressed them. They bring a somewhat farcical figure, Joe Martin, their jam man from Newbliss.9 Meet them with Miranda for dinner later at the Simcoe and find them well away, downing double Irishes in the bar with two jam prospects. Tony sets upon Miranda, warning her that a singer’s life is not all glory, etc.—he is not good with young people, and never credits them with any intelligence. We had a merry time with them; both look much better than when last seen, which was in New York on Dec. 8, 1960. Tony tells me that was the day that the British consul sent for him to ask if he would accept a knighthood; also that Philip Langner and Don Herbert gave him a cigarette case inscribed “To a great human being” or some such bosh. But he was vexed with them for putting up the notice cancelling the production without telling me, and also for trying to get money out of me on Dec. 6. Tony says he knows I exerted myself over his knighthood; he affects to care nothing for it but I know he likes it. He says the Minneapolis theatre is “a bugger” outside but good inside. I have written a piece about Tony for the April issue of Drama Survey10 and have tried to be sensible about his contribution to Stratford. It is never easy to write justly about him—so dear a friend.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, TORONTO: Lunch with Basil Coleman. He is doing very well and looks happy. At 4 p.m. go carefully over the College building with Brenda and Lionel Massey and make notes. Detached from the Foundation, Lionel is the most practically and realistically intelligent of the lot.
At 7 dine with Tuzo Wilson and his wife, Isabel, the first of the Senior Fellows (barring the Ropers, who are old friends) we meet in this way. He commands great respect and is enthusiastic for the College.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, TORONTO: With Ron Thom at 9:30. He is more cheerful and exuberant than I have seen him and talks of warm colour in the College! I suspect a woman. I fear that the decoration and colour scheme of the College has suffered dreadfully from Vincent Massey’s old age, Hart Massey’s affliction, and Ron Thom’s divorce—all life-diminishing.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14: Flowers to Brenda and also a card index, which she wanted. Fifteen letters on College affairs, and worked on John Gay. Feel ill and wretched and wonder if it is low blood pressure; as always when unwell, worry a great deal; bad dreams.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15: Feel somewhat better: work on eighteenth-century playwrights all day. Rosamond home for the long weekend. It is now decided Jenny goes to Rome for three months in March and I hope this enlarges her world. Relax in home atmosphere.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, TORONTO: Visited the College, which progresses—plaster, chimney in Hall almost done, ceiling in Senior Fellows’ Dining Room, crockets on lantern, bell up—and then to see Friesen, who has been pegging conscientiously away, and is beginning to make sense of the budget, is interviewing possible porters, has repelled a man who wants to put a coin laundromat in the basement, etc. He worries that he is not doing enough work: I urge him to sit still and think. Ron Thom lunches with Brenda and me; he is confused and disorganized. There is a woman, Molly Golby, whom we met last night at Allan Fleming’s—not a little lady to whom I warmed, though Brenda was inclined to like her. Ron Thom got drunk and passed out, when the rest of us were in an ordinary two-drink evening. They are engaged. I do not think it can work well: Ron is one of Nature’s victims, and I suspect women are Nature’s means of bamboozling him. A man of genius, without self-knowledge or self-protection, naked, bruised, and wondering.
A Celtic Temperament: Robertson Davies as Diarist Page 27
