A Celtic Temperament: Robertson Davies as Diarist
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25 E.K. Chambers and Percy Simpson were among the leading Shakespearean scholars of the time.
26 Peter Swan, then an assistant keeper of the Ashmolean Museum.
27 John Piper (see May 13, 1961).
28 After leaving the Presbyterian Church, Davies was confirmed as an Anglican on March 1, 1937, by the bishop of Oxford.
29 Bickersteth had retired to Canterbury, where he grew up. His father had been a canon of Canterbury Cathedral.
30 Rob and Brenda had brought photos of a chalice and candlesticks they had seen at S.W. Wolsey in London.
31 Arthur Michael Ramsey was the one hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury.
32 The Norma Epstein Foundation Award for Creative Writing is a national contest open to students registered in an undergraduate or graduate program.
33 The University of Toronto student newspaper.
34 Frances Brooke, The History of Emily Montague (1769), generally considered the first Canadian novel.
35 The Kelmscott Press, established by William Morris in 1891.
36 Davies was to lecture for the university’s Department of Extension (today called the School of Continuing Studies) on the Canadian Opera Company’s season.
37 Henri Murger, Scenes of Bohemian Life (1847–49), on which the libretto of La Bohème was based.
38 Prominent lawyer and politician; grandfather of Tom Symons and Scott Symons.
39 Pat Kennedy came from York University, where she had been secretary to the chief librarian, to serve as the Massey librarian’s assistant and later as assistant to the bursar until she retired in 2009.
40 Frederick Hudd, a friend of Vincent Massey’s, died in 1968 but it was many years before the estate was settled. The Hudd Fellowships to offset Junior Fellows’ fees began in 1978.
41 The Stratford production of Cyrano de Bergerac had been revived for a second season.
42 Ward’s role as the facilitator in the Profumo scandal in the U.K. had been much publicized.
43 Sir Peter Hall was then artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
44 “What will poor robin do then, poor thing?” From “The Robin,” a traditional nursery rhyme.
45 Carl Williams, psychologist, director of the Department of Extension.
46 Herman Geiger-Torel, general director of the Canadian Opera Company.
47 She was the daughter of the great pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch.
48 Bill and Zoe Broughall bred Pekinese dogs.
49 A Latin grace said before dinner at the College.
50 Davies posted quotations to encourage dinner conversation among the Junior Fellows.
51 Davies’s plan was that the terrae filius should read a satirical verse on the establishment of the College, to which Massey would reply, also in verse.
52 This was the final handover ceremony in the Hall. There were a hundred guests including the Junior and Senior Fellows. Davies described this as “the birthday of the College.”
53 Norbert Iwanski, later the College’s master cabinetmaker.
54 Tenor and conductor. Wry and Giles Bryant began the Massey College Singers.
55 Bora Laskin, later Chief Justice of Canada, was a professor of law, University of Toronto.
56 Robin Ross, registrar and secretary of the Senate, University of Toronto.
57 Davies was planning a gaudy, an evening of music and entertainment like those he had experienced at Oxford.
58 Guthrie, Davies, and Grant Macdonald published Twice Have the Trumpets Sounded in 1954.
59 A room on the second floor of the Lodgings, over the gate, was used as a sitting room by Rob and Brenda. It was more private than the main-floor sitting room.
60 “Revelation from a Smoky Fire,” in High Spirits (1982).
61 A type of unaccompanied English part-song.
62 Eminent Canadian conductor, organist, and composer.
63 The Russian impresario Nikita Baliev founded Le Théâtre de la Chauve-Souris, which combined serious drama with cabaret, in 1908.
Rob and Brenda Davies, in the sitting room at 361 Park Street, 1957.
Anna Pedak, who was with the Davies family from 1948 until 1968.
Muriel Newbold, Brenda Davies’s mother, on a visit to Canada.
Jennifer, Miranda, and Rosamond, October 1959.
A valentine for Brenda by Davies.
Senator W. Rupert Davies, Robertson Davies’s father.
Leighton Hall.
Grant Macdonald’s portrait of Brenda Davies as Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew, 1949.
Davies’s copy of the agenda of the Board of Governors meeting of the Stratford Festival on September 10, 1959.
Judy and Tony Guthrie from Davies’s sketchbook.
Brenda and Rob with Tony and Judy Guthrie, at Miranda and Jennifer’s christening, 1945.
Love and Libel opened in Toronto on November 2 and toured to Detroit, Boston, and New York.
Davies at a rehearsal of Love and Libel in 1960.
From Davies’s sketchbook for Muriel Newbold in 1960.
Vincent Massey as governor general, with his daughter-in-law, Lilias, his son Lionel, chief aide, his brother, Raymond, and Raymond’s wife, Dorothy.
Governor General Vincent Massey with Senator Davies (left) and his business partner Roy Thomson, at the Canadian Press dinner in 1956.
Vincent Massey at Batterwood in 1962.
The young Wilmot Broughall, graduate of the Law Society of Upper Canada, who served as an officer of the National Trust Company, and a trustee of the Massey Foundation.
Claude Bissell, president of the University of Toronto from 1958 to 1971.
May 25, 1962: Prince Philip gives an address at the laying of the foundation stone at Massey College. From left to right: Chancellor Jeanneret, Claude Bissell, Lieutenant Governor John Keiller MacKay, aide-de-camp, unidentified man, Vincent Massey, Prince Philip, Robertson Davies, and Ron Thom.
Raymond, Lionel, Lilias, Hart, and Geoffrey Massey; Prince Philip, Davies, and farther back Bill Broughall in legal formal dress.
Brenda and Rob inside the Master’s Lodging, while it was being built, in January 1963.
Ron Thom, the architect of Massey College.
Massey College under construction.
Outside the master bedroom at Massey College in 1963, with Jennifer and Rosamond.
Miranda, Jennifer, Rob, and Brenda.
SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Bissell, Claude. The Imperial Canadian: Vincent Massey in Office. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986.
————. The Young Vincent Massey. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.
The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca. Davies, Brenda, and Jennifer Surridge. Beads in a String. Toronto: Pendragon Ink, 2001.
Davies, Robertson. Selected works.
Davies, W. Rupert. Far-Off Fields. Privately published, 1962.
Dickson, Lovat. The Museum Makers: The Story of the Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1986.
Forsyth, James. Tyrone Guthrie. London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd., 1976.
Friedland, Martin L. The University of Toronto: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.
Grant, Judith Skelton. A Meeting of Minds: The Massey College Story. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.
————. Robertson Davies: Man of Myth. Toronto: Viking, 1994.
The Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com.
Pettigrew, John, and Jamie Portman. Stratford: The First Thirty Years. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1985.
Spadoni, Carl, and Judith Skelton Grant. A Bibliography of Robertson Davies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org.
We are grateful for the advice and help we received from John Fraser, Master Emeritus, Massey College; Catherine Hobbs, Literary Archivist and Senior Archivist, Library and Archives Canada; Jill Spellman, Archivist, the Upper Canada Co
llege Archives; and from our agent, Dean Cooke. We would like to thank our readers, Miranda Davies, Rosamond Bailey, James Neufeld, Judith Skelton Grant and John Grant, and to acknowledge the support and enthusiasm from our publisher, Doug Pepper, and our editor, Jenny Bradshaw, at McClelland & Stewart, and the exceptional attention of our copy-editor, Barbara Czarnecki.
Readers may be interested in the projected publication of Robertson Davies’s complete diaries in digital format, to be edited by James Neufeld, professor emeritus at Trent University. This online edition is affiliated with the Editing Modernism in Canada project. The digital edition of the diaries will allow readers to browse at will, or to search through the diaries, focusing on passages of interest to them and choosing from among a variety of formats and presentations that will include digitized images of the original, verbatim transcripts, corrected transcripts, and annotated texts. The diaries will be enhanced with hyperlinks to visual, audio, and textual materials from various archives and collections, to provide background and colour for the events Davies describes. The digital edition of the Davies Diaries will begin with the theatre diaries, with a target date of 2017 for release.