1 Stage director at the Old Vic Theatre, London.
2 Restaurant on King Street named after Winston Churchill, which catered to entertainers and the business establishment.
3 Massey had retired as governor general the previous September. Batterwood was his house near Port Hope.
4 The Order of the Garter is the highest order of British chivalry conferred by the monarch and is accompanied by a knighthood.
5 The 1955 Stratford Shakespearean Festival production of The Merchant of Venice aroused a great deal of criticism about the play’s perceived anti-Semitism.
6 She Stoops to Conquer, Act 3.
7 Walter Gordon, eminent Canadian accountant, businessman, politician, and writer.
8 English writer, broadcaster, and priest.
9 Bill Fleury was an architect who had been at Upper Canada College with Davies. He later designed Rob and Brenda’s country house, Windhover.
10 “How to Design a Haunted House,” in One Half of Robertson Davies (1977).
11 Now the Park Hyatt Toronto.
12 A deep pain in the rectum that feels like a severe muscle cramp.
13 English potter, designer, and writer. His novel Joseph Vance (1906) was an immediate but not enduring success.
14 Albert Trueman, first director of the Canada Council.
15 Claude Bissell had become president of the University of Toronto in November 1958.
16 Famed historian at Columbia University.
17 Christie, a Canadian actor and director, had met Davies at the Old Vic. He was married to Grania Mortimer and was the father of actress Dinah Christie.
18 Davies and Guthrie wanted to cast major Canadian actors wherever possible.
19 From Gilbert and Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance.
20 Alec Guinness played the title role in Richard III, directed by Guthrie, the first play produced at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, in July 1954.
21 Warren, a prominent American dramatic baritone, had died at age forty-eight on March 1 onstage at the Met, having just sung the aria “Morir, tremenda cosa.”
22 The O’Keefe Centre (now the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts) was funded by E.P. Taylor of the O’Keefe Brewing Company and was to open on October 1, 1960. With a capacity of 3,200, it was designed for touring musicals and other large-scale theatrical productions.
23 English-born actor and singer. King had starred in Broadway musicals through the 1930s and into the 1950s. He was now sixty-two. Ultimately he was to play the role of Humphrey Cobbler.
24 Distinguished theatre designer, brought to Canada by Guthrie to design the original Stratford stage. She returned to Stratford frequently, designing costumes for several productions.
25 Muriel Newbold, Brenda’s widowed mother, now in her sixties, who had come from her home in Australia for a three-month visit.
26 Ethel Larking, Brenda’s grandmother, died in 1952.
27 Then leader of the federal Liberal opposition.
28 The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company staged the original productions of all the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, starting in 1875 and continuing until 1982, and for many years controlled the copyrights.
29 Miranda was accepted as an acting apprentice for the 1961 season. The apprentices were to help in all departments while taking acting, fencing, and voice lessons and walking on and dancing in the plays.
30 Davies’s review of Camelot in the Examiner was considerably more generous than his actual opinion of the play.
31 Rob and Brenda rented a furnished apartment for rehearsals and the Toronto run of Love and Libel.
32 From Pygmalion by G.B. Shaw.
33 As well as being a partner in the Canadian Theatre Exchange, Rawley was manager of the Royal Alexandra Theatre.
34 Toronto Star theatre critic, notorious for his acerbic and hypercritical reviews.
35 Davies’s library at its greatest held ten thousand books.
36 Guthrie’s immensely successful production of Paddy Chayefsky’s The Tenth Man was still running on Broadway.
37 Improvising rather than following the script.
38 Impresario and lyricist.
39 Screenwriter, director, and playwright.
40 Producer, stage manager, and theatre owner.
41 Guthrie (born 1900) was thirteen years older than Davies. Sir Lewis Casson (born 1875) was a leading British actor and director and the husband of Dame Sybil Thorndike.
42 He played one of the Townspeople of Salterton.
43 Organist at St. Paul’s Anglican Church.
44 Le Juif Polonais (1900), an opera by Camille Erlanger.
45 Act 5, Scene 2, The Taming of the Shrew.
46 Named for Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, a hat tilted over one eye with a brim folded up on both sides.
47 Non-paying invited guests.
48 Davenport was one of Davies’s closest friends at Oxford. He named his first son Robertson Davies Davenport.
49 American producer of the film of Guthrie’s production of Oedipus Rex at Stratford, 1957.
50 James Bridie was the stage name of Osborne Henry Mavor, Scottish playwright.
51 English actor, writer, film and theatrical producer and director.
52 By Tad Mosel, from the James Agee novel A Death in the Family.
53 At this time Rupert Davies, in partnership with Roy Thomson (later Lord Thomson of Fleet), owned the Frontenac Broadcasting and Kawartha Broadcasting radio and TV stations.
54 Davies was preparing a series of three public lectures drawn from A Voice from the Attic, to be given at Trinity College in January 1961.
55 A form of divination in which advice or predictions of the future are sought by randomly selecting a passage from Virgil’s Aeneid. It was most widely practised in the later Roman Empire and in medieval times.
56 “Come, Holy Spirit.”
1961
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SEVERAL MEMBERS OF THE MASSEY family who were Davies’s colleagues, patrons, and sometimes protagonists in the establishment of Massey College now appear frequently in the diaries. At this time Vincent Massey was the most distinguished man in Canada. He was the head of his generation of a family that had made a fortune in farm machinery, and his career had been marked by a succession of diplomatic and government appointments culminating in the office of governor general from 1952 to 1959. Widowed since 1950, he was somewhat lonely and, at the age of seventy-three, had by no means lost interest in the possibility of remarriage. He lived at Batterwood, a large English-style country house north of Port Hope, Ontario, that he and his late wife had developed in the 1920s. While he was governor general, he had relied on his elder son, Lionel, as secretary and Lionel’s wife, Lilias, as hostess. To some extent these three were still decompressing from their vice-regal lives. Lionel now lived in Toronto and had a senior if uncertain position at the Royal Ontario Museum as director of administration.
Vincent’s grandfather, Hart Massey, who had made the family fortune, had also established a family tradition of philanthropy, which Vincent inherited. While he was still an undergraduate at the University of Toronto in 1910, he had persuaded his father and other family members who were executors of Hart Massey’s estate to make a major gift to the University of Toronto, the great student centre Hart House. Now, fifty years later, he had decided he wanted the Massey Foundation to make one final gift to the university of a post-graduate residential college. Vincent was inspired in large part by his own undergraduate experience at Balliol College, Oxford, although the new college would function more like Oxford’s post-graduate college, All Souls. Like Hart House, Massey College was originally intended for men only.
In 1961, Vincent Massey was chair of the Foundation and its senior member. Other members of his family who sat as trustees were Lionel, now forty-four; Hart, Vincent’s younger son, forty-two, a noticeably short man, an architect, considerably more independent from his father than Lionel; Raymond Massey, Vincent’s taller, nine-years-younger brother, an act
or, famous as a London, New York, and Hollywood star, with a breezy, extroverted American manner quite different from Vincent’s more formal British style; and Raymond’s eldest son, Geoffrey, thirty-six, who had inherited his father’s height and good looks and was now an architect in Vancouver. The disagreements among these family members as well as their various changes of mind in the course of establishing and financing Massey College were to be a major source of vexation to Robertson Davies, and of entertainment in these diaries.
Despite their shared theatrical interests, Davies had never met Raymond Massey, but he had met Vincent a number of times. Though they worked closely and mostly happily together in the first years of the College, Rob continued for some time to address the older man as Mr. Massey. Rob had overlapped with Lionel at Upper Canada College and with Lionel and Hart at Oxford. Both Lionel and Hart had been seriously injured in the war, and Lionel had been a prisoner-of-war.
The Masseys were represented, to some extent, by Wilmot H. Broughall, a lawyer and trust officer at the National Trust Company, which looked after the Massey money, both for the Foundation and for the Masseys individually. In this role Bill Broughall carried out the Masseys’ wishes, and sometimes instructed them on what their wishes were. He and Rob were exact contemporaries and swiftly became allies, and he became a key figure in the creation of the College.
At the University of Toronto, the leading figure in the establishment of the new college was Claude Bissell, at forty-two the comparatively young and recently installed president. Like Davies, he had grown up in small-town Ontario, in his case Meaford. An English literature scholar by academic discipline, he had been president of Carleton University before his Toronto appointment. From its inception he understood the purpose of Massey College, supported it consistently, and never shared in the suspicion and obfuscation that marked the attitude of some of his academic colleagues toward Davies and Massey College. At a much later time he wrote the biography of Vincent Massey.
Rob and Brenda continued living in Peterborough in 1961 but were spending increasing amounts of time in Toronto, where Rob lectured at Trinity two days a week. At various times they rented a furnished apartment or stayed in hotels, with friends, or at the Hawthorn Gardens house of Rob’s father.
A month after Davies was invited by the Masseys to accept the job of Master, he realized that the establishment of the new college would be an important development, not only for himself but also for the university and the country. Accordingly he decided to start a separate diary devoted to the College, backdating it to his December 31, 1960, meeting with Vincent Massey. The early entries have a somewhat stiff and formal quality, in the nature of minutes of meetings, but they swiftly degenerate into a compelling, ongoing, indiscreet dramatic narrative. Davies continued to keep his personal diary, though the entries become more cryptic, as well as his occasional travel and theatre diaries. Selections from all these diaries are interleaved here.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1960: I visited the Right Honourable Vincent Massey at his country home, Batterwood, near Port Hope, and he asked me to be the first Master of Massey College. I was not wholly unprepared, as he had made the appointment for me to come the previous Monday, Boxing Day, and I had an intuition it was about the College, and probably the Mastership. Had not Hugh MacCraig, the astrologer, said that I should spend the latter part of my life among young people, and be something of a sage and prophet? So, though of course I gave no sign, I was not taken by surprise, and promised to consider the proposal most carefully, and spoke with enthusiasm of the project. How often does one receive such an offer? How often is one asked to take part, from the beginning, in a really exciting project? How often is one given the opportunity to shape something which is of significance to large numbers of other people? That is why I have determined to keep this record of the history of the beginnings and growth of the College from the time I became involved with it. I want to make it an honest chronicle, perhaps of interest and use to the College itself in some time to come. But it had better be secret; I have no disposition to be scandalous but I want to be candid, and my tendency toward what is satirical and possibly farouche unfits me to write a flat-footed record.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 1: Lay late; up at 12 and write my yearly diary and theatre notes; in the afternoon we walk in Jackson Park. In the evening New Year’s dinner and we tell the girls of the Massey College offer, enjoining them to secrecy; they are delighted and full of questions. The Love and Libel disappointment is so soon salved! The offer bears out Hugh MacCraig’s comment that I have a very protected horoscope and seems to point the direction I should go. Hope this is not mystical nonsense.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4: With Brenda to Toronto by train and to our rented flat at the Waldorf-Astoria, and then to Trinity to my new office, a plaster box. This afternoon a long talk with Claude Bissell in his office in Simcoe Hall which dispels my misgiving about Massey College. The university is strongly behind it and will not see it sink under a deficit. We got down to figures: the Master is to have a college head’s stipend, between $15,000 and $20,000; in addition I would have a university professorship, whatever it is worth—something like $8,000 to $10,000, I believe. (Later note: Misunderstanding: $15,000 altogether, which is what I get from the Examiner.) So it would not be a backward step financially, with a house as well. We looked at the model—a handsome building. Bissell and I agreed that some of Vincent Massey’s ideas about the number of Senior Fellows1 would not work in a Canadian university, if they were expected to maintain rooms. Also, that the College would more probably be ready in 1963 than in ’62, as such a structure should not be rushed or scamped. But the whole thing is now much clearer. Bissell sees the university as the “angel” of the College. He wants all financial control (which would extend, in time, to everything of importance) in the university’s hands. I know Vincent Massey does not want this, and asks for an independent corporation. But there can be no independence without money, and College revenue will be small. This is the basic dilemma and the one which must be solved before I can agree to taking the mastership. I made it clear to Bissell that I am not a financier and cannot and will not beg up and down Bay Street for funds. He assures me nothing of the sort will be required. But—ah!—I must have something more solid than any assurance either side has offered. Nonetheless, very reassuring. This clinches it. We dine with Arnold and Letty Edinborough,2 very jolly.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, EPIPHANY: Wrote Vincent Massey assuring him that if details can be worked out (meaning College finance) I will take the post.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 8: Lay late. In the afternoon, walked in Burnham Wood.3 Did some work on the second Trinity lecture. In the evening heard Tales of Hoffmann on the gramophone with increased admiration, while browsing among my books—something I rarely have time to do.
I am becoming somewhat more accustomed to the Massey College idea which overset me for a while, as being so extraordinary and beyond all foreseeing and perhaps not quite real; but it is real enough, and looks better all the time.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11: To Toronto and when I arrive at Trinity College, a letter from Claude Bissell awaits me, with an offer of the mastership and an academic appointment—probably a special lectureship—at a total of $15,000 per annum. Precisely what I get for editing the Examiner, but a heated, lit, tax-free, and maintained house goes with the post, so it is worth decidedly more. Bissell and I are agreed I must have an academic post as Master, as without it I shall always be under the reproach of being a mere lodging-house keeper, or another warden of Hart House. Meanwhile I have sought the advice of Gordon Roper as I would like my academic appointment to be to Trinity, where I am now a visiting professor. He will speak to Derwyn Owen, the provost.
At tea I told my father of the Massey proposal and asked his advice. He was immediately and strongly for it. One of his comments was Victorian and characteristic of his concern with putting the family in a good way of life: “It will lift you right above commerce,” said he. Delightful, and out o
f key with the attitude of so many businessmen who despise academic life. My brother Arthur also expressed strong approbation and is confident we can make good provision to run the Examiner.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 14: Busy morning. Meant to work on lecture in the afternoon but slept, then h.t.d., vastly more humanizing. Walked with Brenda before dinner. In the evening, heard Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin with the score and enjoyed it greatly. Talked with Brenda about the Massey College move: it will not all be fun, but it is a chance to do something new, which is rare at my age, and I do not see why I cannot write, too.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 15: Once again ambition burns in me to have a D.Litt. from Oxford4 but on what basis? Voice from the Attic? Not an original contribution to learning. Or is it? But for my professional work and status as Master it would be helpful: shall I look into this? Write the secretary of faculties.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18: To Toronto and see the Reverend D.R.G. Owen, provost of Trinity College, who has been talking to Vincent Massey at a dinner party. Owen gloomy and not very pleasant; he has got the notion somewhere that Trinity is being asked to pay some of the stipend of the Master of Massey College. He utters gypsy warnings about college finance. I feared this: the jealousy and obstructionism of other colleges will be one of the hazards of this project. They will not mean to be discouraging and disagreeable—at least, not markedly so—but they will have to be more than human to avoid it. And I, as a non-academic person becoming head of a graduate college, will not be to their taste. All the more reason to insist that the College have enough money to have some measure of independence.