SUNDAY, DECEMBER 1: Lay late while we decided on overseas Christmas gifts. Brenda finds constant hospitality a strain, but is doing a splendid job. As Christmas approaches I think the College is moving in right direction and a Christmas gaudy57 would work well.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3: Put up the notice about the gaudy to be held on December 17 yesterday; today someone has scrawled over “The Master and Fellows invite …” “How can we invite ourselves?” Such bad manners, and I am angry. So many Junior Fellows have no manners, only the arrogance of the clever boy in a commonplace family. But one of my jobs is to teach ’em manners, and to do that I must first of all be faultless in courtesy.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5: A catalogue of Canadiana from Joseph Patrick lists Twice Have the Trumpets Sounded as by “Tyrone Guthrie et al.”58 Just call me Al.
Rigby tells me a few men in College are exercised because the choir is called “Massey College Singers,” as they were not consulted. What egotists they are! Told him to tell them that as they have no organization, no consultation of the College body is possible.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6: Chapel dedication at 5:15 to 5:40 and a handsome reward for all the work it has been to prepare it. Senior Fellows present: Bissell, Bladen, Dobson, Wilson, Broughall, Roper, Polanyi, Lionel and Lilias Massey, quite a few Junior Fellows, and the chapel full. Ecumenical service truly moving, and a good spirit was to be felt in the place. Ian Montagnes was much moved; Norbert was there, who did so much good work on it; also McCracken and his wife. Jock Wilson said, “It’s like having a family chapel.” And so it is.
I was really pleased when Lilias said, “Well, Master, you’ve brought it off again,” which gave me warm satisfaction, for it is not easy to combine dignity with the warmly familial quality this service had. And I welcome the chapel: I would not have sacrificed a library to it, but that was not necessary. And religion? “People will accept certain theological statements about life and the world, will elect to perform certain rites and follow certain rules of conduct, not because they imagine the statements to be true or the rules and rites to be divinely dictated, but simply because they have discovered experimentally that to live in a certain ritual rhythm, under certain ethical restraints, and as if certain metaphysical doctrines were true, is to live nobly, with style. Every art has its conventions which every artist must accept”—thus Aldous Huxley. But there is more. I cannot get beyond the beauty and the solace of the belief, but I sense that there is more, and I want to be directed toward that—whatever it may be or however athwart the accepted notions of God or religion.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7: H.t.d. on waking. Shop with Jenny for Christmas. In the afternoon write a College ghost story which Brenda thinks will be good for the gaudy on December 17. Miranda’s birthday party in evening; we lurk in gate room.59
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8: Lay late. Work on story, Christmas cards, then walk an hour with Brenda in Forest Hill; in the evening, the Singers rehearse in Hall. We have entertained sixty-eight people here since Sunday last.
Little by little the mists clear and I see my way to what the College is and how it will work: I have over-estimated the maturity of some of the men and undervalued my great ally—time.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 9: Appointment with the president at 10 to discuss the statute about the Master, the possible endowment, the visiting-professor plan, and an appointment for Lochhead to teach bibliography. All went very well, and we see eye to eye on the knitting of the College to the university. He gave me comforting counsel: one cannot reach all the students in a group, and one can but do one’s best with those who will listen; rules, especially those relating to morality, must be made and kept and nothing is so salutary as an expulsion or two. I should think of getting a junior academic to take some of the disciplinary problems off my hands so that I may, he flatteringly said, not be impeded in my literary work.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11: From 10 to 11 with Jack Sword, who offers me the chair of drama that the university hopes to establish in place of the Edgar Stone lectures. Everything about it is good—the stress on scholarship rather than foolish pretense of training actors and directors, the independence linked with University College, and the seriousness with which the English Department regards it. I am to meet him again next week for further talk.
Ian Montagnes came to see me this morning about his book on the history of Hart House. When leaving he asked me how Melvyn Pelt was getting on and asked me to be patient with him as these young Jews have special difficulties. Montagnes himself is a Sephardic Jew and a very fine man.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14: Last night the College dance, an undoubted success; good band, good supper, and good floor show arranged by Robin Green, directed by Brenda and with Stuart Niermeier, Dinsmore, Bill Dick, Garry Clarke, and our girls. The girls’ College song “O Community of Scholars” sung to Mendelssohn’s “Lift Thine Eyes” the best and best-received. Claude Bissell and Vincent Massey both delighted. Quite a resplendent evening, and again much was done to knit the College into a community. We went to Robin Green’s rooms for a party after and got to bed at 3 a.m.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17: Maygames early. Busy, worrisome day preparing for the Christmas gaudy, depressed and with stage fright. Would it be possible to bring off yet another successful function? But it goes like a charm, mulled claret and all, and my ghost story a great success. The dinner went splendidly: Vincent and I had decided against the loving-cup ceremonial as too elaborate, but one of the maids inadvertently filled the cup, so we did it at High Table, and then were delighted when the Junior Fellows filled water jugs at their tables and did it too! Royal toast and College toast only, and Fishwick gave us the long graces in fine style. Could not have wished it better, and to crown it, Colin Friesen announced to High Table that the LLBO man had been to see him about 5, and we shall have our licence by Christmas!
Chat in the Common Room and again to Hall at 9: 175 people, I judge. Choir sings a selection of traditional carols, after which mulled claret was served, and very good it was. Then Lochhead reads—not a good reader. More wine, then my ghost story,60 which I think I read well and which went to great laughter and applause. Then “Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind” (the Stevens glee61) and “The First Nowell.” Everything went splendidly and I felt truly that the College was knitting, and good standards of taste and feeling were being established. Very happy and grateful for having been able to manage it. Endicott, a keen Max Beerbohm man, said the story was good enough for Max—a great compliment from him. The singing of the carols by the full Hall not good, but hearty. I think—I dare to think—that Massey College can do something for this university.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18: Meeting of Master and Fellows at 4:10 and serious debate about the statute defining the office of Master: Claude Bissell tactful but firm, and Vincent sticky but not intractable, so at last all is worked out, though Sirluck and Eayrs intervened unexpectedly and unhelpfully. Many compliments on the gaudy.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19: Vincent in College and comes to see me. Delighted with the progress of the College. Bill Dobson comes, delighted with the gaudy, and pays me a compliment: “You’ll be a very hard act to follow,” said he.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20: Following Bickersteth’s example, I want to give a Christmas gift to every man who is in the College over the holidays, and have bought forty copies of Huxley’s Literature and Science and written a personal letter to go with each one. But now I am worried: will those touchy, suspicious young men think once again that I am trying to “influence” them in some horrible way? We shall see; they are unlike anything I have ever encountered.
The liquor licence, so long looked for, arrived today: another worry dismissed. Now—a curious thing: at the dance, standing by the fireplace during the cabaret, and again at the gaudy just as I was about to begin my story, in the doors on the southeast of Hall, a strange figure has been seen. A man, very neatly dressed, but with long white hair, and a face variously described as no face, or like a skull. Brenda has seen it and several of th
e men. Some think I planned it, but I have not seen it and know nothing of it. A College joker? An intruder?
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21: An agreeable vacation peace settles on the College. Tonight to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra Christmas concert; Sir Ernest MacMillan62 conducts and I am sorry to see how old and moonlit he now looks. A formative figure in my boyhood, and as I watch him bow courteously to a bad house, saying, “Doubtless many people have been detained by Christmas shopping,” I am irresistibly reminded of Sir John Martin-Harvey, thanking a few folk years ago at the Royal Alexandra. After to a literary party at the John Grays’ of Macmillan of Canada. Jack McClelland, owner of McClelland and Stewart, tells me he wants to buy out Clarke, Irwin; I should like that. I am set upon by one William Kilbourn of York University who wants to come here to see how we have made the College “go.” They want twelve colleges with 1,000 undergrads in each. I say these are far too big for colleges and he admits it. Jim Eayrs, who was present, says they are understandably jealous of Massey College and want its secret, a kind of “instant tradition.”
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28: My fears about the Huxley book groundless: I have had ten letters of warm thanks; that is about one in four, which is not bad. On Christmas Day we gave the seven men in College cocktails in the Lodgings, then special dinner in the Senior Fellows’ Dining Room, with two bottles of Beaune among them. Not bad commons!
To the Royal Alex to see the Obratsov Puppets, taking Jenny, Rosamond, Sharon Hooper, and Mrs. Pedak with us. A very fine, unusual concert: the uttermost, surely, that glove puppets can do—funny ’cellist, pianist and singers, dancers, a baby in a pram who played a Hungarian rhapsody, gypsy dancers, trick poodles, a magician who made things disappear (baby chicks, wine in glasses), tap dancers, a brilliantly observed American jazz singer and her “combo,” and magnificent trained lions. All of this presented by a delightful conférencier, reminiscent of Baliev.63 Great charm of detail: when the curtain rose, a puppet stagehand was arranging spotlights. Afterward to Helen Ignatieff’s and met Obratsov and his party, vegetarian ex-actress wife; other guests were Marion Walker, Herby Whittaker, the Goldschmidts, and some more Russians. Ate a Russian dinner—herring in sour cream, “little doves,” and sweets, with vodka and wines. Obratsov replies to a toast by Nicholas Goldschmidt with a moving, because true and sensible, plea for peace and understanding between us and the U.S.S.R. He also shows us, with a puppet supplied by Herby, how the Chinese puppeteers can make a glove puppet fold its arms behind its back—they spin it rapidly and imperceptibly. Also that the great fault of most puppets—German especially—is that their heads are too big and heavy. A delightful evening, with real artists, which is always refreshing after social nonsense and emptiness.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29: In the evening read and hear music: I am dull and out of sorts and feel a failure. Too much celebration? I feel my writing trivial and my life a mess. This could be indigestion or just the inevitable weary self-recognition of middle age, but damned disagreeable. But admirable h.t.d.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31: In the morning work, in the afternoon read and walk. Herbert Whittaker comes and I discuss the drama professorship with him. In the evening we go to the Hoopers’ from 9 to 11, then to Helen Ignatieff till 2. H.t.d 67 in 1963.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 1964: Well, I have so far avoided being an ornamental hermit, a lodging-house keeper, and I hope an inferior pedant. Adventures with the College I record in detail in the College diary, and my theatre-going in the theatre diary: I am in a fair way to being a neurotic diarist and hoarder of experience, but I do not really want to break the habit—a harmless hobby. I begin to see a little more clearly what I should do here. The chapel is a great friend to me; I go there and think and pray and am quieted and strengthened; as I grow older I know more and more that I cannot live without this awareness and invocation of the Other. I do not think it has much to do with Christianity: it is Man and God and in my case I want to pray in the language of a man of my education and temperament, addressing that which has made him.
We all like the College and the life here, and without being ungrateful for Peterborough we praise God that we are not to spend another twenty years there. Brenda has her friends in Peterborough and sees them when they come to Toronto, but for a long time her closest friends have been here. I am glad to be in a society where I need not always talk below my weight, and watch my vocabulary lest some unfamiliar word offend or exclude my hearer. Domestically, Brenda and I are somewhat astonished by having all our three girls at home for the first time in several years, and it makes for uneasiness, as they are now two adults and one large-spirited adolescent. And love and marriage are in the air, though nothing serious yet impends. But we are as happy as it is in our natures to be—which is very happy indeed, consciously so, though somewhat ironic—and what blessing is greater? The prospect of a professorship of drama pleases me but I am anxious that I should not cease to be a writer, and in this I have almost too much encouragement. Clarke, Irwin want a superior book on writing English for high schools; Jack McClelland and Alfred Knopf want an anthology of humour, which I might do on the plan of Aldous Huxley’s Texts and Pretexts; and I want to write my Thamesville novel and also my servant’s memoir. How to choose?
But this morning the papers carry the news that Roy Thomson has been given a barony, and this surely is a tribute to persistence and utterly unreasonable ambition. Why should a Toronto barber’s son, a radio and TV entrepreneur, a collector of newspapers, be “my lord”? Because he wanted it and would not give up. Now, admitting that the arts do not yield to thrust as does the world of business, cannot I do more than I am doing to make a reputation as a writer? I think my Thamesville novel the most serious thing I have yet projected, and technically interesting. So I must get on with it.
1 Davies remained publisher until March 31, 1968, when the Examiner was sold to Roy Thomson. Until then, he continued to have a share in the ownership, attend meetings, and write occasional editorials.
2 The astrologer Hugh MacCraig.
3 George Stewart directed the production of Iolanthe for the UCC Music Club. Davies played the Lord Chancellor.
4 Hugh Walker was the founding general manager of the O’Keefe Centre.
5 Bickersteth was a well-connected Oxford graduate who had come to Canada on an Anglican Church mission in 1919 and became the very influential warden of Hart House from 1921 to 1947.
6 W.T. Robb was chair of the Liquor Licensing Board of Ontario.
7 The house, known initially as the Master’s Lodgings, is at the southeast corner of the College; it has its own entrance on Devonshire Place as well as access to the main building. When the Davies family lived there, it had five bedrooms with four bathrooms, plus a guest suite of two bedrooms and a bathroom. Outside the main-floor sitting room and dining-room are a patio and garden. The Master’s study is up a few stairs from the entrance. A large basement area, known as the Green Room, was used for choir rehearsals and later for Davies’s teaching.
8 Graham McInnes, writer, film producer, and diplomat, met Davies in the 1940s, and their families became lifelong friends. He and his wife, Joan, had grown up in Australia. Graham was the son of Campbell McInnes, the singer, and Angela Thirkell, a prolific popular novelist. Graham’s brother was the writer Colin MacInnes, and Lance Thirkell was his half-brother. Graham had just been appointed the first Canadian high commissioner to Jamaica.
9 The Guthries had begun a jam business using the fruit picked from their garden, as described by Davies during his 1959 visit, to provide some local employment.
10 “Tyrone Power and Dr. Thomas Guthrie in Canada,” Drama Survey 3, no. 1 (May 1963). Reprinted in Judith Grant (ed.), The Well-Tempered Critic (1981).
11 Frost, former premier of Ontario, was still serving in the Legislature. His wife was an ardent temperance supporter.
12 With Eastern Construction.
13 Makers of academic, legal, and other specialty robes.
14 “Son of the earth”: traditional
ly someone appointed to perform a satirical Latin poem at public events at Oxford.
15 Davies’s translation: “I summon the living: I mourn the dead / I rouse the sluggards: I calm the turbulent.” Saint Catherine of Alexandria is the patron saint of scholars and of Balliol College.
16 Pearson had been first secretary at the Canadian High Commission in London from 1935 to 1941, while Massey was high commissioner.
17 For the Stratford season. The plays were Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, and The Comedy of Errors.
18 Second-class honours, upper division.
19 Alison Ignatieff, wife of George Ignatieff and a niece of Vincent Massey. Her father was W.L. Grant, headmaster of Upper Canada College while Davies was there.
20 John Pearson was a friend of Davies from their school days at UCC. He was gifted but led an unhappy and unaccomplished life and committed suicide on October 31, 1958. Davies was his de facto literary executor.
21 Rupert Davies was away for the summer at his house in Wales.
22 Psalms 127:1.
23 She was going to stay with Graham and Joan McInnes.
24 Davies and Moira Whalon, who had moved to Toronto to become his secretary at Massey College, remained on formal terms for most of the thirty-nine years she worked with him.