In the home all is well. Brenda has established herself as a professional director of plays, and does well, not merely getting a show on but helping the actors to find something of themselves and to act truly, so far as in them lies. Miranda is an undergraduate at Trinity. Jenny is at BSS and finds school work hard going. Rosamond will go to BSS in September.
My resolve for 1960 and the future is to be more true to myself, more insistent on my critical standards, less compliant and yielding toward what I think unworthy. The day for encouraging anything and everything in Canada has gone and the younger men know it: I must not fall behind them. I am now on the committee for the Governor General’s Awards, and must try to promote high standards, and this cannot be done without hurting some feelings. The other members, D.V. LePan51 and Northrop Frye,52 are good company. And in the autumn I go to Trinity as a visiting professor, a welcome taste of academic life. Otherwise, the notable event of the year was the Dominion Day dinner at Government House with Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip, a taste of high life which greatly appealed to us both. Had the satisfaction of making the Queen laugh with a mild joke about the modest rewards of literature in Canada. She is beautiful, but when she laughs she is also delightful.
1 From Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”
2 Canadian publisher and philanthropist; at the time, president of Maclean-Hunter and Stratford board member.
3 First couple of Stratford Shakespearean Festival, who hosted the meeting between Tyrone Guthrie and the committee formed to start the festival. Dama Bell was on the board of governors for ten years, and Alf Bell served as its president from 1955 to 1957.
4 The Davieses avoided sleeping in a double bed as Rob was such an uneasy sleeper.
5 Margaret McAdoo, Rupert’s second wife.
6 Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, with the Peterborough Little Theatre.
7 Many days Davies walked to and from the office, in the morning, at lunch, and in the evening.
8 In Greek mythology, for his sins against Zeus, Ixion was tied to a fiery wheel that rolled in all directions.
9 Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English writers.
10 The Tibetan rebellion had caused a Sino-Soviet rift.
11 Davies began to read Freud in 1938, but by the 1950s he had found Jung’s thought and writing suited him much better. Jung saw religious and psychological matters in broad terms and had much to say about the second half of life. Many of Davies’s novels introduced Jungian ideas.
12 The program on CBC TV was called Belief. Davies was interviewed by the philosopher (and Massey cousin) George Grant.
13 Associate editor at the Examiner.
14 Moira Whalon, Davies’s secretary from 1956 to 1995.
15 Davies was brought up as a Presbyterian and while at Oxford was confirmed in the Church of England. He had very strong religious beliefs but found that the church did not fulfill his needs. He felt that Christ had nothing to say to older people and they had to find their own way. This was one of the beliefs that led to his investigation of Jungian thought. He liked the pageantry and music of the Anglican church but was not a regular attender at services.
16 Anna Pedak was Estonian. She and her two daughters were interned during the Second World War in a camp in Germany. They came to Canada with the Displaced Persons Program. Her daughter Sylvia was with the Davieses in 1947 and 1948 as a mother’s helper and went on to an accomplished career in early childhood education. Mrs. Pedak was with the Davieses as housekeeper from 1948 until 1968. She was a loyal and very moral person and a wonderful cook. With her idiosyncratic English, sense of romantic drama, and sweet singing voice, she became part of the family.
17 Matthew 2:16–18, Massacre of the Innocents.
18 Lawyer and philanthropist; eldest son of Prime Minister Arthur Meighen.
19 Austrian-born international banker. His marriage to the Canadian international administrator Mary McGeachy brought him into the Canadian arts world.
20 St. Denis, a friend from the Old Vic, was a leading theatrical director in Britain, France, and the United States. The Method is an acting technique derived from Stanislavski and developed in the United States by Lee Strasberg.
21 M. Esther Harding, prominent Jungian analyst then in her seventies. She wrote many works related to Jung, including Journey into Self (1956), the book Davies was reading at this time.
22 The traditional summer cottage with outhouse and attendant domestic discomforts did not appeal to Rob or Brenda, but they had a cottage on a property called Bryn Camlas (Welsh for “hill on the canal”) around the TV station on the Otonabee River outside Peterborough, which they used for day visits.
23 The governor general’s son and secretary had become a friend of Davies’s at Oxford.
24 Willis Kingsley Wing, Davies’s New York literary agent.
25 The American stage star had also played in the first Stratford season.
26 George McCowan and Jean Gascon.
27 Davies did the colour commentary for CBC TV and for the CBC Radio broadcast.
28 Irish actor (1795–1841). The American movie actor Tyrone Power (1914–1958) was also a descendant.
29 Oliver Rea and Peter Zeisler, with Tyrone Guthrie, founded the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, which opened in 1963.
30 Popular English novelist, playwright, and broadcaster.
31 Professor of English literature, University of Lebanon.
32 American composer of musicals, including Juno (1959), from Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock.
33 Forsyth later wrote Guthrie’s biography: Tyrone Guthrie (1976).
34 Non angli sed angeli (“Not Angles, but angels”), attributed to the sixth-century pope Gregory the Great.
35 James Bernard Fagan, Irish-born actor, producer and playwright, and mentor of Guthrie.
36 Davies was not good on the telephone at any time and was worse if he was surprised. It would take a little time to get him ready to have a reasonable conversation, and if it was with one of his children, he would often pass the telephone to Brenda and hear the news from her.
37 Davies would rarely change an arrangement once it was made, nor would he complain about bad service. It was unusual that he changed his flight to Canada, and it showed how much he wanted to get home.
38 Dealer in antique jewellery, which Brenda collected.
39 From Archy and Mehitabel, by Don Marquis, a newspaper column beginning in 1916.
40 The painting is referred to in What’s Bred in the Bone (1985).
41 Now called Toronto Pearson International Airport.
42 Rare-book shop dealing in theatre material.
43 Prominent English writer; unlike Davies, left-wing, pacifist, and a keen gardener.
44 This problem was quickly resolved.
45 Percy Davies, Rupert’s brother; Mary Bonyun, Rupert’s sister; Arthur, Rupert’s second son; Kit, the widow of Rupert’s son Fred.
46 Managing editor of the Examiner.
47 A close friend Davies met in Peterborough during the Second World War; by this time a professor of English at Trinity College, University of Toronto.
48 Directing and playing in Arms and the Man, by G.B. Shaw.
49 Beland Honderich, editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star.
50 Alfred Knopf’s wife, Blanche, was a co-founder of Alfred A. Knopf Inc. and a prominent editor.
51 Douglas LePan, diplomat, poet, novelist, and professor of literature, University College, University of Toronto. He and Davies met on their way to Oxford in 1935.
52 Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, Victoria College, University of Toronto.
1960
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THROUGH 1960 ROB AND BRENDA were spending more time in Toronto, particularly in the autumn, as Rob started lecturing at Trinity College, University of Toronto, and rehearsals began for the Leaven of Malice play, which eventually came to be titled Love and Libel. They often saw and sometimes stayed with their closest Toronto friend
s, Clair and Amy Stewart and George and Norah Harris. Rob had become friends with Clair Stewart in 1941, while both were working at Saturday Night, and Clair was now one of Canada’s most distinguished graphic designers; Amy was a daughter of J.S. McLean, the president of Canada Packers and a well-known art collector. George Harris was a member of a long-established and sporadically wealthy London, Ontario, family; Norah was the daughter of John M. Lyle, a leading Canadian architect whose buildings included the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. Both couples were dedicated patrons of the arts, particularly supporting the Stratford Shakespearean Festival and the Crest Theatre in Toronto. Two other friends Rob and Brenda often saw were Herbert Whittaker and Helen Ignatieff. Whittaker was the long-time theatre critic for the Globe and Mail; Helen Ignatieff, his frequent social companion, was a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum; she was the widow of Nicholas Ignatieff, who had been warden of Hart House at the University of Toronto. His brother George was a prominent Canadian diplomat and the father of Michael, later an author and politician.
Another close friend was the artist Grant Macdonald, whom Rob had met on an Atlantic crossing in 1935. A great lover of the theatre, Macdonald was a portraitist of London and New York actors in his early career, and he was commissioned to do a series of portraits of actors in the first seasons of the Stratford festival. He illustrated two of the three books Davies co-wrote about the festival and made several portraits of Brenda and Rob. By 1960 he was living in Kingston, teaching at Queen’s University.
During 1960 Davies continued running the Peterborough Examiner and writing his weekly column for the Toronto Star. He maintained his personal and “big” diaries, and in March he began a separate diary focusing on the production of his Leaven of Malice play. Selections here are drawn from all these.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 3: Lay late; entered my “big diary” for 1959 and did tidying for our party. At 6:30 the Thompsons, Curriers, Mathewses, and Porters arrive, twenty-one in all for supper, drinks, games, and a puppet show written and given by our girls, Tim Thompson, and Tim Currier. It was excellent and I was delighted with them. Party over at 12:30.
Everybody we meet seems to have had quite enough of the festive season and to be lumpish and sagged, but our party went well and was gentle but not dull. I have gained three pounds without seeming to eat inordinately.
MONDAY, JANUARY 4: A letter from George Chamberlain:1 Tony Guthrie is critically ill and must have a long rest, but he will do Leaven of Malice as a play if possible. I refuse to be panicked by this news but it could be very serious. I write George and also a letter of cheer to Judy Guthrie. In the evening, long talk with Jenny about her schoolwork, which is a bugbear to her. I assure her that it is not the only reason for living.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 8: To Toronto; a long lunch at Winston’s2 with Herbert Whittaker. Then to Hawthorn Gardens and talk with WRD and dine, then to Hart House to adjudicate inter-college drama festival. I carried through my New Year’s resolve to be more forthright in asserting my artistic opinions.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 10: To lunch at Batterwood with Vincent Massey.3 Afterward he talks to me for two hours in his study. The Queen wants to give him the Order of the Garter,4 and the prime minister won’t have it and wants Mr. Massey to tell him to tell the Queen to desist. I agree to do what I can. I am fascinated by Vincent Massey’s position about the Garter. He ought to have it, he wants it and deserves it, but Diefenbaker is a real small-town Western Baptist. Canada is a hard land in which to get one’s deserts.
MONDAY, JANUARY 11: In the evening heard recordings of Douglas Rain reading from Merchant of Venice, which he did well, poignantly reminding me of its lack of success, which I try not to think of.5 Wonderful h.t.d. with both of us laughing uproariously.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 12: In the evening heard all of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and was thrilled—it is my kind of opera.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13: A very busy day and as so often, I write well under stress, but I quickly weary of newspaper concerns now. In the evening frowsted by the fire and read. Then to bed and dreamed I was accused of fathering an illegitimate child, and I must revise for the Theatre Guild a play not mine, which they said was.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 17: I walk in the afternoon and in the evening read Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed, great stuff; then chat with Brenda till bedtime. My fatigue seems boundless and the fate of Tony Guthrie is a counsel to rest. The more I rest the more new areas of fatigue reveal themselves; but I make progress, which means doing as little as possible.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20: Brenda groggy with ’flu in the evening and takes to her bed. I sit up and read The Devils, as the translator, David Magarshack, calls The Possessed and am greatly caught up in its slow, python-like coils.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 24: Dyed beard, scrubbed, washed hair. On our afternoon drive the Jaguar conks out on a country road. I read Hedda Gabler and am once more lost in amazement at Ibsen’s insight, astonished anew by his genius and the appropriateness of his plays to so much of Canada today. But I have made some of these points in my own work and they have passed unnoticed. A strangely obtuse country.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 29: Quiet day; read and thought. Great news by the afternoon mail: the Saturday Evening Post wants Chapter 1 of A Voice from the Attic for Adventures of the Mind, at $2,500! I’m happy to be in a series with Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, etc. and making an entry into a big popular magazine. A quiet evening and read The Old Curiosity Shop to Rosamond. Early to bed and h.t.d.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 30: To Cobourg at 12 and then for ten and a half hours I live in the devitalized, self-castrating world of a little-theatre “workshop.” The adjudicator was Alan Nunn, who has nothing to say and says it at great length. The production of my At the Gates of the Righteous went well. The other play performed was The Boor by Chekhov. Bad dinner with ninety others.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2: Our twentieth wedding anniversary. To Toronto and see Herbert Irvine, the interior decorator at Eaton’s, about redecorating our house, which is a real anniversary present. What a chatterbox Irvine is! But life enhancing: an Agreeable Rattle.6 We gave a dinner at the University Club for the Harrises, the Stewarts, Walter and Liz Gordon,7 Helen Ignatieff, and Scott Young: turtle soup, lamb chops, asparagus hollandaise, endive salad, and water ice with kirsch-peach sauce. Châteauneuf du Pape. To the Stewarts’ afterward, a delightful evening and a real celebration.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 7: Spend much of the day reading Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Much talent but a derivative and ill-planned work. Brenda and I rearrange furniture in the living-room with excellent effect and banish the gold sofa. Result, room much unified.
A good deal of loafing this week goes far to restore my calm of mind: I must be idle at times or my activity loses all meaning and becomes mechanical. This is the last quiet weekend for at least five to come.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12: To Toronto to a meeting of the Press Freedom Committee. A good meeting and I am put on an even smaller committee. I shop and meet Brenda, who has a massage, then we sup at the University Club and drive home. Very cold. Hear the Franck symphony which I bought, long a favourite of mine; Rosamond home from skating carnival at Lakefield. Very jolly h.t.d.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13: Write a Star column about Ronald Knox.8 Herbert Whittaker and Helen Ignatieff with her nephew Michael Ignatieff come for the weekend. We begin conversation which continues sans break—gossip and good cheer. Michael Ignatieff is a nice boy of twelve. Herbert tells me of being interviewed for the New York Times position as drama critic. He does not expect to get it. He looks unwell but Helen is flourishing.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20: To Toronto by train at seven a.m. Collision with the Ottawa train at Claremont, and I am thrown on floor. There is a delay and we reach Toronto at 12. Cocktails with the Fleurys.9 We get Jenny and Miranda from Bishop Strachan School and spend a quiet afternoon at our Royal York suite. In the evening I address the Ontario Association of Architects and do it well, Brenda sa
ys. My speech for the architects was very carefully composed and rehearsed and I acted it.10 It is the best method for me. But all such affairs too long—it is murderous to put a man up at 10:30 when everybody else in the place has fatigued the audience and they long for release.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21: We leave our grand suite and are home by 11:30. In the afternoon a country walk and hear some music. To dinner at the Porters’ with Ruth Thompson and the Curriers. Very pleasant and lots of jolly talk about profanity, black mass, and music. Home about 12:30.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22: To Toronto at 4 p.m. and to the Park Plaza11 to dine with the Harrises, Helen Ignatieff, and Grant Macdonald; and then to the Crest Theatre where Dame Edith Evans reads poetry. She was sad, mannered and empty, no intelligence, and she wearied before the end and was pathetically nervous and shaky. Afterward to the Harrises’ for chat and we all were very sorry about Dame Edith, but she is an actress, not a verse-speaker.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23: Home and I find a letter from Tony about casting which I find very depressing for no good reason. I felt low all afternoon and in the dumps all evening; a long time since I had such a fit. To bed but woke with proctalgia fugax12 in midst of the night. I seem to fight and reject my success, in the depths of my spirit. Why?
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29: Busy day: wrote three editorials and did much incidental work. In the evening worked on Governor General’s Awards books, a dreary lot, and wonder if awards should be made. I am out of love with Canada these days, a country of stupid, ill-educated, timid, narrow-gutted pseudo-Scotchmen.