A Celtic Temperament

by Robertson Davies

  FRIDAY, MAY 19: The Parsonses gave us cocktails and at dinner we stood the table to a couple of bottles of Moët & Chandon, which loosened tongues and made Parsons more a Tory, and Bolgiano more a man of some intelligence and independence of thought. Then talked with David Walker28 over drinks. He says Nicholas Monsarrat29 is a very unhappy man, which I can well believe, but Brenda thinks David Walker is at some kind of crisis, too, perhaps about his wife. But he has the writer’s bad habit of not really thinking that anyone else has insight or sensitivity; therefore he does not really hear what is said to him—though in this he is by no means so bad as many I have known. Brenda talked some excellent Jungian sense to him about women, and he seemed rather surprised to hear it. A charming fellow, very tense, thin-skinned, and just now very worried.

  SATURDAY, MAY 20: Brenda competes in table-tennis finals and comes second—very good as she has not played for some time. Mrs. Bolgie was absent from dinner—over-eaten, presumably: she and Bolgie eat vastly, for tiny people. Brenda in a tape-cutting game; then we had drinks with David Walker who continues to reveal his mind, as romantic and feeling, rather than thinking, and doubtless a very good way for a novelist’s mind to be, and I would be better if more inclined that way.

  SUNDAY, MAY 21: Spoke to David Walker about Massey College, which he regards as a good idea, and broached the notion to him that he might be a Senior Fellow; he jumped at the notion. A personal friend of Lionel, and of Vincent Massey, a writer, a soldier, and a traveller, I think he is the sort of man we want. He is somewhat gloomy about Vincent Massey’s health, which strikes chill upon my heart.

  TUESDAY, MAY 23: Disembarked Montreal. Fly to Toronto. See Jenny and Rosamond at BSS. Stay at Hawthorn Gardens.

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 24: Home by 6. The house is splendidly clean; travelling, even in good places, one forgets this sort of fresh cleanliness. Thus ends our Portuguese journey, which has been a brilliant success—quite the best holiday I have ever had.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 1: On returning, I found a letter from Bill Broughall warning me that feeling between Vincent and Raymond is still uneasy and that Raymond is still set on a chapel, but it is hoped he may be pacified with a sort of praying-closet, housing what Broughall calls “the artifacts of our sect.” This difficulty, he says, antedates my appearance on the scene, and stems from Raymond’s pique that Geoffrey was not asked to design the College. There are also the problems that the university would like us to use their solicitor and perhaps their bank. Also awaiting me are more detailed plans from Ron Thom of the Examination Room with places for sixteen Senior Fellows; no one of course has told him that there are to be eighteen, and he says no more can be accommodated. This is what comes of designing a college first and trying to make the organization fit it. We are all to meet on September 16 for a full-dress discussion, and probably the first meeting of the Master and Fellows.

  Miss Whalon tells me she hears some discussion in Peterborough as to why I bother with a small Toronto college and do not “put in” for the presidency of the proposed Trent college here. Of course they never thought of me until I was asked elsewhere.

  Abroad got a Ben Jonson Folio, a fine Mabinogion, and two Beerbohm manuscripts which will look well in my office in the new college and establish me in a better range as a collector.

  Massey College has already had an applicant (Nikola Stanacev), which cheers me, and Maclean’s has carried a friendly piece about my appointment. Also the summer issue of the Graduate has appeared with my article in it, which reads well and I hope will answer some questions. It is modest in tone but not creepy. Question: will my appointment to the university staff come through on July 1 as proposed? If it is to do so I ought to have some sort of formal proposal from them shortly.

  TUESDAY, JUNE 6: To Montreal to receive the Lorne Pierce Medal from the Royal Society. What is this Lorne Pierce Medal?30 What a lot of medals there are that carry no real distinction with them. I am gracefully presented by Frank Scott; otherwise the affair is Canada at its most gauche, a provincial gallimaufry.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 8, TORONTO: With Bill Broughall at his office this afternoon from 3:30 to 5:30: like many lawyers he is very slow to get things said. The pattern with him is business laced with gossip. The business is that he wants to have the statutes which establish and govern the corporation drawn as soon as possible so that we can go smartly to work on September 16. He is especially anxious to assure the College of its endowment, which means it must have the funds of the Foundation made over to it from time to time, and this must be tactfully dealt with, for Vincent Massey gets $7,500 yearly as head of the Foundation and he may be loath to relinquish it, as he is so convinced of his poverty—though Bill says he pays tax up to 65%. Broughall’s gossip is that Hart Massey is pressing for a chapel because his wife, Melodie, who has run through Christian Science, Moral Re-Armament, and Anglo-Catholicism, is now an Orthodox convert; I should welcome an Orthodox chapel. I must try to arrange some system whereby the Senior Fellows have committees—Financial, Housekeeping, Library, etc.—in order to get the best out of them.

  MONDAY, JUNE 19, STRATFORD: Visit Miranda during the day. In the evening picnic very grandly with Harrises in the motel; Coriolanus at 8 p.m. but curtain delayed by half an hour because of heavy rain. A splendid performance. Very warmly greeted and see many friends. Party at Len Webster’s.

  TUESDAY, JUNE 20, STRATFORD: Judy Finch’s party at 12. Gregorys’31 lunch at 1: chat with Judy Guthrie. Raes’ garden party. With the Arnold Edinboroughs for bad dinner at the Steak House. Henry VIII rather tasteless but good bits: Miranda is beautiful as court lady.

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, STRATFORD: Lunch at Miranda’s flat. Opening of the exhibition; opening of Meighen Gardens;32 Beth Hall’s party—meet Tuzo Wilson33 and James Coyne.34 Dine at the Bells’; Love’s Labour’s Lost delightful. Party for the company. Hospitality is very intense.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 22: Leave Stratford at 11 and to Brantford, then long drive to Peterborough to a fusty house, accumulated mail, and empty cupboards. Splendid h.t.d. Enjoyed the social part of Stratford very much: am I growing to like people? Or am I better at coping with them? Do not talk so foolishly as I did: speak my true mind more.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 30: Busy with detail as Ralph Hancox goes on holiday. In the evening hear music, Handel and Brahms Liebeslieder. Am uneasy and inward-looking and wonder what I should be writing.

  The to-do about the College chapel continues. This evening Hart Massey called me; he is on his way to Vancouver: what about the chapel? I repeat my stand: yes, if it can be dignified, not too expensive, and confined to prayer only. I suggest an ikon as the devotional object about which the plan should gather. Hart wants a crypt-chapel under the Examination Room—not a cellar, oh, no, no! but a crypt. I asked him to urge Ron Thom to answer my letters. What difficult chaps architects can be!

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 12: Brenda away to Toronto at 7. Work well and read some Jung in the afternoon. Brenda returns at 6:15 with the new Sunbeam Alpine sports car. In the evening we all go for an enjoyable country ride, Jenny driving. Summer at last; I feel well and enjoy life.

  TUESDAY, JULY 18: Brenda drives me to Batterwood; arrive on the stroke of 10. We spend all day on the right-hand side of the terrace—Vincent Massey, Lionel, Hart, Bill Broughall, and I—discussing Ron Thom’s revised plans. Some things must go; the circular desks in the Examination Room to my regret, for though I agree movable tables will give more flexibility, the other arrangement had a certain inquisitorial air I liked. They seem to want more than eighteen Senior Fellows; I suggest twenty-four: some bad candidates and some good ones were named. The kitchens come up again: Thom has neglected my letters about them, but Hart says he is breaking up with his wife, and is distrait. Vincent Massey has the grant of arms: the Massey arms, with a gold hart on the chevron, a castle on its back and its forefoot on a scroll. But Raymond will not have my motto, Dilige, et quod vis fac,35 and VM seems greatly to regret this. Says Raymond “lives by his emotions” and cries him and Geoffrey
down very much. Indeed I have never known him so free-spoken: he said Mrs. W.H. Clarke was “quite the most charmless woman I have ever known—in fact, a pain in the neck.” Bill Broughall won a maj or victory for common sense; he persuaded the Masseys to have a cost-accountant make a dummy budget to see what we shall really need. So far we have been ridiculously vague about money; suppose we find we cannot finance the College on what the rents, the Foundation, and the university can produce? Bill thinks we shall need a yearly income of $100,000 or $150,000—that shows how vague we are. Left when Brenda called for me after 6 p.m.

  I puzzled much about a new motto. At last hit on Tamquam scintillae in harundineto36 from Wisdom of Solomon 3:7. Hope the Masseys will like it. I do not want some milk-and-water tag of nineteenth-century provenance. I wish passionately that the details of this College could be fixed and money security assured and all the castle-in-the-air atmosphere dispelled. Since July 1 I have been a professor in the university but I am Master of Cloud-Cuckoo College and I am sick of that position. We talk of Fellows and wine cellars, but we do not know if we can support them.

  THURSDAY, JULY 20: Very hot; extremely busy in the afternoon. Write Star column on Logan Pearsall Smith and in the evening read Jung and chat with Brenda. Rosamond unwell; Jenny is coming out of her shell and tonight played tennis ’til 11. Found an excellent Massey College motto in the Apocrypha.

  FRIDAY, JULY 21: H.t.d. on waking; a very hot, miserable day. The Manchester Guardian says there are no Canadian authors: ah, that wonderful Mancunian certainty. Ron Thom sends plans of Master’s house: it is smaller than I foresaw.

  SATURDAY, JULY 22: Again very hot. Write to the Manchester Guardian, moderately but firmly. In the afternoon, sleep and read: am good for nothing. Oh! that depression would lift! It is some time since I had one of my fits of depression: despair that my work has not found a public, that I grow old but not wise, that I have missed the boat. I breathe slowly and can hardly drag my body. This is the Blue Devils indeed!

  SUNDAY, JULY 23: In the afternoon to Bryn and row and sunbathe and picnic. Very pleasant; return about 7 and show the College plans to Rosamond and Jenny. My depression lifts and I feel immeasurably better.

  MONDAY, JULY 24: The Masseys do not like my motto from the Apocrypha: afraid it will be interpreted as claiming special merit for the Junior Fellows. Does no one else see the good of having a proud motto and having to fight to uphold it? Apparently not. How timid, how creepy-crawly! So I suggest the first verse of Psalm 42: “Like as the hart panteth for the water-brooks so longeth my soul for thee, O God”—Quemadmodum cervus desiderat. Provide a heraldic pun. I bet they will take it. It has just the Creeping Jesus quality of most college mottos.

  THURSDAY, JULY 27: To Toronto and meet Young and Gwillim of Commercial Caterers at the Board of Trade Building on Adelaide Street. They have drawn blueprints of the kitchens and seem to understand everything and want our business. I see a kitchen, one of their buffets, and some of their food, and am impressed. They can take care of the College at $2 a day per head, including uniforms, laundry, and insurance. I was encouraged by their attitude. Then to the York Club where Brenda and I lunch with Robert Dale-Harris and Richard Butterfield, who are to do the financial investigation for us. Dale-Harris is externally a caricature silly-ass Englishman: in reality a Canadian and a shrewd man of business. Butterfield takes on the actual work, and as it is not really very complex thinks it can be done by September 16. I want to get the Masseys down to realities about money as soon as possible. But they have gone too far to draw back now. Let the College cost what it may, they must find the money somewhere. In reality I have small doubt that it will be forthcoming, but I should like to know what the facts are.

  On July 30, Rob and Brenda again drove to Arlington, Vermont, for a series of Alexander lessons with Lulie Westfeldt.

  MONDAY, JULY 31: To Arlington in heavy rain, arriving about 3:30 to the Candlelight Motel. To Lulie Westfeldt, who does wonders for us both, then treats us to Scotch and chat. She asks us to call her Lulie. A quiet dinner and early to bed, drunk with mountain air.

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 6: Home by 6: total journey 1,163 miles. The Alexander Technique is very disturbing and sometimes makes me out of sorts when big changes occur as this time. Takes a form of dissatisfaction with my literary work: I wish I thought I might someday achieve some real recognition in that realm.

  MONDAY, AUGUST 7: Breakfast in bed; write long letter to Miranda.

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9: A significant dream: on the night of August 7 I felt myself violently shaken—opened my eyes to find my mother, her face filled with fury, hovering in the air above my bed, dressed in a white robe, shaking me! Terror! I scream! Brenda calls to me (she says next day she never woke) and the phantom vanishes. I get to the bathroom and turn on the light, much shaken. Is this because I wrote frankly about Mother to Miranda?

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 17: To Toronto and from 2:30 to 5:00 in the offices of McDonald, Currie at 100 University Avenue with Butterfield, and McClellan and Whalley of his staff. Work our way through a fourteen-page draft of their findings which grows more dismal at every page. The upshot is that at a rough guess it may cost $135,000 per annum to run the College and our income is estimated at $54,600; with $25,000 from the university, that leaves $56,000 deficit. Has the Foundation that kind of money? I don’t know. But we are all in too deep to draw back. Butterfield thinks we shall need a bursar to be business director of the College, as Tom Symons37 says my secretary will have her hands full doing that job. I should be happy to have the actual day-by-day management off my neck but did not think we could afford it. But Butterfield thinks if I undertake that, I shall have no time for any academic work—which is what I am hired for. But now we are coming to grips with facts and one of them seems to be that we should have done all this investigation long ago. But there is no point in fretting about that now. Butterfield promises the report for the 10th and I think it will be a bombshell. The most careful reckoning I can do with the figures I have gives a deficit of $38,015, which is not bad, and takes no account of rentals to Senior Fellows.

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 18: My trouble is that I do not really know anything about anything thoroughly, and am ignorant, superstitious, spiteful, and third-rate. Arthur is fifty-eight: I phoned him and he was merry. Worked very hard on a Star column and a piece for Holiday magazine.38

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 19: In the afternoon I work from 2:30 to 5:45 on the speech for organists39 and enjoy it; finish notes in evening but fear the subject too specialized. Great changes at work within me and I think I am altering radically. Worried about Berlin.40

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 20: Lay late reading Final Curtain by Ngaio Marsh. Dye my beard too dark—must look into this. Loafed all day never stirring from the place and found this very refreshing: my condition of mind asks for inactivity; worked on my speech.

  I am indeed changing: trying to purge my writing of ornament and mere eccentricity and my thinking of bile, emotionalism, and vulgarity. Oh! that I may make some progress in these things!

  MONDAY, AUGUST 21: Ralph Hancox at Stratford. I write some editorials, a relief to be free of the demands of his personality, good chap though he is. In the evening, read Jung on the Mother archetype, then talk with Brenda about my own mother; have proctalgia fugax in the night: a consequence?

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 22: Busy about Examiner affairs and at 6:30 to Toronto with Brenda and stay at Hawthorn Gardens. To The Magician by Ingmar Bergman for the third time and like it greatly except that bad American voices have been dubbed in with coarsening effect. Admirable h.t.d.

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23: To Stratford. In the afternoon saw The Canvas Barricade by Donald Lamont Jack, the Canadian play which won the Globe and Mail contest. Bad play though with witty interludes and lively production. It was about a painter who sacrifices everything to his art and fights Canadian materialism: mode—farce. But no attitude contrary to materialism was ever put forward, and the materialist world was flat and foolish. No character developed or ex
perienced anything; some moments of poetry were approached and hastily shied off from. Characters came and went who were sheer waste. One, an old farmer, seemed pinched from my Overlaid. The play contained many good things but was not as a whole a Good Thing. Sad it should be the first Canadian work on that stage. George McCowan had produced with obvious contempt for the play. Miranda tells me the actors hate it, and why not? It gives them nothing to work on but caricatures. The critics have abused it—even Herbert Whittaker, who had so great a part in bringing it into being. All very bad for Canadian playwriting. In the evening, Henry VIII, duller than before. A good visit with Miranda. Drive to Toronto from 12:45 to 3 a.m. in heavy mist, demanding and alarming.

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, TORONTO: At 2:15 to see James Gow of Blake, Cassels & Graydon in the Bank of Commerce Building. A short, dumpy man with a potato nose, agreeable in a lawyer-like way. He reads and explains the statutes which set the College in motion; the Act of the Legislature merely declares that it exists. They seem clear and he seems very capable; I had the satisfaction of explaining to him what a “Visitor”41 was; he had supposed the office to be merely honorary, or ornamental. One of his partners is Cassels, the university’s solicitor, and we discussed the mistrust of the university among the Masseys; he sees its cause, but believes as I do that tact and decency can check any officiousness from the university’s financiers. To my astonishment he showed me the deed of gift of the Lee Collection to the Massey Foundation; Bill had already given me a copy: how confidential these lawyers are! He says the Masseys are vague about money, but suggested the endowment of the College would be about a million, which will not be a penny too much.