A Celtic Temperament

by Robertson Davies

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, TORONTO: Meet in Lionel Massey’s room at the ROM at 9:30. Lionel, Vincent, Ron Thom, Lorimer, and the man from the contractor’s firm. Hart Massey, Deo gratias, could not come, so some decisions were possible. He means well, but he creates an atmosphere in which indecision is the norm. All details of the building now pretty well settled, though I suspect we shall have a row about the lectern in the Hall. VM now wants the Club Room called the Upper Library again. Fuss, fuss, fuss! To Eaton’s about 11 and attack the chair for the Senior Fellows’ Dining Room—literally, for Howard gets a saw and hacks arms and spikes off it until a goodish, chair-like thing is left, and not Ron Thom’s Roycroft rubbish. This small dining-room is to be cedar panelled and (my suggestion) have red velvet curtains! Also Lionel and I are empowered to choose a red curtain stuff for the Common Room. All this red because Vincent is off to Barbados and thus cock-a-hoop, and Hart is far away in Ottawa. So the forces of Life and Joy get a chance!

  Take Lionel to lunch at University Club and talk ROM business. He says frankly he will be very disappointed if he does not get the directorship, which he says Eric Phillips, Bissell, and Bladen have more than once assured him should be his. And why not? He can run a show and has imagination. But he has not even a B.A. to bless himself with.

  Thirteen new applications for the College. Brenda and I to Eaton’s about lamps and drive home by 5:30. Jolly h.t.d.

  I have read the first two binders of Vincent Massey’s book, What’s Past Is Prologue: full of meat, especially the political stuff, and I think I have persuaded him not to chop bits out for fear of offending somebody, or using Cabinet material. Can’t be an author and a gent. Very spicy about William Lyon Mackenzie King. But it has the air of a dictated book. He depends on speech rhythms to make points, and of course they don’t do and the effect is often dry and curt. Regret this especially in his description of nineteenth-century Toronto: he knows the milieu, he has the literary skill to fix it forever, poetically, but he has muffed it. A pity.

  WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, TORONTO: To our lawyers’ and see their Mr. Hamill, a precise Scot with some sort of nervous, scruffy ailment of the scalp. He is handling our liquor licence and seems to think we should get it, as Leslie Frost11 has given the word. Hamill says we “have pierced the corporate veil,” which I take to be a Scotch joke for having whistled through the regulations. I sign the application to the attorney general to incorporate the “Common Room Club,” for Leslie Frost says the name of Massey College must never be mentioned.

  SUNDAY, MARCH 3: Basil Coleman comes on the 12:10 train. In the afternoon, Miranda sings for him and we go to Burleigh Falls to walk. Talk with Basil about families till 11:45. Jenny is much excited about going to Rome and it is good to see; she is somewhat fearful of the journey but I am sure she will manage admirably and have a glorious spring.

  MONDAY, MARCH 4: At the Examiner office in the morning. To Toronto at 1 and to the University Press. ROM committee meeting at 4. Suspect Claude Bissell will not recommend Lionel Massey as director, as professional pressure against him is too strong. Home and chat with Brenda, Jenny, and Basil Coleman until midnight.

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, TORONTO: Last night a long talk with Lionel Massey about College details: he tells me Raymond can never be chairman of the Foundation as he is an American citizen. This afternoon to see Friesen after my lecture, and he tells me there are only sixty-seven Junior Fellows’ rooms: he and Gord12 have counted twice! So Ron has lost three sets of rooms somewhere. We get some applications every week and now have thirty-nine. We have altered the final date for applications to April 30, and the University Press is mailing 1,600 brochures, with this additional information, next week, so we move.

  Hart is against cedar for the Senior Fellows’ Dining Room: says it is not a first-rate wood. Also he and Ron have had a great row about the skylight in the Round Room, which still lets in water. Bad design, says Hart, and Ron must pay for putting it right. But a man who can lose three sets of rooms might do anything.

  SATURDAY, MARCH 9: Wrote many letters in the morning. In the afternoon a long rest in bed, sleeping and reading, then a drive in fine weather. In the evening read Wilde’s Letters, especially “De Profundis,” then to the Thompsons’ for chat with the Curriers. Brenda scolds me: says I am rude to her. She is right: I have grown more self-assertive and probably rude. It is part of the price of my new freedom, and it will pass: but to be free of so many things which have burdened me for twenty years—who would not lose balance a little?

  TUESDAY, MARCH 12, TORONTO: For two weeks we have been considering a possible porter, one Captain C., of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery. Good references, good appearance. The former commandant of Royal Military College says of him, “Not the smartest fellow in the world …,” but nothing against him. But Friesen arranges that Captain C. and Mrs. C. meet Lionel Massey in the College today, as though by chance. The wife is crucial. Mrs. C. does not pass the test: smokes at Lionel and fusses about the quarters. Friesen calls me and says he thinks it won’t do. So does Lionel. So we next see a regimental sergeant major of the Queen’s Own Rifles. The porter must be right or we shall have endless trouble.

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, TORONTO: Lunch at Eaton’s with Herbert Irvine, lecture on Sheridan at 2, meet Lionel at the College at 4:25. We have twenty-five more applications; Brenda makes great progress with the house. Our new porter is one RSM McCracken, who seems to me the right sort—vast waxed moustache, intelligent, and gives out a good feeling. The past fortnight has been a welter of detail and I am spent. Our applications now stand at seventy-one residents and fifteen non-residents, and there are more to come as 1,950 brochures have been sent to Graduate School men and fourth-year men. Have also composed a report to the Senior Fellows. Trouble with Commercial Caterers: Sedgwick and Vincent Massey have talked so much about “quality” that they have grandiose and foolish plans—a “hostess” in the dining hall, God forbid! And very elaborate food. Must crush this, without undercutting VM, who has brought it on his own head: special silver and china, so why not special food? Strangely, I seem to be the only person connected with this venture who recognizes that 10 cents more per man per day can mean close to $4,000 a year to the College. The woodwork is going into the College and looks handsome, and the bronze fire-doors are splendid. It is all exciting and I wish I had more time and spirit to enjoy it and was not so absorbed in details. Must conquer this (and the details too, of course) or I shall never be properly useful to the place.

  SUNDAY, MARCH 24: Brenda and I talk with Miranda from breakfast to noon; in the afternoon walk at Omemee. In the evening, read and chat about T.S. Eliot and Jung. A spring day and I have my annual spring headache. But a sense of achievement as the College goes into final stages of preparation. Lionel relays to me some handsome compliments about the work I am doing, which cheers and refreshes me. Who can live sans appreciation? Not I.

  TUESDAY, MARCH 26, TORONTO: Lionel Massey, Bill Broughall, and Friesen lunch with me at the University Club to discuss catering and budget. Friesen cannot get it into his head that the object is not to get the budget as low as possible but to keep it from going higher than the Foundation can pay—so that the cushion may be used for the Library, which the Masseys still think of as a needless, if not frivolous, expense. Poor Lionel, as usual, has to face the consequences of family pride and stupidity, and I instruct Friesen to contradict Vincent Massey and tell the caterers to get their price down.

  THURSDAY, MARCH 28, TORONTO: To Harcourt’s13 again about College gowns. Hit on an Oxford doctor’s undress gown stripped of its braid and with a red-brown rosette on the collar at the back. Miranda and Brenda with me: they find Harcourt’s fascinating.

  FRIDAY, MARCH 29, TORONTO: To Lionel Massey’s office at the ROM at 9:30: Hart, Ron Thom, and that dummy Lorimer present. We work till 12 on plans and details. Ron wants to add ironwork to the tower and gate to enrich the stone. Whence this new yearning for ornament? The influence of Molly Golby, perhaps? Anyway, I am fo
r it, and strangely, so is Hart. Ron has designed a fine lectern, but has not got it quite right yet. Then we all go to the site and Hart makes some excellent suggestions, including filling in those holes in our garden wall. But oh! the doors in our cellar are stained a hideous diarrhea yellow; must talk to Ron. Home, and in the evening prepared a plan for Vincent Massey for the opening ceremonies in October—a workmen’s party, a garden party for officialdom, and a formal ceremony to acknowledge the transfer of the College from the Masseys to the Master and Fellows and at which I suggest the intrusion of a terrae filius14 to enliven the affair and bring the Junior Fellows into the scene. Hope VM likes it, as it would lift our opening right out of the ruck of muddled, self-conscious, hick university ceremonies.

  SATURDAY, MARCH 30: A device is needed to go on the north wall of the chapel, in relief, so tonight I paint a phoenix to show Ron, whose forte is not Christian symbolism. What a lot of odd jobs I am let in for! Design a gown, symbolism for the chapel, shall we have “French” or “semi-French” service in Hall, what uniform shall the porter wear? I am the Inigo Jones, the Capability Brown, of the place. Am sometimes led to mild deception or pious fraud. What should be inscribed on the bell? Nothing old is really right, so I fudge up this:

  S. CATHARINA

  Vivos voco: mortuos plango

  Excito lentos: paco cruentos15

  and it is accepted as genuinely traditional stuff. It is rooted in tradition, but it is rather boldly adapted. Anyhow it is now on our large bell and our Hall bell too. Enjoy this sort of thing hugely, but if I did not do it, who would? Endless committees, I suppose, with the usual committee results. One must be both bold and discreet when trying to set something going which may become traditional. I enjoy the really creative College work, which now is in full swing, and also the sense that the drudgery draws to a close. But I become overwrought during these taxing mid-weeks.

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, TORONTO: The Southam Fellowships are awarded today, and the committee is anxious to get the new Fellows into the College. Claude Bissell gives a lunch for us and the outgoing group of Southam Fellows, and if we get such a good lot next year they should be an asset to the College.

  MONDAY, APRIL 8: Election Day and Brenda, Miranda, Mrs. Pedak, and I vote at 9. Work all day on my last lecture of term. In the evening back to the Examiner and enjoy the excitement of the election returns, but result so far is indecisive and a Tory is returned here, as predicted: Tory Peterborough!

  TUESDAY, APRIL 9: To Toronto and to a ROM committee meeting: Bladen and Stone speak very well of Lionel but I fear he cannot be director, as he is not academically qualified. We dine at the flat, and with Brenda to film of Long Day’s Journey directed by Sidney Lumet, very good but long indeed!

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, TORONTO: Haircut in the morning. I give my last lecture at 2 and am applauded at the end! Work on graduate exams, then to Park Plaza at 5:30 and spend an hour with Ron Thom; dine at Lichee Garden with Brenda and Rosamond and complete exams by 11.

  THURSDAY, APRIL 11, TORONTO, MAUNDY THURSDAY: Met Lionel by chance at the University Club and we lunched together. He asks me about my salary and I tell him I have drawn none so far, and he is astonished: I am glad to have established this, for while I do not in the least grudge giving my work, I am not quite willing that it should be unknown. We go to the College and meet Vincent Massey, Hart, Allan Fleming, Ron Thom, the foolish Lorimer, and Norah Leavings (as secretary) in Hall—the first meeting of any sort in our building. We agree on the Founders’ Plaque, which Allan has done in a fine humanistic script, and decide on door numbers. Ron outlines what he wants to do to the building and gets approval if the prices are satisfactory. Then Ron works through a long, dismal list of accounts, some of them very high prices—chapel $10,000—and the staggering sum of $7,500 for the two book presses in the Upper Library! This is refused. Then the Quadrangle and south garden plan: full of trees and silly plants which would require expert, constant attention. So VM vetoes all but one tree in the quad, and wants the south garden replanned. Some costs relate to our house—$1,500 for bookshelves in TV room, and $450 for a wine cupboard! I was embarrassed. Finally choose curtains for the Common Room. All this done to screams from a power-saw, and the yelling and crashing without which nothing can be built. But VM was good-tempered and philosophical about it all and looked well, though Lionel is worried about his health. Our anxiety about admissions is now over but there is a new and difficult problem. We have lost five rooms! Ron refuses to admit that he ever said seventy but we all know he did. But VM, who is a realist at heart, agrees that we rent five of the non-resident Senior Fellows’ rooms to make it up, and thus our budget is protected. It is now firm that all work inside the College must be finished by June 1, and all outside work by August 15. So Brenda and I decide to move in on June 10 if we can possibly manage it.

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, TORONTO: Dean Roland McLaughlin of Applied Science and Engineering gives a lunch for me at the York Club, introducing his departmental heads; Claude Bissell was the only other non-engineer. They are very friendly and all goes well. Breckenridge, who is also an associate dean of graduate studies, tells me the rumour now goes around that to get into Massey College you must have gone to a private school. He teases me about the rejection of women from the College. Then Friesen and I go to the College and meet Ron Thom and discuss creating a suite for Robert Finch and also converting a non-resident Senior Fellows’ room into a room for Friesen. Ron immediately wants to “build in” a desk: he has a passion for these immobile rooms, frozen forever as he creates them.

  FRIDAY, APRIL 19, TORONTO: At 2:30 meet the Massey Foundation in the College and find that Ron has told them I want a built-in desk for Friesen! Not a lie: he cannot understand that anyone disagrees with him unless they are vehement. A very obtuse mind. Vincent Massey looking old and stiff and unwell, and playing the distinguished proconsul troubled by nit-wits. Poor old man! I am sorry for him but he will act a role, and that rather puts us all in the position of supporting characters with very minor business—which holds things up.

  After they had gone I roamed the building and tried to get some message from it—for I must breathe life into the place and I must know what it says to me before I can do that: the newborn, sleeping building must speak something, or murmur, before I can make it speak aloud. Am very tired, nervous, and worried: expenses for the Library are nearing the $25,000 mark and I must talk to Bill Broughall or we shall have a flaming row with the Foundation. Am planning a vacation in July, but before that a multitude of decisions must be made, and some difficult corners must be rounded, of which the Library is probably the most troublesome. I am fed up with College matters, but I cannot think of anything else. Friesen reports McCracken is having all his teeth drawn and a false set made, to look handsome for his new job.

  In the evening with Brenda and Miranda to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Crest, much better done, to my mind, than when I saw it new in New York. Toby Robins excellent as Maggie—great variety and real tenderness and strength when she had a chance to use them. But the real performance was Bruno Gerussi as Brick—a fine study of the calm of despair. How the classical work helps in these modern pieces! The whole cast good and the nuance better marked and more telling than in New York. Do not like the play; it rubs me raw to no purpose, but it permits virtuoso acting, and got it.

  SUNDAY, APRIL 21: Brenda speaks of spiritual dryness, the trouble of middle age: if one succumbs to it I am sure one gives in to ailments and bitterness. We are both conscious of this danger and work against it.

  TUESDAY, APRIL 23: Now that a Liberal government is in, and the prime minister is Lester B. Pearson, a former assistant to Vincent Massey,16 we may yet get our augmentation of honour. I mentioned it to Lionel Massey in a phone conversation this evening and he says Esmond Butler is already going ahead with it, and had not VM told me? No, VM has not. Indeed I wonder if VM is not rather tired of me. Bill Broughall says the Masseys always turn on those who serve them. We shall see. I have
never conceived of a college head as “serving” anybody. Have finished VM’S book. It ends well. It is the middle part that is weak. But, in the cant of the day, it “projects Vincent Massey’s image” successfully. The shame is that his “image” is not the best part of him.

  Felt low, discouraged, and bleak all day, nerves jangling and unable to concentrate, but got a lot of routine stuff done. In the evening a misery of self-doubt and despair. Sleep badly.

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24: Still heavy in spirit: Friesen calls—caterers’ estimate still extreme and he is worried and so am I. In the evening I write a long unwise letter to Vincent Massey but shall not send it. Hear an early Mozart opera, Bastien et Bastienne.

  THURSDAY, APRIL 25: Weary but do a good day’s work on College affairs. Trouble about the caterers; they will not get their price down. Colin Friesen phoned me yesterday, discouraged, and flops all his troubles on me. So this morning I phone the caterers’ man, and tell him, firmly, that we can’t pay the $90,000-odd he asks. He whines. These people look like men of business, but they have a servant mentality. As I have long suspected, that wretched man Clements and Sedgwick visited the caterers and filled them full of nonsense about fine china and silver, and the class of service that would be required. What impertinence! Write Vincent Massey and mention this; in the end it comes back to his lack of realism and his passion for rather stuffy grandeur. I am very tired and worn down, and sick to death of all this lodging-house detail. Why do I worry and sleep badly because the Masseys are stupid with their money? Perhaps I have a servant mentality too—Old Rob, the good grey steward to Milord Massey. Christ have mercy!