In the evening work on my lecture on Timon17 and hear the Schubert Quintet. An admirable h.t.d. but cannot get to sleep and moither for, it seems, hours, worrying about the College.
FRIDAY, APRIL 26, TORONTO: Bill Broughall lunches with me and is worried about the Foundation: Raymond is being silly, so Vincent Massey wants not to have an annual meeting, oblivious of the fact that the law requires it. Also, VM draws $7,500 per annum as chairman and this is illegal, and Lionel counts on it when his turn comes. How can Bill break it to them? I suggest it be paid to VM through the College as an honorarium to the Visitor: this nails the Foundation to the College and makes it, in effect, the College’s endowment. Bill says, “A stroke of bloody genius!” and I think it is not too bad for a non-financial man like myself. Bill tells me that, when VM was governor general, Bill was summoned mysteriously to Ottawa for very important instructions: VM wanted a clause in his will that when he died the embalmers should not get him till a doctor had done all that could be done to ascertain that he was indeed dead! Of course Bill had to advise him that he could not tinker with VM’S will and that such promises should be exacted from his near and dear, and not his executors. Embarrassing and pitiable. We agree to pay for the Library partly out of running expenses and partly out of furnishings.
Bill has let me see the letter he wrote VM on August 1, 1962, about the Foundation’s ability to support the College. Significant figures: College expected to cost $1,750,000 for the building and $250,000 to furnish; $60,000 has been granted the College for working capital plus $100,000 common stock endowment fund, and $25,000 library fund. All this leaves the Foundation with about two millions, money which should yield it annually about $100,000. I do not want to be a schemer, but if the Visitor, i.e. VM, got his money through the College, it would be a good thing.
THURSDAY, MAY 2, TORONTO: I give the College Admissions Committee lunch at the University Club: A.R. Gordon, Tuzo Wilson, Bill Dobson, and Gordon Roper. Despite predictions that had reached me that Andy Gordon would be intransigent about the admission of anyone not registered in the Graduate School, he was not so, insisting only that they be not called Junior Fellows. He drives us to his office, cursing the man at the parking lot—“Hurry up, you old bugger!”—and students on the road—“Out of the way, you bastards!”—and we make up a final list quite quickly. But none of them can count, so although they say a few places are vacant, there are no resident places open, and only one non-resident, and this may prove a nuisance. I then show them over the College, and Andy, who has not seen it before, is deeply impressed. And indeed it is impressive, but the details! That idiot Ron tells us one thing about our house and then leaves orders for something else—so that today we found the painter staining all the woodwork in the kitchen (which is all woodwork) the darkest oak brown! Am happy at last to have chosen some men for the College; they are quite a star-spangled group. It means that the place today took a huge stride into life, and away from mere architecture and furnishing. We have a balanced group, arrived at quite naturally—mostly Canadians, but U.K., U.S., Nigerian, Indian—the lot, and happily a couple of French Canadians. I am greatly restored by this, and a cloud lifts. As I sat in my poky office at University College making up the list to send to Miss Whalon in Peterborough, I positively sang!
WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, TORONTO: Attended a Ph.D. viva this morning in a desperately overheated room painted green in the Graduate School building. How badly they need our Round Room. In the afternoon I interviewed Duncan Fishwick, a classics don from St. Michael’s College, who will superintend Hall for us and do a Latin grace for a small reduction in his rent. T.H.B. Symons dines with Brenda, Miranda, and me at the University Club to discuss 361 Park Street. A useful day and bed early.
THURSDAY, MAY 9, TORONTO: I go to the College alone and for two hours visit every room and clear my mind about it. Then to a Graduate School meeting, an eternity of muddle, 4 to 6:30. We dine at the flat and go to That Hamilton Woman at the Crest, Barbara Hamilton’s revue, supported by Tom Kneebone and Bill Walker. Several good numbers but somehow amateurish in total effect. Barbara wears some flashy, ill-made gowns. She has learned a lot, but is not confident of herself and so falls back on her stock jokes—that she is ugly and has a fat bum. Neither is true, and would not be funny if it were. She is a curious, lost creature, convinced she is a clown; she might be an actress but I fear it is too late now to find out.
FRIDAY, MAY 10, TORONTO: Moffat St. A. Woodside, university vice-president (academic), very kindly has me to lunch at the York Club to meet his department heads and talk about the College. I know most of them and it goes well. Fulton Anderson, professor of philosophy, says to me at parting, “You’re the only one in Canada that could do it—manage the university, manage the College, and manage Vincent Massey—and he’s a son-of-a-bitch to manage!” Kind, and from Anderson I appreciated it greatly.
SATURDAY, MAY 11: Help Brenda clear the attic, a tiresome job. In the evening the girls clear out the children’s books. I play Handel and Mendelssohn duets with Miranda. We are all working at clearing the accumulation of twelve years living in this capacious house.
SUNDAY, MAY 12: Seized with rheumatism while washing my face, severe all day. Rosamond returns to school in the afternoon. Make notes for my Comedy of Errors lecture and glad to be at it. Beautiful day, but oh! the twinges! lumbago, right arm affected. Have been working up to rheumatism for weeks: felt it coming: too much wine? too fat? fatigue? Do not want to become its steady prey.
TUESDAY, MAY 14, TORONTO: At 3 to the College and found Vincent Massey in a bad temper about the light in Hall. Eaton’s, suspecting it would not do, had one made and hung before going ahead with the other nine. It is really dreadful, made of raw silk and plastic of a deep amber colour which would kill all other colour in the room. VM vents his ill-humour on Lorimer, who has not provided any chairs. I have never seen VM so cruel or so angry. Of course Lorimer is an ass, but I was sorry for him; he is so stupid he never knows why he is being savaged, and like many stupid people he underestimates the intelligence of others. VM hastily designs a lamp himself, which at least is inoffensive, if dull. Hart condemns it as “feminine” because it is round! (Lionel not present: has had virus pneumonia. I visited him at his house this morning. He pretended he wanted to talk College but really was worrying about his situation at the ROM, which I think is what brought on his illness.)
Meeting of Master and Fellows in the board room at 4:10. Elect Sirluck a Senior Fellow. All goes well except that VM fusses because one man is identified as a French Canadian; if it got into the “wrong hands” it might give a “wrong impression.” So that page of the report must be done again. Our liquor licence draws nearer, but I shall not be at rest till we have it secured. I learned this morning that one of our Junior Fellows, Nikola Stanacev, has had a laboratory accident and may lose his sight. Must visit him in hospital—first of many such duties on the pastoral side of my work.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 15: A busy day at the Examiner and worked on notes for Comedy of Errors. T.H.B. Symons visits the house, eats six scones with jam, and is worried about its size but likes it greatly.
THURSDAY, MAY 16: To Dr. Dobson for a checkup. Painful, squeezes testicles and ravages anus, but gives me a very good report.
THURSDAY, MAY 23: On Wednesday to hospital and saw Stanacev and liked him—courageous, intelligent, and what a learned man should be under adversity: the College must do for him what it can. Home and immediately learned of an important meeting today—Vincent Massey is breathing fire, Ron is said to be ready to throw up the job, etc.—so reluctantly go back to Toronto again this morning, to be a make-peace if necessary. The Foundation present in the bodies of VM, Hart, Bill, and Miss Leavings; Lionel is in hospital with virus pneumonia, pleurisy, and blood clot, poor soul! After all the nonsense nothing untoward happened. VM’S lamp was made and hanging and looked like a wind-sock at an airfield; compromise—Ron is to try again, as he says his last, very bad, lamp was ill-made and he wanted opal plasti
c instead of the dreadful amber that appeared. My guess is that his orders were verbal, muddled, and muttered—and so useless. The lamp done with, we go over a list of other things to be done: the Masseys make Ron pay $280 for an error (which incurred work to this sum but saved over twice as much in materials!) and were in high glee, having apparently made some money. Copper on the veranda of our house and metalwork over the gate discussed, and though VM fusses I think we shall have them at last. VM is away to England for the summer, Bill Broughall says, to renew his assault upon the heart of the relict of Fruity Metcalfe (i.e., Lady Alexandra “Baba” Metcalfe, née Curzon), though I find this suggestion grotesque—but one never knows.
I get some time with Ron to discuss the lectern in Hall and we work out a possible notion. The College looks more exciting every day now, and the Lodgings very fine, if somewhat austere.
Lunch at L’Aiglon with Brenda; we work on wallpapers and buy a Pembroke table. Drive home by 6, Miranda has passed with a II: i18 and is fifth in English in the university. Very good, and we are all delighted.
SUNDAY, MAY 26: H.t.d. on rising. Bask in sun all day and read Jung’s memoirs, deeply interesting and evocative. Vincent Massey calls—augmentation approved by Pearson—victory at last!
We have enjoyed the last of ease at Park Street—henceforth packing and dismantling must have sway: excitement tinged with regret—a delightful old house.
FRIDAY, MAY 31, TORONTO: Spent the morning at the College with Ron and went over a host of details—including a fidget from Armstrong, bursar of Trinity, about the drainage of St. Hilda’s garden directly to the north of us—as suspicious and pennymite as his master the provost. Will our house be done by June 10? I doubt it; Eaton’s are as slow and stupid as they accuse Ron and the contractors of being. Brenda and I entertain Helen and Alison Ignatieff19 at lunch at the University Club and Alison talks wonderfully about the Masseys: Hart “the most inflexible man I’ve ever known; Uncle Vincent is afraid of him”; “the Masseys have sentiment in plenty but no compassion.” I ask about Bill Broughall’s repeated warning about the fate of those who serve the Masseys. “Not true and it won’t happen to you; remember, they need you and your reputation more than you need them; they were dreadful to Daddy but he won, because he was strong and they respect that.” She was amusing about “Baba” Metcalfe, who is very beautiful, and says Vincent Massey is considered still a very desirable parti among grand old ladies in London. I’m very fond of Alison, the first girl I ever took to a dance and my headmaster’s daughter. Alison tells this of her grandfather, Principal Grant of Queen’s: Sir John A. Macdonald dined with him one evening at the Principal’s Residence, and Dr. Grant settled down for what he expected would be an evening of interesting talk. But Sir John rose to go: “I must call on the coloured barber,” said he. “But Sir John,” said Grant, “can you mean that you would rather talk to the coloured barber than to me?” “Indeed I would,” said Sir John, “for you must realize that the coloured barber controls seven votes, whereas you—you’ll always vote at the dictates of your conscience!” We go on to Convocation, where J. Burgon Bickersteth is given his honorary LL.D.
SUNDAY, JUNE 2: Preparatory to moving I make another assault on the papers of John Pearson.20 I cannot keep them—remorselessly full diaries kept from age fifteen onward; a record of adolescent self-doubt, of unresolved love-affairs with girls, of homosexual affairs, of the dreary attendance on his dying parents, of the gay days on Capri, of the katzenjammer that led him to a monastery, of the flight thence (with my help), of a squalid life in Hollywood, of his experience in a home for alcoholics, of his journey to B.C. and trying to “go straight,” of adultery with Earle Birney’s wife, of flight east and the awful “group therapy” for alcoholics in Toronto; and all rendered somehow farcical by his childish inability to spell and his strange lack of humour. Wit, fantasy, yes. Humour, especially about anything associated with himself—absolutely none.
I have kept his thesis, what he had done of his novel “Bottle in the Smoke,” and his verses, and a few letters. The diaries it is kinder to destroy, and I have done so; they show him small, vindictive, and uncharacteristic. But I have been wrong about him: he was learned but not wise. He thought philosophy could resolve his troubles, but it was love he needed and love must be paid for with love, and he could not give in that coin. Poor John—you were the most learned of us, and I have had to destroy your literary legacy because it was worthless! N.B.: Interesting that when I was twenty and Pearson eighteen, he complained in his diary about what an unsatisfactory creature I was in an argument because I was always changing ground and did not seem to take anything seriously. Meaning himself, and the metaphysical whimwhams with which he delighted to torture himself and everybody else. But this frivolity in me has always given offence: not for nothing was I born when Mercury was powerfully in the ascendant.
MONDAY, JUNE 3, TORONTO: Brenda and I have a small dinner at the University Club for Burgon Bickersteth. Our party is Helen Ignatieff and Bill and Zoe Broughall. It goes well and as Helen says, we are an interesting group. J. Burgon Bickersteth, the warden of Hart House in its early years; herself, as the widow of Bickersteth’s successor, Nicholas Ignatieff, in the middle of its history; and Brenda and I the beginning of a new Massey venture. We take them to Hawthorn Gardens afterward and discover there is nothing to drink, but nobody cares.21
TUESDAY, JUNE 4, TORONTO: I meet Burgon Bickersteth at the College at 11 and show him over it for an hour; he is tirelessly curious and enthusiastic, and likes it very much. What energy these old men have! I greatly like him; a gentleman but not caught in the persona of a gentleman—very easy, interested and delightful. No wonder he did so well and meant so much to generations of men!
But at the College there is confusion, and architect, contractor, and Eaton’s are at odds. One problem: our stairs are cement, and Ron says they were never meant to be finished in wood. But we would like wood. However, our wishes are as nothing in the vendetta between the Foundation and the architect: the Masseys keep saying, “We must teach Ron a lesson,” and considerations of College and of us are nothing to that. Bill Broughall has intervened, and as always, I don’t know how much he tells me he has said to the Masseys is truth and how much Irish phantasia. But I am worn down and rather frightened, and for the first time wish I had never been involved in this mess. But the only path is forward. Bill Broughall warns me that Lionel has a notion that if he inherits Batterwood he will give it to the College right away, in trust, to ease his tax situation. Will resist this; it would sink us.
In the evening I lecture on The Comedy of Errors in the Edward Johnson Building to a good audience, over 300. Home by 12.
THURSDAY, JUNE 6: In the afternoon to Toronto and to the College, where confusion reigns, as Lionel Massey told me in a morning call. We rest at Hawthorn Gardens, dine at the club, and I lecture on Timon to a much bigger audience. To the Stewarts’, and home by 12:30.
SATURDAY, JUNE 8: Work all morning at the Examiner on sorting and throwing out. To the Curriers’ for a pleasant dinner and evening of talk. This is a strange suspended time. We are grateful to the old house but not regretful at leaving it. We have been happy here but hope to be happy in the new life and cannot indulge in luxurious, meaningless regret.
SATURDAY, JUNE 15: We move into the College. At last I sit in my study at the College to enter this diary, after a week of hard physical work and some spiritual strain—breaking with the Examiner and leaving the Peterborough house which we all liked so much, and in which we had known so much family unity and happiness. It took Tippet-Richardson two days to pack our traps—Friday and Saturday, the 7th and 8th. Sunday we hung in suspense in an echoing house; Monday they loaded the van and almost did not get everything in, as they had underestimated my 150-odd cases of books—we drove to Toronto and dined with Helen Ignatieff and the Goldschmidts and slept at Hawthorn Gardens. On Tuesday from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. they unloaded here, and at 7 p.m. I gave the third of my pre-Stratford lectures,
on Troilus and Cressida, to a crowded house. On Wednesday the men unpacked and chaos descended. Thursday and Friday we settled things about, dealt with new things that were delivered, dealt with tradesmen and painters and men with noisy floor-polishers, and people who wandered in off the street (including six army padres from Trinity) who “wanted to see the new building” and were huffy that they could not trudge through our house. Coped with the fire inspector, who insisted that we should have a hose on the wall on each floor. In the midst of this I tried to do something about our liquor licence, which it seems we may not get until late autumn, as Eric Phillips, the great “fixer,” has not fixed it, so I have asked the aid of Leslie Frost.
Claude Bissell sends me a draft of the ROM committee report, which appoints Dr. William Swinton as director for two years; this galls Lionel as Swinton is now set above him, and I think Lionel has been ill-used. Phillips and Bissell, he says, promised him the directorship: Bissell denies this. But Claude Bissell is a man in a great hurry and I do not think Phillips a man to depend on, so the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I can see Bissell’s predicament: obviously he is worried, for he called me on Friday morning for advice about what to do with Lionel, and I suggested that some face-saving device be found. Thus I discover myself in the middle of the mêlée. The plain fact is Lionel could not decently be appointed: he is not qualified, and it would be taken as a naked quid pro quo for this College. His trouble is at least half imaginary. He is well paid and has a job well suited to his capabilities: he could make himself indispensable. But he yearns to be top dog. He visited me this morning in my study and almost wept as he went over the story several times. So already this room has been a scene of passion and a measure of intrigue. This place already demands a degree of hospitality strange to me but I must learn to do the polite.
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