COMEDY LOVES MISERY
Diaries of Robertson Davies impish, irascible — like the man
On Dec. 31, 1961, Robertson Davies gave his diary an update on his sex life:
“We are both clearly middle-aged and our sexual life as not as active as it was — 74 times in 1961 — but I think we take a deeper pleasure in it than ever,” he wrote.
Such candour is endearing because it illustrates one rewarding aspect of A Celtic Temperament, the new volume tapping into the personal journals of a remarkable Canadian. The devoted family man is always present. His wife, Brenda, was his essential anchor — and Davies imposes few limitations on himself in explaining why.
Edited by Davies’ daughter Jennifer Surridge and publishing veteran Ramsay Derry, this most welcome volume reveals the great man in moments of both euphoria and despair between the years 1959 and 1963, when he was in early middle age and emerging as Canada’s preeminent man of letters. It also focuses on two particularly stressful periods of his life.
The first involved the disastrous attempt to bring Love and Libel, the stage version of his critically acclaimed novel Leaven of Malice to Broadway.
The second deals with the creation of the University of Toronto’s Massey College, which sought to fulfil former governor general Vincent Massey’s dream of “a community of scholars.” Davies, who was to become its first master, found himself trapped in the crossfire between the blue-blood Massey family and anyone deemed an obstacle to its vision.
The entries on these long-ago events have a liveliness and immediacy — and yes, an impishness, for Davies often saw life as a comedy. And they frequently startle, even shock.
Davies could seem a forbidding figure. That magnificent beard — which, we learn from his diaries, he faithfully dyed — seemed to set him apart. So did his lofty demeanour, extraordinary erudition and magpie knowledge of the more curious byways of life and literature.
Yet, he emerges here as refreshingly down to earth — for example in his grumbling about what passed for catering 53 years ago in Toronto’s most eminent hotel: “The usual Royal York bad dinner: tinned fruit salad, tinned consomme, chicken and veg, a common dollop of ice cream mounted in cherry jam, coffee in big thick cups.”
Indeed, the waspish tone of some entries isn’t that far removed from the diaries of Samuel Marchbanks, the fictional alter ego Davies created to enliven the pages of The Peterborough Examiner during his years as publisher and editor of that Ontario daily newspaper, in the 1940s and early ’50s. There’s a Marchbanks crankiness, for example, in his dismissal of Esmond Butler, who was to serve as secretary to six Canadian governors general, as “a nincompoop.”
And what’s the verdict on Massey, that most sacred of sacred cows? Davies happily records a fellow academic’s observation that the country’s first Canadian-born governor general was “a son of a bitch to manage.”
His own judgments on Massey reveal genuine affection — but also growing apprehension and exasperation as Massey College’s benefactor keeps throwing monkey wrenches into its birth process.
Massey was always conscious of being a member of the elite, so perhaps it’s not so surprising that he fussed about the quality of the college silverware, was determined to make it a male preserve and initially objected to inviting the lowly heads of U of T’s Veterinary College and household science department to the laying of his cherished college’s cornerstone.
Meanwhile, fearing fiscal catastrophe for the college, Davies was despairing over the Massey family’s ostrichlike escape from definite discussions of money, their neurotic attitude toward it, their belief that gentlemen don’t talk of such things.”
There is also the aging Massey’s interest in pornography and his enthusiasm for Frank Harris’s notorious My Life and Loves, a book Davies clearly considers inferior to John Cleland’s equally notorious Fanny Hill. Davies really twists the blade here. “If VM objects to women near his College, perhaps it is to be expected that he should be taken in by a book by a ruffian who uses women as things, and not fellow creatures, which I find detestable.”
But Davies was also painfully self-critical, and his own demons came to the fore as he struggled to advance his credentials as a major dramatist.
For him, the big test would come with the Broadway-bound Love and Libel, directed by Tyrone Guthrie, his lifelong friend and mentor and also founding artistic director of the Stratford Festival. The endless rewritings and revisions, the juggling of scenes, the crises sparked by egotistical actors, a frantic awareness of time running out — all these elements evoke the nightmare of mounting a new play under the intimidating auspices of New York’s Theatre Guild.
But even here, Davies can extract grotesque comedy from such misery — especially during his time at the Guthrie estate in Ireland working on the play under Guthrie’s direct supervision while also enduring the slovenly household habits of Guthrie and his wife.
“They are charmers but loonies,” Davies tells his diary.
“The methods of washing up appal me: Cigarette stubs and butter in the water, and the only dishes that are scraped are those the dog is given to lick. There is a bucket for the hens under the sink and so far as I can discern, the hens live on coffee grounds, tea leaves, and empty cigarette boxes.”
Perhaps Davies is taking a leaf from the irresistible Chips Channon, one of the 20th century’s great diarists, who famously observed: “What is more dull than a discreet diary? One might just as well have a discreet soul.”
And Davies does not practise discretion — even about himself. The fact that he left Queen’s University without a bachelor’s degree weighs on him.
He complains of feeling physically ill when he attempts to write something serious and is offended by his moments of depression. As for the stature thrust on him of being Canada’s “leading man of letters,” he has this to say on August 17, 1962:
“Am I so? The distinction is roughly that of the best rose-grower at the North Pole or the best architect of snow sculpture in hell. Meanwhile I have an impending strike at the Examiner to keep me from growing dull.”