A Celtic Temperament: Robertson Davies as Diarist Page 3
TUESDAY, MAY 5: To Toronto, then fly to New York and to the Dorset Hotel. To supper with Brenda’s friend from our Old Vic days, Jackie Davie, and meet Dr. and Mrs. Kingsbury, David King-Wood, two Jews and whatnot, and a jackass playwright named Herschel Williams who thinks the Times is dominated by Reds. A very jolly evening and fierce h.t.d.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, NEW YORK: Very good lesson with Lulie Westfeldt, who says I have made good progress. In the afternoon sleep, then h.t.d., then to film Room at the Top, excellent. Dinner at a downtown Longchamps and to Mark Twain Tonight with Hal Holbrook, who was excellent and held the audience spellbound. I was delighted with it.
THURSDAY, MAY 7, NEW YORK: Good lesson and marked changes in my lower back. Lunch with Willis Wing24 at L’Argenteuil, then shop for shirts and books. In the evening to dine at David King-Wood’s flat in Greenwich Village with Jackie Davie.
FRIDAY, MAY 8, NEW YORK: Brenda has a cold. A good lesson with Lulie, then to Dr. Esther Harding and get very good advice about a Jungian analysis. I am impressed by her. In the afternoon to the Museum of Modern Art to see Marlene Dietrich in von Sternberg’s 1935 The Devil Is a Woman, amusingly dated. Brenda rests. In the evening to Triple Play, three one-acters by Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy: not quite a good evening. I was greatly pleased by Dr. Harding.
SATURDAY, MAY 9, NEW YORK: Very good lesson with Lulie and study “monkeying,” then lunch with her at her club. In the afternoon to J.B. by Archibald MacLeish, which we liked very well in spite of having heard some bad comment. It is close to tragedy. Ideas begin to assert themselves for the Leaven of Malice play and I was vexed that some of these appeared in J.B.
SUNDAY, MAY 10, NEW YORK: Breakfast in bed, then excellent h.t.d., the effect of “monkeying.” To the Metropolitan Museum and lunch there. In the evening to the musical Once upon a Mattress, which is very crude and uninventive but pleases a boob audience.
MONDAY, MAY 11, NEW YORK: To Lulie Westfeldt, then I call on Morton Levy and Don Herbert. Business arrangements with Tony Guthrie still vague. I take Alfred Knopf to lunch at the Stork Club and he complains cheerily of many things. Brenda to Hugh MacCraig the astrologer. In the evening, dinner at Jackie Davie’s, very pleasant and we have a thoroughly good time.
TUESDAY, MAY 12, NEW YORK: Another good lesson, though changes consequent on Alexander Technique make me very tired. We shop for gifts for the girls. After lunch h.t.d., very good, then to the film Doctor’s Dilemma directed by Anthony Asquith, excellent. We dine at Stockholm, noisy, then to Raisin in the Sun for which we were supposed to have seats, but a muddle, and we end up at Sunrise at Campobello by Dore Schary, a mechanical piece.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 13: To Lulie Westfeldt for an excellent final lesson: we have made good progress. Lunch at the St. Moritz, then pack and away in some haste; roughish flight to Toronto; to the University Club and Margaret joins us for dinner. Toronto seems provincial and Victorian after New York. Drive home in rain, greet Rosamond, and in bed by 12.
SUNDAY, MAY 17: We have been bidden to dine with the Queen in Ottawa on July 1, representing Letters, a great honour and doubtless productive of some jealousy. Usual hubbub for women about what to wear.
FRIDAY, MAY 22: Finish rereading Leaven of Malice and my mind is a yeast of schemes to make a play of it. In the evening read some Jung: am I wise to tinker with this stuff, without going into it wholeheartedly? Yet it seems to be a kind of wisdom.
SATURDAY, MAY 23: Brenda to Toronto; I find Colin McDougall’s Execution has the Governor General’s Award, as I expected. In the evening, work on Leaven of Malice play and think I am on a good scent, more eager than I have been about a piece of writing in a long time.
SUNDAY, MAY 24: Am in high spirits about Leaven of Malice and think I have found a way to make a play of it: a great contrast to my former gloom. My great task will be to keep Tony Guthrie from destroying my ideas without replacing them with ideas which I think better.
SUNDAY, MAY 31: Lay late; to Bryn. Mosquitoes bad. We walked all over the property. Development is rapid out there but we do not want to sell though buyers nibble. We picnic, row boat.
TUESDAY, JUNE 2: Letter from Tony reassuring about terms and method of collaboration. In the evening, drive to Omemee in the new Jaguar, which is far the nicest car we have ever had and a relief from that vulgar beast of a Chrysler Imperial. Read all of Act 1 to Brenda, who makes some suggestions and thinks it good.
THURSDAY, JUNE 18: Letter from Tony about the Leaven of Malice contract. Very vague; I don’t care but the lawyers do. Work hard and do a Star column on style. In the evening read Jung’s Answer to Job. Brenda is undergoing some psychological changes and is nervous but eventually the outcome will be good, I am sure.
SUNDAY, JUNE 28: Tea at Bryn on hill, very beautiful, then home and fuss and pack. Am now, to all intents, on holiday, and very glad of it; have truly earned it. I am conscious of changes due to Jungian reading: should I go to a Jungian analyst? Am I not the kind who should go it alone?
MONDAY, JUNE 29: Drive to Stratford. Jenny drives much of the way. Very hot. Stratford governors’ party a brawl, as always; As You Like It a delight but too much complicated by business extraneous to the play. Irene Worth25 lovely as Rosalind, but a certain lack of unity in the production.
TUESDAY, JUNE 30, STRATFORD: Long committee meeting. Wilf Gregory’s excellent luncheon; art show; cocktails at Dave Rae’s. Othello great: Douglas Campbell, Douglas Rain, Frances Hyland, and Kate Reid all first-rate. Have never responded to a tragedy so: shaken and fearful; and this is a production sans stars and with Canadian direction!26 To Toronto through the night.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1: We fly to Ottawa at 12:00. Presentation of Colours at 4; tea with WRD, who is here as a senator. Government House at 7:45 for dinner with Her Majesty and the Prince: gathering of thirty-five Canadians from all walks of life. Had chats with Her Majesty about Stratford and Canadian literature and His Royal Highness about same. A wonderful affair very well done.
THURSDAY, JULY 2: Fly to Toronto at 9:15, then motor to Stratford. An awful dinner at the Country Club, then to the theatre. Broadcast on CBC TV on the Queen’s arrival.27 The director says brilliant but I was very scared. A good performance of As You Like It and Her Majesty and His Royal Highness remember Brenda and me, very kind. Parties at Raes’ and Andersons’, fireworks, fine h.t.d.
On July 6, Rob, Brenda, Jennifer, and Rosamond (Miranda was at a music camp) drove from Peterborough to New York City to put Rob on a plane for his working holiday with Tyrone Guthrie at Guthrie’s house, Annagh-ma-Kerrig, in Northern Ireland, where he stayed until July 31. Davies began his travel diary and also wrote frequent letters home to Brenda, using a private nickname, Pink.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, NEW YORK: In the afternoon we go to the Swedish film which is so much talked of, Wild Strawberries, directed by Ingmar Bergman. Very good indeed and a use of symbolism which was truly illuminating and not merely portentous. We have dinner at L’Argenteuil, very good, and an excellent Puligny Montrachet, then Brenda and the girls saw me away at the airline terminal: I thought, as I looked at them from the ’bus window, what a distinguished group they were in that blurred milieu. Hated leaving. On arrival at Idlewild, to ’plane at once and we flew promptly at 11. My seat-companion was a deaf Americo-Irish dizzard who left the Old Sod in 1900, at fifteen, and was making his first return. Stupid and a roarer, and unable to hold his tongue. As I was reading Little Dorrit he favoured me with his literary history—“Used to read all kinds—love stories and Westerns and them. Deepest book I ever read was called She by a fella named Haggard. Ever read it? Aw, that’s deep stuff.” The air thing by my seat was broken, and he insisted on smoking his pipe—“You’ll never notice: I use that mild tobacca, rum and maple sugar cured.” I slept quite well. Glad to see Prestwick. Then a long ’bus ride to Glasgow, and another to Renfrew, then a long wait, and very weary. But at last I take a small ’plane for Belfast, and Tony meets me in a tiny Morris, and we drive about sixty miles to Newbliss and thence to
Annagh-ma-Kerrig, Tony and Judy’s house. And to bed in a large room which is like Bertram Rota’s rare-books shop in London, for it is book-lined with first editions (usually the only ones) of poets of the ’twenties.
FRIDAY, JULY 10, LETTER TO BRENDA
Dearest Pink and Darlings Jenny and Rosamond,
Here I am at the end of my first day at Annagh-ma-Kerrig, in a comfortable and big bedroom, rather like a library, really, for it has three walls all of books, a big, old bed with a terrible mattress and seven wool blankets and an ancient eiderdown: also a hot bottle. A dressing-room with a candle in it, but the bedroom has the electricity—a good Anglepoise lamp. A large white chummy which I am bidden to use, but won’t: would rather go down a long dark passage to the W.C. A queer old house, this, somewhat ruinous and full of junk—part of the antlers of an Irish elk, two pianos in bad tune, endless chairs not quite safe. Big but rambling and inconvenient. A large lake in the park, icy cold, where Tony and Judy make themselves swim. A bouncy, yappy wee dog, and a marmalade cat. Plenty to eat, so far, but threats of having to eat fish from the lake. The fruit which isn’t good enough to sell is kept for the house, and so wooden peaches turn up, and greenish raspberries. This sounds awful but is really very pleasant.
This morning Tony and I began work on the play. Read it all and he likes it very well but keeps saying “Wouldn’t it make a good film.” He has several good suggestions. That took all morning. Right after dinner I was put to work to pack raspberries, wild ones for the bottom of the baskets and tame ones on top. They fetch 1 shilling, 3 pence a pound, apparently. Then tea and right to work proof-reading Tony’s book A Life in the Theatre. They seem to slave, and then stop and play patience. Judy’s cough is, if anything, worse: I tremble for her. Tony looks a good deal older and has an arthritic elbow which gives him a good deal of pain. Not surprised, for it is terribly damp here. The countryside is pretty but rolling: no mountains. They are expecting a horde of guests and one came today—Tony’s sister’s adopted son, Joe Hone, who is very handsome in the Irish way—big eyes, high colour, and curly hair.
No doubt I shall settle down more as time goes on but at present I am restless. When we really get to work on the play I expect I shall feel better but just at present I find the atmosphere queer and disturbing. Hard to say why, for Tony and Judy are most hospitable, but the climate is odd—lovely sun today and roasting hot during the berry-picking—but damp and clammy at night, and though it is now dark it was light outside till 10:30. Tony says the climate is “very sluggish.” But I am an awful old fusser and it isn’t clean: it is disloyal to write this under my host’s roof but it fidges me. When I was in the w.c. today Tony peed in the face-basin! This sort of thing gives me the creeps, and I rather dread to wash. Call me North American if you will, but I don’t like it.
Must climb under the seven blankets now. My love to you all and I wish you were here or I was there.
(Very special love to you, Pinkie dearest.)
Rob
SATURDAY, JULY 11: Worked on the play in the morning. Things begin to move, as Tony is getting notions for physical production and these spark off my mind for scenes and dialogue. This is what I had hoped for, and when he is working in this way he is very inspiring and it is all practical, for he knows to perfection what can be done and how. In the afternoon played the piano, they have fascinating heaps of old music, and thought about the play. Tony shows me family pictures, his great-grandfather Tyrone Power28 the actor, and great-grandfather Guthrie, the Scots divine—Tony looks woundily like the latter.
SUNDAY, JULY 12, LETTER TO BRENDA
Dearest Pink and Cherished Poppets Jenny and Rosamond:
The people who said it could be cold and damp in Ireland were right: yesterday was a glorious day of sun and was quite bearable even when night had fallen, but it has rained all day today and tonight it is as cold as Greenland, and damp as a bog. I sit with a blanket around me, writing this by the light of the candles. Work on the play has begun and promises well: Tony has made some good suggestions and is working out a plan of production—how it will look and how we will get people on and off the stage, and all that—which clarifies my ideas a good deal. He is much more extravagant than I and wants a good deal in the way of scenery and stuff, but I think his notions are imaginative and not merely representational. Anyhow, we are off to a start and I feel much better. How long it will take I can’t say, but certainly no longer than the time I have allowed: so the chances are strong that I will come home with a finished script.
We work a good deal on the proofs for Tony’s book: he reads them and laughs at his own jokes, I read them and make changes in style, and Joe Hone reads them for spelling and punctuation. I argue with Tony about the insulting stuff, but he wants it all kept. Now and then we take a rest and Tony sings in a very loud, trembling voice, and I play for him. Judy messes happily in the garden and boasts about the money she makes selling fruit. Tony is very fierce with her about the amount she smokes.
This evening at 6 p.m. a Mr. and Mrs. Rea (pronounced Ray) and a Mr. Zeisler from New York arrived: the Guthries had forgotten they were coming and were unflatteringly astonished to see them. They are theatricals of some sort and 5×2s, I expect, from sundry hooky beezers and florid manners. They brought some good wine, which Judy made the maids put under the hot tap!
I miss you all and it is like a little chat to write, even when I haven’t much news. Now that things begin to move with the play I feel less lost but I am a family sort of creature. Good-night, my dears, and huge hugs and kisses to all (and especially to you, my darling Pinkie)
Rob
SUNDAY, JULY 12: Strange in this Irish country house to hear New York theatre gossip at breakfast, and the slick locutions of New York lingo—“This I believe …,” “The Bolshoi was fabulous technically, but lousy choreography-wise.” After breakfast I take some photographs and retire to my room to post this diary. In the afternoon we all go for a walk around the lake; it pours with rain. Peter Zeisler has no raincoat and is drenched. The Reas, like me, have coats and are drenched. The Guthries have no coats and pay no heed to the rain. They wade through brooks in their tennis shoes and squelch through mud ankle-deep without seeming to notice. We pant up a hill on the chance of a glimpse of Slieve Gullion, the highest point in County Armagh. We fall into quite deep ditches which are full of water. But no one is out of temper: one cannot be vexed with the Guthries, though one has sometimes a sense of being over-ridden.
In the morning Tony is closeted with Rea and Zeisler,29 who want to found a company to do classics and plays of worth in the U.S.A.—possibly in Cleveland. Their problems are familiar: they want to be out of New York, but regard all else as “the sticks” and cannot conceive of any good actors thinking otherwise. Idealists, crippled by cynicism.
In the evening, at Tony’s suggestion, I read the first two acts of my Casanova play, General Confession, to them all: I think I read well and Tony liked it greatly, though he suggests some small cuts, and thinks Laurence Olivier the best cast for Casanova—as who would not? Tony is doing Hamlet with Christopher Plummer in London next winter, and there is general discussion about casting.
MONDAY, JULY 13: In the morning we all go to Monaghan to shop: it is a glum, stony, rebarbative town, ugly as masonry can be made. I am with Joe, a nice young man, proud to be Irish and anti–Free State. We meet for a drink at a pub in the best room over a snug—a hideous chamber, scabby-walled and furnished in damp, discouraged green velvet, with three broken radios and a piano deranged in its wits—anyhow it spoke in idiot tones. A town of poorly dressed, pinched-faced children: I saw one boy’s toes peeping from under the upper of his boots. Saw two privileged insane, rather too many for the population, and a man with a horribly swollen face done up in a dirty rag—a toothache or a gathered ear. Betty Rea gave great scandal in the snug where, it appears, decent women do not go.
After lunch I did Tony’s morocco scrap book with saddle soap, and tried to work on my play but was sca
nt of ideas. The great event of the day was the return of Miss Bunty Worby, the late Mrs. Guthrie’s nurse-companion, and her great friend Miss Davis: these two elderlies chatter and make more noise than schoolgirls. We men retired to Tony’s room and read proofs for him: Joe is the great expert on punctuation, I on usage and style, Peter and Oliver forget themselves and read for pleasure, and laugh a lot. Under this regime the book undergoes some salutary changes and is going to be good, I think. Tonight I read Act 3 of my Casanova play and astonished them, I think. Tony thinks it wants minor cutting but is on the whole very good. Enjoyable reading it.
TUESDAY, JULY 14: This morning went over the last, and by far the best, chapter of Tony’s book and was able to make a suggestion or two which he found useful, particularly the cutting of a final paragraph which was emptily rhetorical. Before tea walked to the post with Scamp, Bunty’s dog: I think I see why lonely people like dogs, for they bounce about and are company. After tea to visit Lady Rossmore and her son, called by Tony “my young lord.” They live in the dower house, Camlagh, for their hideous nineteenth-century castle is ruinous with dry rot. They have a fine library for which they care little, but are vaguely conscious that they could sell it for something: a wonderful collection of first quartos of John Dryden and Thomas Otway and their congeners, Sir Martin Mar-All, etc.; the first printed Adam Bede. Lady Rossmore has mislaid a Shakespeare Fourth Folio and a first edition of Pride and Prejudice. Extraordinary people! Nice, but unconscious.