A Celtic Temperament: Robertson Davies as Diarist

by Robertson Davies, Jennifer Surridge (Editor), Ramsay Derry (Editor)

The selected diaries of Robertson Davies, one of Canada’s literary legends, and a celebrated playwright, novelist, journalist, and academic. Published for the first time, the diaries are a self-portrait of a brilliant and charismatic man and an insider’s view of a writer’s life and the Canadian cultural scene in the 1960s.

Robertson Davies (1913-1995) had a remarkable literary career that extended through the entire second half of the twentieth century. After university in Canada and at Oxford, Davies had begun working in British theatre, but with the outbreak of war in 1939 he returned to Canada where he swiftly established himself as an outstanding editor, columnist and literary critic, and as an increasingly prominent playwright and novelist.

Tall, ample, and bearded, with a richly developed theatrical voice, he had an imposing and distinctive appearance that made him seem older than he was. His rather magisterial presence hid well the mixture of ambition, anxieties, and insecurities, and often conflicting perceptions and emotions that all bubbled furiously within and that are recorded in the diaries. Chronicling his time as editor of the Peterborough Examiner, his role as the founding master of Massey College, and most of all his life as a writer, from the failure of a play in New York to the beginnings of an idea for a novel that would become Fifth Business, A Celtic Temperament is entertaining and illuminating and a major addition to Davies’s body of work.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published October 6, 2015

About the author

William Robertson Davies, CC, FRSC, FRSL (died in Orangeville, Ontario) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is sometimes said to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate college at the University of Toronto.

Novels:

The Salterton Trilogy
• Tempest-tost (1951)
• Leaven of Malice (1954)
• A Mixture of Frailties (1958)
The Deptford Trilogy
• Fifth Business (1970)
• The Manticore (1972)
• World of Wonders (1975)
The Cornish Trilogy
• The Rebel Angels (1981)
• What's Bred in the Bone (1985)
• The Lyre of Orpheus (1988)
The Toronto Trilogy (Davies' final, incomplete, trilogy)
• Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)
• The Cunning Man (1994)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertso...

Reviews

[Sarah Booth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was 4 years of Robertson Davies life and the diaries he kept. It covered the process of his play Love and Libel from Leaven of Malice. This covered the writing of the play through it’s quick run and closing on Broadway. It also covered the process and trammels of the creation of Massey College where he became master. Davies’ personal life was also covered and we get to know the man who is behind such brilliant writing. He’s been my favorite author for decades now and this was a wonderful insight into his thinking and private life. He writes of his real feelings about people and situations and his own worries, doubts and anxieties. It’s hard to believe the man doubted whether he was a good author. The book was collated very well and a great read for someone who likes Davies work.

[Al Maki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Normally I read a number of books at once, a chapter of each in rotation. I picked this up in a remainder bin the other day and read it straight through, very unusual for a diary. But Davies was one of Canada's most successful novelists from the 50s through the 90s and an excellent story teller and so his telling (to himself) of his personal experiences fascinated me. He used the sort of journal that divides a page into four sections, a week fitting onto two facing pages, seven slots for seven days and one for a summary. This allowed him only enough space for eight lines of hand written script a day and I'm convinced that restriction contributed to his writing a tight and lively account of each day. He maintained more detailed, specific diaries of his interests and these are interwoven with the daily entries.
Davies came from a wealthy Ontario family and captures the life and attitudes of the Canadian ruling class of the time with great precision. He was also a deeply introspective man with an interest in Jung's theories and the diaries show his thinking about psychology evolving out of his own experiences. The diaries show him as a dissatisfied, ambitious, self-doubting man.
History was against him. Born in 1913, just as the modernist era was being born, and influenced by the writing of Aldous Huxley, he lived into another time whose values are very different. For example, in 1963 he became the first Master of Massey College of the University of Toronto, which was an all male institution founded just at the time the women's movement was rising again. It's typical of Davies that when the college was picketed by protestors he invited them in to have a chat to find out their specific concerns. He spent much of his adult life trying to instill values like Christianity, erudition and civility, that were disappearing from his society.
For people interested in twentieth century Canadian history or fans of Davies's novels, it's a good read.

[Lory Hess · Rating 3 out of 5]

See my full review at The Emerald City Book Review. Here’s the latest posthumous publication from one of my all time favorite novelists and essayists, the Canadian literary magus Robertson Davies. Davies was a voluminous diarist who kept multiple journals of his private and working life, and to publish them all would be a massive task (an online version is in the works). In this volume the editors have selected and interleaved about half of his output for the years 1959 to 1963. This was an important period of his life that included both a major failure — his play “Love and Libel” flopped in New York — and a significant new step — his appointment as Master of the new Massey College of the University of Toronto, and his involvement in its founding and construction. As opposed to the retrospective view of a memoirist or autobiographer, the diarist doesn’t know what is coming next in his story, and this gives it an immediacy that is very engaging. Though I was personally more interested in the theater portions of the diary than in the details of college funding and furnishing, I still read it from cover to cover with great appreciation for this glimpse into the life of one of the most intellectually stimulating writers I know.

[Michael Bedford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an enlightening read for anyone who likes Davies's novels, people interested in Canadian literature, and people interested in Canadian history. It gives great insight into Davies's surprising lack of confidence about his own writing talents and his worries over where and how he fits into the world of letters.

One interesting thing about the end of the entries is that they cover the assassination of JFK and the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby. Very interesting to get a historical Canadian perspective on the events, and I also learned that Aldous Huxley died around the same time. This was a great blow to Davies who loved Huxley's work.

[Lisa Tarnarutckaia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book. It was certainly very educational when it comes to Canada in the 1950s and '60s, some prominent Canadian families, and the founding of Massey College. At the same time, it confirmed my gut feeling: while I do admire Robertson Davies as a writer, I wouldn’t want to meet him in person. There’s too much of the upper-class attitude—dismissiveness, preoccupation with fine dining, expensive items, silverware, and so on. I was also surprised by how little he seemed to read for an author (I only noticed references to Jung, Huxley, and Evelyn Waugh). That said, I appreciated his self-reflection, and his family life does come across as exemplary.

[Adrian]

Diary of Robertson Davies from 1959-1963. Details his work on play Love and Libel and the two year struggle in getting Massey College off the ground. Wrangling with obstreporous Masseys over every jot and tittle of the college becomes tiresome. Davies bridles continually against Canadian provincialism but is still ambitious to reach the top. Every day events intrude only occasionally in here. Attitude towards women and Jews reflect the times. He is an ivory tower snob but eccentrically notes how often he and wife Brenda make love with the cryptic notation 'h.t.d'. Did neither editor know what this stood for?