Into the Archives: The First Catch of the Year

LETTERS BETWEEN FATHER AND DAUGHTER: Robertson Davies & Miranda Davies Paperback – January 27, 2025

by Miranda Davies (Author, Editor)

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Robertson Davies had a remarkable literary career as one of Canada’s most distinguished novelists. This book shares a collection of fascinating letters written between Davies and his eldest daughter Miranda over a long period (1950-1994). These letters offer insights into Davies' private life, revealing his deep appreciation of theatre, his interest in Jungian psychology and his bond with Miranda. Davies and Miranda shared an interest in theatre, literature, music, psychology, and people. Throughout the book, this interest matures and evolves as father and daughter become closer through shared adulthood. Davies was a pre-eminent literary voice in Canada for more than half a century, while posthumous publications include plays and essays as well as two volumes of his letters and one of his diaries. This volume is a contribution to his wide-ranging literary legacy.

Miranda Davies took an honours degree in English at the University of Toronto and moved to London where she studied and performed as a singer. She then trained as a child analyst at the Society of Analytical Psychology, worked as a child psychotherapist in the National Health Service, taught and gave papers in the U.K. and abroad and served as Co-consultant to the Child Analytic Training from 1999 to 2006. She has co-edited two books and written a number of clinical papers published in professional journals. She is now retired in Gloucestershire. – Amazon. 

The first bit of Robertson Davies material I've got since 2021 (I think), and at 580 pages and 5x1.45x8 inches, it's quite a fat little brick. I ordered it less than a week ago, part of the post-Christmas flush, and it arrived today about 12:30 PM.  I'm in that strange little stretch of time between holiday hours and when 'regular time' winds up again and the daily schedule reasserts itself. Letters should help tame that floating feeling a bit.

Wish Fulfillment: Five Years of the Wish List (Cabell, Davies, White)

I suppose if there are any connections between these three authors all I can think of are three personal one. I think of them all in connection with what might be called Academic or Humane Letters, their quirky intellects, and they all remind me of San Marcos, probably because that's where I was most deeply introduced to them.

Robertson Davies Sez

What am I to say about my family--the matrix from which everything I am and have written arises...whatever I may have undergone or felt, I am not going to present them as minor characters in a drama of which I am the leading player;  they too had their troubles and dead or alive they have their rights.  Nothing they did was done in malice, but in the hurly-burly of daily living,  in which one stumbles from hour to hour under burdens that are nobody else's affair.

--Robertson Davies

"What will make him an old man is a frightened clinging to the values of the first half of his life. We have all seen these juvenile dotards whose boast is that they are just as young as their sons or their grandsons; they do not realize what a pitiful boast that is. They prate about their sympathy with youth, but they mean only the superficialities and ephemera of youth. Many of the sad smashups in marriages that we see among middle-aged people have their origin in this attempt to dodge an inescapable fact. The values that are proper and all-absorbing during the first half of life will not sustain a man during the second half. If he has the courage and wisdom to advance courageously into the new realm of values and emotions he will age physically, of course, but his intellectual and spiritual growth will continue, and will give satisfaction to himself and to all those associated with him. And such courage and wisdom are by no means rare; they may show themselves among many people who have never thought along those lines at all but who have a knack for living life wisely; and they also are to be found among those who regard self-awareness as one of the primary duties of a good life. Paradoxically, such people are on better terms with youth than the shrivelled Peter Pans who dare not be their age." --Robertson Davies.

“I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.”

― Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

 

“If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.”

― Robertson Davies, Fifth Business

I could have told them a thing or two about that, but my time for instructing people is over. Let 'em wallow in whatever nonsense pleases 'em, say I.  --Robertson Davies,  World of Wonder

 

“Ah, critics! How unforgiving they are toward anything that isn't, in some special way, known only to them, absolutely first-rate. Do they ever guess, I wonder, how much energy and guts and sheer talent it takes to be second-rate?”

― Robertson Davies, Murther and Walking Spirits

 

Robertson Davies: The Well-Tempered Critic

After having first received by mistake (the vendor's mistake, not mine) the similarly titled "The Well-Tempered Critic" by Canadian critic Northrop Frye (published in 1963, and thus my exact contemporary), today I finally got "The Well-Tempered Critic: One Man's View of Theatre and Letters in Canada", written by Robertson Davies (or Robertson Gravies, as my nephew hilariously refers to him) and edited by Judith Skelton Grant, who later went on to write his monumental biography. How's that a sentence for you?

This book came out in 1981 (and so the year I first heard about Davies, although I paid little attention to his work until years later); this is it's 40th anniversary. It is an ex-library book from California. It's also the last Davies' book I'm likely to buy unless another volume of his diaries comes out. There are more obscure, specialist books of his, but they are rare and priced out of my range. Even the 1964 reprint of his first book, "Shakespeare's Boy Actors" (1st edition 1939) is going for $1331.30.

I am only a few pages into it and I have already found this, from a 1949 entry of Davies writing in his persona of the crusty curmudgeon, Samuel Marchbanks:

"Saw The Glass Menagerie this evening, very well acted, but it did not move me to tears or laughter because, I think, I am temperamentally unsympathetic to such pieces. The plot was about a group of people who were in terrible fixes of one sort or another, with no hope of getting themselves straightened out. Now when I encounter such situations in real life my instinct is to run, for I know that if I remain among such people I shall not be able to help them, and they will only succeed in involving me in their troubles, and dragging me down to their own hopeless level. One of the bitterest realizations which life offers us is the knowledge that there are some people who are doomed, either through ill luck or their own unsatifactory character, to be always in trouble; it is necessary to be kind to such people, of course, but it is dangerous to try to straighten them out, for their genius for misfortune is far greater than my genius for assistance. When I see them on the stage I do not have to take a humane attitude towards them, and I reflect that it would have been far better if they had all committed suicide before the curtain went up."

Birthday Books: Robertson Davies and Friends

There is an interesting overlap with "America At Last" and this book; they are both diaries, with White's book covering 1963 and Davies spanning 1959 to 1963. I love Davies somewhat crusty persona, and it comes out in spades in his more personal writing, such as the volumes of his letters already published. This appears to be what is planned as the first of a series. I haven't read it yet, but looking at its dense, rich contents (like a a Christmas fruitcake) seems to promise a prolonged feast, not to be polished off in haste, but savored over time. For more details on the book, search elsewhere in this blog.

Davies always enjoyed the works of Stephen Leacock and looked upon him as his literary forebear as a Canadian humorist. In a time when Leacock was fading from view, Davies was happy to bring him out of storage, dust him off, and display his antique beauties to the modern world of the time. Will I enjoy it myself? Only time will tell. But when a friend introduces me to another friend, I'll always give him a chance. I at least have Davies introductory essay.

I have been wanting to read this book since reading about it in Davies' "The Lyre of Orpheus", where one of the points of view is that of "E. T. A. Hoffmann in the Underworld" watching the main characters try to bring his unfinished opera into stageable form. Tomcat Murr is mentioned often as a sort shadow-side of Hoffmann's character.

Hoffmann was something of a cat-fancier, and he actually had a pet he called Tomcat Murr that he based the book on, so much so that when it died Hoffmann announced the death of the fictional feline and ended the work. 

"Tomcat Murr is a loveable, self-taught animal who has written his own autobiography. But a printer's error causes his story to be accidentally mixed and spliced with a book about the composer Johannes Kreisler. As the two versions break off and alternate at dramatic moments, two wildly different characters emerge from the confusion - Murr, the confident scholar, lover, carouser and brawler, and the moody, hypochondriac genius Kreisler. In his exuberant and bizarre novel, Hoffmann brilliantly evokes the fantastic, the ridiculous and the sublime within the humdrum bustle of daily life, making The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr (1820-22) one of the funniest and strangest novels of the nineteenth century." - Amazon.

Robertson Davies

 

The Deptford Trilogy: Fifth Business, The Manticore, World of Wonders, by Robertson Davies.

“I first encountered the work of Robertson Davies quite by accident. My mother bought me The Deptford Trilogy on one of her garage sales expeditions; it looked rather fantastic, and was a trilogy, and as far as she knew it could be my cup of tea. On my first glance it seemed far from it: novels set in Canada, in "modern" times, in a realistic milieu. But to humor her I gave it a chance, dipping in, reading here and there, getting interested, then hooked, and eventually eagerly seeking out anything Davies had written. It turned out to be one of the best gifts my mother ever gave me.” – Power of Babel. A King Penguin book.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Novels. Trilogy. Softcover.

Robertson Davies: Man of Myth, by Judith Skelton Grant.

Having gotten into the Deptford Trilogy, I was intrigued by Davies, and after I had found this biography at Half-Price and read it, I was even more so. It made me take a further chance on his other works. “Robertson Davies (1908-1995) was born in Canada, son of a senator and newspaperman. Both his parents were avid readers. He got most of his education in Canada and finished up his college in Oxford, where some of the classes he attended were taught by C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien (I have to note that as personally interesting to me; I can't say how significant it was to Davies). He majored in Drama, and throughout his life he acted, wrote and studied theatre. He returned to Canada where he got into the newspaper business with his family, and for years he wrote many books while writing and editing the paper, including essays published in the persona of his alter-ego, Samuel Marchbanks. In 1961 he became the first Master of Massey College, founded largely by members of the Massey family, of whom perhaps Raymond Massey is the most famous. During his tenure he did his best to supply the New World college with the best of the humane traditions of the Old World colleges. It was through these years he wrote his most famous works, the books of The Deptford Trilogy; also in the spirit of fun he wrote one ghost story each year to be read at the college's Christmas revels, as per the old English tradition; these stories were later published as High Spirits. Davies at his best is a marvelous mix of qualities: the feeling of wonders behind and alongside the work-a-day world, a generous, tender, and forgiving spirit, not unmixed with wry humor at human follies, the appreciation of a serious and unselfish dedication to a worthy craft. If occasionally he comes up with a howler like saying an orangutan has a tail, we can forgive him with the same generosity and humor he extends to his own characters.” – Power of Babel. Cover jacket a little tattered, and I’m not too sure about the spine of this huge book. It came out only a little while before Davies passed away.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Biography. Literature. Hardback.

 

The Salterton Trilogy: Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, A Mixture of Frailties, by Robertson Davies.

The first series of his novels. “In the small university town of Salterton, Ontario, dreams are quietly taking shape . . . or falling apart. In Tempest-Tost, Valentine Rich, professional director of the Salterton Little Theatre Company, is tormented by the amateurish efforts of his actors. The families Vambrace and Bridgetower almost go to war over a fake notice of engagement in the local paper in Leaven of Malice. And in A Mixture of Frailties, the fortune of the late Louisa Bridgetower is lavished on an aspiring singer because there is no male heir to claim it. Tracing the lives and incidents of a small community, The Salterton Trilogy peels off the public veneer of geniality and respectability to reveal the private passions simmering beneath.” – Penguin. A wise and witty warm-up to his more Jungian novels.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Novel. Trilogy. Softcover.

The Cornish Trilogy: The Rebel Angels, What’s Bred in the Bone, The Lyre of Orpheus, by Robertson Davies.

“Woven around the pursuits of the energetic spirits and erudite scholars of the University of St. John and the Holy Ghost, this dazzling trilogy of novels lures you into a world of mysticism, historical allusion, and gothic fantasy that could only be the invention of the inimitable Robertson Davies.” – Penguin. I think this book contends with the Deptford Trilogy in my heart for first place among Davies work. In fact, I first became aware of Davies work by seeing a review of one of these books in high school in Mr. Flemings copies of Times Literary Review, where I though the cover was ridiculous. Never judge a book by its cover, I suppose. The connecting theme is how old systems of knowledge still affect modern lives.

“The story of The Rebel Angels is set in motion by the death of eccentric art patron and collector Francis Cornish. University professors Clement Hollier, Urquhart McVarish, and Simon Darcourt are the executors of Cornish's complicated will, which includes material that Hollier wants for his scholarly work in Medieval Studies. The deceased's nephew Arthur Cornish, who stands to inherit the fortune, is also a character. All three executors (and Arthur) are intrigued by Maria Theotoky, Hollier's half-Polish, half-Gypsy graduate student, while the plot revolves around John Parlabane: ex-monk, skeptic philosopher, famulus, and general mischief-maker.” – Wikipedia.

“What's Bred in the Bone is the life story of Francis Cornish, whose death and will were the subject of The Rebel Angels. His was a full life, and we follow him through his childhood as a wealthy and precocious misfit in a small Ontario town, his education in Toronto (in which we meet Dunstan Ramsay from the Deptford Trilogy) and Oxford, his unusual apprenticeship as a restorer and painter in Nazi Germany, his wartime experiences in England, and his later career as a collector and a patron of the arts in Toronto. Cornish's life story develops as related by Cornish's daemon, a Mercurial influence who intervenes at crucial moments to ensure that Cornish becomes a great man, although that may be seen only after his death.” – Ibid.

“In The Lyre of Orpheus, Simon Darcourt, Arthur Cornish, and Maria Cornish find themselves at the head of the "Cornish Foundation" and are called upon to decide what projects deserve funding. Their first assay into the world of humanist patronage is to support a precocious composer in completing an unfinished opera by E.T.A. Hoffmann entitled Arthur of Britain, or the Magnanimous Cuckold, and then bringing it to the stage at Stratford, Ontario. The novel follows the course of this project from inception to completion. At the same time, the archetypes in the opera are reflected in the personal lives of those involved: Arthur and Maria as the central "ruling" couple, Arthur's best friend Geraint Powell, a Welsh actor-turned-director as Lancelot, Simon Darcourt as the household cleric and writer, and so on. In this final novel, archetypes tie together the three levels of Arthurian, Romantic, and modern characters.” – Ibid.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Novels. Trilogy. Softcover.

The Cunning Man, and Murther and Walking Spirits, by Robertson Davies.

These were going to be part of another trilogy, but Davies passed away before he could write the third book. In “The Cunning Man”, Dr. Jonathan Hullah reviews not only his life as a medical man with specialized insight learned from unorthodox teachers but seeks to reveal the mystery around the death of Father Hobbes, a reputed saint. A cast of characters including the mystical curate Charlie Iredale and the artistic Pansy Todhunter (his landlady) make this an involved and interesting process. In “Murther and Walking Spirits”, Hullah’s godson Connor Gilmartin is killed by his wife’s lover in the heat of the moment, and must undergo a review of his life, including the lives of the ancestors who contributed to the person he was. Meanwhile he watches the sudden blossoming of his wife’s career in the wake of his death, and the shattering of the (undiscovered) but guilt-ridden murderer’s psyche. I understand the third book was going to be something along the line of the wife and Hullah getting together. Penguin.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Novels. Softcovers.

High Spirits: A Collection of Ghost Stories, by Robertson Davies.

As Master of Massey College, Davies tried to give it a set of traditions like those he experienced when he went to Oxford. One of those traditions he initiated was writing a ghost story for the annual Christmas party – its Gaudy Night – and reading it aloud. Many of them have a literary or collegiate theme. After he retired the stories were collected and printed in this book. I can’t say I can point to any favorite tale, although ‘Dickens Digested’ and ‘The Cat Who Went to Trinity’ do stand out. Penguin.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Selected Plays, by Robertson Davies.

Selected Plays, by Robertson Davies.

It is hard for me to properly evaluate these plays without seeing them performed; simply cold reading them as text is not the best way to judge. Apparently, they were presented with some success. But they are Davies, and I find them sporadically attractive. Penguin.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Plays. Selected. Softcover.

The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks, by Robertson Davies.

“The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks, … constitutes a collection of the writings of Samuel Marchbanks, a character created in 1944 by Canadian novelist and journalist Robertson Davies when he was editor of the Peterborough Examiner newspaper in the small city of Peterborough, Ontario, northeast of Toronto. The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks is drawn from The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947) and The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949) as well as selections from Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack, published in 1967. This book is presented as a "scholarly edition" of Marchbanks' writings, presented and edited by his "friend", Robertson Davies.” – Wikipedia. I found this copy when John took me to a San Marcos library sale, where I was must fortunate to find it. Humorous, satirical look at life in Canada in the mid-20^th century.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Humor. Collected Columns. Hardback.

Conversations with Robertson Davies, Edited by J. Madison Davis.

Collected interviews and articles from conversations with Davies gathered together in one book. Another chance to hear him imparting his wisdom and opinions through the great decades of his writing.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Interviews. Literature. Softcover.

The Quotable Robertson Davies, Selected by James Channing Shaw.

“The Wit and Wisdom of the Master”. ““From the time of discovery of Robertson Davies’s writing, some of my greatest pleasures in reading Davies’s work have come from his quotable aphorisms, opinions, and general advice for living. The quotations, usually no more than one sentence in length, address women, art, literature, life itself. Some quotation-worthy phrases are mere descriptions beautifully composed, or opinions about Canadian life, or a humorously irreverent insult. In Davies’s novels and plays there is an abundance of these passages, with many more in his critical writing and in the Samuel Marchbanks books. This collection of approximately eight hundred quotations was selected from Davies’s written works. Those expressed in the spoken words of Davies’s characters are labelled with the character’s name in parentheses. Some are identified as the thoughts of the narrator. The quotations from Samuel Marchbanks, the fictional alter ego of Robertson Davies, are labelled by book title. All are quintessential Robertson Davies.” – from the Preface.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Quotations. Collected. Hardback.

One Half of Robertson Davies (Paperback); A Voice from the Attic: Essays on the Art of Reading, Revised Edition (Softcover); The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies, Edited by Judith Skelton Grant (Softcover), by Robertson Davies.

These Penguin books are of course collections of Davies’ essays and articles. They are the most engaging reading. It would be inaccurate to say he is a complete conservative, but he is a traditionalist, a gardener who will prune the tree and encourage new growth rather than just tearing down the tree. He always has something interesting to say and can invoke enthusiasms for things which you had no idea even existed. Browsers for ‘rakes at reading’.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Essays. Articles. Literature.

The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading, Writing, and the World of Books; and Happy Alchemy: On the Pleasures of Music and Theatre, by Robertson Davies.

The Merry Heart: “This rich and varied collection of Robertson Davies’s writings on the world of books and the miracle of language captures his inimitable voice and sustains his presence among us. Coming almost entirely from Davies’ own files of unpublished material, these twenty-four essays and lectures range over themes from "The Novelist and Magic" to "Literature and Technology," from "Painting, Fiction, and Faking," to "Can a Doctor Be a Humanist?" and "Creativity in Old Age." For devotees of Davies and all lovers of literature and language, here is the "urbanity, wit, and high seriousness mixed by a master chef" (Cleveland Plain Dealer) vintage delights from an exquisite literary menu. Davies himself says merely: "Lucky writers. . .like wine, die rich in fruitiness and delicious aftertaste, so that their works survive them." – Amazon.

Happy Alchemy: “One of Canada's--and the world's--most beloved authors, Robertson Davies was also a devoted fan of opera and the theater. In this follow-up to his first posthumous collection, A Merry Heart, Davies ruminates on these lifelong passions, offering a diverse sampling of personal reflections on everything from the ancient Greeks to Lewis Carroll, Scottish folklore to Laurence Olivier, the sins of Verdi to the virtues of melodrama. The combined effect of these thirty-three essays, lectures, plays, and librettos-- edited by his widow and daughter--is true alchemy, as "readers . . . come away with a renewed appreciation of the ease with which Davies routinely transformed his sometimes erudite passions into delightful entertainments" (The New York Times Book Review).” – Amazon.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Collected Essays. Hardbacks.

Discoveries: Early Letters 1938 -1975, by Robertson Davies (Selected and Edited by Judith Skelton Grant); For Your Eye Alone: The Letters of Robertson Davies 1976 - 1995, by Robertson Davies (Edited by Judith Skelton Grant).

Once having read the life of a great man, you also feel an interest in the letters. And these collections are a fine batch, written in an age when writing letters was a craft in itself. Davies talks about his personal life, his writing, publishing adventures, and his work at Massey College in so a lively manner you often wish that you were the person he was writing to. He has a magpie-eye for bright and interesting things, and sometimes you can see where he wove them as adornments into his novels. ‘Discoveries’ is an ex-library book and has suffered the transition a little roughly. There is another book, ‘A Celtic Temperament’, that is extracts from his diaries that would go well with these books.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Collected Letters. Biography. Hardbacks. 

Items from the Wish List: Robertson Davies

 

A Celtic Temperament: Robertson Davies as Diarist by Robertson Davies, Jennifer Surridge

Versatile and prolific, Robertson Davies was an actor, journalist and newspaper publisher, playwright, essayist, founding master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, and one of Canada’s greatest novelists. He was also an obsessive, complex, and self-revealing diarist. His diaries, which he began as a teenager, grew to over 3 million words and are an astonishing literary legacy. This first published selection of his diaries spans 1959 to 1963, years in which Davies, in mid-life, experienced both daunting failure and unexpected success.

Born in Thamesville, Ontario, in 1913, he was educated at local schools, then Upper Canada College, Queen’s University and Oxford University. He worked in England at the famous Old Vic theatre as an actor and literary advisor before returning to Canada where he became the editor and publisher of the Peterborough Examiner, established himself as a prominent Canadian playwright, and published his first three novels now known as the Salterton Trilogy. By 1959, at the age of forty-five, Robertson Davies was already one of Canada’s leading literary figures. Even so the diaries show that he was frustrated by the limitations of his literary success, often exasperated with the distractions of his daily life and buffeted by his mental and emotional state. They also show that he enjoyed life, was deeply interested in the society he lived in, and in the people he encountered. More often than not he found comedy in the world around him and delighted in recording it. He kept not only a daily journal, but also more focused diaries such as his accounts of the Toronto and New York production of his play Love and Libel, when he worked closely with the great British director Tyrone Guthrie, and of the founding of Massey College, the brainchild of Vincent Massey. The descriptions of backstage and academic politics are invariably entertaining, but in his diaries Davies also reveals himself as intensely self-critical, frequently insecure, and with a highly changeable nature that he described as his “celtic temperament.” We also see him as a partner in an intensely happy and creative marriage, and as a man with an astonishing capacity for hard work. By the end of 1963 his life had taken a new direction. As master of Massey College, he finds himself a public figure, but he is increasingly preoccupied with a new novel he wants to write which he is calling Fifth Business.

The publication of A Celtic Temperament establishes Robertson Davies as one of the great diarists. In their range, variety, intimacy, and honesty his diaries present an extraordinarily rich portrait of the man and his times. – Amazon.

The Well-Tempered Critic: One Man's View of Theatre and Letters in Canada by Robertson Davies, Judith Skelton Grant

Feast of Stephen by Stephen Leacock, Robertson Davies

“Do you know the characteristic wine of Madeira?…I do not know whether Leacock ever drank Madeira himself – he was very much a Scotch-whisky man – but I enjoy Madeira greatly, and I never drink it without thinking of Leacock, who was sometimes dry, sometimes sweet, but who always leaves upon the tongue a hint of brimstone…”

In his witty and illuminating introduction, which takes up the first third of the book, Robertson Davies invites us to join him in a Feast of Stephen. Davies’ selection of fifteen pieces from Leacock’s less familiar works presents the humorist as a true, broad, and sympathetic interpreter of Canadian life, as a man who may have lacked self-knowledge and sensitive insight into the feelings of others, but “whose best work was the outpouring of genius.” All shades of Leacock’s writing are represented here, from the “brilliant nonsense which made some critics liken him to Lewis Carroll,” to his occasional attacks of “aggressive Lowbrowism.” Together in all their diversity, Davies’ selections pay tribute to the gifts of exuberance, originality, and slightly malicious truth with which Leacock so entertainingly extends our vision. - Amazon.

Shakespeare's Boy Actors by Robertson Davies