Robertson Davies
Claude Bissell's admirable first volume of his life of Vincent Massey has been widely reviewed and widely praised; the elegance and economy of the writing and the quality of the research have earned it wide acceptance from the reading public.1 There are special groups, as well, which will turn to the book for information about particular aspects of history in Canada, in those areas of politics and the arts where Vincent Massey was an important figure. Readers of this publication will be especially interested in Mr Massey's relation to the theatre, and particularly to Hart House Theatre, of which he and his wife were the founders and for some time the moving spirits.
The Masseys were lovers of the theatre and keenly interested in the new drama of the period just preceding the First World War; they were also impressed by the growing Little Theatre movement in the United States, which was supplementing the fare offered by the commercial theatres with experimental productions of the new plays and translations from European dramatists who had not gained, and in most cases would never gain, commercial success on this continent. Should Canada lag behind? Not if the Masseys knew it, and they had the happy inspiration of building a Little Theatre in the new manner in the sub-basement of Hart House, which the Massey Foundation was building as a gift to the University of Toronto. The Washington Square Players, the Greenwich Village Theatre and the Neighbourhood Playhouse influenced their thinking about repertoire, and they consulted the New York theatre director Livingston Platt, and the Canadian actress Margaret Anglin, about the realities of Little Theatre management. Further, with the characteristic Massey enthusiasm for architecture, they determined that their theatre should be one of the most beautiful on the continent, and in this they succeeded splendidly, for although certain necessary structural changes were made in later years by the Toronto architect William Fleury, the essential design was lovingly maintained, and Hart House Theatre today is much what it was when first it was opened to the public and especially to the University community.
There are many people who remember its earliest form. The stage was roughly half its present size, because for some reason the Little Theatre movement favoured small stages and in the fashion of the time had a beautiful faith in the ability of draperies to offer a suitable setting for virtually any play. There were, however, two handsome little pulpits which stood at some distance in front of the proscenium and at the sides of the auditorium; these could be reached by narrow walks from the stage proper. In early productions of medieval plays, and in scenes such as that of the court chamber in a version of Alice in Wonderland, the pulpits were used with imagination; indeed, in a production of a somewhat undistinguished play by Louis N. Parker, Pomander Walk, one of them served as the gazebo in a garden scene. The lighting equipment was of the best and most modern order, and was used by early directors to light the draperies already mentioned in ways that surprised Toronto audiences, and which owed much, as did all adventurous lighting at that time, to the ideas of Gordon Craig. In this handsome and surprising theatre - surprising to audiences used to the Royal Alexandra, and the Victoria - the new drama was brought to Toronto.
Toronto was not always pleased, for its taste was provincial, and the paradoxical arguments of Shaw and the new mode of compassion that was to be found in Galsworthy fell upon many doubting ears. But the Masseys persisted. Although the theatre had a governing body of its own, and directors who shaped the work and influenced the repertoire, the enthusiasm of the Masseys was the determining factor in what was done and the way in which it was done.
Vincent appeared frequently as an actor, and this caused raised eyebrows among Toronto grandees who took no interest in the arts themselves, and could not understand why a rich young industrialist should wish to expose himself to criticism, and ally himself with a frivolous art about which there still clung a savour of immorality, or at least of looseness.
The reason was that Vincent Massey was an artist in spirit, and some of his misadventures and misjudgements in politics sprang from that fact. To the end of his life he could never really understand why people would not take fire if they were offered an idea; the wet wool of Old Ontario was outside his comprehension. He loved acting as an art, and was himself an excellent actor - another fact which did not win him unmixed praise when he acted the role of Governor-General with more style than any other holder of that office. He meant no insincerity; he simply thought that things should be done as well as possible by the people who were asked to do them. It was his conception of what was involved in acting well that offended people who were solemn without being in any way serious.
It is unlikely that he ever consciously modelled himself on George Arliss, but it was in the Arliss mode of economy of means, high style, wit and sudden and unexpected emphases that he played his part, on stage and off. He spoke clearly and well - though not, as the tin-eared loved to assert, with an 'English' accent, whatever that may be - his movements were deliberate and usually graceful, and he loved to bring everything, even a casual conversation, to some sort of resolution or climax. To the end of his life there stood on his desk a photograph of himself in the role of the Pope in Claudel's play The Hostage; Mrs Massey told me that it was the part he had most enjoyed at Hart House, and it is a fine role, of a sort that would have appealed to his mixed enthusiasm for politics and the playhouse. It must be said that Mrs Massey, though she did not act, was every bit as strong a supporter of the theatre as he.
Such strong support brought its complications, for two reasons. First, the Masseys were not invariably tactful, and it cannot be called a happy inspiration that the first tableau curtains at Hart House bore the initials V and A enclosed in cartouches. Second, it is an unfortunate aspect of human nature that benefactors are rarely liked without reserve, and nobody is so resistant to any sort of patronage as the modern artist, who has not forgotten that his artistic forbears were a sort of superior domestic servant. When the artists are not wholly sure of their artistic status, as the amateurs of the 20s in a puritan city like Toronto could not be, their determination not to be patronized can be aggressive. They bite the hand that feeds them, for although they are ready to grab the food, they fear the pat on the head that may follow it.
So the Massey era at Hart House, though splendid in many ways, was not always pacific, and in the course of time they withdrew from it, somewhat saddened. Mr Massey told me not long before his death that he could not remember when last he had been in Hart House Theatre.
But the gift remains, and a splendid gift it has been.
NotesROBERTSON DAVIES ON THE YOUNG VINCENT MASSEY
Robertson Davies
1 Claude Bissell, The Young Vincent Massey Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1981.
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