An Appetite for Life: The Education of a Young Diarist, 1924-1927

155 Pages·2001·0.89 MB·English

by  Charles Ritchie

ALSO BY CHARLES RITCHIE
The Siren Years
Diplomatic Passport
Storm Signals
My Grandfather’s House

Copyright © 1977 Charles Ritchie
Convocation Address © 2001 The Estate of Charles Ritchie
Originally published in hardcover by Macmillan of Canada 1977
McClelland & Stewart trade paperback edition published 2001
by arrangement with the Estate of Charles Ritchie
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a
retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying
or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an
infringement of the copyright law.
National Library of Canada cataloguing in publication data
Ritchie, Charles, 1906–1995
An appetite for life : the education of a young diarist, 1924–1927
eISBN: 978-1-55199677-6
1. Ritchie, Charles, 1906–1995 – Diaries. 2. Diplomats – Canada – Diaries. I. Title.
FC 561.R58A3 2001 327.71’0092 C00-932576-X
F1034.R573A3 2001
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing
Industry Development Program for our publishing activities. We further acknowledge the support
of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street,
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
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v3.1
To Sylvia
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by this Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
FOREWORD
PART ONE
Halifax, 1924–1925
PART TWO
Oxford, 1926–1927
EPILOGUE
Diaries: A Convocation Address
FOREWORD
The notebooks containing my old diaries are stacked on dusty, toppling
piles in the cellar of the apartment house in which I live. They are not,
as they should be, arranged in chronological order (a task I have always
shirked). After the appearance of my book The Siren Years, which
covered the years 1937–45, I intended to follow it up with the records of
the next decade, and with this object in mind I descended to the cellar in
search of those diaries. While pulling notebooks at random from the
stacks, I happened to open one much earlier in date than those I was
looking for. It was dated September 1924, the beginning of my
eighteenth year.
I began to read, and having once started, read on and on. As I did so,
an idea struck me. Why not – instead of plodding on with my middle-
aged diaries – go back to the youthful ones? The notion appealed to me,
yet I realized the risks. Whatever the shortcomings of the later record, it
did deal with the worlds of international politics and diplomacy in
which by then I moved. It included anecdotes of the famous and the not
so famous. If I continued with its publication, I could offer the reader
some measure of historical interest, but if I decided in favour of the early
diaries, there would be no supporting props of this kind. The youthful
diarist would have to stand on his own two feet. Yet in the end I could
not resist giving him a chance. It seemed callous to leave him to rot in
the cellar when he was plainly longing to get out and tell all.
However, there are limits to one’s tolerance of the adolescent ego. To
publish the whole of these diaries would be to flood the reader with a
spate of words – often repetitious and finally exhausting. So there has
had to be a good deal of “culling” – also some telescoping – of the
material. This has at times involved the joining up of scenes and
episodes originally scattered in fragmentary form over a number of
entries. Also, for reasons which will become obvious, names of certain
persons have had to be changed.
It is with some trepidation that I introduce my earlier self to the
reader in the hope that his company may prove enlivening. For, with all
his faults and absurdities, he had a great appetite for life, and not least
for the comedy of life.
C.R.
Chester, Nova Scotia
June 1977
PART 1
HALIFAX
1924–1925
19 September 1924.
I spent the morning trying to write a short story. I had written some of
it last night, and it seemed to flow along as though I were doing
“automatic writing.” For the first time I thought, “I really can write,”
capering about my room and saying out loud, “I’m going to be an
author!” I wanted to tell someone and went down to the library. Mother
and Aunt Millie had not gone to bed yet. They were discussing
household finances. I listened to them talking for a few minutes and the
impulse to tell them dried up. It is just as well, because this morning
when I re-read what I had written I was appalled. It is no good, no
bloody good at all. The dialogue is like someone trying to mimic who
has got the voice and accent just wrong. As for the story, it stands still.
Nothing moves forward and the characters are cardboard.
I crumpled the whole thing up and threw it into the wastepaper basket
and took out a new sheet of paper, determined to begin again, but I just
stared at the blank page for nearly an hour and nothing happened. Not a
thought, not a word came. I found myself looking out of the window at
the leaves flittering in the breeze at the edge of the lawn. I watched Aunt
Millie come out of the house with her shopping bag over her arm,
walking slowly out of sight down the drive. “What is she thinking
about?” I wondered; “what she’s going to buy for dinner, or about
making over last summer’s dress, or is she worrying about Eileen’s
future? She is a mystery, everyone is a mystery. But the characters in my
story are not mysteries, they aren’t people at all.”
I thought I might as well go for a walk as sit here staring into space. I
took the short-cut past the stables, over the new bridge, across the
railway cutting, through the village, and into the park. It was a funny
sort of day. There had been fog but it had lifted, and it was neither hot
nor cold. The sun just not out, the tops of the pine trees just moving. I
went down to the point where you can look out to sea and sat on a
bench. There was a liner moving out of the harbour mouth. It seemed to
be moving slowly, hardly at all. The next time I looked it had almost
disappeared. I thought, “Oh, to be on board, doing anything, a