Letter
The Hallé, Ida Carroll, Geoffrey Griffiths
1939

IT IS DATED! I think it's the only one out of the hundreds I've seen. OMG. Anyway...

Written just a couple of weeks before the start of WW2. Geoffrey Griffiths, in this epic multi-day letter to Ida Carroll refers to the Hallé's season, hoping for Mendelssohn's "Elijah" but happy to settle for other things to study and sing.

He worries about the "painfully enforced lack of exercise" which he thinks is making him gain weight.

He went home from meeting her, at about 1100 at night which she may think late but "in Lourdes in 1937, or just outside the town border, gaiety not being allowed during Pilgrimage time, a quite respectable group of tourist agents might have been seen going home at four in the morning; I know, because I was with them." He dismisses accusations of being a trouble maker, saying he usually sticks to the "middle" groups depending on their choice of entertainment but relives when "they even made me dance, but I must have been under the influence of Drink."

He discusses seaside resorts, liking Eastbourne but "Bournemouth wasn't as good as Brighton - well, I arrived there one afternoon from the Rye district and fled screaming (silently) on the first available train to London."

Ref: CARROLL/IGC/3 GG
With thanks to the Ida Carroll Trust

Part of the #NSM2020 project "A 20/20 Legacy: the centenary of the Northern School of Music" supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.