Letter
Ida Carroll, Geoffrey Griffiths
1938

A little different letter from Griff to Ida. After telling her he has burned her letter, "for ill-intentioned burglar might find letters if he searched hard enough, but that can't be read again," he relates a sort of autobiography.

He remembers living in Buxton during the First World War as his father was working there. "Two hotels were turned into hospitals for the Canadian wounded and there was an endless procession of battered humanity." After the war they lived with an elderly lady in Levenshulme, sort of live-in help in exchange for rent and his dad was a gardener.
He writes about getting a his job at Stanton's the travel agency, and how the first boss went off the rails and stole from the business, the second was an "Efficiency Expert" looking for any reason to lay off staff, and the third was a nice chap it was working out "until the Depression reached us with its cuts and so on."

He recalls girlfriends but realises now that relationships aren't just about going out together, but that they need to be "fundamentally domestic". He laments that "I shouldn't care to know just how much misery there is, and has been through the ages, by the exercise of what one might call passion without love." He confesses to Ida that "your influence on me was profound, and still is, and likely to be so."

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.