Letter
Walter Carroll, Ida Carroll, Geoffrey Griffiths, St James Church Choir at Birch-in-Rusholme
1938

"Wednesday being one of those ridiculous days when I'm not privileged even to catch a glimpse of your in the far distance, I am relieving the feelings with written words."
He discusses her father Walter leaving his Birch Church where he was choir master. "He has built Birch to the point when it has one of the best voluntary choirs in the world." He knows why he presses them so much - because they are amateur - but sometimes "I feel like chucking Birch and a good many more pleasant things and becoming one of Manchester's shop-owners or something and trying to make a packet (like Comrade Cottie)" Comrade Cottie? If anyone can make betters sense of that writing then I can do correct me.
He thinks he could get out of a rut if he could write successfully, a play or something. "A lot of money isn't really required, only more." But he sometimes "sinks into gloom."
He hopes Walter doesn't think himself too old for Birch. He got himself a chair after choir to save his feet and "it hurt a little for we have never known him to do that before." And "he has the spirit and interests of much younger men, and his ideas on church music are so sound."

Ref: CARROLL/IGC/3 GG
With thanks to the Ida Carroll Trust
Date is unknown.

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