A few months ago, my cousin handed me a folder containing letters that she had inherited from my late Aunt Lella in 2011. My Aunt was an upright, formal woman, all tweed and tradition, with a passion for the arts that often inspired her to write letters to actors, playwrights and authors she admired. Many high-profile figures responded, and their return letters, dating from 1927 to 1993 are now The Theatre Collection’s newest accession.

They range from short, perfunctory replies from JB Priestley – ‘Many thanks for your letter and I am glad to learn from it that you have enjoyed “Instead of the Trees” so much. It was good of you to write’ – to longer replies from actresses including Peggy Ashcroft, who thanks Lella for sending in a script for critique – ‘Dear Miss Raymond, Thank you for letting me have the script on “The Bronte Affair”. If I may I will keep it and suggest it again to the Apollo Society. It might well be an Aldwych Theatre Project.’

Other letters from non-theatre stars, kept with the collection for the sake of provenance, include a notecard from Jessica Mitford complaining of the earthquakes in Oakland, California (below), and one from writer Vera Brittain, stating ‘I hope you are liking your nursing work better than I liked mine. The day may still come when your experience will be similar to mine – though I hope not!’

Other correspondents offering their greetings, thanks, and interesting tidbits from their lives include Evelyn Waugh, Celia Johnson, Cicely Courtneidge, Sybil Thorndike, Wendy Hiller, Miles Malleson, John Betjeman and Rachel Kempson.

It is a lovely collection, and it is a pleasure to think that the fruits of my aunt’s dedicated letter-writing career might go on to inspire and inform researchers well into the future.

By Helen Kavanagh, Keeper of Theatre Archives

One of the things I love about volunteering at the Theatre Collection is handling some of the artefacts held in its keeping. Yes, it can be a little chilly when working in the temperature-controlled strongroom, but as my mum used to say, I can ‘don a thermal vest‘.

Lately, in the more balmy surroundings of the reading room, I’ve been working through boxes of the Oliver Messel Archive, undertaking biographical research of his associates. I’ve gained knowledge about some of the 20^th century’s notable personae and insight into Messel himself. A man I hadn’t heard of before I started working with the material – and there is plenty of material! He didn’t seem to throw much away but we’re richer for it.

Amongst myriad papers, there is treasure: yellowing press cuttings; black and white photographs of Bogart and Bacall, printed telegrams and letters (glorious, handwritten letters that Messel and his friends exchanged). Handwriting is becoming a dying art and it’s wonderful to see this tangible connection and imagine a pen – or pencil – scuffing across paper. Messel demonstrated that a well thought-out response, even in disagreement, carried more weight than a vitriolic key-bashed Tweet. He also came across as a man of principle and a couple of items in particular reveal this.

Firstly, a letter he wrote to Kay Graham of the Washington Post.  In January 1977, the newspaper published an article about Theodore R Britton Jnr, the first black American ambassador in the Caribbean. It claimed Britton was being, “probed on incompetence charges.”  Messel, then resident in Barbados, did not like the tone or content and sent a delightful riposte, praising the ambassador’s achievements. He was also unequivocal about why, in his view, Britton was being investigated: “…You cannot convince me that there has been no racial motivation in all of this from the start; of course there has! Envy that a man who is black should be in a coveted position, that he should also have compelling charm and intellect.”

A second example illustrated that Messel’s loyalty extended beyond his acquaintances. In September 1970 the Performing Arts Council Transvaal, wrote to him about mounting a production of Sleeping Beauty in Johannesburg. They requested use of costumes and décor that Messel had designed for the production when it was performed at Covent Garden.

I almost whooped, ‘Good man, Oliver!’ when I read Messel’s reply. His firm refusal was from the heart. Referring to the poisonous regime of apartheid, he made clear that there weren’t any circumstances in which he would accede to the request. ‘I could not wish to accept any hospitality from a country whose laws and principles are to me so utterly abhorrent.’ He continued, ‘that you all live blind-folded through the selfish greed of a white minority appears tragically short-sighted.’ He was, he said, ‘revolted by separate audiences.’

I’ve discovered that the Messel Archive isn’t only about what one man left behind. It’s also a glimpse of what was happening in the world: what’s changed and, unfortunately, what hasn’t. I wish I could have met him, though what he’d have thought about my thermal vest, I can only guess.

By Natalie Smith

This month’s object of the month is a costume sketch by Oliver Messel for the 1940 Sadlers’ Wells ballet The Mask of Comus.

This is a drawing for the costume of the water sprite Sabrina from the 1942 production of The Mask of Comus by the Sadlers’ Wells ballet. Based on a masque written by John Milton for John Egerton, first Earl of Bridgewater and first performed in 1634, Comus was reworked as a ballet by Robert Helpmann for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1942. It starred Helpmann as the eponymous Comus and Margot Fonteyn as The Lady. Oliver Messel took time from his war-time duties to design the sets and costumes.

The plot concerns a virtuous lady who, becoming lost in the woods, meets Comus, the son of Bacchus who leads her to his castle where she is imprisoned by his enchantments and tempted into intemperance, sensuality and vice. The lady’s brothers, on trying to rescue her, are helped by a magical attendant who conjures the water nymph Sabrina who finally frees the Lady. For the costume of Sabrina, Messel uses his quintessential skirt of layers of painted gauze fabric to form a light floating, nymph-like costume rather than the more familiar stiffened tutu. He also designs a head-dress to resemble the “twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair” that Milton describes in the poem. The character of Sabrina also provided the inspiration for the title character of the 1954 Billy Wilder comedy Sabrina Fair, starring Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and William Holden.

The drawing comes from the personal archive of theatre designer Oliver Messel. Oliver Messel began his theatrical career in the 1920s by designing masks for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and for the annual theatrical revues of C.B Cochran. He moved on through the 1930s to designing stage productions, working with theatrical greats including Vivien Leigh, John Gielgud and Michael Redgrave. As well as designing for theatre and dance productions, Messel also designed nine films, the first being The Private Life of Don Juan with Merle Oberon and the last being Suddenly Last Summer with Katherine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor.  During the Second World War, he worked as a camouflage officer, using his famed ability as a theatrical designer to disguise pillboxes as barns and haystacks as well as using painted canvas to create fields of fake lorries. Following the war, Messel returned to stage design with the Royal Ballet’s famed production of Sleeping Beauty.  Throughout the 1950s Messel continued to design for theatre and opera before moving to Barbados in 1966 where he embarked on an additional career as a designer of houses and villas in Barbados and nearby Mustique.

The cataloguing and conservation of the Personal Archive of Oliver Messel has been generously funded by grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Linbury Trust, the Friends of the Theatre Collection and others.