SINCERELY YOURS – letters from the collection

ARTS & LETTERS CLUB

Click image to see full photo.

VIEW TRANSCRIPT OF LETTER

Alison Sutcliffe (kneeling), Margaret Craigie, Helen Richardson, Gladys Schnick, Senta Estelle Cohen, Bettina Byers, 1930s (Alison Sutcliffe Collection). Click image to see full photo.
This thank-you letter from the Arts & Letters Club is one of many clues that give historians insight into the links between dance, theatre and music in Toronto during the Great Depression. 

After she returned from New York City, Alison Sutcliffe soon found work teaching dance for the Toronto Conservatory of Music (later Royal) where the conductor and composer Ernest MacMillan was her boss. In her collection are many pieces of correspondence that reveal the connections within the arts community between Hart House, the Conservatory, and individual artists. This letter is also a reminder of the fact that the Arts & Letters Club began as a men’s club; its women-only parallel, the Heliconian Club, began in 1909 and counted Alison Sutcliffe among its members in the 1930s. (Letter from Alison Sutcliffe Collection)

Ad for Alison Sutcliffe’s school, found in house program for Ballets Jooss performance at Massey Hall, Toronto, 1936 (Alison Sutcliffe Collection). Click image to see full photo.
SINCERELY YOURS – letters from the collection

transcript

The Arts & Letters Club of Toronto

2 Leader Lane
Toronto #2
December 7th, 1931

Miss Alison Sutcliffe
34 Tyndall Ave.
Toronto #3

Miss Alison Sutcliffe,-

On behalf of the Arts & Letters Club we write to express our thanks for all you did to make the programmes for the last Dinner and Ladies’ Day the successes they were. It was more than good of you to devote so much of your time to helping us, and we can assure you the members appreciated your kindness tremendously.

If, in giving the performance, you had only a tithe of the pleasure we had in watching and listening to it you must feel repaid for the trouble you took; we can only hope that such is the case.

Yours sincerely,
E. C. MacMillan [Ernest MacMillan]
President
C. Barry Cleveland
Chairman of the Programme Committee