We have chosen these two photographs from the archive of Dahl and Geoffrey Collings for this post. They were included on Christmas cards sent to the Collings’ by their friends Wilfrid (Bill) and Phoebe Rolfe and feature the Rolfe’s daughter Charlotte. The first was taken in 1946 and shows Charlotte at the age of two and three quarter lighting candles above the fireplace in their home in Effingham, Surrey, England. We think this photograph beautifully captures the wonder of Christmas for a small child. The second photograph was on the cover of the Rolfe’s 1949 Christmas card and shows Charlotte now aged five hugging her cat.
Wilfrid Rolfe (1909 – 2004) and Geoffrey Collings first met through the advertising industry in London in the mid 1930s when both were working for American based agencies: Rolfe as a copy writer for Lord and Thomas and Collings as the Art Director for Erwin, Wasey and Company. They became great friends as did their wives Phoebe and Dahl although they only saw one another irregularly after the Collings’ left England in 1938 so their relationship was primarily maintained via correspondence especially though Christmas cards and letters. One exception was World War II when Wilfrid Rolfe was stationed with the Royal Navy in Australia in during 1944 and 1945 and spent Christmas 1944 with Dahl and Geoffrey Collings and their family as well as with their friends Chips and Quentin Rafferty at Church Point. He returned to England in October 1945.
Like many of us at this time of year Wilfrid Rolfe would sit down and type a letter to his friends reviewing what had taken place over the past year, for example proudly telling the Collings’ about the children and later grand children, providing them with news about mutual friends of times long past including the film producer Vivian Cox, reflecting on changes within the advertising industry (“as changed as the 40 year old cricket bat that’s had three new blades and two new handles”), and informing them of his latest writing projects. No doubt Dahl and Geoffrey Collings sent similar letters and cards to the Wilfrid and Phoebe Rolfe but alas we do not have copies of their correspondence.
Wilfrid Rolfe retired from full time work in the advertising industry in 1966 after spending most of his career as head of copy at what had become Masius Wynne-Williams. He then embarked on a second career as a travel writer, initially writing articles for the British Travel Association and a series of ‘motor tour guides’ for Charles Letts and Company’s on various regions of southern England. He was then commissioned to write glossy coffee table books full of colour photographs on Britain under the titles The Love of Britain (1976), The Love of London (1978) and Glorious Britain (1986). As he joked in a Christmas letter to Dahl and Geoffrey Collings The Love of Britain “is a lush piece of nostalgia specially designed to accentuate the tear-ducts of exiles from these islands” but in his Christmas letter the following year he wrote “My love of Britain is very real and in spite of everything we find this country has very much to offer (see my book! Advt.)” The Love of Britain proved to be very successful selling at least 150,000 copies with editions in English, French, German and Dutch.
The last item we have from the Wilfrid and Phoebe Rolfe to Geoffrey Collings is dated 1995. Wilfrid Rolfe died in 2004 aged 94 while Phoebe Rolfe died on Christmas Eve 2007 in her 99th year.
Post by Paul Wilson, Archivist
Photographs 2007/30/1-29/21 and 2007/30/1-29/38 Powerhouse Museum collection
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