Scrapbook.
[Theater] Vernon, Esme. Archive. Including photographs, programmes and various other ephemera. [c. 1920-1930].
Folio; 21 album leaves with numerous photographs and printed ephemera, some photo’s loose, and tears to ephemera (where opened), edges of album leaves chipped (due to paperstock); bound in recent buckram.
Archive of material belonging to Esme Vernon, charting her time as a budding actress at Somerville College, Oxford in 1923 until late 1929 when travelling with the Maurice Colbourne Company in Canada.
Apart from a typed report from the “Students Theatre School” in Cromwell Road, London (which alludes to a time before Esme arrived at Oxford) the earliest dateable evidence in the archive is a printed cast list for a performance of Walter De La Mare’s Crossings held at Somerville College in January 1923 (where Esme is found acting the part of Sallie Wildersham), although several of the photographs appear to show Esme at a younger age, possibly with younger siblings. Throughout the next couple of years she was busy with the Oxford University Drama Society, and large photo’s of the Society are included, as well as a 1925 Oxford Recitation certificate signed by Walter de la Mare and John Masefield. Also found (on the first page of the album) is a printed programme for the 23rd Annual Elocution Competition held at the Haymarket Theatre in July 1924, where Esme was judged in ‘Class V. Amateur Ladies’ by the famous Shakespearan actress Dame Sybil Thorndike no less.
Several newspaper cuttings are included reviewing ‘Miss Vernon’s’ performances, one in the Daily Telegraph particularly glowing:: ‘Miss Esme Vernon brings distinction as well as beauty to Lady Percy’. A February 1926 typed letter from ‘The Stratford-upon-Avon Festival Company’ confirms her as being accepted as part of the company and sets out the terms and conditions and a variety of ephemera (newspaper clippings, programmes for professional fixtures, photos) relating to her time and work with the company is then included.
Various other photo’s of trips at home and abroad (Bodium Castle and Belgium) are found before concluding with her trip to Canada with the Maurice Colbourne Company. A variety of ephemera relating to this is tipped in, including theatre programmes and advertising for the company, as well as photographs and menu’s whilst travelling between performances.
We have been unable to find much further information on Esme Vernon, although the album does include one later photograph of her amongst the cast of a play, the verso noting ‘Kenilworth Court, Eastbourne, Xmas, 1947’ suggesting she continued on as an actress.
In all a fascinating insight in to life of a budding actress during the “Brideshead” generation at Oxford, and then onwards as her career developed throughout the 1920s.
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