I looked up Constance Collier (1878-1955). Born in Windsor, England, Collier was "known to be very tall with a big personality." She was a dancer and actress of the stage. Later Collier migrated to Hollywood to become an acting coach. She collaborated with Ivor Novello to write plays and film. Novello starred in two silent films directed by Alfred Hitchcock: The Lodger and Downhill (both 1927). The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians writes of Novello he was until "the advent of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the 20 century's most consistently successful composer of British musicals." He was a trailblazer for other reasons. Hilda Hammerton postcards can be bought online.
My daughter found this postcard of Constance postcard (above) in a secondhand store in Osoyoos, British Columbia. There are a couple of lakes with nice beaches in Osoyoos, which is tourist destination in wine country on the US border. The store is a couple blocks away from the lake and owned by a man who migrated from Ontario a decade ago. We bought some cassettes from the eighties for 25 cents apiece (Whitney Houston, K-Mart Hits of the Year, etc.) for my daughter's Walkman II. I found some Beatles' fan papers as well. They cost $2.50 per.
The postcard was sent from Newport, Wales to Brittle Cottage, Shatterford, misspelled as Shaterford, on September 10, 1909. How the postcard ended up in a little store in Western Canada for my daughter to buy July 20, 2024 is anyone's guess. Maybe Nell and Will immigrated to Ontario and were related to the proprietor. The postcard reads:
"Dear Nell and Will, [I] hope you are both quite well[.] I don't feel as though I have had any holiday now can suc friends name the I mean with much, love from Mark."
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