Letters from Vaughan Williams

Last time I visited my parents I spent an afternoon going through more of Simona's papers and photographs. I had previously found her correspondence with Ursula, but had not realised she also had several letters from Vaughan Williams himself. I don't know why I was so surprised, given her reference to this letter in her book A Discovery of his Music. 

I can fully imagine the mix of excitement and terror on discovering the letter on the doormat; here was a letter from her musical hero, an acknowledgement of her existence, yet it was going to give an opinion on her book. What if he hated it? What if he wanted to block its publication? All that work, all her passion for him and his music on a (paper) knife edge. But when she finally plucked up the courage to read it what relief she must have felt! Yes, there were a number of factual corrections, but there was also an endorsement of her work and, more importantly, an invitation to tea! 

When I picked up the second letter my heart sank. Almost unreadable (and having worked both in a County Court and in the health service I am used to reading bad handwriting) I feared that was going to be the end of my discovery. If anybody can decipher more than the few words I have managed (something about thanking her for flowers, that he is recovering rapidly and about the nurses being very pretty, after which I'm stumped) please let me know what it says! 

Fortunately almost all the rest were typewritten. These next two are my favourites, especially the comment about how much he values Simona's opinion. Her book may never have been the biggest seller or an award winner, but to get that respect from one's subject must be as, if not more, rewarding to an author. 

What was frustrating for me was only seeing one side of the correspondence. What was the photograph Simona sent to VW? And in the letter below, what had generated the grumpiness of the opening sentence? Emails of today are far less personal and will not provide the wonder of seeing the original handwriting of a composer or an author that I get whenever I visit the British Library's collection, but they do provide the ability to see both sides of the conversation and to contextualise the words. I subsequently discovered that VW had been asked to orchestrate The First Nowell for a smaller number of instruments than he would have chosen in order to enable the performance to be staged at Drury Lane in the middle of a run of My Fair Lady. 

For those of you who are scholars of Vaughan Williams, you will notice this letter is dated two days before his death, 58 years ago today. It arrived at Simona's on the morning of 26th August 1958, shortly after Ursula had phoned my grandfather Noel to tell him of Ralph's death.