THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates,
Dorking,
SURREY.

9th November, 1949

Dear Moore,

I hope you will forgive an old friend writing to you though it is years since we met, and I want to write to you about another old friend of ours, Bob Trevelyan. He has done such splendid and unrecognised work that I feel we ought to bestir ourselves to get him some public recognition. Though, of course he never suggests that he wants anything of the kind, yet I cannot help feeling that it would please him, especially now when family troubles and a complete loss by fire of his “complete edition” are tending to depress him.¹
The obvious thing to my mind would be a LL.D. of Cambridge or D.C.L. of Oxford.
Perhaps you can tell me whether it is possible to offer a Cambridge man a Cambridge Hon. degree, then I shall know how to proceed, and perhaps if you approve of the plan you could suggest some names to whom I could write who would be influential in arranging it. It must not, of course, be a sort of hole in the corner degree, but done properly at the big function in the summer when all the grandees get their honorary degrees.
Yrs

R. Vaughan Williams

Professor G.E. Moore,
Trinity College, Cambridge.

1. It appears that VW was not successful in this endeavour.