Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Ursula Wood
Letter No. VWL1725
Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Ursula Wood
Letter No.: VWL1725
[Sometime between 1938 and 1946]
So now you come to London he says,
Its this a fine lady ’ll make you,
And you shall enjoy a silken gown,
Diamond rings & gold laces.
I’d rather be a poor man’s wife
And sit at my wheel a-spinning,
Than I wd. be a lawyer’s jade
Or be in a place of roaming and go no more
Butterworth1
And now she is a poor man’s wife
Her husband dearly loves her
She lives a sweet contented life
No lady in town is above her.2
W Daniels
Selscombe
Ockham Drive
G.H.3
1. The purpose of this note here is not clear.
2. Pencil draft in UVW’s hand found in her papers.
3. Note in VW’s hand.
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General Notes:
It is not clear if this is part of another letter, as it is mostly in the hand of UVW.
The third verse here (“And now she is a poor man’s wife…”) is the final verse of The Lawyer, an arrangement of which VW made about 1913 and published in 1935 as the second of “Two English Folk Songs for Voice and Violin”. The variant of the tune used in this work was collected by George Butterworth from Harriet Verrall in 1908. VW used it again in his 1949 cantata Folk Songs of the Four Seasons. All three verses, as given here, correspond with the last 3 of the 5 verses given in Folk Songs of the Four Seasons, no. 4, where the song is called The Green Meadow. -
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