THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

From R. Vaughan Williams,
The White Gates,
Westcott Road,
Dorking.

[3 February 1940]

My Dear

I went and got a Lear¹ at once – it is a good book – but I wish he² w^d not call them “Limericks” – I feel sure he w^d have hated the word – a Limerick is an indecent poem in the same metre as the Lear nonsense rhymes.
I’d often thought of setting the Pobble³ to music – its one of the most mysteriously romantic poems I know.
Have you read the prose nonsense story⁴ – its superb – I did not know it before.⁵
The wedding⁶ is next Sat. (10^th) – I am told the bridegroom has a pretty sister so I am all agog.
Love from

RVW

1. According to R.V.W.:a biography, p.233, this was a paperback edition of some of Edward Lear’s writings. it was possibly Edward Lear’s Nonsense Songs, with the Author’s Own Illustrations, an edition published by Chatto & Windus in 1938.
2. i.e. the editor, not the author
3. The Pobble who has no toes, one of the Lear poems.
4. The story of the four little children who went round the world  by Lear.
5. The letter up to this point is quoted in R.V.W.: a biography, p.233.
6. Probably that of Honorine Williamson (see R.V.W.: a biography, p.232 and VWL686 footnote 3, etc.). She had lived with the VWs ever since the move to Dorking and was to marry the trumpeter Bernard Brown.