THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

27 Gledhow Gardens
SW

15 July l924

My very dear VW

You will be overwhelmed with congratulations & applause.  But you will know I don’t want to push in or have the cheek to congratulate – & yet I do wish I could find words to say what I have felt.  I sort of wished I could have caught your eye when I waved my hat to you from the front of the balcony last night, but I’m glad I didn’t.  I loved the glorious success of it, your success, the great house packed with people who admired.  But I liked to think that tho’ so unmusical & unfit to judge yet I somehow knew you better than many there & knew what your achievement was – or at any rate that I delighted in it, for your sake & for the sake of this wonderful old world which has been capable of it, even more than the people round me.  But you will be having enough letters to open.  I am telling Moya¹ about it & sending her press cuttings.  We have a pied à terre in London at the above address but I shall be going over to Ireland at the end of the month. If only we could ever get you over there!  I wonder where you are going to be now & in the autumn.  Adeline will know I am thinking of her in all I have said.
Yours with pride & love

Crompton Ll D

1. Moya Llewellyn Davies, Crompton’s wife, lived mainly in Ireland where she was a Republican activist.