THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

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

[late 1939]

My Dear

Your letter is most exciting¹ – & I am sure you w^d do it well. One of your jobs could probably be to go & win the hearts of authors & persuade them to write (I knew of a young & lovely lady who was employed by a publisher solely to do that). You’ve already won mine (what there is of it) as you know. Nevertheless I think you must get someone else to write about music – I’ve already said all I have to say about that.
You’ve been having a riotous time! My dear it will be fun if you spend mid-weeks at the flat. I’ve got another “device on my brain” (as Evans says – or is it Fluellen²) – Have you ever considered the Hogarth Press for your poems? I do not know Leonard Woolf personally but Virginia W. is a cousin-in-law though I’ve not met her for years but on the strength of that I might write.³ Though with Nevinson⁴ & Rhys⁵ to back you, you w^d scarcely need any one else.
My dear there is no subtlety about my signature
Yrs

Ralph
RVW
R

(Cross out whichever does not apply)

1.  UW had been discussing a publishing job, but it did not materialise.
2.  A quote from Evans in  Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor.
3. It appears that VW did write to Virginia Woolf – see VWL1373.
4.  Henry W. Nevinson, war correspondent and writer, and husband of Evelyn Sharp, the librettist of The Poisoned Kiss. A friend of Maud Karpeles.
5.  Ernest Rhys, founding editor of Everyman’s Library series of affordable classics.