THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

13 Cheyne Walk
S.W.3

Thursday [11 May 1922]

Dear Evans

I fear I have hurt your feelings – & I suppose it c^dnt be helped – I dislike doing so very much – because you know that I admire all the work you have done so much
I hope however you will give me the credit
(a) of being honest
(b) of having taken the least agreeable and more difficult course – Because obviously the easiest and pleasantest thing for me w^d have been to have gone in with the rest, or if I did not, to say nothing about it, in which case neither you nor anyone else w^d have noticed the omission.
What the opinion of the promoters are I do not know – but I cannot see that a composer c^d possibly make a presentation to a critic (among other things) without the obvious inference being drawn – (that we are publicly thanking you for praising us)
By the way I did not say that the public etc w^d recognize you but that they were the people who ought to recognize you since it is, at all events theoretically, for their sake not for ours that you have propagandized – so I still feel that¹ much as I feel that your work ought to be publicly recognized that that¹ it is emphatically not the composer who can promote it.²
Yrs very sincerely

R. Vaughan Williams

1. repeated in original.
2. See VWL495.