THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

B.W.T.A. Soldiers’ Recreation Rooms,
Friends’ Meeting House,
Saffron Walden,
Essex.

[24 May 1915]

From 2033 P^te R.V. Williams
2/4^th London Field Ambulance

Dear Dent

I shall be delighted to do what I can for Pole¹ – I know no one of importance in America but I am writing him a testimonial – on this paper!
Don’t you think it would amuse you to come over on your bicycle to see me one day. I’m usually done by 4.0 – & its only 14 miles – I can’t come & see you because its out of bounds! I billet at 29 Bridge Street about the 3^rd cottage on the right as you enter the town from Cambridge.
I expect you are doing much more for your King & Country than I am – indeed you can’t be doing less.
Yrs

R.V.W.

P.S. Cecil Forsyth² is in America – w^d it be worth your while to write to him – I will try & get his address if you think it is a good plan.³

1.  Reginald Pole; presumably Dent had asked VW to provide an introduction in America; Reginald had been at Cambridge University where he founded the Cambridge Marlowe Dramatic Society in 1907 with Rupert Brooke; he was an actor and eventually became a theatre director.
2.  Cecil Forsyth, author of Orchestration (London & New York, 1914). He worked for the music publisher H.W. Gray in New York which represented Novello’s in America in 1937. 
3.  The postscript is written on the envelope.