THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Royal College of Music
Prince Consort Road,
South Kensington,
London, S.W.

Febry 26. 1917

My dear Vaughan Williams

I have been wanting to write to you for eversolong,¹ but the apparent difficulty of finding out where you were just sufficed, on top of being always rather busy, to stop my taking any opportunity to get under way.  Now your dear old Uncle, Major Darwin, suggests, what I ought to have thought of long ago, that I might get a letter through by asking your wife to forward it – and so late as it is I won’t forego letting you know how splendidly I thought the “Sea Symphony” came off at the Bach Choir Naval Concert at Queens Hall. Allen² took any amount of trouble with it and it’s worth it – and they all got into the spirit of it splendidly.  I daresay you remember how enthusiastic everyone was when they did it before and how they had you up and shouted with pleasure. It was quite the same this time and it does the public credit that they have found out what a splendid work it is – quite one of the finest and most genuine and characteristic thing that has been achieved in late years – so great and big!
I wonder if you [….]³ you to write something more in the strange conditions you must be in now – What experiences they must be!  Perhaps you will extract something out of them!  I should so like to have news of you.
Your sincere friend

C. Hubert H. Parry

1.  sic.
2. Hugh Allen at this time was conductor of the Bach Choir in London.
3. Passage illegible because of being on a worn and stained fold – probably the letter had been carried around in a pocket by VW for some time.