THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

c/o R.V.W.
The White Gates,
Dorking.

Jan 3 1942

My dear Alice

 I ought to have written before to thank you for the cheese: but letters now take such an eternity in transit that a week or two more or less doesn’t seem to make any difference. But what a kind thought it was; we shall think of you with every mouthful.
  Well, things go on quietly here. It is a new mode of life for me internally, but externally all goes on much as before. The R.C.M.¹ still keeps its head above water and the work at Oxford continues on a modest scale, and what with one thing and another I don’t want for occupation. Few people do, in these days.
 And now you are all in it too. I wonder if you wish now that you and the boys had stayed in England? It was one of the most difficult decisions to go or to stay, and the motives that prompted you to go were powerful indeed. I think it conceivable the war might have ended this year but for the Japanese complication; and as it is, I think the European end of the Axis may be the first to crack. After that it may take some time before the Japanese goose is properly cooked, and meantime we must be prepared to have a sticky time of it in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
 Ralph and Adeline are both wonderfully well; the former as you may imagine is up to his eyes in all sorts of local activities, refugee committees and so forth, and between times he has made the opportunity to do some music – principally the incidental music for the film “Forty-ninth Parallel” – I don’t know whether that has been released yet in the U.S.A. Try and see it if it comes your way.
 I don’t know your present address so I am sending this to Sumsion with a covering note, so that he may enclose it with his next to you.
 Keep your pecker up my dear: the tide is on the turn.
     Yrs  RO

1. Royal College of Music