THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

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

[31 July 1939]

Dear Lilburn

This is splendid news – & I congratulate you.
I wish I c^d have heard your overture – perhaps I shall one day.¹
I was in Skye on a ‘reading party’ in 1894!!  It was a good place – we were in a farm house at Tothardor (Struan) – & we walked once to the Cuchullin hills and climbed Skur-na-Gillean & got lost in a fog.²
Have you seen Loch Coruisk – a wonderful place
Also if they have one of their big open air prayer meetings you should go to that – a wonderful sight & sound – all good wishes to Gundry³ – & tell him I want to see his variations
Yrs

R. Vaughan Williams

1.  Lilburn had won the Cobbett Prize, the Farrar Prize, and the Foli Scholarship at the Royal College of Music. The overture to which VW refers would have been the Festival Overture, of which George Dyson had conducted the premiere that year at the Royal College of Music.
2.  In current cartography: Cuillin Hills and Sgùrr nan Gillean. According to UVW, on this walk G.E. Moore discovered he was vertiginous and when the fog cleared had to be flanked by someone on each side so that he couldn’t see the steep falls.
3.  Inglis Gundry, a fellow pupil and Cornish composer who had been a fellow pupil of VW with Lilburn at the Royal College of Music.