THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

From R. Vaughan Williams,
10, Hanover Terrace,
Regents Park,
London, N.W.1

October 25th 1956.

Dear Edmund,

I am so glad that you will accept the tuning fork.¹ Now I want you to do another thing for me.  Arthur Bliss and Gerald² had kindly agreed to be my literary executors.  Will you step into the gap?  Arthur throughly³  approves of the idea.  I do not think there will be very much to do – only to go through my manuscripts, and to advise either Ursula, or my executors, as the case may be, as to which should be offered to a publisher, which should be destroyed and which should be deposited in some library.  I should like all manuscript copies which have been already printed exactly in that form to be destroyed.  Owing to the legal red tape your full name and address & title have to go into my will, could you tell me what they are?
Our love to Antoinette.
Yrs RVW

1. Beethoven’s tuning fork, which VW wanted to bequeath to Rubbra. See VWL3441 and VWL4968. The tuning fork is now in the British Library (Add MS 71148A).
2. Gerald Finzi had died on 27 September.
3. sic.