THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

[Sutton Veney]

[June 1916]

Dear V.

We are on the eve – all packed & ready – I can’t say more – write to me occasionally, my wife will give you the address.¹
Your letter about Thaxted was splendid² – I sometimes feel that the future of musical England rests with you – because every Paulina³ who goes out, & for the matter of that every Morleyite will infect 10 others & they in their turn will infect 10 others – I will leave you to make the necessary calculation.
Good luck to you – I feel that perhaps after the war England will be a better place for music than before – largely because we shan’t be able to buy expensive performers etc. like we did.  I wish I c^d have been there – perhaps next Whits: – who knows? 
I read your letter over & over again, it was so inspiriting – we don’t take music as part of our every day life half enough – I often wish we could all migrate to some small town where there could really be a musical community – London is impossible from that point of view.
Goodbye & good luck
Yrs

RVW

1. VW’s army unit, 2/4th Field Ambulance, left Salisbury Plain on Midsummer Day and embarked for service in France on 22 June; see R.V.W. : a biography, p.120.
2. See Short, Gustav Holst: The Man and his Music, p.138. From this year it became usual for a group of Holst’s pupils at Morley College and St Paul’s to come to Thaxted, where the Holsts had a cottage, for a Whitsuntide festival. This year Whitsunday weekend was 10-12 June.
3. i.e. ex-pupil of St Paul’s School for Girls where Holst was Director of Music.