THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

13 Cheyne Walk

[29th July l926]

Dear Mr McEwen

It was a great pleasure to me to receive the copy of the Brahms Clarinet Sonatas from your father’s library.¹ Up to the present I have not been able to connect his gift with any particular conversation or other circumstance – but we used to talk about so much music when we met that I think we may have discussed this work.²
I am always very sorry that I was not able to send your father a copy of my ‘Shepherds of the delectable Mountains’.  About two years ago he most generously offered to defray the expense of publishing it.  At the time I did not feel that I ought to accept his very kind offer but the indirect result was that I overcame my inertia and offered ‘The Shepherds’ to a publisher who to my surprise immediately accepted it.  The copies have only lately appeared – I wish I could have sent him one.
Yours sincerely

R. Vaughan Williams

1. John McEwen’s father was Robert Finnie McEwen.
2. In a covering note sent in 1959 (see VWL477) with copies of 5 letters, the recipient (at that time Sir John McEwen of Marchmont Bart.) said that his father ‘had left the work referred to to R.V.W. & I had given it to him’.  The others letters are VWL581, VWL578 and VWL579.