THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Hotel Suisse
Ospedaletti Ligure
Riviera
Italy                          

[14th February 1914]

Dear Randolph

How good of the gentleman of Killaloe to send me Lecky – It will make me all the more prepared to volunteer (if they’ll have me) on the side of law & order when the fight comes.¹
We are here for our healths – & my brother-in-law² fell ill the first fortnight & is so still & Adeline is not much the better for it – I am very well – but then I was never ill – And the opera is nearly finished³ – I come back in March – but I hope they will stop on.
I heard of you in Switzerland – good fellow that you are – among the nobs. This is a very jolly place – with fine walks up in the mountains – I bathed when we first came & shall probably bath[e] again soon – so I’ve sampled 3 seas in 1913 – Adriatic, Atlantic & Mediterranean.
Today Tomorrow I go a motor drive in to the mountains with some of my smart friends – ahem – Give my love to Iris & all
Yrs

RVW

R L Wedgwood Esq
Stonefall Hall
Harrogate
Yorks
Inghilterra

1. VW seems to have been contemplating serving in Ireland in some capacity. The book sent may have been W.E.H. Lecky’s A history of Ireland in the eighteenth century, which had appeared in a new edition in 1892 in 5 volumes. A trip to Munster and Connaught had been planned for September the previous year (see VWL347). There had been considerable unrest in Ireland as Ulster resisted the threat of becoming part of an independent Ireland.
2. Hervey Fisher.
3. Hugh the Drover, Catalogue of Works, 1924/2. Writing to Percy Scholes in 1922 he said that the ‘Vocal score was completed 1914 (May)’. See VWL501.