THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

XI.97

Dear Randolph

Its a long time since I’ve written to you and so I will tell you a little of what I’ve been doing – Firstly I am a charity boy that is to say I am a member of the “Akademie der Künste” for which I paid an entrance fee of 20 marks and then the state pays Max Bruch to give me an hours lesson once a week at his home – so there’s an expense the less. We also have German lessons from a tall fat very hearty young man who discourses learnedly on Grimm & Descartes for 1½ hours once a week and makes us read Lessing’s “Nathan der Weise”¹ – very dull. We simply soak in concerts – the best concerts and all the “Hauptproben” which are just as good take place on Sunday mornings at 12.0 – a most ideal time to listen to music.
Also we went to [a] German version of “Trilby”²  and to Faust “Erste Theil”. They are also doing “Zweiter Theil” but we haven’t been to that yet as the concerts take up all the time.
All that has been said against Berlin is absolutely untrue – it’s of course not a picturesque place but very bright and cheerful and delightful canals with trees planted all along them. Also here is Potsdam ½ hours rail away – with that lovely place Sans Souci the most wonderful artificial garden with its statues and fountains and terraces all on an autumn afternoon with the leaves falling which fitted in beautifully with the general feeling of sentimental decay. Then across the valley on the other side rise beautiful sham ruins making a classical landscape in the style of Claude. The whole is so beautifully artificial. It was on that journey that I helped a policeman to put out a lamp – he was trying to do it with his sword but was not tall enough so I offered to help him whereupon the servant of the Kaiser handed me his sword and I turned it out.
We feed here very nicely – ordinary German Fruhstuck then about 2.0 we go [to] the little restaurant where you get a luncheon of 3 courses and coffee for 1 mark. On opera nights we have buttered eggs, bouillon, rogenbrod,³ kuchen and tea at home before we go out & tea and kuchen later on when we come in; on other (I was going to say ordinary) days we reverse the process, the buttered eggs & bouillon are self-made
yrs affecntely

R. Vaughan Williams

P.S Whats Amodges⁴ address?

1. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan der Weise: Ein dramatisches Gedicht in fünf Aufzügen, Berlin 1779.
2. The novel by George du Maurier, first published in 1894. Dramatised by Paul Potter. The German translation of the dramatisation appears to be unpublished.
3. i.e. Roggenbrot – rye bread
4. A nick-name for Maurice Amos, his Cambridge friend.