THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

[1895?]

Dear Randolph

Please give me cartloads of “dull pedestrianism” in future – I want it.

Yes – before you wrote I had settled to stop on, at all events till next Xmas.  I was persuaded by the curate of all people – who pointed out that if I left at Easter I should just have finished knocking down the old building and not have started building the new, and that things w^d just slide back into the old groove.  You see before I came they used to yell bad music much too quick; I make them sing good music rather too slow; and at first they don’t like it.  But the vicar is coming round and we are going to give 2 men £10 a year each, and a solo boy £4 a year.  Also we have started a choral society – first practice tonight – also I intend to start an orchestral society.¹

Now about the reading party you see Good Friday to Easter Monday is just THE VERY TIME in the whole year at which I MUST be here – so what is to be done.  Why can’t you take your holiday later – then I could probably get off – now Trevy and Moore can more or less choose their own time for holidays – and as to Amos – well we all know that a lawyer has six months vacation every other day.²  So much for time – now about space.  Why the Lowlands of Scotland not that I have anything personally against them – not against Mr Durniewassal of Dumbarton – but if one is going to have a weeks holiday it seems a pity to spend 48 hours of it in the train.  I know that Scotland is nearer to Yorkshire than to London – still another place I think might be more convenient – as exemplified in this plan

You perceive that Utopia will be rather nearer to you & a great deal to me.

If you want to read a really good French novel read “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert – an attempt was made in France to suppress it as being “Lascive” but I don’t think this will hurt you – also “Le Cousin Pons” by Balzac is very good.

1. VW was at this time organist at St Barnabas Church, Lambeth.
2. George Trevelyan, Moore and Maurice Amos had been part of the reading party in Skye in 1894. The group eventually went to Seatoller, in the Lake District, in 1895.