THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

13 Cheyne Walk
S.W.

[1st April 1906]

Dear Randolph

The elegant Swainson’s address is Westminster Mansions Great Smith St Westminster S.W – but I don’t know the number – let him choose you a piano.  I’m sure he will get you a nice one – I’m so glad you are getting a boudoir grand – you will find it makes all the difference.
I’m so sorry Harford¹ & the songs were a frost – he certainly does sing them very well at times – within his limits of course and one must always remember that if a singer really did what Moore, say, can do in your sitting room – it would make no impression at all in a large room – therefore a different point of view has to be started from altogether – and it is only the very best people who can produce the same effect on a large scale – by different means – that Moore can in a small room.²
Q.E.D.

It will be splendid to meet in June when the Dearmers cease from troubling and the Athelstans Rile no more.³
Yours very affectionately

Ralph Vaughan Williams

1. Francis Harford, the bass singer, who performed VW’s songs widely in the early years of the twentieth century.
2.G.E. Moore, VW’s friend at Cambridge. In later years VW used to recall Moore singing Schubert after Hall.
3. A reference to the end of his work on the English Hymnal, whose editors were Percy Dearmer and Athelstan Riley. The words are from Job 3:17: “There the wicked cease from troubling and there the weary be at rest”.