THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

[April 1899]

My dear Herr Gatty,

“Come back to Erin Mavourneen”.¹ DO come home and set up in London. You would be sure to get some work – and friends – London is really a very good place and one can lead the café life here very well. Also you will have an opportunity of seeing our house while it is fresh. Why didn’t you come to Ljndon instead of Kjbnhav’n.
Do you intend your latest poem for publication² – and may we send your ‘Rise early morn’ on its travels. I think its one of the best things you’ve done.
We’ve seen a good deal of Ivor & Nicholas – Nicholas comes and leads a ‘quartett abend’ here every Sunday of which he is the bright particular star³ & I’m the viola – so you can imagine what we’re like.
You don’t say what your worries are – do be more explicit. If you’d only been here to help us furnish!
Yours

R.V.W.

1. A popular drawing room ballad by ‘Claribel’ (Charlotte Alington Pye Barnard).
2. The VWs, and in particular Adeline, helped Gatty by copying his poems and sending them round to magazines in hopes of publication.
3. From Helena’s speech in All’s Well that Ends Well, Act I, sc 1: ‘’Twere all one that I should love a bright particular star and think to wed it’.