THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

From R. Vaughan Williams,
The White Gates,
Westcott Road,
Dorking.

Oct 18th 1947

Dear Walthew¹

I do not suppose I can make you understand what a pleasure it was to get your letter.
I owe you such a lot from those early days – you taught me so much (and not only about music we discussed Browning, theology & all sorts of other strange subjects). Do you remember taking me to “Carmen” & I being then an insufferable young prig went prepared to scoff but remained to pray – & then where you asked me to your home & we played pfte duets (or rather you played & I followed after as best I could) – these are all fragrant memories for which I am grateful.
You know, you must have thought me a mere amateur – & I have been so, more or less, all my life – I seem to have had no natural technique – but have had to hammer out everything from the facts of the case.
I wish we ever met now –

Do you remember that? – I think I have got it right.²
Always yours

R. Vaughan Williams.

1.  A fellow student with VW at the Royal College of Music. VW often played piano duets with him. See ‘A musical autobiography’ (Ralph Vaughan Williams, National music and other essays, second edition, Oxford 1987, pp. 182-183), an essay which was first published three years after the date of the present letter and echoes some of its phraseology. Richard Henry Walthew was about three weeks younger than VW and spent much of his life as a freelance composer, conductor and pianist, conducting both the South Place Orchestra and the opera class at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His most successful compositions were in the field of chamber music.
2.  The opening of Walthew’s cantata The Pied Piper, a work which was performed by the Highbury Philharmonic Society in 1893 and was presumably heard then by VW. The quotation is a good example of VW’s musical memory.