THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

From R. Vaughan Williams,
10, Hanover Terrace,
Regents Park,
London, N.W.1.

July 2nd 1954.

Dear Mr Fiske,¹

I am very sorry to be obliged to refuse your kind invitation, but I have made a rule never to talk in public about my own music … nor in private, if I can help it.  How about David Willcocks or, if he cannot do it, the man who knows most about my score at the moment is Roy Douglas, who has been copying and correcting it for me.  He would, I think, do it very well.  But he must be warned that his remarks must be quantative² and not qualitative.³
Yours sincerely,

R Vaughan Williams

Roy Douglas lives at 3 Eden Road, Tunbridge Wells.

1.  Writer on music and, at this time, producer of music talks on the BBC Third Programme.
2.  sic.
3.  The talk was to be in connection with the first performance of This Day (Hodie), Catalogue of Works 1954/3, which was due to take place at Worcester on 8 September.  Roy Douglas has described working on the score in Working with Vaughan Williams.