THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates
Westcott Road
Dorking

May 31 [1944]

Dear Wood

At last I am able to send you a fair copy of my oboe concerto.¹
I am so sorry for the delay which is due (i) to the fact that when I had, as I thought, finished it I began to re-write it and (ii) my copyist fell ill in the middle.
It is most kind of you to be willing to conduct it.  I hope you will receive the score from O U P² simultaneously with this
Yrs sincerely

R Vaughan Williams³

1. VW had offered his Oboe Concerto, Catalogue of Works 1944/1, to Henry Wood for the 1944 Proms season in the preceding January, but Wood initially turned it down on the grounds that it would not work in the Albert Hall. However, he later changed his mind since no other new VW work was available. 
2. Oxford University Press.
3. On the letter Henry Wood has drafted the substance of a reply: “Many thanks! I am going to find much pleasure in doing this & hope you will be kind enough to run through it with me prior to rehearsal”. In fact the concerto was not done by Wood that season since the Proms were cancelled (see VWL1859, footnote).