THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

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

[June, 1939]

My Dear

I have not written for a long time & you have written twice – I like your new Poem! and the one about Haymaking!! The Haymaking did not come off because the Mower failed to appear – He has come today.¹
I don’t much care for praises of Satan²  – either Satan means evil in which case he should not be praised or he is good in which case why not call him God and have done with it.
I hope you will never wear dresses like the fashion plate you sent me.
Love from

RVW

1.  VW is referring to some such occasion as that depicted in John E. Lunn and Ursula Vaughan Williams, Ralph Vaughan Williams; A pictorial biography, pp. 51-52.
2.  UW was preparing a translation of Baudelaire’s Les Litanies de Satan.