THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

[About September 1942]

My Dear

I am so sorry I have neglected to advize you.
Personally I should prefer the Elizabethans & Restorants¹
(Byrd Fantasia
Jenkins (ed Mangeot²)
(a fantasia I think by him is a lovely thing)
Byrd Lachrymae
Gibbons Fantasia
(all for strings)
Purcell Fantasia for string 4^tet (I know these are recorded)

I think you ought to find enough among all these.
That is a handsome [verse?] by G Buller  – I am glad he likes the love poem addressed to Mr Jedediah Cleishbotham (or whatever his name is)³
I see he alas praises your hated rival Lilia Bowes Lyon (who is a nice little thing – but no rival in any other sense)
I hope you have put in for you quota of a million pairs of silk stockings.
–   I love writing that word pair. It brings up lovely memories.
Did I tell you that my “Peoples Land” film music was finally recorded – the usual ungodly hurry at the end.⁴
Take care of yourself my dear and write some more lovely poetry.
–  I wish you would make some experiments in rhyme and metre.
Love

RVW

P.S. Grand about the portrait & the galloping horses (mares I presume chiefly but one or more (?) stallions) .⁵

1. Presumably meaning Restoration composers such as Purcell.
2. André Mangeot, violinist and editor of 17th century music.
3. Cleishbotham is an imaginary editor in Walter Scott’s Tales of my Landlord.
4. Catalogue of Works 1943/3. The music was written in 1942 and the film first shown in March 1943.
5. The reference is to a postcard from UW, where she writes “I have met a painter, so I am to have a portrait (probably it will be romanticised as he paints like that) & frescoes of galloping horses up the stairs—I like the latter, anyway”.