Letter from Ursula Vaughan Williams to Michael and Eslyn Kennedy
Letter No. VWL3366
Letter from Ursula Vaughan Williams to Michael and Eslyn Kennedy
Letter No.: VWL3366
From R. Vaughan Williams,
10, Hanover Terrace,
Regents Park,
London, N.W.1.
August 20th [1956]
Dearest Michael & Eslyn,
It was lovely to have your letter & news of John1 – I hope he’ll have to go very slowly but, as you say, how he will hate it.
Clearing up – I always clear up as if I was about to die when we are going away – really, because I always delude myself into the hope of a fresh start, with well regulated working hours when I come home – I found spare copies of two Trollopes for you. Ralph says the opening of Barchester Towers is one of the best things in fiction – & Lily Dale in Small House2 is one of the best nice – detestables ever done. We are both addicts.
Ralph has been sculpted again – I think with great success by David McFall. We shall have it here in due course.3
Rehearsals for 3 choirs upon us – then the festival, home 7th for Adrian recording no 8 that day & 8th, & on 9th fly to
Hotel Bendinat, Palma de Majorca, Spain
till Oct. 7th.
I’m feeling in a bit of a flap now, with painters coming in, carpets to be cleaned & all the gerfuffle. Still, I expect it’ll all be fixed in time, & how blissful to have nothing to do for a month! Our garden is ragged too – sad, the wind blows away all ones plans – but the Blanc double de Coubert is flowering at last, a lovely medieval white rose.
Bless you both,
Ursula.
1. John Barbirolli.
2. i.e. The Small House at Allington.
3. A copy of this bust can now be seen at the entrance to the Rare Books & Music Reading Room at the British Library.
4. i.e., Adrian Boult’s recording of Symphony No. 8 (Catalogue of Works 1955/2).
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Shelfmark:MS Mus. 159, f.134