THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Dorking.

18.12.50.

My dear Gerald,

I brought your letter here, for consultation and advice, as well as having talked it all over with Bob¹ & Katharine Abercrombie.²  As things are now I don’t think you’d ever be able to collect enough people, privately, to contribute to guaranteed fund to make it large enough for B³ & his family to live on. A public appeal would not do either – & unless you can give him as much money as he is earning its no good. Seriously, I think that he might resent being given money, instead of earning it for his own liabilities. It is one thing to accept money from a friend, or a Trust, in an emergency, but I’m not at all sure that its the thing to live on. After all – Charles Lamb did earn his didn’t he? I know that both you & I and Bob are more or less lilies of the field, so its very hard not to wish equal freedom available to all others – but I don’t see how we can achieve this.
What I do think we can, & should, do, is to collect as much money as we can, to give B. a long recuperative holiday, to help him get over his asthma & bronchial trouble. I think this would be a real & valuable thing to do, & if it included an invitation to use some house in a delectable spot (Madeira?) for a month also – fine. I know you won’t like me saying so, but the training as a social worker has really inclined me to the view that you do best for people by dealing with the thing that causes trouble, & helping them to stand on their own feet. In B’s case, the trouble seems to be health really. 4 days in an office may not be too bad, & its probably much more peaceful than home with 3 little creatures rollicking all over everything all the time, as I dont suppose his house is very soundproof.
I honestly don’t think we should try to change the course of his life, it seems not only difficult, but verging on the impertinant⁴: but if we can produce a decent cheque, & the Times will give him a break of a month or two, I think it would accomplish something.
Ralph thinks it would be wrong & unfair to make him throw up a good job – as he has a moderately congenial one. 
I send a copy of the Author – not for the correspondance,⁵ but for the Article on awards, etc.
Love

U.

1. Robert C. Trevelyan.
2. Catherine Abercrombie, wife of the poet Lascelles Abercrombie.
3. Edmund Blunden.
4. sic.
5. sic.