THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates

Sunday morning 7.30 [After October 1940]

Sunday morning 7.30

My Dear

I’ve not taken umbrage (I don’t know quite what it is – but I certainly haven’t taken it – but if it is anything which belongs to you I should like to have it.[)] I didn’t get any large batch of verse – only “Soliloquy” which I like very much.
My dear don’t escape from Bude – everywhere is deadly now – and you have your job (as we all have) of looking after those who belong to you which I believe is the first thing to do (here endeth [the lesson])¹
Have you heard anything from the Abinger Chronicle – the last number was so bad that I thought of giving it up – But then I thought “No they’ll say say it’s because they haven’t put in Ursula’s poems “ – Then they asked me to write something more – & I refused – but wondered afterwards if I ought to have said “I will write for you on condition you put in something by Ursula” – But I did neither.²
Take care of yourself my dear & write a lot more beautiful poetry and keep your beauty – my goodness what wonderful things to possess – to have beauty & to be able to make beauty. The Nazis can’t destroy that.
Love from

RVW

I’ve been re-reading “Soliloquy” – I think it is beautiful – one or two things I am doubtful about
“Record, not guide, is all past history”
and
“masks all the world beyond a stage & decoration”³
RVW

1. See VWL1441, footnote 2. Ursula’s husband Michael Wood was stationed in Bude at a radar unit and UVW had accompanied him there.
2. However, the paper did eventually publish a poem of UW’s in December 1940. See VWL1477.
3. “Soliloquy” was published in UW’s collection of poems No Other Choice (Blackwell, 1941), p.45. The first line noted by VW does not appear in the published version, but the second survived intact!