THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Cornell Heights Residential Club
Ithaca, N.Y.  U.S.A.

November 6th 1954.

Dear Frank,

It seems a shame to trouble you on a matter which really has nothing to do with you, but you seem so clever in storming the Kipling Citadel that I venture to send you the enclosed letter that will explain itself. You might be able to see some way of helping, or give me the name of some one to whom I could write. We have made friends with John Kirkpatrick, we like him very much. He is a fine pianist and an excellent musician.¹
We are having a good time here. but alas, work has gone to the wall! We bathed in the Pacific and found snow at Ithaca all within a week. Everybody is being most hospitable and the audiences most receptive and intelligent. And we have seen the Grand Canyon!!!
Yrs

RVW

1. John Kirkpatrick, American pianist, exponent of and writer on the music of Charles Ives, and at this time Director of the chapel choir at Cornell. He had asked VW to help in attempting to gain permission from the Kipling estate to extend, for a recording, the setting by Ives of two stanzas of ‘Tarrant Moss’ to include four further stanzas later added by Kipling. Ives had also apparently failed to obtain permission for the orignal setting so that it had been published in 1922 without the words.  Kipling’s heir, Mrs Bambridge had so far refused to give this permission.