THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

From R. Vaughan Williams,
The White Gates,
Westcott Road,
Dorking.

June 5/49

Dear Gerald

Dictated

In my will which I made a few years ago I appointed Morris and Bliss¹ as my literary executors. I should feel so happy if you could now undertake it with Arthur Bliss.
Your duties would be to look at all my unpublished manuscripts and decide what is to be done with them ie – either to be destroyed – kept in manuscript or published. All that you think ought to be published will be handed over to the Butterworth Trust to whom I am leaving all my copyrights and royalties.²
I do hope you will do this for me. Perhaps you will like to know also that I am leaving you Beethoven’s tuning fork³ which was left to me by Gustav Holst to be passed on to anyone I considered worthy.
Love to Joyce
Yrs

RVW

1. R.O. Morris and Arthur Bliss.
2. As it turned out, VW’s marriage to Ursula Wood in 1953 meant that it was she who was entrusted with the responsibilities that VW envisaged at this time might be held by Finzi and the Butterworth Trust.
3. Finzi died before this provision could take effect and in the end UVW presented it to the British Library in 1992.