THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

Kilcot,
Newent

3.9.57 at 4 a.m.

Dear Ralph & Ursula (In that order only because the reverse doesn’t lilt):

Your letter was good news indeed, though not for Worcester, for it is only you who have clothed the natural shrivel of the Three Choirs.  Without you their only hope lies in injections by the BBC, itself in a less advanced state of decline.  What a chance the Anglicans are losing today, while the Romans realise the advantage of the tunes!  But the ultimate clash of philosophies has always lain between St. Paul and Marx.  The Buddists are better prepared to accept new thought in practical form, and the Confucians have already done so.
Out of the whirligig to your bedside where evidently persists music, the final religion of them all.  You can’t help yourself, can you: the notes make patterns in your days and your dreams until you have to write them down to be rid of them – rid of their pertinacity till you can establish them in permanent form.  Don’t I know that ache and even the annoyance of the notes when they force one to light up in the middle of the night and put down things that the next day often destroys. 
Well Ralph, you are the only man alive with whom I’d like a long agreeable disagreement; but that is now unlikely, for if the mountain couldn’t get to Mahomet a hillock is less & less likely to get to you.  In other words, a physical goodbye for I’ve seen the last of London.
Love to you both from Kathleen and myself, with an extra hug to Ursula for the 200% plus she has made of her man –
Rutland

1. VW’s letter is VWL3544.