Item 183 - Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Elizabeth Trevelyan

1 item

The White Gates, Westcott Road, Dorking. - Saw the 'lady conductor of Forest Green' yesterday, who says what Bessie was told about the hut [village hall] being taken over by the W[ar] O[ffice] and empty was 'quite untrue'; the village is still using it in the 'ordinary way', with the sole proviso that 'in the (unlikely) event of troops coming to the neighbourhood the YMCA would then take it over for the troops'. Hopes Bessy will put this right if she has told anyone else: the 'poor W.O. has so many true [emphasised] accusations' it is important no false ones are made. Regarding their conversation about the BBC and German music, he thinks that 'many musical and sensitive people who love German people and German music' might therefore 'find it an unbearable pain' to hear it due to the contrast between Germany's past and potential and its present state. Doubts that the BBC 'deliberately abjured German music for a week or so', but if they did perhaps that was the reason. Stresses that 'we English are not always [underlined] quite so stupid and so evil intentioned as our candid friends in the New Statesman and elsewhere try to make out'.

British Library, MS Mus. 1714/1/12, ff. 116-120

Transcription available on-line on the Letters of Vaughan Williams website, copyright the Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust.
Reference number VWL1602: http://vaughanwilliams.uk/letter/vwl1602

Pencil annotation dating the letter '1 October 1939'.

The editors of the 'Letters of Vaughan Williams' project give the name of the 'lady conductor of Forest Green' as Miss Farland.