Letter from Ralph Vaughan Williams to Gustav Holst
5 Cowley St
Westminster
Dear V.H.
We are both most awfully glad about F. Thompson1 and your songs - it was brought about by a certain Miss Noel2 whom we had told about it - she knew the Meynells3 very well who take care of F.T. (He has D.T. and is in a home) and she laid your case before them and they managed it.4
I will go and get your suite - thanks awfully for letting me have it; and for all the directions - will any of it do for performance in church.5 I played the Reubke6 the other day.
Tristan - Glasgow!!!7
Yrs always
R. Vaughan Williams
1. Francis Thompson, the poet.
2. Name is unclear on original.
3. Wilfrid and Alice Meynell, literary editor and poet.
4. Holst had set a poem by Francis Thompson (To Sylvia, see Short, Gustav Holst: The Man and his Music, p.37) but apparently had difficulty in obtaining the poet’s permission to publish it.
5. Holst’s Suite in G minor for string orchestra, H41. See Short, Gustav Holst: The Man and his Music, p.39.
6. Julius Reubke, Sonata on the 94th Psalm for organ, an established classic of the organ repertoire.
7. Presumably the exclamation refers to a proposed performance in Glasgow of Wagner’s Tristan by the Carl Rosa Opera Company, in whose orchestra Holst played the trombone.
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Typescript copy.
Not included in Heirs and Rebels.