Dear Fergie,

I expect you will be back soon from The Emerald Isle. Probably the Italian Exhibition has already done the job. I'll be back on the 14th for The Royal Crematorium [teaching at the R.A.M.], when I shall have to instruct Molly Selby, Audrey Thomas, E. Talbot, Joan McTurk, Leila Goulden, G. Robbins and Mary Donnington in the theory of music, harmony, the first species and such things, about which I know nothing and care less. What a lot of tarradiddle and bunkum it all is.

On the 20th the B.B.C. have a ‘try-over’ 10-1. - a sort of Patrons Fund minus the audience, with a view to finding new works. They are doing my ‘New Year

Music'. Looking over the score again I find it to be a dreadful work, but I shall go through with it, if only to hear my trombones. They write that I shall be ‘admitted if I care to come'. If you are not playing in Timbuctoo on the 20th would you make an attempt to join me there? I don't know whether they will admit you. You could say that you were my uncle or son. Curwens won't do those songs, though they write a very fulsome letter and Jacobson told (Herbert) Lambert that some of them were ‘absolute masterpieces'.1 Of what use to me: I can't put it on my visiting-cards. Of course there were criticisms but I gather it is really a financial question. So we must go on, and go on, and go on writing ‘absolute masterpieces'! However, the world is not too bad when you consider that I met yesterday, for the 2nd time in my life, a woman who said ‘I like nature very much.’ Ever, G.F.

Dear Dave,

You were right about the Italian pictures. I arrived here at 8 on Friday morning and was down at Burlington House by 10! Strange to say, they are quite as wonderful as the papers say.

Can you come here tomorrow (Tuesday) or Wednesday evening for food: any time after 6. Give me a ring during the day if you are home.

Adrian Boult and Keith Falkner are doing my old Dirge [ ‘A Lyke Wake Dirge', Op.1, No.2] at Birmingham on 26 June. I'm delighted, as I want to hear what it sounds like.