[Dearest Dave]

The ‘Interlude’ [G.F.'s for oboe & string quartet] is fixed for Monday next, the 22nd, at the Gallery; sandwiched between Haydn (I think) and Dohnanyi Quartets. The players are Edward Selwyn and the Strattons.

No letter yet from David Martin. I envy you your skating! H.

Dearest Dave,

I had a horrid feeling at the time that Bradford would prove to be the last straw. It did; and the camel is now writing you from his bed, having had to cancel Manchester, Belfast and the two Dublin concerts. However, as Myra says, there is nothing so pleasant as having some nice engagements to look forward to, and then being able to put them off! The doctor is allowing me up tomorrow; in the meantime I'm rather enjoying the first idleness I have experienced for weeks.

There did not seem to be time the other week to tell you how much I enjoyed ‘Dies'. It is a most lovely work. The performance, too, seemed fairly adequate; but I can imagine that a greater sense of forward-movement and line would be an improvement. Just occasionally both Suddaby and Miles allowed things to sag, which is fatal where such a subtle line is concerned. It is the greatest pity in the world that the performance was not in Hereford: that, or some such place, would provide the perfect atmosphere, which is painfully lacking in Wigmore Hall.

I still feel ‘The Fall of the Leaf’ shows signs of its chequered genesis. Nor can I convince myself that this is altogether because I happen to have inside information on the subject. However much one may know of the difficulties that a work has gone through, if that work finally reaches an inevitable shape one immediately and automatically forgets all the tentative steps that have led up to it. This I cannot do with ‘The Fall'. Though I feel that so much of the material of it is fine, I cannot feel that the whole of it is either final or inevitable. It is not that this or that point sticks out as being unsatisfactory, but that the thing as a whole lacks the quality, which every complete work of art must have, of seemingto be the result of a ‘single pouring out of molten metal'.