Ursula Vaughan Williams:
The Echo of Imagination


Ursula Vaughan Williams died on 23 October 2007 aged 96. Stephen Connock pays tribute.

Friends of Ursula Vaughan Williams were doubly blessed. First, we enjoyed her vitality, warmth and wonderful sense of humour. Second, we had access to the world of Ralph Vaughan Williams — to his life and music and with an insight unique to Ursula.

Ursula Wood was born in Malta in 1911, the daughter of an Army Officer. Typically, she was relocated many times — she told me it was as many as twenty household moves before she settled at finishing school in Brussels. Here she could at least visit the opera, theatres and art galleries. She wrote her first poems in 1927 and continued an interest in poetry until her death.

Her childhood was often lonely, whilst her relationship with her mother was never close. She preferred the company of her grandmothers. She married Michael Wood in 1933, another Army professional whom she had met at Porton in 1930. He was tall and good-looking, but quiet — too shy for Ursula as she came to realise. Michael liked nothing more than to paint, becoming an accomplished water-colourist..

Ursula Wood joined the Old Vic Company in 1932, starting rehearsals in August. As she said, it was an interesting season with Peggy Ashcroft, Roger Livesey, Alastair Sim and Anthony Quayle in the company. She would visit the ballet. As she put it in Paradise Remembered.
"One night I went to the Vie when the ballet was a new one and saw Job. Normally I didn't notice music, being interested in what was happening on the stage, but Job...absolutely bowled me over".

Ursula was to meet Vaughan Williams in 1938 to discuss a possible collaboration for a new ballet. So began a relationship that would last twenty years, until Ralph's death in 1958. Without doubt, Ursula was the right person at the right time for Ralph. She brought to him a renewed zest for life. She also introduced him to poetry, including Edward Lear's The Owl and the Pussycat which he loved. Ralph, for his part, introduced Ursula into a musical world where she could attend concerts and parties afterwards..

Michael's death in 1942 brought Ralph and Ursula even closer. Following Adeline's death in 1951, they married entering into a "blissful phase" as Ursula put it to me. She provided fresh texts for Ralph's music, including The Sons of Light, their "Joint Cantata" in 1952 and the Four Last Songs, settings of Ursula's poems, in 1958. One of these songs. Tired, was very personal to them both..

During this period, Ursula continued to write poems and also produced four novels. Her work shows the influence of both W. B. Yeats and Thomas Hardy. She became an accomplished librettist with over 30 composers setting her words to music, including Finzi, Howells and Malcolm Williamson. As one composer put it: "There is a beauty to her words. It is very sensitive, she can capture moods and ideas in a few words or lines. Above all, the words are evocative and stimulate a musical response."

Following Ralph's death, Ursula worked tirelessly on musical causes. She became President of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. She served on the executive of the Musicians' Benevolent Fund and on the Committee of the Royal Academy of Music. She was deeply involved in the RVW Trust — stimulating new music and performances — and was very supportive of the RVW Society. She became our first President, in 1995. The Society was proud to publish Ursula's Complete Poems and her autobiography Paradise Remembered. No one else had made this effort on behalf of her writing and she was deeply grateful to the Society for our belief in her as a writer.

All Ursula's friends will miss her greatly, especially her sense of fun and her free spirit. As the conductor Igor Kennaway put it in a letter to Ursula of 1 February 1993:

What draws all who know and love you is the echo of your imagination and your heart — always aware of so many levels of existence. I think that the free spirits which dance around you are such precious gifts of friendship that I shall store and treasure them forever.

We will never forget her.