Ursula Vaughan Williams

Joan Ursula Penton Vaughan Williams (née Lock, formerly Wood; 15 March 1911 – 23 October 2007) was an English poet and author, and biographer of her second husband, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Ursula Vaughan Williams was born in Valletta, Malta, where her father, Major Robert Lock, was aide de camp to the General officer commanding, Arthur Pole Penton.

Lock, later a knighted major-general, was married to Penton’s daughter Kathleen.

She had governesses before attending a day school in England and finishing her schooling in Brussels (1927–28).

By then her father was stationed in England, as commandant of the experimental station at Porton Down.

The musicologist Oliver Neighbour writes that after moving from Brussels "she passed the next four years, horribly bored and reacting sharply against the social round in which she was expected to take part".

Ursula became the composer's muse, helper and London companion, and later helped him care for his ailing wife, Adeline, who had arthritis so severe as to confine her to the house in Dorking where she and her husband had lived since 1929.

Whether Adeline knew, or suspected, that Ursula and Vaughan Williams were lovers is uncertain, but the relations between the two women were of warm friendship throughout the years they knew each other.

Neighbour records that she occupied herself with reading, writing poetry, archaeology and amateur dramatics, "and finally escaped to London" in 1932–33 to study at the Old Vic theatre.

While a student there she was able to attend some performances free of charge, and one evening she saw Job, a ballet by Ninette de Valois with a score by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

It was a memorable experience that remained in her mind.

She later said it "opened a new world to me".

On 24 May 1933 she married Captain John Michael James Forrester Wood of the Royal Artillery at St Clement Danes church, London.

Between then and the Second World War she wrote prose and verse and contributed to the BBC and the Times Literary Supplement, while living the peripatetic life of an army wife.

In 1937 she sent Vaughan Williams – whom she had not met – a ballet scenario she had written about the Ballad of Margaret and Clark Saunders.

The subject did not appeal to him, but through the intercession of Douglas Kennedy he was persuaded to consider another scenario of hers, based on Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion.

Author and composer met for lunch in March 1938 and enjoyed each other's company.

Despite their both being married, and a four-decade age-gap, they soon began a love affair that lasted secretly for more than a decade.

In 1941 her first published book of poems appeared, titled No Other Choice.

The following year Michael Wood died suddenly of heart failure.

At Adeline's behest the widowed Ursula was invited to stay with the Vaughan Williamses in Dorking, and thereafter was a regular visitor there, sometimes staying for weeks at a time.

The critic Michael White suggests that Adeline "appears, in the most amicable way, to have adopted Ursula as her successor".

Ursula recorded that during air raids all three slept in the same room in adjacent beds, holding hands for comfort.

In 1943 she published a second volume of poems, Fall of Leaf.

Ursula was the eldest of their three children, having a younger sister and a brother, who was killed in Burma in 1944.

Army life entailed frequent moves, and her education was sporadic.

Adeline died in 1951, aged eighty.

In February 1953 Vaughan Williams and Ursula were married.

He left the Dorking house and they took a lease of 10 Hanover Terrace, Regent's Park, London.

After Vaughan Williams's return to live in London, Ursula successfully encouraged him to become much more active socially and in pro bono publico activities.

With her support he resumed the composition he had been forced to set aside during his first wife's illness; Ursula wrote the libretto for two of his last choral works, including the cantata for Christmas Hodie.

Vaughan Williams died in 1958.

Following his death his widow moved to Gloucester Crescent near Regent's Park, London.

In 1964 she published RVW: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams.

She wrote four novels, including Set to Partners (1968) and The Yellow Dress (1984), and five volumes of poetry.

She wrote libretti for other composers, including Herbert Howells, Malcolm Williamson and Elisabeth Lutyens, for example, her "Hymn to St. Cecilia", which was set to music by Howells.

Until her death in London at the age of 96 she was honorary president of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society.

She was also the president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

She completed her autobiography, Paradise Remembered, in 1972, but did not publish it until 2002.

The composer's concern for his first wife never faltered, according to Ursula, who admitted in the 1980s that she had been jealous of Adeline, whose place in Vaughan Williams's life and affections was unchallengeable.