Dear Mr Finzi,

Please forgive my delay in answering your letter. I received it while away from London, and have only just returned this week. I enclose the Sonata [G.F. had asked for the loan of a Sonata for Violin & Piano, written by H.F. c.1925 at the R.C.M. It was later destroyed.] but fear it won't be the least good to you - try Beethoven!!

Best wishes, Howard Ferguson.

I sail for U.S. in December.

[Harold Samuel had been booked for a four-month tour in the U.S.A. early in 1927. As he was going to be away for so long he decided to rent an apartment in New York, and take along Pu (H.F.'s ex-nanny) as housekeeper. As R.O. Morris (H.F.'s composition teacher) had just become Head of the Theory Department at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, H.F.'s ever-helpful parents agreed that he too should go to America, so that lessons with Samuel and Morris should be uninterrupted. Thus it came about that Harold, Pu and H.F. sailed for New York on the Cunarder Celticon 18 December 1926. Their apartment in New York was at 410 West End Avenue.]

G.F.'s ink drawing of H.F.'s arrival in Philadelphia, Pa., where (in spite of all the luggage) he was notstaying.]

Dear Finzi,

Greetings from the land of the unfree; greetings from this the dirtiest city in the world [compared] to your poor dear despised only second dirtiest London. You say it is dirty, but you don't know what dirt is until you come here; I always had the impression that this was a clean place, now that I am here I know better. You can't leave a book on the piano overnight without its becoming covered with dust; I spend all day washing my hands, and by the evening I am - dirty. Everything you touch is dirty, in fact the whole place is dirty.

Having got that off my chest, I will go on to say really how very much I am enjoying myself here, in spite of all the dirt, dust and what not.