The treacherous ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart’s sister, wilt thou sail with me?’
I have beside me the book which taught Philip this sad bliss, this wild wisdom. The fly-leaves are entirely covered by copies in his hand-writing of the best-loved poems and passages. Between some pages are still the scentless skeletons of flowers and leaves — still more pages bear the stains left by other flowers and leaves — plucked in that spring at Lydiard Constantine. The gilding of the covers for the most part is worn smoothly out; the edges are frayed, the corners broken. Thus the book seems less the work of Shelley than of Philip. It embalms that Spring. Yet why do I say embalmed? It is not dead. It lives while I live and can respond to the incantation of one of the poems in this little book, beginning:
‘Life of Life, thy lips enkindle,
With their love the breath between them...,’
When I first heard them from Philip, Spring was thronging the land with delicious odours, colours, and sounds. I knew how nothing came, yet it was a sweet and natural coming rather than magic — a term then of too narrow application. As nearly as possible I step back those twenty years, and see the beech leaves under the white clouds in the blue and hear the wood wren amongst them, whenever by some chance or necessity I meet that incantation: ‘Life of Life, thy lips enkindle,’ and I do not understand them any more than I do the Spring. Both have the power of magic....
Not magical, but enchanted away from solidity, seems now that life at Abercorran House, where Jessie, Ann, Aurelius, and the rest, and the dogs, and the pigeons, sat or played in the sun, I suppose, without us and Shelley, throughout that April. There never was again such another Spring, because those that followed lacked Philip. He fell ill and stayed on at Lydiard Constantine to be nursed by my Aunt Rachel, while I went back to read about the Hanseatic League, Clodia (the Lesbia of Catullus), and other phantoms that had for me no existence except in certain printed pages which I would gladly have abolished. With Philip I might have come to care about the Hansa, and undoubtedly about Clodia; but before I had done with them, before the cuckoos of that poet’s Spring were silent, he was buried at Lydiard Constantine.
At this point the people at Abercorran House — even Jessie and Aurelius — and the dogs that stretched out in deathlike blessedness under the sun, and the pigeons that courted and were courted in the yard and on the roof, all suddenly retreat from me when I come to that Spring in memory; a haze of ghostly, shimmering silver veils them; without Philip they are as people in a story whose existence I cannot prove. The very house has gone. The elms of the Wilderness have made coffins, if they were not too old. Where is the pond and its lilies? They are no dimmer than the spirits of men and children. But there is always Ann. When ‘Life of Life’ is eclipsed and Spring forgotten, Ann is still in Abercorran Street. I do not think she sees those dim hazed spirits of men and children, dogs and pigeons. Jessie, she tells me, is now a great lady, but rides like the wind. Roland never leaves Caermarthenshire except after a fox. Jack has gone to Canada and will stay. Lewis is something on a ship. Harry owns sheep by thousands, and rents a mighty mountain, and has as many sons as brothers, and the same number of daughters, who have come to the point of resembling Jessie: so says Ann, who has a hundred photographs. Mr Morgan is back at Abercorran. When good fortune returned to the Morgans the whole family went there for a time, leaving Ann behind until the house should be let. She stayed a year. The family began to recover in the country, and to scatter. Jessie married and Jack left England within the year. Ann became a housekeeper first to the new tenant of Abercorran House, afterwards to Mr Jones at Abercorran Street. Otherwise I should not have written down these memories of the Morgans and their friends, men, dogs, and pigeons, and of the sunshine caught by the yard of Abercorran House in those days, and of Our Country, and of that Spring and the ‘Life of Life’ which live, and can only perish, together. Ann says there is another world. ‘Not a better,’ she adds firmly. ‘It would be blasphemous to suppose that God ever made any but the best of worlds — not a better, but a different one, suitable for different people than we are now, you understand, not better, for that is impossible, say I, who have lived in Abercorran — town, house, and street — these sixty years — there is not a better world.’
The Letters
Hare Hall, Romford, Essex — where Thomas was sent to work as a map-reading instructor in 1915
Hare Hall, c.1915
Edward Thomas (middle row, second from left) and the company of Hut 35 taken at Hare Hall Camp, October 1915
Thomas in uniform, 1916
THE LETTERS OF EDWARD THOMAS
1896-1899
1900-1904
1905-1909
1910-1913
1914-1915
1916-1917
Index of Letters
Thomas, 1905
One of Thomas’ letters to his beloved wife
1896-1899
Index of Letters
To James Ashcroft Noble
61 Shelgate Rd Battersea Rise
London SW
11 January 1896
My dear Mr Noble,
I am just back from Wimbledon and have been reading your letter. It gave me intense joy for a moment in a day of misery — comparative misery. In truth though I am not ill, I am worse today. Want energy, and weakness, stiffness and languor, and have no plans, hardly any ideas, for tomorrow. I trust it will find me away somewhere. The idea of being permanently glued to a stool at a London office is horrible just now. For though I fear I cannot say.
My love for Nature is as old as I, with increasing health — and I am getting better — my intense love for the open air, my — feeble though it be, — sympathy with everything about me increases too. Badly thought and expressed again, but I may learn something from Emerson and my favourite? — Thoreau.
I would wish that I might not be classed with ‘Provincials’, ‘Dissenters’, ‘Very Middle Class’ people, ‘Phlegmatic’ cusses or other — I was going to say ‘dramatic’ — aversions.
Now I think I had the symptoms.
My brothers could not — would not — come with me today, and I did not feel strong enough to go far, so I went off to the Common after dinner. Of course, my pleasure on the walk was great, but a sadder, a serener pleasure perhaps than usual. Many things I saw, and among them such a band of blue tits — and quite close to me. They were chattering in their usual merry fashion, and hanging in the strangest attitudes on the birches. I do hope Helen and I will see another such band on Monday. No weakness could deter me from that walk! — and I may be well again. I did not walk more than nine or ten miles, nor was I tired, but my shoulders are very stiff.
Should I see Arthur tonight or tomorrow I will give him your kind message.
I am glad I am not ‘Very Middle Class’.
When you mentioned Mary’s watch I was astonished for a moment, but I have it safe and will bring it with me on Monday.
I shall be sorry if it has inconvenienced her. The glass is cracked, but I forget how it was when I had it.
I have finished Leland, saving only the ‘Spells’ and a ‘Short History’. It has pleased me immensely and it only adds to my indebtedness to you for introducing to me such a charming and interesting book.
I should like you to have this note by tonight, so must bring it to a sudden end.
Love and kindest regards to you all from Yours ever affectionately
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To James Ashcroft Noble
19 Cambria Place
New Swindon
Wilts.
21 February 1896
My dear Mr Noble,
I was very sorry indeed to hear of your continued illness, so bad as to keep you in bed. I do hope you have been feeling better and are improving now, that I may have a better account of your health.
I am loth to trouble you with my affairs, but y
ou will be able to judge in a moment whether the paper has a chance. I am bewildered in attempting to give a title to it. I think — though I may be wrong — that the Gypsies should be mentioned in the title. ‘Gypsies and (or in) Wiltshire Meadows’; ‘Round a Gypsy Camp’; ‘Meadows and Gypsies’; each of these has something to be said for it though they are very clumsy. It was extremely kind of you to suggest a magazine and I would have tried without troubling you at such a time, but I thought you might see better where to try by looking over the article. After all, it is not very long, but there seems to me more information than I can generally give.
My note book would show you that I am not wasting my time — out of doors at least. I have written another paper and hope to be able to write two a week regularly. Father in his letter suggests that I should try the provincial daily press, but I know nothing of it, though it seems worth some trouble.
We are having some lovely clear weather now and every day I have been out for long walks. I wish I could hear that yourself had been tempted out by the sun, as you would have been today if better. Though I like the old man’s company I really enjoy walks alone best and seem to feel the companionable stillness of the woods, and get more intense calm and pleasure thus.
My reading, beyond Civil Service work, is limited to: ‘Hypatia’ and ‘Selborne’ and a snatch at Jefferies rarely as yet.
Besides studying the wild creatures of the fields I have gone so far as to make the acquaintance of a ‘hedger and ditcher’ and a shepherd on the downs. All of them cry out on the farmers who ‘put no money in the land’ and send everything to London; they say that the farmers even forget how to make cheese!
Arthur is in no hurry to write but I suppose he is waiting to let me know the result of his exam.; I hope that by this time you will have heard of his success.
Again hoping you are already better or well and with kindest regards to all I remain, my dear Mr Noble, Ever your affectionate
Edwy Thomas
Index of Letters
To Helen
113 Cowley Road Oxford
Sunday 14 November’97
Thank you very much for the stamps, dear.
My dearest Friend,
I am very happy with you, very content, and very hopeful, but little inclined to write. In fact I sat several minutes before I could ‘think what to say’. The happiness and content and hope is in a magic and higher place of our own: to write a letter means to leave that place, sweet heart; and leaving it I have doubts, frettings, hopelessnesses. That is why I hesitated at the beginning: and I write that you may have no least misgivings. Perhaps you are not likely to have them? Then I find it is because I should be a little discontented if I wrote nothing to you for long. So I write.
Your last letter was kind, it was gracious and sweet and gave me joy. I thought of it, and even read it again, as I walked in the quiet fields today. It is fine and mild; the last few days have been a little wet; today is the tenderest of all. Not a bright sun, but a cloudy sky pleasant to look upon, and most of all where it meets the thick woods of the horizon. Little flights of larks were singing and darting about in the last gardens of the town and the first fields of the country. Short snatches of blithe song — for indeed the birds were too lively and eager to fly, to sing much. In the wet grass, there were daisies, one here, one there, but half closed — for the day is too dull to open them. A mistiness in the air — hardly a wind — a healthy languor everywhere — a day when it is good to be alone, to walk slowly in the loneliness, not to think but merely to live, if our souls are calm enough. I was not calm and therefore did not enjoy it to the full; but I became calmer, and was the sweeter for the walk. My head is so full of littleness; now I think of history and coin an ‘idea’, now I think of what is about me and stupidly write in my notebook, and nothing ever long; in fact, a sort of madness. I want an object which shall concentrate my life, gather up the flying edges and trailing ends, and purge away a good deal, too. For I find myself with a lot of minor interests, encouraging now one, now another, and not really developing any. My writing vexes me, too. I don’t know what my papers are coming to, except prose fancy. If I ever had any power of description, it is entirely gone now, not a particle left. I am become a mere word spinner — almost always. Yesterday for example I put my hand to the perfecting of a half-done paper, thinking it would absorb my brain for a while. Instantly I began to spin and spin things that were never in my brain before the moment: I was led away now by a thought of somebody’s verse like a word spinner; and so went on producing not a whole at all, but patchwork, where, besides, not one patch is silk, nor even honest cloth, but rotten finery. However, I grant you I may not be an entire fool, and so leave the matter.
I wrote Mr. Hooton a long letter yesterday and Friday: in fact so long that I feel you might be justly angry. But you know why it was long, and yours short: — all is uncertain, and unknown between me and him: — we have no uncertainties. Therefore you are content, sweet Helen?
The most beautiful thing I could do, would be to draw your picture in my fancy, you as you are at this moment among the shaking birches. I see you indeed. If I were to choose one thing and then die; it would be to really see you now as you are, happy and well, you say, and enjoying the wild air, feeding on your own sweet mood. I only wish my head were cooler and clearer, to see you the better, to see you perfectly. You alone are beautiful. I can often doubt whether what I see on the earth is beautiful; but I know...
(left unfinished)
Index of Letters
To Harry Hooton
113, Cowley Road, Oxford
10 January 1898
My dear Harry,
You must have known how sorry I was on Saturday not to be able to call as I had hoped; but there is surely no need for me to talk of a disappointment so slight in comparison with the delight of yesterday; indeed you have probably forgotten. I hope Janet was as well on her arrival as she was happy, and I hope she came in good time. Surely I shall see her when I get back?
It is a weakness of mine that in any but the most fitful conversation I lose my head and my power of memory and even of reasonable speech; but immediately I am once more alone I recollect the subject and torment myself with a regret that I did not see this and that. One or two things occurred to my mind after leaving you on Friday. For example, it seemed to me that, desiring as you do an unbroken progress of character which death cannot affect, modern Science, with its doctrines of development, and Christianity, with its trust in a constantly beneficent God, should help you, at least by their inspiration of hope. But will you object to this, that it degrades the egoistic idea? Surely not; for what I suggest would be an action not more obtrusively outside action than what in life affects us from the outside, — surely a great force, even for the most self-centred egoist. This is vainly longwinded, and quite enough. Nevertheless, I will mention another thought that occurred at the same time. You considered the total cutting short of a character in the process of arduous development one of the most pitiful results of death to be contemplated. But is it not a question, a matter of opinion, whether we live to mould the abstract beauty of a character for itself alone, or whether only for its service to surrounding human nature? The results of well doing and the enjoyments of sweetness are positive enough to be the reward of any exertion, I am inclined to think; and added to them, if one still dreads the shattering of this lovely thing character, there is at least the trust, if not the certainty, that, as I before suggested, a beneficent God or a natural process will carry on the development to its perfection, which is of course infinite. There remains, however, the sad consciousness which a person of strenuous and lovely character must possess, that a very miserable portion only of his strength has by outward forces been allowed to strike itself into the soil; then as to the remainder, which has been wasted or unused; surely it has not been futile, whether seemingly resultless, or even never exercised? There comes in the Egoist’s assurance and delight in himself, even if he stand perfec
tly alone.
I am almost enjoying myself here, though I certainly shall see no friendly creature before I return. In fact, I find quite a keen pleasure in the competition. I will try to go in full of hope.
Did you read any of Richard Jefferies on Saturday night, I wonder? I should be very glad to find you could enjoy him.
Helen goes to Bedford Park today, and it is about time; for I was beginning with ground to fear for her health. She should have a month’s ease there, and need be in no hurry to find another place, though never forgetting that end. What happy times are still promising for us. You make it so pleasant that we have quite a debate to decide whether to go to you or to Wimbledon. Goodbye! I will tell you when I definitely come back.
Edwy
Index of Letters
To Helen
113 Cowley Road
14 June’98
My dearest Friend,
Your letter this evening gave me such a warm sense of quiet bliss. I half expected you would have been miserable after my one note. You mistook me favourably once, however. As if I meant Irene! How could I have had enough experience of her to find my ‘friendship’ with her ‘accursed’? No. I am not her friend, nor is she mine.
I hope to return by a train leaving here at 4.20 on Thursday. I don’t know when it gets to Paddington; rather before 6 I should guess: but you could look it up, and if able, meet it. We might have a quiet, if not a private hour. Never mind if you can’t. Still, I will watch for your brown face, sweet heart. If I don’t see you, I will write to arrange for Friday. Don’t wear a white dress if you meet me at Paddington.
Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas Page 30