Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas
Page 34
Goodbye my own sweet little one. Kiss Merfyn and Bronwen and a special kiss for Merfyn’s letter.
I am ever and wholly yours
Edwy
Index of Letters
To Helen
16 April 1904
Well Knowe with Bottomley
Dearest one,
I have just been asleep for an hour (it is 4) because I did the same yesterday and then had the clearest and happiest hour I have had since I came, as I was walking back from the post across ‘the Park’. Yet your letters were enough (one letter and a parcel containing another letter arrived together at 9.30), and I was more sweetly dissatisfied than usual; only I was still tired and thought I would call sleep to the aid of your letters — sweet one, dearer letters they seem than you ever have sent and I have no language but my body to thank you with and that is glowing with thanks even yet. If I could only love you and show my love as much as you deserve how happy would you (and I) be! But with all my silly head and trembling body and rotten soul I do love you, and Merfyn and Bronwen will love you as you should be loved. How gay your letter is with your happiness and theirs. As I write this, I feel keenly how stupid it is not to be off to you at once. Yet I am getting more out of my visit than I thought I should. I can’t and don’t walk at all except to the post, but my talks (though far too littry and all that) are getting easier and deeper and more satisfying, and a few expressions of violent dislike of men and books have cleared my mind a good deal. I now find I can say to Gordon what I cannot say to most people with the exception of some bad language. Mr Bottomley came back last night and we have had some three-sided talks. — I admire and could like him, but he emphasises too much his ‘literary tastes’ and dislike of ‘commercialism’ and though they are part of a real refinement, in themselves they are a little laughable. He and everyone speaks so lovingly (and more than that) of you.
I have spent id since I came here, and got three clay pipes for it.
Goodbye dear old sweet and beautiful one. Keep yourself as neat as you have made the house and I won’t grumble ever again; and don’t wear your glasses. Kiss Merfyn and Bronwen for me many times and get them to kiss you back for me.
I am ever and wholly yours, my own sweet little one
Edwy
Index of Letters
1905-1909
Index of Letters
To Jesse Berridge
The Weald
8 August 1905
My dear Jesse,
I did call at the Bank last Wednesday at 10 minutes to 5 and was sorry to find you gone. I half expected to see you at the Vegetarian Restaurant between 5 and 6. I am almost always there on every other Wednesday. But I fear you were still unwell — I hope you are right now. Perhaps I shall feel more equal to meeting G. K Chesterton later: if I do, I shall want you to take me.
I am glad to have your letter the I do not know what is the ‘one cure’ for me. I can only think about ‘cures’ when I am fairly well and then I can’t think very seriously. The one thought which may in the end be comforting is that there is certainly no hope from myself in the tenderest friend.
Of course I know books and reviews are not important, but vanity prevents me from treating them quite lightly as well as badly.
What I really ought to do is to live alone. But I can’t find courage to do the many things necessary for taking that step. It is really the kind Helen and the children who make life almost impossible.
Freeman and I started for Canterbury on Saturday but we only did 25 miles because my foot became blistered. We had one good night sleeping under corn sheaves in a field not far from where you and I slept one day — on the Pilgrims’ Road. I meant to have asked you to come and strangely forgot.
Yours Ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Gordon Bottomley
c/o John Williams
Waun Wen School
Swansea
23 November 1905
My dear Gordon,
I got a promise at The Academy and Chronicle of your book and probably I shall get it from one of them. That was on Monday. On Tuesday I came here and I have been fiercely bored ever since. Swansea is a big rather notably ugly town and what with my not very intimate acquaintance with my host I am being reduced to inanition. Everything is against me. A mile off lives an old Aunt whom I remember seeing when I was 4: two miles off is an old Lincoln friend whom I had not seen since 1900. I have seen them both and they have plunged me into languid and unpleasant reminiscence, and although the Welsh mutton is good my food is thus not altogether bracing. Also the merriest man I ever knew — Watcyn Wyn — the bard who wrote ‘The Maid of Llandebie’ and ‘The Maids of Caermarthenshire’ — is to be buried today: and on Sunday I am to be taken in my bowler hat and collar to a Welsh chapel in the town. And I have still a lame foot and cannot confidently start a long walk. Of all those blessings my temperament makes the best as you know it would. So how can I write?
I saw Balmer on Monday and enjoyed an hour or two with him and his brother. His brother is charming — his clean and reddish hands, his shining collar, cheeks and eyes, the perfect white parting of his hair, as he sat at the piano, were fascinating in a way. On Tuesday I saw Ransome for a little while. He read me a story about a tramp, a clay pipe and a wife in which a small pretty notion was insisted upon to distraction. He also talked about the Lady whom he has promised to marry. He complained that he could not ‘get anything of himself into’ his stories: a natural complaint.
My host is a schoolmaster. The school is adjacent and now I hear a master’s whistle assembling a crowd of ragged children and see him with miniature ferocity giving silly little cuts with the cane to boys who are healthy enough to ignore his commands. So I end.
Remember me.
I am ever yours
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Walter de la Mare
The Weald
nr. Sevenoaks
27 August 1906
Dear Sir,
I am very glad to hear you are publishing some more poetry. If you care to let me know a few days before the reviewer’s copies are sent out, I shall ask for it and have no doubt I can do you whatever service praise may be. — But I have never dreamed of collecting my reviews. I live by them and that seems to be wonderful enough without sending the poor things out in fine raiment to beg once more. (For as I dislike writing about books and do it in haste and in such abundance, I assume it is valueless.) It is good of you to ask about my books. I began at an early age in 1897 — since then those published:
‘Horae Solitariae’ — Duckworth — 2/6
‘Oxford’ — Black — 20/ —
‘Rose Acre Papers’ — Brown Langham 1/6
‘Beautiful Wales’ — Black — 20/ —
‘The Heart of England’ Dent — 20/ — just coming.
But the expensive books were written to order and the little books of essays are very early.
Believe me
Yours very truly
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Walter de la Mare
Berryfield Cottage
Ashford
Petersfield
14 November 1906
Dear Mr de la Mare,
I was very glad to have your letter this morning, you are the only man I do not know who has ever written to me about my reviews and knowing your work I cannot but be happy. And yet I feel that even I could do so much better — about your book, for example — if only I had time. My article was only a hasty review: I have not time to order or make clear the thoughts and emotions your ‘Poems’ suggested. But to have pleased you is everything and to talk like this is only vanity. So thank you again and may I look forward to seeing you in London. May I call? When I am in London I often happen to be in Anerley (which I shall like a little better now).
I am using ‘Keep Innocency’ and (probably) ‘Bunches of Grapes’ and ‘The Child in the st
ory awakens’ also in my Anthology and I will mention the publishers.
About ‘Ev’n’ I think you can count on your readers making it a grave monosyllable without printing it so.
My other review of you — a very scrappy little one — will appear in the Bookman.
Yours sincerely
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Gordon Bottomley
Berryfield Cottage
26 December 1906
My dear Gordon,
The photograph is very good and a good picture too and Helen and I were glad to have it this morning and send our thanks to Emily for it with our love. But I may still regret that you didn’t meet F H Evans and get him to inspect you. Perhaps you will this next year. At any rate I wish you the health for a journey. It is nearly a year now since I saw you at Cartmel and I reflect that I have had one sight of you per annum since we began to write. Then with luck I may see you 30 or 40 times again — which makes the future seem quite a desirable reversion. But the present is of the old sort: even a little worse, since I have had but one visit from a friend since I came here, have had so much work that only twice have I been able to walk all day, and for some reason have attained a degree of self-consciousness beyond the dreams of avarice (which makes me spend hours, when I ought to be reading or enjoying the interlacing flight of 3 kestrels, in thinking out my motives for this or that act or word in the past until I long for sleep). Certainly I have a devil as much as any man I ever read of. But if there are devils there are no exorcisers, though a kind friend wrote to me lately to point out the security and sweetness of his refuge in the fat bosom of the Church. I feel sure that my salvation depends on a person and that person cannot be Helen because she has come to resemble me too much or at least to play unconsciously the part of being like me with a skill that could make me weep. It is unlikely to be a woman because a woman is but a human being with the additional barriers of sex and antipathy to me — as a rule. And as to men — here I am surrounded by schoolmasters at Bedales, while in town I can but pretend to pick up the threads of ancient intercourse, a task as endless as the counting of poppy seeds or plovers in the air.
I think you are right about Davies. But there are fine things in the new book, ‘The Likeness’, ‘The Ox’, ‘Music’, ‘Parted’, and others, and I do like ‘Catharine’. He will always observe and always feel, I think and whether he grows much or not, it seems likely that he will often attain simplicity unawares. I must think out a just and yet genial comment for his private eye. In print I shall praise him mainly because a reviewer has to shout like an actor if he is to be heard by the audience.
How is your Anthology? I have half expected Guthrie to call (at your instigation). Do you think we could do anything with one another?
Oh, thank you for The Gem and the Prayer. I wonder is that Miscellany worthy of its great aim. The soft paper anticipates part of a great millenial scheme of my own.
I have written to Dent asking that a copy of my book be sent to the Courier but it has very likely gone there and into other hands already. If not Dent will send it and I trust your man Dixon Scott will get it. Salute him for me. He belongs to a very small and very secret society. So far my only intelligent review is from The Athenaeum and that is not favourable. It objects to my ‘sensuousness’, ‘love of colour’, ‘lyricism’. So far no one has discovered ‘The Ship, the chariot and the plough’ except you and me.
It is alright about your Poetry article. As a matter of fact I am being hurried on by the publishers, but I have only the first to get ready at once and there will be no literary articles therein.
With our love and good wishes to you and Emily and your father and mother and Aunt Sarah,
Yours and Emily’s ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Jesse Berridge
Berryfield Cottage
Ashford
Petersfield 11 January 1907
My dear Jesse,
Smoking some of your York River tobacco, but otherwise rather denuded by too long a walk into Sussex in the slush. I thank you for your letter and the tobacco. I am glad you liked the books. If I could possibly heip to set Dell off in a direction of profit and delight I should be happy. I wish I had got to know him. But now he is getting older and aloof I expect. How hard it is to get over the natural boundaries between those even of an age I know, I know; for here I am surrounded by good men, masters at Bedales school, and so far I simply look at them with a ‘How I wonder what you are’. How I wish you were a curate — or better still a rector — within an easy walk. Someday you and I ought to walk to Oxford from here. Winchester is a fine day’s walk, Selborne is close at hand.
Never mind now about the tunes. I sang them to Freeman and now we have got them all right. You shall have the Anthology and recommend it to your parishioners as by your brother. The melodies — 56 of them — are a fine lot but the poems are perhaps rather obviously chosen by one who didn’t want to clash with other anthologies.
Some day I will come to Colchester. Tell me when it is quite convenient and I will do my best.
W. H. Davies is cheerful at the cottage and looking out for reviews of his New Poems just published by Elkin Mathews. Ransome is at present in Edinburgh where his mother lives. He is or lately was engaged again and he has plenty of work — did a dozen Xmas books for children, of no great merit. Tom is in Derbyshire, cheerful and serene and puzzling as ever I suppose. Rolf has a boy baby. Yes I saw Hogg’s book and gave it a lift in the Daily Chronicle. Some of it was jolly good, clear and original thoughts justly expressed. But I never got the Virgin Goddess. I wish I had. Lend it to me some day.
Merfyn had 10 days at school at the end of term, now looks forward to his scarlet cap and school every day with joy. He was a Rat in a musical performance of the Pied Piper of Hamelin at the end of the term!
Helen’s love and mine to you and Edna and Dell and Denys and Incogniti Tertius and Quartus.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Gordon Bottomley
Berryfield Cottage
Ashford
Petersfield
14 May 1907
My dear Gordon,
It is a beautiful still evening at 7 o’clock and I sit and look at the most luxuriant beechen hill and coombe in the world. I have no need to do any more work today, because I did 1600 words of reviewing before 3.30, after which I wasted two hours trying to pay calls with Helen but finding my victims out. Then I said ‘don’t’ to the children many times, and finally to myself; then suddenly seeing how beautiful it was, I thought I ought to enjoy it and could not think how. I can’t read for pleasure. I tried gardening: it annoyed me, and there was an end to it. It is no use walking, for I do nothing but feed my eyes when I walk, and it has at last occurred to me that that is not enough, — a man in the country must be a naturalist, an historian, an agriculturist, or a philosopher, and I am none of them. I have no ‘interests’ at all, and I know that beauty can bore and even infuriate one who is seldom passionate. So I am writing to you which is obviously a poor thing to do as it simply clarifies my introspection a little but will not — I know well — lead it anywhere. Oh for a little money, to turn round for a year, to make sure whether there is anything I should want to do if I had not to do reviewing. I tried to get my agent to help me out of reviewing. But he could only suggest fiction, which I can’t even begin to think of yet. I suggested a book on the Suburbs, but instead of my little 20,000 words he wants an important work of 60,000 and I know what that means, and he wants a syllabus and I don’t know what that means. The Jefferies has not been settled yet and I am afraid of it. It is a silly thing to do a bad life of a good man and I shall have no leisure to try to do a good one. I wish I hadn’t written this because it is not clear enough to enable you to help, supposing I can be helped. But I leave it, I think, just because I don’t like sending you a very short letter and I don’t li
ke keeping you waiting very long. Oh, my self-consciousness, it grows and grows and is almost constant now, and I fear perhaps it will reach the point of excess without my knowing it. I won’t send you my Anthology until the 2nd impression because it is full of misprints. I simply cannot concentrate my mind on familiar poems so as to detect misprints.
What you say about ‘a new movement of Naturalism — naturalism of feeling where Wordsworth’s was no more than a naturalism of thought’, I believe is well worth thinking about, and I have meant to get conscious of it to some purpose (having long thought vaguely as you do); but positively only reviews and nature ever make me think at all and that in a way beyond my control — things occur to me and I think for about the length of a lyric and then down and blank and something new — if the old idea returns it will not grow, but is only repeated. Perhaps we worry less about conclusions, generalisations nowadays, in our anxiety to get the facts and feelings down — just as science picks up a million pebbles and can’t arrange them or even play with them. I am by the way going to plead for a little more playfulness and imagination (if to be got) in archaeology, topography and so on: the way in which scientific people and their followers are satisfied with data in appalling English disgusts me, and is moreover wrong.
About Jefferies — I never read The Scarlet Shawl but it is a yellow back and said to be an entirely vain attempt to write an ordinary novel about lords. But I should like to look at it when I come down. By the way, as Helen is a daily schoolmistress from 9 till 10.30 she cannot get away until August and will then most likely go with the children.