Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas

by Edward Thomas

  I am very glad to have your news, especially that you like Criccieth and the country and the sea round about. I hope it is really doing you good. I should like to be there, but my travels for some time must be chiefly in connection with work, especially the Icknield Way (from East Anglia S.W. into Dorset).

  I can’t remember when I wrote last. But did I tell you Garnett and I were trying to get a small pension for Davies? You have perhaps heard Yeats and Conrad were to have pensions. Davies is not certain yet. We got an interesting lot of signatures, including Bridges. Gosse is helping to get something from the Royal Literary Fund.

  I saw Ransome in town. They are thinking of a Chelsea house now, and I suppose they are pretty well off. But I find myself remote from them now, especially from him. I heard about Tabitha and the little Abercrombie. Did you see Mary and the Bramble? Rather loose and eloquent, with nice feeling, I thought.

  I am falling asleep after a lot of gardening in these warm lovely days. How are they with you? The garden is very crude, but the terrace and the flowers are already pretty. We have some rosemary — at least I have by my study window. But we hope for a sprig of yours. You should see my wallflowers, the yellow and the darker than blood. We are waiting for the cuckoo. When I see you next I have a Welsh cuckoo song to hum you. I hope that will not be far ahead. By the way, Guthrie was here a month ago. He and I hit it off less, I think. Except in his art he is inarticulate but not silent. We are all well and glad of the new weather I assure you. Goodbye. Give our love to Emily and thank her for writing and ask her to forgive my not writing back. She would not have thanked me had I done so when I ought.

  Y — ours ever! Edward Thomas

  Index of Letters

  To Harold Monro

  Wick Green

  Petersfield

  19 May 1911

  My dear Monro,

  I am glad to hear from you and especially to hear you are coming to England. If you do settle here I hope it will not be too far away. Houses are not quite undiscoverable in this neighbourhood, by the way, where you will still find Lupton next door to me, and he is married now.

  I don’t know what to say or what not to say about journalism. I suppose your friend has a gift of writing and perhaps nothing very definite to exercise it — I mean no special subject or temper. With health and persistency such a man, if at all clever, soon makes £50, £100, £200 out of joumalism in London. I have known very few and they have usually begun with literary and journalistic friends to suggest or introduce. But the usual beginning is to get reviewing on a Daily or weekly, or to write articles upon subjects or people of the day or of the day after. I got my first reviewing by calling without an introduction and finding an editor friendly. Then I got to know people and ways and means developed. Everything was rather accidental in my case and I daresay often is, so that it is hard to recommend any course — I have never myself had any influence to use. I don’t think I have ever ventured to introduce any one to an editor, partly because I have not been personally friendly to editors and my word would have little weight, partly because I should have been cutting my own throat. At present I am in a worse position than usual and am being threatened with the necessity of writing many more books and losing most of my reviewing. Low as reviewing is it is only for the day and can be shaken off, but continuous hack-writing of books seems to me worse, more damaging to freedom and reputation. This I mention because it may not be without bearing on your friend’s case. I was without special knowledge, had only a sketchy acquaintance with a number of things and a youthful bookishness. Partly owing to my work, perhaps chiefly, I have lost the bookishness and my acquaintance with things remains sketchy. But I am no longer entirely youthful and both the dulness and the ripeness of maturity are against light adventure. Hence I am dropping out, I believe. Your friend may of course be much better equipped: he will almost certainly have more vitality. I don’t like to advise. If he does come to London I should advise him to find a special subject or domain if he has not one already. He will have to do much that he is only slightly qualified for, but let him try to master a subject or a particular kind of writing. Then he will have something to keep his head above the mud of things. Also it is well when first looking for work to have a subject which you know rather particularly well, a language, a period of history or literature, or form of literature, the hobbies of royalty etc. Under cover of this one subject a young writer insinuates himself among editors and others who usually have no subject at all: they are not afraid of a man who asks only for books relating to the reign of William IV. But do not trust me. I have done hard work, it is true, and made a living, but I have never made my way. I was kindly treated as a very young man and as I say things seemed to come my way. Thus I have not a fair knowledge of the field, and I am suffering from this now and it may be inclined to take too gloomy a view. As you say, there is no regular entrance to journalism. But your friend can evidently write well enough. I should not think shorthand was necessary except to a regular newspaper man, a reporter and subeditor. This cutting tells me only that he can do the usual things in a competent manner. If he wants to write paragraphs, interviews, leaderettes, I know nothing personally about that side of the trade, but could possibly introduce him to one or two that do. The necessities in every branch are the power of writing grammatically with ease (and still better, with plangent confidence), and persistency. I have been talking too generally, because I don’t know enough to be particular. I can’t answer your question as to ‘what sort of work is most wanted now,’ except that more and more the journalist’s business seems to be to follow while seeming to lead, and to connect everything he does with the moment. But I have never done anything for the papers except reviews and a very few articles which represent the one out of a dozen of my own choice which was also theirs.

  I hope you are not going to meddle much with journalism. I shall be glad to see your book, the I have so many to read and write now that it needs an effort to regard a book as anything but an enemy, though a helpless one. I have three books in hand to be done before the year’s end, have written two short ones already this year, and have just published one and am about to correct the proofs of another. Let me know your plans and if I can be of use in any particular I will try. At present, as you can guess, I cannot subscribe to your belief that good things are bad for one, if it has the corollary that unpleasant things are good. And yet I am not so sure, because after all, unpleasant as things seem to me now I have always believed myself to be choosing what was pleasantest and least troublesome at the moment; and with such a motive I suppose it is inevitable that nothing should come up to one’s standard of pleasantness.

  Yours sincerely

  Edward Thomas

  Index of Letters

  To Harold Monro

  Wick Green

  Petersfield

  19 July 19x1

  My dear Monro,

  I wrote to you exactly a month ago but put off finishing the letter because I was expecting your poems every day. When they came I still left the letter and now it was sufficiently faded and stale to be burnt. I am only sorry because I am not likely to write as long a one now, and I estimate (my own) letters by their length, because it seems a virtue to write a long letter when mere writing is repulsive. It is late for me to be writing about your poems. I have already reviewed them — with much more confidence than I feel, and also with much less attention to the body of the book than it deserved. The reason is that — possibly because it is new work — I have not discovered in the poems the unity of word and spirit which I always look for. In fact I feel that you might do equal and possibly greater justice to your view of things by a reasoned statement in prose. Whether I am right or not you can see that I could never get quite at home with it. I kept feeling that I wanted to reach your ideas but that your form was a veil, often an attractive one in itself, between me and your ideas. Not that you leave me or anyone else in any doubt as to many of your ideas, but that these are so absorbing that
I resent anything which (however good in itself) hinders you from expressing them and me from understanding them fully. Directness is not an essential, I know. The great poets are not concerned to tell us everything straight out like a man in search of converts: nor do they make converts either. But I do feel that in your case an increase of directness would be a gain. I feel it in ‘God’ and equally in ‘Dream’ and ‘To the Desired’. They make me want even crudity and bluntness, especially when I come to a phrase like ‘some faint delicious dream’: I find myself trying to translate this into physical actuality and cannot. This may be pure perversity and I should not be surprised if you feel sure that it was.

  As likely as not, this criticism is the outcome of weariness and dissatisfaction. I am just finishing a book; I finished one in June; and I am correcting the proofs of two others. You were quite accurate in interpreting my last letter, and I am afraid nothing has happened to make me revise what I said. At this moment I could say it over again even more bitterly. There is now some chance that circumstances will drive us away from here, if indeed they are not so confusing that they will not compel us even to so unpleasant a solution but leave us merely uncertain. However, I hope we shall stay and if you come as a neighbour, so much the better. Houses are not very easy to find but some friends who were looking for one lately heard of several. I hope I shall see something of your friend if he comes to town.

  Yours sincerely

  Edward Thomas

  Index of Letters

  To Edward Garnett

  Wick Green

  Petersfield

  16 September 1911

  Dear Garnett,

  I have not got on with the Shakespeare papers yet. Since I saw you I have not been well and I got away to Wales. But it did me little good and I have thought of a seavoyage. It occurs to me as just possible that you might be able to suggest an article or series connected with a voyage, say on a Welsh trading ship to the Mediterranean parts, perhaps as far as Constantinople. This may strike you as quite impossible for me and in any case impractable; and I am not at all confident myself. But if it could be managed I should be glad as well as surprised. Don’t answer if it merely seems fantastic.

  Yours

  E Thomas

  Index of Letters

  To Edward Garnett

  4 October 1911

  Wick Green

  Petersfield

  Dear Garnett,

  I am sorry to have troubled you so much for nothing (except knowledge of me), but I don’t think I shall go away now. It is not the war but closer things that prevent me — mainly, I believe, dislike of being thrown with new people; partly also the great unlikelihood of finding a publisher to offer me much for such a lean and shadowy outline as I could offer and partly that as things are at present I could not get away with any piece of mind. I am really very sorry to have cried ‘Wolf!’ in this way and hope it is not my last chance.

  Yours ever

  E Thomas.

  I had already been offered a choice of Cardiff ships to the Black Sea or Port Said.

  Index of Letters

  To Harry Hooton

  c/o Mrs Wilkins

  Victoria Street

  Laugharne

  Wednesday December 1911

  My dear Harry,

  Many thanks for a big batch of proofs but I suppose the one preceding it was lost. Never mind. I have adopted most of your suggestions. By the way Ellesborough is near Wendover, Edlesborough near Dunstable. I am sorry to say I don’t believe what you say about my writing.

  I can’t tell you how astonished I was when you said I was secretive. I go about telling everybody everything till people take no notice. I am sure I have not spared you. Perhaps you did not think it was everything. I have somehow lost my balance and can never recover it by diet or rule or any deliberate means, but only by some miracle from within or without. If I don’t recover it and causes of worry continue I must go smash. Then I must remove some of the causes of worry. It is not easy as I must either have a remote study or a separate dwelling, I think. Greatest difficulty of all is a school we know something about and a master we can trust and low fees as well. Just going to any grammar school is abhorrent. Do you know any schoolmasters? Then I ought not to be over 60 miles from London.

  Sometimes I feel wellish here, sometimes very bad; never well, I never can be well again without the miracle. But do not allow Helen to know this as I contrive to write to her at the better times.

  Yours ever

  ET.

  Do any suggestions about expenditure occur to you? I may not like them but should like to know how it strikes you.

  Index of Letters

  To Edward Garnett

  Llaugharne

  13 December 1911

  My dear Garnett

  My temperature being what you know it is I naturally can’t thank you properly for your letter — and also for the book sent me by Dewar at your suggestion, of which I am now using the wrapper for notepaper. I should not be surprised if the camera proved a saviour as well as an instrument of pleasure and profit. Up till now I have had to put up with my own childish sketches to give me an idea of the relation of things seen etc. As a young brother who is rather expert and knows my ways advised me not to develop the negatives myself I shall not do so, and will write to G.B. at once, also asking him to send the camera to Petersfield as I leave here tomorrow. The fact is I finished Borrow on Tuesday and then suddenly found myself restless and tired and unable to stay on here for the present. So I am going to have a look at Swansea and Newport and Caerleon again and I may see you on my way home on Tuesday: I hope so and Hudson too.

  If I had a few quiet months I could write a Welsh itinerary now, partly at any rate following Gerald, as I have been a good deal in his steps at St. Clears, Whitland, Llawhaden, Haverfordwest, Camrose, Newgale, St. David’s and Llanrhian, and I already know Caerleon, Newport, Neath, Swansea, Kidwelly and Caermarthen. Perhaps I shall fix myself somewhere on his northern route early next year and in a real Welsh district. Laugharne is mostly English in language and other ways, though all the surrounding villages except close to the coast on the West side speak Welsh and are only moderate at English.

  I have had some splendid bright windy weather, but of course too mild. I am just beginning to master the geography here and also the gossip of Laugharne. But Borrow has absorbed me and I have scarcely written anything else. Sometimes a tune makes me think: ‘Give me health and a day — and I leave it at that. Did you ever see Haverfordwest? A most fascinating dirtyish old town with steep narrow streets up a hill and with a castle and two fine towered churches on top at the brink of a tidal river with many-windowed store houses by the little quay, and some river mist, sawmill smoke, and a half moon before frost. I went twice and walked up and down as I never did before in a town. The one drawback was that I felt Muirhead Bone ought to be there for a few years. — If I can possibly manage it I shall make some sketches out of this visit. I want to do a book on Swansea which I know better than any town but nobody wants it.

  It was kind of you to speak to Dewar. Like everyone else — nearly everyone — he probably has a hundred people to please and doesn’t please any single one very much. Look at Milne. I am now competing for Xmas books with the Editor’s little daughter and Arthur Waugh’s schoolboy son and Tighe Hopkins’ niece and so on, above all with Milne himself. Someday I shall do a book on Milne’s prose. I am collecting specimens now. — Belloc did send me Borrow’s letters after all but I don’t know if he will print my remarks.

  The reason I asked you about Borrow was that you scoffed me out of doing this book three years ago. You probably didn’t mean as I took it and will probably remember nothing about it. I don’t revive it out of unkindness but to show that miserable sinner in journalism as I am, I am not the hardened and unconscious sinner that my misdeeds seem to proclaim. I sin with a score of sins in these matters also. You sometimes rub it in as if I needed telling!

  Please tell me of some celeb
rated monarch, poet, prostitute or other hero that I can write a book about. My own list includes none that publishers will look at. Seriously I should like to see what I could make of some non-literary man or woman.

  Yours ever

  E. Thomas Scott-James’ notice of Davies was very good, and I hope you found something to like in the book. I think he is advancing with something stronger and more passionate as he gets sure of himself.

  Index of Letters

  To Irene and Hugh McArthur