Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas
Page 42
Your affectionate Edwy
Index of Letters
To John Freeman
Coventry
8 March 1915
My dear Freeman,
The 20th then and early. I believe the 8.55 still runs and another something before 11 (getting in at 1.15) but make sure about this just before the day as there are so many changes nowadays. If I could produce a nightingale on March 20 do you think I should bother about being a bard. I wish I could. Now if it were a very very pretty March 20 the Lord might produce a chiffchaff or a thrush’s egg, but since I hurt my ankle I have seen nothing, and it isn’t a real ankle yet by a long way.
The Anthology is substantially done. It grows slowly now while I am waiting for the Oxford Press reader’s judgment. (He is J. C. Smith, who edited Spenser’s Faerie Queene). All that typing and turning over pages knocked all the rapture about as far off as the nearest nightingales. Then came a beastly Index and a beastly book on Babylon (to review). Now I’ve had more at the Museum and still have a day of it left. Then I hope to put myself in an attitude worthy of the Muse’s indulgence more. Whether the habit of writing will make me command it more often than I deserve it, and whether that will be fatal to success, I can’t say. My pseudonym is just a family name, Edward Eastaway. I never thought of Gibson. It would have been a lark. So far I have heard no news. By the way what I have done so far have been like quintessences of the best part of my prose books — not much sharper or more intense, but I hope a little: since the first take off they haven’t been Frosty very much or so I imagine and I have tried as often as possible to avoid the facilities offered by blank verse and I try not to be long — I even have an ambition to keep under 12 lines (but rarely succeed).
I’ve not dipped into New Numbers yet. Drinkwater is hopeless. Gibson, for me, almost equally so. Abercrombie, I fancy, applies the lash, and I wonder whether he always did. I used to think he was naturally a spirited steed. I am always anxious to like him.
We haven’t yet heard from Mervyn. His ship arrived 12 days ago so we might do soon.
By the way I got Doughty for my Anthology. He was very nice.
Yours ever
E.T.
Index of Letters
To Edward Garnett
Steep
17 March 1915
My dear Garnett,
Your letter gave me a lot of pleasure this morning when few other things could because I had tired myself to death with two days cycling (to the sea and back) in this tempting and tiring weather — which is my reason for writing only a short note. I am fit for nothing at all really. I am glad to find you preferring certain things — like ‘Old Man’ and the ‘Cuckoo’ and ‘Goodnight’ — and sorry to find your preferring them to certain others like ‘The Signpost’. But the great satisfaction is you obviously find them like me. I had fears lest I had got up in the air in this untried medium. So long as I haven’t I am satisfied. Of course I must make mistakes and your preferences help me to see where they lie, though I shall risk some of them again — e g what you find petty in incident. Dimness and lack of concreteness I shall certainly do my best against. I hate them too much in others to tolerate them in myself — when I see them.
It was almost as pleasant to know you like Frost. The reviews he got here were one by Abercrombie in the Nation, one by Hueffer in the Outlook, and a number by me in the New Weekly etc. In America he got only an echo or two of these. He had been at American editors ten years in vain. But may I suggest it might damage him there if you rubbed the Americans’ noses in their own dirt? I know he thought so. Most English reviewers were blinded by theories they had as to what poetry should look like. They did not see how true he was, and how pure in his own style. I think the ‘Hired Man’, the ‘Wood Pile’, the ‘Black Cottage’ and one or two others — such as ‘Home Burial’ — masterpieces. I send his first book. Much of it is very early indeed. Look, however, at ‘Mowing’ and ‘The Tuft of Flowers’ (pp. 34 and 25). Hudson didn’t return North of Boston, or not to me. I will send him some of my verses.
The reason of my wire is that I am only sending out verses at present under a pseudonym, and have already done so to the Nation, Times and English Review. I don’t want people to be confused by what they know or think of me already, although I know I shall also lose the advantage of some friendly prejudice.
And I should be glad if you would not mention my verses to friends.
Frost is descended from early English (Devonshire) settlers, with a Scotch mother. He has farmed for some years and has gone back to farm. He has also been a teacher of English and paedagogy. — There are some of his latest verses in the last number of Poetry and Drama.
Y — ours ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To W. H. Hudson
Steep
Petersfield
23 March 1915
My dear Hudson,
I believe that a man who likes poetry and says honestly what he likes is about as rare as a good critic, and I am really not sure if the two are not one. At any rate apart from one or two such men I don’t know where to look for the critic, so that as far as getting into his hands and having his opinion go, I am not in a hurry to be published. So far as I know reviewers there are kind and complimentary ones, there are enemies, and there are idiots besides. They have the power to tickle or sting for a moment, but nothing more. They (‘we’ I should say) have to show how much cleverer they are than the reviewed. It is so much easier to do this with offence. I would rather never do it again, and I am certainly not anxious to be the victim of it as a versifier. I had quite enough ups and downs reading your letter first, though I was really very glad of it all. I was glad you liked ‘After Rain’ and ‘The Signpost’. (I will type ‘The Signpost’ and ‘Beauty’ for you gladly) and glad to have your reasons for not wholly liking some others. I must think about the sensation at the end of’May 20’. I think perhaps it must come out. But about ‘Merry’ in ‘The Manor Farm’, I rather think I will stick to it. If one can feel what one has written, and not what one meant. I feel here as if the merry England asleep at Prior’s Dean added to the sleepiness and enriched it somehow.
I am sending them about and getting them back. Probably I shall soon tire and be glad to consign them to a printed book.
If I had been coming up today I would have telegraphed. But I thought I would wait till next week. It is very good gardening weather and has been for a week now, and in fact good for everything except walking far. It has got very languid after a little rain following on nights of frost and days of sun. I shall be at the Mt. Blanc, so far as I can tell, next Tuesday, or at 3 Henrietta St at 1: if you are to be, I will be. And I hope you will be better.
Looking back it seems possible you might think I had found your letter too critical. But really I would very much rather know that you like or don’t wholly like a thing, than that somebody else thinks it a pity I ever read Frost, etc.
Yours ever
E. Thomas
Index of Letters
To Robert Frost
Steep 3 May 1915
My dear Robert,
I got a letter from you on Friday, the one I have been gladdest to yet, and not only because you said you liked ‘Lob’. I was glad to hear of you going off to Stowe ‘tomorrow’. You are enjoying this period, but it is silly of me to tell you so. If you weren’t you ought to be, because you are not writing about Marlborough. But we have one piece of luck. Two pairs of nightingales have come to us. One sings in our back hedge nearly all day and night. My only regret when I first heard it was that you hadn’t stayed another Spring and heard it too. I hope the Gods don’t think I’m the sort of poet who will be content with a nightingale, though. You don’t think they could have made that mistake do you? What does it mean? — I get quite annoyed with people complaining of the weather as soon as it greys a little. Am I really ripe for being all sound content, or what? 2nd piece of luck (still embryonic) is that Scott-James has
some connection with an American literary journal called The Bellman and is recommending them things by me, beginning with a remark on Rupert Brooke. You heard perhaps that he died on April 23rd of sunstroke on the way to the Dardanelles? All the papers are full of his ‘beauty’ and an eloquent last sonnet beginning ‘If I should die’. He was eloquent. Men never spoke ill of him.
But you have some poems by you fit to send out, haven’t you? These editors mustn’t go sour with waiting.
I find I can’t write. Re-reading Rupert Brooke and putting a few things together about him have rather messed me up and there’s Marlborough behind and Marlborough before. I shall have to go up to London for the last time next week — for the last bout at the Museum, I mean. Bronwen is now at school again. I shall take Baba up and leave Helen to contrive some spring cleaning. I tell you — I should like another April week in Gloucestershire with you like that one last year. You are the only person I can be idle with. That’s natural history, not eloquence. If you were there I might even break away from the Duke for 3 days, but it would be hard.
Are the children at school now? Or are you still ‘neglecting’ them? God bless them all. By the way, there was a beautiful return of sun yesterday after a misty moisty morning, and everything smelt wet and warm and cuckoos called, and I found myself with nothing to say but ‘God bless it’. I laughed a little as I came over the field, thinking about the ‘it’ in ‘God bless it’.
Yours and Elinor’s ever
Edward Thomas
Don’t send back that parson’s letter and of course keep the poems. (I haven’t quite stopped even yet.)
P.S. Here is Ellis very elderly and masterly about my verses, not finding one to say he likes, but seeing the ‘elements of poetry’. The rhythm is too rough and not obvious enough. He wants to talk them over. I don’t. Well, I feel sure I’m old enough not to know better, though I don’t profess to know how good or bad it may be.
I have now gone the round of pretty well all the verse-writers I know. Ellis was kind enough to find mine ‘eminently the stuff of which poetry is made’ &c. Thinking he might make a book of them I did at last send a selection to Monro. He didn’t like it. He muttered something about conception and execution as if they were different things. But I had requested him not to trouble to give reasons why he liked or didn’t like them.
If you have a farm by now these remarks will easily sink into perspective. But I am thinned out by all this reading and smoking.
My love to you all
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Harry Hooton
Steep
Petersfield
19 May 1915
My dear Harry,
Thank you for the two poems. You have brought on yourself all these others now. Tell me which you like, if you like any, as I hope you may; and tell me anything that strikes you in reading them, either general or particular. I don’t suppose anyone’s warning or advice will have any direct active effect. But I want to know an honest reader’s opinion because I seem to be committed to a new path that does not promise money and I want any confirmation I can get that it promises at any rate some advance in effectiveness. I had got past poetical prose and my new feeling is that here I can use my experience and what I am and what I know with less hindrance than in prose, less gross notebook stuff and mere description and explanation.
I have begun to write Marlborough now and can do nothing else, but if you and Janet come down any time after this weekend I shall be game for a walk or two, and you can take a stick away.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Robert Frost
Steep Petersfield
13 June 1915
My dear Robert,
Your two letters came together Friday night. When I saw the Franconia postmark on the smaller I guessed it was the second and that you were there. I hope very much you still are and will be almost as long as you would like to be. My next hope is that I shall see you there. But this is a funny world, as I think you said before I did. ‘Rum job, painting’, Turner used to say when Ruskin had poured out a can of words. I wish I hadn’t to say more about poetry. I wished it on Friday night particuarly as I had to spoil the effect of your letter by writing 1000 words about Rupert Brooke’s posthumous book — not daring to say that those sonnets about him enlisting (?) are probably not very personal but a nervous attempt to connect with himself the very widespread idea that self sacrifice is the highest self indulgence. You know. And I don’t dispute it. Only I doubt if he knew it or would he have troubled to drag in the fact that enlisting cleared him of
All the little emptiness of love?
Well, I daren’t say so, not having enlisted or fought the keeper. But I ought to write about ‘The Road not Taken’. I ought to search for the poem first among your letters. But I shan’t yet. I am pretty tired. I must own though that it wasn’t a very honest remark that of mine. For whether it was that I was deaf or that you didn’t quite speak in the verses I got the idea somewhat apart from the words. That is to say I thought I did, — the fact being that I got the idea as much as if I had skimmed the words, which I don’t think I did. So at the time I was content to deceive you by referring to the poem when it was really to that idea not yet in the form of poetry which existed in my head after reading. The word ‘staggering’ I expect did no more than express (or conceal) the fact that the simple words and unemphatic rhythms were not such as I was accustomed to expect great things, things I like, from. It staggered me to think that perhaps I had always missed what made poetry poetry if it was here. I wanted to think it was here. I don’t know what an honest man would have said under the circumstances. Well, I won’t go about with a lantern just yet, though I am going to have a devil of a lot of leisure which I shall do no better with. The Marlborough got practically finished yesterday morning — 26 days writing. I am going to cycle for a few days probably up to Haines at Gloucester (through Swindon) and perhaps on to Coventry. And yet I hate spending the money. We get scared now, with things 25% dearer than they were and work so much more than 25% j scarcer. I take no steps. I try to imagine what I should do if I got to New York or Boston. For I can’t deceive myself into imagining I should be a new man. I know I shouldn’t meet any one nearly half way if I didn’t feel something of a friend in him and I know I should seldom feel that. Perhaps I should not be much easier there than in London where if I want work I can only ask for it uncomfortably or hang about without asking for it as if I had forgotten what I came for, but it wasn’t for nothing. 10 years ago an editor having to say the first word said ‘Well Mr. Thomas what can I do for you?’ and I could only say ‘That is what I came to see’. He laughed. It was almost clever in me then, but I can’t enfant prodigue it now. So I pester my friends or did when I had such. I suppose one does get help to some extent by being helpless, but when one doesn’t — it is as if one had pride after all.
Still, I am thinking about America as my only chance (apart from Paradise). Tell me when would be the best time to begin. Are people back in town in September? I suppose I ought to take what introductions I can get. You will tell me if there is any way of living cheaply and yet not being in the wilderness. But what will your distance be from Boston and what the fare?
I am glad to hear about your 3rd edition. You must get something out of it. And then I want to hear that the Atlantic is hospitable. There is nothing in Garnett’s article to turn your head. It is extraordinary only because it is sensible and goes straight to your substance and psychology. It surprises Sidgwick because he is used to seeing bards praised by a set of epithets and abstract substantives. It should be out in July I suppose.
Honest man (Marlborough used to think he was honest), I have found ‘Two Roads’. It is as I thought. Not then having begun to write I did not know that is how it would be done. It was just its newness, not like Shelley or de la Mare or anyone. I don’t pretend not to have
a regular road and footpath system as well as doing some trespassing. On looking at it again I complain only of a certain periphrastic looseness in ‘the passing there had gone to them both about the same’. Also I hope that so far you have not found that you had to sigh on realising it had made all the difference, though it had. You don’t wish you had been Drinkwater. Another trifle — the lack of stops I believe put me off a little.There. If I say more I shall get into those nooks you think I like. It is all very well for you poets in a wood to say you choose, but you don’t. If you do, ergo I am no poet. I didn’t choose my sex yet I was simpler then. And so I can’t ‘leave off’ going in after myself the some day I may. I didn’t know when I left you at Newent I was going to begin trying to write poetry. I had proved it was impossible. Have you got your lecture written out or typed and can I see it? I am glad they asked you and got you to Boston.
I tell you those two letters were the best thing I have had since you were here. Odd, but they made me discontented too with what I knew I was going to do (and wasn’t going to do) with the 2 or 3 days leisure. I have now — the book near done and my youngest brother here to keep me off it and fine weather to go about.
To think of your doubting Davies knew what shame was! I never knew anyone at all who so often got himself into positions that made him feel uncomfortable. Did I ever tell you that when he lived near us he used to carry home his groceries in the lining of his overcoat, and Helen asked him once what he would do if they began to leak out as he went down the street. He said he would let them lie and pretend not to notice. He would have been ashamed to be seen admitting that he did his own shopping and that he carried things in the lining of his overcoat. Of course you need not believe it. As to the bed, either a married couple had slept in it or a single man in distress. — He has just gone into his 4th London lodging already.