Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas
Page 44
Things are still difficult here. There has been a complete reorganization. We do not know how it will affect us ultimately. So far it has meant that we only instruct the company (D) to which we have been attached since Xmas, whereas we used to instruct the whole battalion of 4 companies in turn. Our sergeant has gone and left us, so the corporal who would have been my junior is now in charge of us and may get made a sergeant and leave me still as I was. We are very busy. I lecture twice a day. Nearly all the work is indoors, and the weather is changing at last. The snow has melted. The sun is very warm. The rooks in the camp trees are nesting. They wake us at 5.30. We turn out for physical drill at 6.30. I have made myself fire-lighter now. We are 4 non-commissioned officers in our hut and N.C.O.’s are not supposed to do anything menial, which is hard on the other men, there being usually only one N.C.O. in a hut of 25 or 30. So to appease them I light the 2 stoves while they are still in bed, and so far the Lord has been on my side and my fires are wonderful. That is where my modesty fails, you perceive.
Yes, I knew it was a year ago you went away, and two since Tyler’s Green; — and one before what? But Ledington, my dear Robert, in April, in June, in August.
It is warm today. We have a day with no work (but plenty to consider) and 2 of us are left in the parlour of ‘The Shepherd and Dog’ 2 miles from camp, a public house rather like that one at Tyler’s Green or Penn. I am writing this and the other man, who is an artist, is trying to draw me. The taproom is very noisy, but here there is only a fire and 3 billiard balls on a table and us. He is the man through whom I fell into disgrace. I haven’t outlived it yet. But now there is a chance my senior may go to anther company and leave me in charge of D. The worst of it is he and I are very good pals and if we are in different companies we can’t see nearly so much of one another. This means a lot because most of the men around are going to be officers soon and fresh ones will arrive and take their places and then still another set arrive.
You might have sent me Flint’s address. I hardly know where to find it unless through Monro.
I heard from de la Mare lately. He has been talking to Newbolt about a pension for me. Newbolt he says isn’t very hopeful.
When I was at home I picked out 40 poems and sent them to Bottomley to pick out as many as he likes to fill 15 or 20 pages.
The news nowadays is pretty good. It looks as if we could stand any battering the Germans inflict and as if we might yet give them a battering they could not stand. There is a prophecy abroad that it will be over by July 17. Helen says Why not by her birthday which is a few days earlier? She would be more pleased than I. She has had enough of the war and of comparative solitude.
Well, we had to leave the inn (being soldiers) at 2.30. We drew a panorama (you must see some some day) and got back to the usual thing, with the news that my brother has got his 2nd stripe on his sleeve, i e is a fall corporal. These reminders that I am going to be passed over all the time don’t please me, especially at the end of a soft moist warm day, the first such day since last April. But I am yours ever Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Helen
Saturday
Gidea Park
late April 1916
Dearest,
I too was wishing I could be with you, just because I wanted to see you and be with you. I was very much alone. Everyone was away or on duty and I had the whole day to myself except that I saw Wheatley a little in the morning and then late this afternoon, he being in a job that kept him in camp. I was free after pay at 10 for the day. I set out with a meal in my haversack for a long walk, but didn’t go more than 6 miles all day. I sat down a good deal both in the fields and at an inn, and passed or was passed by the same pair of lovers 3 or 4 times. It was very pleasant too, warm and cloudy. I wrote some lines too and rewrote them. As I have the job of Battalion Orderly Corporal tomorrow I got back at 7 to clean up.
Thank you for the form, I can’t fill it all up till I am home next, which I hope will be on Saturday but possibly I might have to wait till Whitsun. Unfortunately the returns I have made for the Income Tax won’t prove much as they apply only to the year ending two months after I joined. But I will make the best show I can. Also I find my deposit is a good deal larger than I thought.
I have no dream girls, dearest. Don’t you imagine it.
Yesterday we were at last compelled to do field engineering with the rest of the company. We have got out of it for 10 weeks or so, but in future we are always to do it. The first day was not bad as we had to do some panoramas from the trenches the battalion has made. So we were on our own. Later on we shall just have to do the ordinary trench-making. I don’t mind — in fact I like — that sort of thing; but it is annoying only to work with the Company at odd times when we don’t fit in. However I shall really be glad to do everything that everybody does.
Sunday
It is now 10.15 a in and really mostly my duties are done. I have been up 5 hours already. It is a most lovely hot day, a pity to waste the remaining 10 hours smoking about the camp. Benson has just come off guard and is trying to sleep. Nash is on guard today. Wheatley will come occasionally and say things like ‘why do people want to kill one another on such a fine day?’ He is really a dear. Vernon is Battalion Orderly Sergeant today. We work mostly together.
Pearce goes to Chelsea tomorrow to be smartened up by a 3 weeks drill course with the Guards. I wish I could have the same.
Now the day has nearly gone. It has been rather boring, but I got out with Benson and Wheatley on to the golf links. In fact I am sitting there now finishing this for the 6.30 post.
God bless you three
Edwy
Index of Letters
To Robert Frost
Hare Hall Camp
21 May 1916
My dear Robert,
This last letter of yours (dated May 1) with the poem ‘Not to keep’ mends all, though it was opened (and untouched) by the censor. I hadn’t been able to write to you for some weeks simply because I didn’t know where to join on. I began to fear the censor had been a Hodgson patriot and found something rotten in me or my verses. However, all’s well — we don’t care a b — do we? to use 2 phrases which an Irishman in our hut used to make seem so witty. He had a face like an archaic Greek god’s that people had trodden on for 1000 years. Now he has gone to France to see if he can still be witty.
‘Not to keep’ is all right. It is no disadvantage to you to be 40. Of course one would prefer to be able to run a mile in 5 minutes and jump a spiked fence, but actually I find less to grumble at out loud than 10 years ago: I suppose I am more bent on making the best of what I have got instead of airing the fact that I deserve so much more. Yet I feel old — I felt old seeing Bottomley’s ‘Lear’. Gibson’s ‘Hoofs’, and Rupert Brooke’s ‘Lithuania’, yesterday afternoon. Bottomley’s play, for example. It was all the result of thinking, not an explanation for what might very likely be a fact. He had to make Goneril run a knife through a rabbit’s eyes. Well, I firmly believe that if he had imagination he would have kept such a thing dark supposing he could go the length of imagining it. As it was, it sounded just a thought out cruelty, worse far than cruelty itself with passion behind it. Of course he pretended there was passion. There wasn’t. Brooke was better though he was only painting with Russian paints. I quite admired the simple souls who couldn’t help laughing. — I mean I felt old because I believed I saw how it was done though I don’t suppose I could do it myself as well or better if at all.
Nobody recognises me now. Sturge Moore, E. Marsh, and R. C. Trevelyan stood a yard off and I didn’t trouble to awake them to stupid recognition. Bottomley and his wife I just had a word with. I was with a young artist named Paul Nash who has just joined us as a map reader. He is a change from the 2 schoolmasters I see most of... He is wonderful at finding birds’ nests. There is another artist, too, aged 24, a Welshman, absolutely a perfect Welshman, kind, simple, yet all extremes and rather unreal and incredible except in his ad
mirations — he admires his wife and Rembrandt for example. I am really lucky to have such a crowd of people always round and these 2 or 3 nearer: you might guess from ‘Home’ how much nearer.
Though I am Corporal P. E. Thomas I am not growing so efficient as all that. We don’t get a chance. We idle away for days together for lack of organisation. Shall I copy out the speech our captain made to the men who were leaving us to go to be finished at the cadet school? ‘Pay attention. Stand easy. I just want to say a few words to you men who are going to the school. I wish you all success. I hope you won’t get into any trouble at all. Take care to mind your Ps and Qs, and do everything top-hole’. He is a kind huge man with no memory, very fond of the country. The other day in the fields he said ‘Company attention! Oh, look at that rabbit’. I wish we could win a little sooner. Then I could come and see you barn-storming. Also I could perhaps begin to earn some money. They are going to relieve some soldiers to the extent of £2 a week, but only those who joined after last August 15. So I don’t count. They had to put some limit. Perhaps they thought the waiters had more to give up. Or they want to encourage the last. Don’t you worry, though, about money. Something may happen.
A pension or grant is still just possible, the de la Mare says — improbable: — I am not old enough is his explanation. Also I may possibly get a job which will take me out into the fighting line yet not with the worst risks and give me more money — as an officer. Of course anything may happen now. Things are continually being shaken up and one drops through a hole or not. You make sure of your farm. If I did want money I would ask you, but I have £100 of War Loan left.
Yes, I wear 2 stripes or chevrons on my upper arm now — not on the skin, but the sleeve.
Haines writes occasionally with news of the great and lately a persuasion to review Doughty’s last, which I did. I can’t get to see him. He is too far for my short leaves. I go home every time. Mervyn was there last time. He hasn’t got on with Hodson and we are all uncertain what to do. I am thinking of asking acquaintances in Wales if he could go into steel works there. He isn’t much changed and still shows only his apathy. The others are well. As I was walking home with Helen and Baba last week, Baba asked whether Mrs.—’s baby was a boy or a girl? ‘A boy’. ‘Everyone has boys’. But I said boys were wanted to replace the dead. ‘You don’t think I haven’t heard that before, my lad, do you?’ she said to me. She is acquisitive and not generous, but she gets her own way without annoying much. I have some new songs for her from camp, and rather more for you.
Goodbye and my love to all of you. Elinor is well, isn’t she? Don’t forget to send any photographs you have of all or any of you and the farm ground.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
You should have seen Monro in the vestibule of the theatre selling Bottomley’s ‘Lear’, standing up straight and just pursuing the women with the whites of his eyes.
Index of Letters
To Robert Frost
13 Rusham Road
Balham
London SW
9 September 1916
My dear Robert,
Three days ago came your letter dated August 15. So I have still a hope that mine (with some M.S.) sent about the end of July reached you just after you wrote. I have not been a good letter writer. But you know the reason. I have had no peace of mind since May. I have been busier and I have had more to think about. Now I have been 2 weeks in the Artillery learning about guns and wearing spurs &c. I think when I wrote I was down with vaccination. And I still am. I suppose it is the vaccination. I was run down. I was not careful. I got a poisoned hand. I am still poor and feeble and it is very nearly all I can do to keep on with the work here, the it is not hard physically. I learn to aim at invisible targets, to know the parts of a gun, the gun drill &c., the telephone by which we shall communicate, the work of an observation officer who watches the result of his battery’s fire &c.
Mervyn has started in lodgings at Walthamstow and is cheerful about it. Bronwen is with an aunt a few miles from here. Baba is at Steep with the John Freemans’ who have our cottage there. Helen is walking with one of her sisters up in the Lake district. Meanwhile we are supposed to be moving to our new cottage in a week or two. I think there will be some delay. Helen runs away so comfortably from affairs, and I am not free to manage them now.
I see a few people now I am in barracks in London. R. A. Scott-James is a cadet with me. The Farjeons are not far off. Nor is Davies, but I never see him. Ellis and John Freeman I have seen. Garnett is still to see. We have missed one another a number of times since I enlisted.
I am likely to be at this preliminary training a month yet. It might only be 2 weeks but I am slow at it and likely not to go with the first batch to Wiltshire where we do more advanced work. I might get my commission next month. More likely it will be later. There is so much to learn and we are a big crowd with rather few instructors. Many of the men are more apt than I am — engineers, surveyors, schoolmasters. It is not like camp life. I make no friends. We are treated rather better and have fewer duties and responsibilities, fewer demands on one another, than in camp. The result is I am rather impatient to go out and be shot at. That is all I want, to do something if I am discovered to be any use, but in any case to be made to run risks, to be put through it. I have been saying to myself lately that I don’t really care a fig what happens. But perhaps I do. — I am cut off. All the anchors are up. I have no friends now. Two I had in camp, but one is just going out to France and the other is still in camp and is not likely to come my way for some time; and both are 12 years younger than I am, and away from camp not likely to be so much like friends. I have a cold. I have no strength. So that beginning all over again comes harder.
I may go and see Haines some week end, but I don’t feel equal to anything but idling here at my Mother’s for 24 hours at the week ends. My mother was operated on for cataract 6 weeks ago and they seem to think she will not get her sight back in that eye.
This is dismal reading. But I don’t want money. Didn’t I tell you the Government had been persuaded to grant me £300? They would not give me a pension. That £300 might last till the end of the war. But those 50 faggots didn’t. We took to cooking with them in the Summer out of doors and that spoilt my verses on the subject so far as they were a prophecy. It is no use me saying how much I wish I were destined to come and live at your farm. You know I think of it often. But of course the future is less explorable than usual and I don’t take it (the future) quite seriously. I find myself thinking as if there wasn’t going to be no future. This isn’t perversity. I say I find myself doing so. On the other hand it may be I am just as wrong as when I wrote about those 50 faggots. I thought then that one simply had to wait a very long time. I wonder is it pleasanter to be Rupert Brookish. Anyhow it is impossible, and I suppose I enjoy this frame of mind as much as I can enjoy anything (beyond my dinner) at present.
Monday the 11th
This frame of mind is lasting too long. The fact is — my cold is worse and I am sick at not being really equal to my work. Once I get into the country I shall be all right.
I don’t believe I can do much yet at ‘The Old Cloak’. You can’t imagine the degree of my disinclination for books. Sometimes I say I will read Shakespeare’s sonnets again and I do, or half do, but never more than that. I should love to do it with you. I thought of what love poems could go in — could Burns’s ‘Whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad’? There are the songs in the very earliest Elizabethan dramatists. There’s a deal of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cowper, Wordsworth and the ballads: some Crabbe: one poem apiece out of Prior and several minor 18th Century people: a few of Blake’s. But I daren’t begin to look at books: I must keep all my conscious attention for my work.
Mervyn looked none the worse yesterday for his 9 hours a day standing up in the factory. He is in lodgings till we make our move.
I have just been seeing off one of the 2 men I knew best at the Artists. He is just g
etting his commission and will be out long before me. I had some time to spare and called for Davies but he was out. He is only ½ a mile away. He is bringing out a big selection of his poems and is looking for a great man to do the introduction.
A small new publisher I know is thinking of publishing my verses, of course under the name of Edward Eastaway, and I believe 2 are to be included in a new anthology of ‘cheerful’ poems at the Oxford press which Smith has a hand in. He is in town but I haven’t met him yet.
Goodbye and try to imagine me more like a soldier than this letter sounds. My love to you all and I hope Carol is much better.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
Use this London address till you know the new one, not Steep any more.
Index of Letters
To J. W. Haines
13 Rusham Road
Balham
London SW
15 September 1916
My dear Haines,
I may go to Trowbridge on Friday. Then perhaps I get over to you. From all I hear about the barracks there I shall be glad to escape, but I don’t know yet what the leave amounts to. I will write again. Up to now I have been so unwell with a cold following on a very rundown condition after vaccination that I have made no use of my weekends.
I like reading over your comments on my verses. ‘Roads’ I think one of the best. Helen of the Roads is simply a Welsh Goddess connected with Roads. Many of the Roman Roads in Wales are called ‘Sam Helen’ or Helen’s Causeway. She comes in the Dream of Maxen in the Mabinogion. Then I like the ‘Unknown’ and refuse to believe it is clever, the I admit it is a bit quicker than the rest. ‘After You Speak’ I believe is alright and ‘The Weasel’. Nobody has cared much for ‘The Ash Grove’. ‘How at once should I know’ is perhaps natural history. The poems to the children are I hope among the best. I wonder how they will look in a book? There is a chance of their appearing before very long. Also a fair selection is to appear in Trevelyan’s ‘Annual’ (Constable).