Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas

by Edward Thomas

  I am very glad ‘Gunnar’ is soon coming. If I were sending out review copies I should not go beyond Times, Chronicle, Daily News, Telegraph, Manchester Guardian, Saturday, Outlook, Nation, Bookman and, perhaps, English Review (tho they review very little). I don’t know if I can decently review a book dedicated to me but I will do it indecently, if not.

  The English Review may perhaps help me if it lives.

  I wish I could talk to you about Edward Garnett. (I shall doubtless; and by the way it seems likely I shall be walking out of Yorkshire into the Lake country in June or there abouts, and if so I should like to stay a day or two with you, if you are at home and free.) Certainly his talk is far better than his writings. I hardly know a poorer writer of any ability at all. I don’t know which Turgenev preface you mean but there again I should like to talk about naturalism — writing would weary me — I’ve had a day of it and woodchopping and reading to children (who have chicken-pox; Helen being away) and walking etc. I don’t know anybody who seems to see literature and life as a whole so well as he, judging from his talk. But nevertheless I think that my respect for his opinion of my own work is possibly exaggerated by feeling that he was at one time reluctant to like it and even perhaps antipathetic to me and it; so that I had something to break down before reaching him and to succeed in that would always please my vanity. He is like the one sinner who repenteth. The man who readily sympathises with my work and says he likes it I am with insistent cursedness, inclined to suspect, on the other hand. There’s a grand fire now and my legs are burning.

  Tell me why you frown on the later Symons? I suppose you detect in his broadening out also a thinning down. But I should have said that, allowing bulk to count, he hardly had a superior living as a critic combining instinct and scholarship. I don’t think he had any originality, but then that is true of his other work too. But I thought a few of the later poems as good as anything he had done before, the not better than (of their kind) the earliest. I imagine he could never be what I should call quite sincere, that is why he had not style; but in the later attitude all the flimsy avoidable insincerity had gone. But I don’t possess London Nights and I am writing on the strength of perhaps very wrong early impressions.

  Then we kiss again with tears over Poe. Hawthorne I know little of, I have read some very indifferent creepy stuff of his the it didn’t produce a creep.

  Arthur Ransome is married, I hear, and is coming to try to live for the Summer near here. I met his lady. She belongs to the higher orders and no connection of hers has ever been in trade. She paints herself. She has many rings. But she is pretty and spirited and clever — but not clever enough to do her own hair. Unfortunately I never venture to limn the higher orders in my sketches...

  It is 10. I must read about the Zeno of the London Celts. You haven’t got to — please, when you are well write again a long letter. I can’t. You can: also you have, at least perhaps you have, more time. Please do Yours ever

  Edward Thomas

  Index of Letters

  To Gordon Bottomley

  Ashford

  16 July 1909

  My dear Gordon,

  Thank you for your letter. I ought to have said it before and would have done had I known I was to glide into such a languid desperate condition as I am in now. Yet I ought to have known for by referring to diaries I have at last found out what I suspected before that I get periods of depression particularly once a month for a week or so. But this is enough of the natural history of ET for the present.

  I have seen the Book and it looks very well and fitting. The printing is not first class and the house at Lithend has come out rather badly, but the pictures are very good — I like the horse’s head at the beginning. It is good of you to promise me a Pullman edition and I quite understand how that may be delayed. Mrs Guthrie seems worse than ever and was to undergo an operation this or next week if no better. I haven’t seen them for months, perhaps not this year, though Helen has. I don’t like going into the house where there is so much disease and pain, especially as the house seems to suffer too.

  If only you were here now you would see de la Mare. He is staying fairly near and we see him and his family often. You would like his singularly (sometimes comically) restless and curious and innocent mind. Our other neighbours we scarce ever see. They frequent Petersfield and other pubs enlivening the countryside with song. We like the ‘painted lady’ less and less and call her the Unicorn because she has a small ivory horn in the midst of her forehead. We feel very bourgeois beside them but deferentially expect Bohemia in Froxfield.

  What do you think of Arthur Wor now after his review in the D.C.? Do you think he is not altogether fool. Still you won’t care, after Sturge Moore’s opinion which I am glad to hear.

  We have seen Garnett’s play acted. The middle was slow and was full of the smell of old skins which the family was beating while awaiting the warrior’s return. But the beginning was good and the last act very fine. He had a lovely dark girl as Helga. Here I send it. Deirdre is an exquisite whole on the stage. But I want to know how Yeats came to use the phrase ‘Libyan heel’. It isn’t Yeats at all, is it? But The Playboy Have you read and seen it? I daresay it is the greatest play of modern times. Of course I don’t know. But I felt it to be utterly new and altogether fine. Goodbye now. In a hurry and I hope you are well again now. Write and tell me.

  I am Emily and yours ever

  Edward Thomas

  Index of Letters

  To Gordon Bottomley

  Week Green Petersfield

  14 December 1909

  My dear Gordon,

  This is the new address. The rhythm of it is quite modern at any rate, though Garnett puts the house down to the period of King Stephen. We move in on Saturday and I have just packed all my books and take the children to town tomorrow to be rid of them for the move. We are in a pickle. I am dirty and my hands are all chipped and scraped and stiff. So I doubt if I can write. But I want to send you Masefield’s book. I think Nan a very fine thing and so do you.

  I was glad to have some news of you though it was bad. I guessed it would be. This must have been a deadly year for you. It has been a great weight to bear continuously and I hope for a crisp winter to clean the earth and help you. For two months nearly I have been better, chiefly because I have had to work hard and regularly in the new garden clay. I don’t really care about it, but it had to be done and I kept at it day after day and it did me good almost against my will. I got a hard hand and my fatigues were more purely physical than usual. I had to do my reviewing badly and to do very little else. Still, one or two stories I worked at did not turn out badly. I used some old Welsh fragments of legends. You shall see them some day. I always feel that when I treat these external things my approach is very literal and matter of fact, but I hope not. Perhaps I am not quite just to myself in finding myself very much on an everyday ordinary level except when in a mood of exaltation usually connected with nature and solitude. By comparison with others that I know — like de la Mare — I seem essentially like the other men in the train and I should like not to be. This is quite genuinely naive and will amuse you. It may be only because I am inarticulate and that I can usually only meet others on ground where I have no real interest — as politics, social and current literary affairs.

  I am perhaps about to begin a book on poets and women. Originally it was to have been the influence of women on English poets. But that is too difficult: so it will be mainly the attitude of poets to individual women and the idea of woman and so on. Please send suggestions, warnings etc as they come to your mind.

  I have been dangling after publishers with all sorts of proposals but could not come to terms. This looked bad and I was willing to accept anything especially as our move means an increased expenditure and Helen talks of having another baby. In fact I have consented to do a guide — pure guide — to Hampshire and Wiltshire, but it is not settled and I shall cry off if I possibly can, though my expenses will be paid to cove
r some fine country and I should get much material by the way. I am not sure that I could do it. The General Election will postpone my little book of sketches. I am trying to cozen Dent into letting me do a country book with houses — cottages, farms etc. — as centres, and dealing more than ever with people. If he will let me — and let me bring in Wales as well — I could make a good book of my kind. I hope The South Country at its best was beyond The Heart of England. It had no structure and its joins were execrable, but I felt some of it was the truest I had achieved.

  Ezra Pound’s second book was a miserable thing and I was guilty of a savage recantation after meeting the man at dinner. It was very treacherous and my severity was due to self-contempt as much as to dislike of his work.

  Goodbye. I must go to bed out of this empty room.

  Yours and Emily’s ever

  Edward Thomas

  Index of Letters

  1910-1913

  Index of Letters

  To C. F. Cazenove

  Wick Green

  Petersfield

  16 April 1910

  Dear Cazenove,

  I confess I don’t see any grounds for hoping that a publisher can be beguiled; and as to paying money for the Homes after seeing specimens that is surely fantastical. I have always got money for books which no publisher would have accepted had he seen them beforehand.

  There is also this to be considered. I might in the course of a year or two sell the greater part of this book to magazines etc and that would be far more profitable than taking less than £50 for the whole. I did want £50 badly at once, but say £30 in six months time is no allurement.

  To put it plainly, this book is fiction and you can’t get money down for fiction by me. Much better try it with magazines, returning ‘Lostormellyn’ and ‘Home’ (part of which has appeared in Wales).

  Yours sincerely

  Edward Thomas

  Index of Letters

  To C. F. Cazenove

  Wick Green

  Petersfield

  28 July 1910

  Dear Cazenove,

  Thanks. I see Dent’s point. He wants to have Thomas plus somebody else, preferably A. G. Bradley. I wish very much I could oblige, but I am pretty sure I can’t. I will think over it though. Meantime is it any good proposing a book to deal in detail with one piece of country either in Wales or in England, describe it generally with some historical outlines and then take a town, some villages, some isolated houses with studies of the people etc.? The only thing is that I refuse to give it away openly by giving it a name, though I will give good fictitious names. Or I will make a leading character and set him walking and telling what he sees; or make the book his journal. If these do not seem to you worth trying I must have time to think it over, and shall be glad of any definite suggestions from Dent or yourself — very glad. Of course I would consent, if there was nothing else for it, to do a book on the Severn or the Towy; but it would be dishonest, because it is not worth my while to make it a solid definite book because it would be one that anybody else could do and would have nothing of me in it, which I am assuming is desirable; and to avoid doing this obvious thing I should find some tricky way out which would annoy Dent.

  The best thing would be for him to let me make a walking tour over the south into the west, giving the book a clear hard backbone and building everything round that. I will, if he likes, mention by name the place I stay at every night and describe my route quite substantially though not giving the exact names of villages, hills, etc. It shall have a beginning, a middle and an end and there shall be as little no man’s land as possible.

  I am sorry I have mislaid Seeker’s letter. As soon as he answers I will send you some M.S.S. or bring it up on Tuesday next.

  Yours sincerely

  Edward Thomas

  Index of Letters

  To Gordon Bottomley

  Swansea

  Monday September 1910

  My dear Gordon,

  I have just had a fortnight in Wales mostly in the wild part of Cardiganshire and am going home tomorrow. May I send you these proofs now and the preceding pages a few days later so as to save space in my bag going home? You will find yourself lowering your standard of English and of sense as you go along, or there will be nothing but corrections. It is a strange piece of work. I put down all but everything just as it occurred to me during the few months I was doing it. How are you now? I have just had a postcard from Guthrie and he speaks as if you might be ill again, but I hope not. He probably needs a holiday very badly himself. If he calls on you, give him my love. I should go over there more often — as he does not come to me — if it were not for Mrs. Guthrie’s sick looks and conversation solely about her ailments. Don’t worry about these proofs. The thing is not worth it. But if you can look them over within 10 days or so, so much the better for me.

  Helen and the new baby are still very well I hear. The baby’s name is probably to be Helen Elizabeth Mevanwy (Myfanwy is the Welsh spelling but impossible in England). I liked Olwen best, but it is too near Bronwen. With my love to Emily and yourself.

  Ever yours

  Edward Thomas

  Index of Letters

  To David Uzzell

  Wick Green

  Petersfield

  22 December 1910

  Dear Dad,

  I had not forgotten you and was beginning to think of writing again when your letter arrived. You did very well at Swindon this time and I was glad to see it. Now we want to see what is going to be done. I am glad to hear that you are all well or pretty well. Granny must find it a bit stiff sometimes going to get that cup of tea for Bill in the morning, so I am sending her five shillings to get something to ease it a bit on Christmas Day. I should like to be down there when the frosty weather comes, but most likely it will be March or April before I come that way. I shall be walking from Wantage to Avebury and shall probably break my journey at Chiseldon and come and look you up. So Bill is a sweep and Charley a lamplighter, two of the best jobs a man could do but I suppose not the best paid. It is not often you meet a black man and a light man in one family like that; they ought to be very useful to one another.

  Well, what weather we do have since you and I used to go walking. What summers they were. Here we are up as high as Barbary Castle and we feel the wind and rain. But today it is fine and shining and there is a thrush singing beautiful down in the wood. I as usual, am writing a book, and if I live much longer and they put a list of my books on my tombstone I shall want one as big as one of the stones at Stonehenge.

  I suppose you will never get me a nice oak stick, a root that would make a good knob. That is what I should like. I have got a good ash and a hazel and a blackthorn, but there’s nothing like oak, a good tapering stick with a knob. If you have one on your estate send it along.

  Remember me to Granny and Bill and Tom and Charley and wish them all a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

  Yours sincerely

  Edward Thomas

  Index of Letters

  To W. H. Hudson

  Wick Green

  Petersfield

  8 March 1911

  My dear Hudson,

  I am very sorry not to have come after your leaving word with Garnett and so on. But I have been suffering from exhaustion lately and had a return of it just as I was going to take the Tube towards you. I always have a bout or two in Spring but this is worse perhaps owing to my change of diet. Thank you for your letter. The Woburn Natural History sounds nearest to the right thing. After reading your letter — I had forgotten Thoreau’s complaint about poetry — I felt that probably I was asking for better bread than is made of wheat. Most cultures being mainly urban, the wildish man does not write poetry except among nomadic or mountainous people as among the Arabs and the Celts. I just glanced at Kuno Meyer’s book and wish I had it. It contains some most beautiful things of a kind, I suppose Thoreau could not have known, unless he had seen Stephens’

  ‘Literature of the Cymry’ or o
ne of the other early books on Celtic literature. But it is noticeable that the English poetry of the sea is very very poor between the earliest times and the 19th century. The Elizabethan poets appear to have regarded the sea chiefly as a division between lovers and a path for invaders, if not as a mere bulwark of England. The wildness that I want, and probably the want itself, is perhaps a reaction against luxury and refinement. It is not satisfying in Emily Bronte. It is too painful like the rapid beating of a bird’s heart in the hand. Her wildness is too delicate and helpless.

  I hope I shall catch you in town next time I am up or not long afterwards.

  Yours ever! Edward Thomas

  Index of Letters

  To Gordon Bottomley

  Wick Green

  Petersfield

  14 April 1911

  My dear Gordon,

  Thank you for your letter and Emily for hers. I wasn’t at all hurt by not getting a letter, but was silent only because for sometime I have been in one of my worst moods and in fact seem hardly likely to get out of it. By the way don’t put it down to vegetarianism (which I have complicated by much reducing the size and number of my meals). I don’t think it would be risky for you. Fruits, vegetables (steamed if possible), good bread and butter and nuts and cream, seems sufficient whether in simple or elaborate dishes: in fact I enjoy the taste of my food much more now than ever. But I can’t advocate anything I practise just now: I am in such a poor way. I only hope I am still suffering from the transition out of youth, and that someday I shall laugh at having taken myself so tragically — as many people say they have laughed. I am beginning to see myself a little clearly and to see what things are probable and what improbable in my life. But I don’t think I had better go into this and I apologize for merely telling you enough to trouble you a little without perhaps seeing what is up — which of course I do not quite know. It is connected with my work too, the unpleasant tendency being the necessity of producing many books instead of a few and much reviewing. The Chronicle and Morning Post are taking away my reviewing. The books are mostly not worth telling you about. One — a collection of Celtic tales retold for schools — I have lately finished. The Maeterlinck, by the way, ought to be in proof soon and I shall be very glad if you are able to correct the proofs. Thank you for promising. When they come I will send them. Then there is the Icknield Way but so far I have only done book work on it.