I look forward eagerly to hearing that you are at Holmbury. I recall the turnings out of the Portsmouth Road to Ockley and try to invent a place for you among the pine trees. De la Mare stayed once in Ockley I remember. He is a too busy man now, reading for Heinemann and reviewing multifariously and never quite unpuckering in our scanty meetings. I shall try to get you and him to meet though, and you would like Locke Ellis too, who has a nice young rich wife and an old house near East Grinstead now and is amusing himself with a picture shop in the Adelphi. Clifford Bax is 100 miles away near Bath but just off to Siena. He is a local magnet, cricketer, theosophist, and an amusing talker who knows poetry because he likes it. He will probably never write any. He edits an occultish quarterly — Orpheus — which Cecil French contributes to, and also his brother Arnold Bax, a most excellent pianist and composer, who writes verse and stories under the name of Dermot O’Byme.
Goodbye and I hope to hear good news of you before long. You must have enjoyed the good parts of September and October. I only watched them. With our love to you and Emily Ever yours
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Helen
Tuesday
32 Rue des Vignes
Passy
Paris
12 November 1912
Dearest one,
We got here last night at 11, I went to bed at 12 and slept till 7.30. Now I am waiting for breakfast. It has been easy and pleasant since Charing Cross except the 35 hours in the train from Calais to Paris. We were 2 hours getting to Folkstone, passing the Weald, Elses Farm and many other similar farms and groups of 2 to 7 or 8 oasthouses with very white cowls. The white cliffs — or rather green hills peeled here and there to show dirty white in the twilight — disappeared in the manner of which you have read before. Everybody had got on the steamer in a hurry because it was cold and windy. About 9 were men and mostly English. Mrs Jones had a private cabin where Jones sat with her to ministrate. I walked about or leaned all the 2 hours and enjoyed every minute, until the sea and the sky became as black as the steamer smoke. The wind behind us was so strong that the smoke almost streamed out almost straight before us. But the sea was not very rough. I had no qualms. However I found it hard to walk straight. For the first time I saw a man standing leaning (against nothing) like this instead of... I suppose he was keeping perpendicular with the sea not the boat. At first I thought he was a magician, especially as he was a sailor with sea boots etc. The Calais light appears when we got across. At first just an appearing and disappearing spark. Then it caused a slight mistiness round it, which grew. Then it could be seen to sweep the waves from right to left with a swift soft misty light, and go out, and then do the same again. At last the smooth sides of the waves began to gleam blackly in the light. We landed at Calais because Boulogne which we were supposed to enter was impossible in that sea.
The landing was nothing. You drew slowly up alongside and walked a few yards to a train. However we had to wait an hour and had dinner in the Terminier hotel, rather a scramble and not very good or interesting, very prompt and very expensive. Mrs Jones all the time headachy and floppy etc., but slept in the train. We talked a little and read a little. The drive here was through straight long streets of very high houses and nothing unEnglish except the chairs and tables on the pavements by cafes, but those (at 10.30 on such a night) were almost all empty. Very little traffic, about as much as Maida Vale at night. No horses. This an eight story block of flats, Jones’ is all white painted, with glass doors, mirror over the marble fireplace, all bright and clear. Lots of food which I had the fortitude to refuse. I had a good night, thank God.
I did see Collins and got 2 books and leave to review Douglas’s book, so I felt easier. He is very amiable, though I can’t talk to him. He gave me the address of the Pall Mall Gazette man here whom I might see. I travelled with nothing but those 2 books and my toothbrush.
The coffee is being ground. It is the only noise, for we are on the inside of a small courtyard and can see only some scores of near windows mostly still darkened, and a blue sky above the pit. When you get that good servant and are free from lodgers for a week you ought to come. Mrs Jones asked and I would have telegraphed. Only I can’t bear the children being entirely dependent on Maud. Is baby having fruit or for any other reason getting better?
It is not much use my writing impressions, as you know that means unreadable disconnected scraps of no use except to the owner (E.T.) and tending perhaps to spoil a broader and more genuine view.
This will be posted at noon in the hope of reaching you tomorrow. Tell me if it does. I write small because this paper is thick. Will use thinner next time.
Please keep the D. C. as I may not get it here.
Goodbye. I am ever and wholly yours
Edwy
Index of Letters
To Helen
Friday
32 Rue des Vignes
Paris
15 November 1912
Dearest,
Thank you for your letter (not enclosing Guthrie’s). I wish you had come. But it isn’t that I put the children before you but that I put the comfort of my own imagination before you. With you here, I should have had more confidence. However I have now bought several things, hired taxis, etc. You should have heard me asking for Castor Oil which the chemist did not know by that name — it is Huile de Ricin. Well I got it. I am sorry to say I need it. And I was yesterday disabled by an instep so full of ache that I could hardly put it to the ground. I am afraid this is connected with the wine and the increased amount of meat, and the condition of my stomach. So I am now eating only nuts, fruit, and bread and butter.
I went to the Luxembourg Gallery in the morning and looked chiefly at the statuary. It’s quite a small gallery and yet crowded and too full for one to do more than pick out what one would like to steal. From there I walked to the river, found my way across it and up many streets to Jones’ office. We had lunch. Mrs Jones met us after and she and I went to the Opera Comique and saw La Traviata. Well done, but stupid. I can’t get over the stupidity of acting and singing together. But there was a dance of five minutes. About 12 slender girls doing a very simple high kicking, low bending in and out dance, with pretty oriental costumes to the knee, tied like a towel so as to display the behind, scarlet stockings, and shoes, and green drawers occasionally visible. They had small really pretty faces and hair down and smiled without any of the hideous effects of paint on which English choruses often show.
32 hours of it with my sore foot never forgettable was too much. We had tea and went back at 6 when I read till 8 o’clock dinner. Jones not returning till 9. In the evening we talked about Hootons etc, about poverty and boasting of poverty when you can’t boast of anything else. Jones played the pianola till nearly 12. Then I slept till 7.30. I sleep very well in these darkened rooms. Every window in Paris has thin shutters which are locked at night against thieves.
I have the same objection to the tiny cottage as you and should be glad to try the Powell’s if you like, especially if you could do without a servant. Also I am certain it need not prevent you from going away as often as you do now. Have you heard more from the Russels or Powells?
I think it was Miss Wilson had the waterproof. And did you get the address; and will you give it me?
Mrs Anthony hasn’t written, though I wrote and perhaps you did. Nor has Rhys, in fact only 2 out of 8 people I wrote to before starting and De la Mare wrote on Monday to Rusham Road, offering Monday and Thursday — had mislaid my letter — was too much rushed — said nothing else. As I had sent a postcard from here explaining why I didn’t appear if he had suggested it, there was nothing to be said. I am sorry to lose him, but I am sure I can’t keep him by making all the efforts to bring off meetings myself, while he does nothing.
The weather continues grey and drizzly and coldish, as it is with you apparently. Today I shall only be able to get about in cabs and train. I shall go to the Louvre, I think, and look about
for some presents. I have now seen the streets almost as crowded and noisy as London and less under control. They keep to the right too which adds to difficulties. The crowd is mostly men and women. Very few girls 17-22 because they don’t get about much and never alone. It makes a lot of difference. Of course you see young servants, but not many. The servants here go about in the streets bareheaded. I suppose because I haven’t been about after dark much, I haven’t seen any recognisable prostitutes.
My hosts are extremely kind. They will do or obtain anything I want at home or elsewhere and show no uneasiness at my ways. This afternoon Mrs Jones will take me to a place where I may find a birthday present for Father and something for Mother perhaps.
By the way will you send my evening dress and the best white shirt you can find (from the bottom of the chest) to Rusham Road in case I don’t go to Rhys and can get to the Nation. Send if off in good time on Monday with the white scarf you will see in the chest, and put any gold studs you can find with the shirt. If however all the shirts are limp I must borrow from Julian.
Goodbye, and thank you for everything, for typewriting for example. I hope you are not having to force yourself to write so sweetly to me. I hope all is well. I am ever and wholly yours
Edwy
Saturday (16.11.12) P.S. Will you keep my Paris letters because I have been very careless with notes.
Index of Letters
To Edward Garnett
Wick Green
Petersfield
6 February 1913
My dear Garnett,
I am sending you my MS today. Is the thread too slender and too impudent? Do you even perceive a thread? I had hopes the book was better than any probable collection of essays, but quite see the possibility that artistically the pretence of being more than a collection of essays may spoil it. I think of writing a preface stating that all the characters but one are from life and offering prizes for identification. My idea was to be pseudonymous — calling myself Arthur Froxfield.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Eleanor Farjeon
Wick Green
Midsummer 1913
My dear Eleanor,
Are you better now? I hope you are. If not and in any case you may find something in Davies’s last book — not nearly so much as usual, though — to like. Can you choose your own time at the week end? Could you come down on Monday afternoon and stay the night? My Mother will be here on Sunday and things always go a little stiffly with her — she is diffident and sad and not clever.
I don’t want postcards from you, except that they would put me at my ease, especially in these days when to write more than a page means attempting the impossible and wearying myself and uselessly afflicting others with some part of my little yet endless tale. It has got to its dullest and its worst pages now. The point is I have got to help myself and have been steadily spoiling myself for the job for I don’t know how long. I am very incontinent to say these things. If I had never said them to anyone I should have been someone else and somewhere else. You see the central evil is self-consciousness carried so far beyond selfishness as selfishness is beyond self denial, (not very scientific comparison) and now amounting to a disease, and all I have got to fight it with is the knowledge that in truth I am not the isolated selfconsidering brain which I have come to seem — the knowledge that I am something more, but not the belief that I can reopen the connection between the brain and the rest.
I think perhaps having said that much I ought to say Don’t speak to me about it, because it is endless and no good is to be done by talking or writing about it. And yet I am letting this go. Well, all my thoughts are of myself, alas, except the scraps I can give to my 8 novels, now almost done with. And I keep afflicting myself by imagining all the distasteful work as if it were a great impossible mountain just ahead. Please forgive me and try not to give any thought to this flat grey shore which surprises the tide by being inaccessible to it.
I haven’t even read Hodgson’s poem, yet, the it is by me. Tell me when you are coming to talk about Keats not me — did I tell you I had accepted rotten terms to do a rotten little book on Keats. I am rather thinking of going away to work and be alone and not afflict 5 persons at once.
Goodbye
Edward Thomas
Index of Letters
To Harry Hooton
Steep
Petersfield
24 September 1913
My dear Harry,
I was glad to get news of you and sorry it didn’t suit you to have me just then. We all got back together last week on Tuesday, Helen very well and pleased with her Swiss holiday with Irene. As I had had one or two of the children always with me for a month I had done little work and so had to settle down to something here at once. There was little enough that had to be done. Work is less and less. But there is still that dubious book on Ecstasy which I have wanted to abandon the more I thought of it. However I must get the £20 so I am beginning it — have begun it — this very day. Can’t you say something suggestive or provocative? I don’t know what I shall do after it’s finished. I badly need some plan or framework to enable me to use my enormous collection of travel notes of the last few years and yet cannot succeed in finding one. If my fiction, which will be out in a month, has any success I may get an impulse. So far I am pulling at a dead weight, with so much neglect or worse to contend against. It is cheaper here, not cheap enough though for my income, to use a euphemism. Am I just to wait and do work I can in a quietly dispirited state? I get wonderfully near deciding that it shall not go on indefinitely, the I don’t see how to round it off. When shall we meet? Not very soon I fear because I can’t often get a weekend and the next but one I have allowed to get engaged and I can’t take another for some time. Tell me if it is ever possible for you to meet me in town for an evening or lunch. Are the Joneses well and Mrs. Jones in particular?
We are well. I work up at my study morning and evening and finish up down here, not doing much here however, because the mere smallness is vexatious. The garden proves manageable and looks well already. Send a word sometime and give my love to Janet.
Yours ever
E.T.
P.S. If I cycle or walk to town on Friday week, Oct. 3, and can manage to get to you, could you have me for that night? I would let you know some days before.
Index of Letters
To Eleanor Farjeon
Steep October 1913
My dear Eleanor,
I am reading two novels a day for the next few and last few days, every page of them, and can think of little else. But I do thank you for what you say about ‘Light and Twilight’. Not time alone prevents me from quite facing the question how far the ‘Stile’ and others represent something which 3 years have shut a door on. But I don’t think doors do shut — not quite fast. I remember how I used to think at 17 or so of games I had as it seemed accidentally given up but as it fell out, for ever, and used to try to get back and thought I could, yet didn’t. This new difficulty is the same. I don’t think in either case I am the same person. If I have time I shall prove that I am a very similar one. But there have been noticeable vanishings, I was going to say not natural ones, which would be absurd, because it is my nature that allows uncongenial work, anxiety etc to destroy or change so much and so fast, so that during the last few weeks I have been like a misty wet dull flat shore, like that at Flansham when the sea seemed to have gone away for ever, and I haven’t believed in another tide. I know now that what I thought a new strength about 2 months ago was only the quiet of weakness consummated.
However, I have work for some time ahead and I suppose I shall do it. You will be glad to hear that Heinemann accepts the Proverbs and I shall soon be trying St. Nicholas etc with them, as the book must wait till the Autumn of 1914. The illustrator is not yet chosen.
When I have a little leisure I will look up some of my unpublished papers and send them. Don’t forget your story, the at the mom
ent I could not look at it or anything outside the novels I have to consider for a ‘Times’ article.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas
PS. Don’t mention this ‘Times’ article as it is a very trying test on which a lot may depend and I only accepted it in the hope of better things from there later. It has to be done at great pressure too.
Index of Letters
To Walter de la Mare
Steep Petersfield
26 October 1913
My dear de la Mare,
Thank you. Then I will come on Tuesday as soon after 7 as I can. I am sorry to hear you are not to do the Fairytales, for of course those terms are absurd. But won’t you do them in any case? You would most likely find places for some if not all in the ‘English Review’ etc. If you can do them, you should. When they are done you will perhaps make better terms, or not need better, if you have sold them serially. I wish you would do them.
Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas Page 39
