Letter from Edward Thomas to his wife, Helen Thomas. Archival reference: 424/1/1/1/1/130
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quite broken up. It is.
Your spelling is quite good, the only mistake in your last letter being NAUSIA instead of NAUSEA.
My writing has made little progress, & the Divinity is becoming more & more hopeless in appearance, so that I can barely hope to write a line before it is over (Dec. 2)
I do not quite understand you when you say "I knew that pleasure could not be ours",
Then add that till the birth of the child "We need not suffer pain, we can satisfy each

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23.11.99
My dear friend,
Thank you for the parcel & the letter that came after it. Thank mother, too, for the cake & apples, which I suppose are from her.
The return of my M.S. from the Speaker is unfortunate, & the manner of it thoroughly discourteous. I can scarcely try them again. To avoid serious result of this defection from my source of income, I at once sent off a paper to the new penny weekly called The Review of the week. It is a

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wonderful pennyworth, & of quite a good tone at present. Literature remains silent.
I have just given a copy of my book to Brook, & he is very delighted. Of course I explained how very poor it was, & how very inadequate a monument of my present self.
He is getting over his fear of me, I think.
Yesterday I had another letter from Haynes, written in quite

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a different strain. There was a refined melancholy about it that found an echo in myself. He was at Washington & full of disgust at American civilisation. About the end of the year he will be back again , & hopes to join me in some Surrey walks. -- I ought to say that the disease he caught on the steamer on the Atlantic was not caused by any indiscretion but by an accident which I remember warning you against.....There was pathos in his question , whether his old Balliol circle of incompatibles was
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others bodily desires"
I am now off to watch some boatraces in which Brook sits as cox. The weather is fair but rather dull.
Maine & I spent a glorious mellowed evening together yesterday, he made some wonderful speeches which he which he emphasized by clicking my silver tobacco box. He said once that conversation went out of fashion with snuff boxes: "Perhaps it will return with silver tobacco boxes" he added, with

sly flatterry.
Adieu & goodnight my own sweet little one Helen.
I am ever & wholly yours
Edwy. Goodbye.
love to Mary & Irene