Letter from Edward Thomas to his wife, Helen Thomas. Archival reference: 424/1/1/1/1/203
Selsfield House
16 viii 12
Dearest one, Here we are waiting for Ellis to turn up. We have been over the garden with Mrs. Ellis + down the deep dark ghyll where they quarried the sandstone
100s of years ago, now full of hazel + oak. The Ellises are thinking of adding a newer bit to
their garden - a square deep hollow with sand martin's nests + ragwort, suitable for an outdoor
theatre, fives' court etc. It is drizzling now, but there is a wood fire in the big open fireplace +
Mervyn is deep in cushions + the Chronicle. Our lodgings last night were a great success. We had eggs and fruit for breakfast and only paid 5/- for everything. The people are named Wadey and if I go to Slinfold again I shall go there.
Ellis arrived at 6 and cut this short. Mervyn sat and listened to us talking till dinner at 7.30 when he went to bed with a bath.
Well, about Friday, we were again in a district of parks though we did not see so many grand

entrances, iron gates, stone pillars surmounted by eagles or suits if armour with no men inside or at Petworth. First we went to see Shelley's home, Field Place, we only saw that it was there among trees near Broadbridge Heath, a small treeless roadside common half way to Horsham. I didn't want to go poking about and [illegible] bare. So we went in to Horsham, passing a big fish pond at Warnham, with reeds, and a pub nearby called 'Dog and Bacon' with a big sign of a dog upon a chair sniffing at some bacon that stands beside a mug of beer on a table. Obviously the original of Worthington's 'What is a master likes so much' except that here the dog is facing right, which is harder to show than left.
We didn't stay long in Horsham which has a square called Carfax as at Oxford. We left some way on the Brighton rd passing close to a beautifl [illegible] mill pond at Whitebridge in a dark hollow. We turned off at Mannings Heath and then hid 7 or 8 miles of St Leonard's Forest, which is like Ashdown, a big region of oak and fir woods closed by deep valleys, several

containing big lily ponds - one, Hammer Pond view in the ironworks when wood as bad as core supplied the furnaces and some was almost as black as Staffordshire. Some of the finest is high and bare and purple for acres with heather and there undulating against a background of wood are lovely. Our road was houseless for a long way, with barbed wire to keep us out of the heaths stretches in the east but no hedge on the west where there was oak with bracken and heather. Heather only at the sunny edge. We sat and looked at the view, the barbed wire and our bicycles, [illegible] Coolhurst - nice name? It is a house with a small park and entrance gates just south of Horsham. The nicest flower all the way was the wood betany at the edges f woods. It looks so wise - a purple flower like basil, but darker, with dark leaves, rather stiff. The combination of oak birds bracken walks and harebell is one of the sweetest. Then we got on the main road which