Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Berryfield Cottage, Ashford, Petersfield, Hampshire. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/104
Ashford
Petersfield
21 V 08.

My dear Gordon,
I thank you for the Bergamot. It has survived frost, sun, rain, wind and weeding and therefore maybe suffered to think well of us as we (illegible). I think of sunny rain and the whiteners of well renown whenever I see it. But I ought to have said this long ago. Your letter was written on the 23rd of last month. Since then I have been reviewing hard, writing the last chapter of Jefferies or at least sketching it, and walking for a week about Sussex, Surrey and Kent. This last was because I am doing a book in the South Country and he wants a solid- looking framework, so I am collecting place- names so as to pretend to be a writer of guidebooks gone wrong. This has to be done in 4 or 5 months, and during that time I have to turn out a large book on (illegible). It looks impossible and will in fact be a testimony to my phlegm and British pluck if it ever done. Jefferies two is still nearly all to copy. What a priceless privilege then I am bestowing on you in sending you a letter. But indeed it is hard to get the time and piece for the imagination one wants in writing a letter not wholly polite. This particular letter I am writing, by the way, partly because it is only eleven

at night and I vow not to sleep till after 12; yet as soon as I try to read I nod.
Walking you will perhaps see suits me. Really I am never so well as when I am rid of the postman and all company walking 20 or 30 miles a day. I was as well as ever I hope to be in my week’s walk, and it’s (illegible) has lasted over another week. I got as depressed and irritable as ever but seem to recover faster. Five months purgation of course has something to do with it. - on the other hand I can’t say I feel “ mad pride of intellectuality”, tho a feeling of extreme virtue after 5 months teetotalism and plainist abstinence from tobacco is hard to avoid. But seriously I wonder whether for a person like myself where most intense moments were those of depression a cure that destroys the depression may not destroy the intensity - a desperate remedy.
You are mistaken in thinking of a farmer’s
daughter. Her father is a retired Anglo-Indian who kept two cows to nourish his sapless frame. I have had a new interest in life since I heard that my letters to her have been shown to quite a number of amateur psychologists and detectors of vice. It is understood that she was just sated. Here I see my egoism has a value. Indignation and wounded vanity are covering up the other sore.
Titterton’s verses disappointed me. The violent

man thinks himself a strong man. He is said to be coming out as the universal sympathiser with the interest and downtrodden, the self tortured -, this time in prose.
No there is no 2 volume Doughty. What will you pay for volumes of the original and only edition? There are several, perhaps a set at at Thorpe’s , which I could probably get for 2/6 a volume (instead of 4/6 net) perhaps less. Here I send the AS am cast forth.
Davies has a Shakespeare, thank you. His book is praised everywhere, but I do hope it will bring him cash.
You agree with me about the Breaking Point and I agree with you. He supplies a number of excellent opportunities for a divine actress to exert all her skill in making the most of (illegible) words. I would have plays that do not depend upon a divine actress. The monotony is true and almost devilish. I think a break of hysterical joy or joy simulated to deceive the lover into hopefulness would have been an early and sufficient way of breaking up the monotony.
I haven’t seen much of Guthrie lately but hope his way is clearing. He gets far too little and far too unvaried company for a man with his liking to talk and talking rather lazily about
himself and trivial things. I am no corrective. In town he would run up against other kinds of intelligence in a useful way unless his quiet assurance is blind as well, which I don't believe. How he lives at all is marvellous to me, his range is so know. That too, with cause - he really is a social animal might cure.
No we haven't bought our house yet, and don't know what it will cost. There is just a chance of having one built for us by a friend close by, but that is too uncertain to boast of yet, though secretly it is a delight to ruminate on. Really I cannot see how to get to you. Helen can’t come till the end of the term when the children might be stowed away, and then I shall be at my busiest. And if I travel at all it ought to be in the south, for time is very short and so is my purse. But could you not come here for a little time from town, if you reach there? A simple journey of 1 1/2 hours from Waterloo, weekend tickets 5/9. I don’t see how you can refuse, so don’t. But first of all are you coming to town?
Helen’s love and (illegible) to you and Emily
Ever yours
Edward Thomas