Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from 76 Worple Road, Wimbledon, London. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/115
76 Warple Road
Wimbledon S. W.
F 1.x.08

My dear Gordon,

Aren't these quotations from The Day's
Morn' good? Don't they express a love
& beauty that never was excelled, though
as to the expression I see its limitations? But
I wonder what people will say if a biographer
who allows his subject to hold the field so.
Many thanks for your latest suggestions.
Some of them were quite inevitable, though they
had escaped my hasty eye (I am impatient at
this stage & weary of the book too). I wish
I felt sure you do think the book an
excusable compilation. As to her friends I
could only give a few names, no conversations,
virtually no letters, & absolutely nothing
essential or suggesting the essential.

My leaving has been postponed
owing to the necessity of considering the
Chancellor of the Exchequer's secretary who
recommended one. I am to stay till
Christmas but to go very easily meantime
& late weekends from Friday to Tuesday!
Also I am to travel some days - tomorrow
Friday first - for finishing my
Museum work for Borrow. I could be
enormously busy if I worked. The 'Saturday'
gives me work & would like more. Lately
I only wish a decent magazine would give me
a chance to do something, not criticism of
course.
'The South Country' is - not
finished - but brought to an end. It has
about a dozen characters & tales &
several interludes about nature study,
poetry, personality etc. which I hope
may have got me nearer to a real
book form. Yet it is made up of
separable parts. My mind is lyrical
or if you like jerky & spasmodic.
Now I have to copy 'The South Country', which is
returning in, a cultivated
taste I have not achieved.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas