Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Berryfield Cottage, Ashford, Petersfield, Hampshire. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/99
BERRYFIELD COTTAGE
ASHFORD
PETERSFIELD

26.xi.07

My dear Gordon,
I don't know when I shall next get a chance to
write to you & even now it nears dinner time.
I expect Guthrie, & I have still to pack, for
tomorrow I leave here for
Minsmere
nr Dunwich
Suffolk

Where I hope to write about Jefferies. I brim over
with a little things but have no notion of a
good movement & sweep yet. Could you send
me the Wilde books there as I understand the
new edition really is coming early in the year?
Isn't Nietzsche magnificent? & so necessary
these days? Yet he damns me to deeper
perdition than I had yet [illegible] myself.
I am glad to hear I was enjoying life.
Perhaps my melancholy is a delusion of the surface,
a term mistakenly applied by one who is after
all only a ½ d critic. I did enjoy yesterday
though because Bronwen excelled herself in
joy & expressions of joy & even Merfyn was
never peevish. We did not over eat, touched
no alchohol & I actually laughed as I was
getting to bed. The other night I went into
the children's room by the way, & awakened
Bronwen by accident - she burst out
laughing and fell asleep again. Fancy
laughing in bed & at night & on just
waking up. I ought to bend all my efforts to
live up to her as the Superman.
I was sorry Emily ran off so gaily, but
it was all a hurry & it does not rankle.
You are right about Yeats & I felt the same
even when I praised Deirdre but if he does it
again I shall administer an emetic for the
laudanum with which is is always drugging by
hearty people. But it was so perfect in its
kind I couldn't throw stones, though glass houses
are really meant for stones. Trench has a
bitter spirit in his Deirdre & the ravishment
of Naois is well done: there is a most
beautiful comparison in it (I forget where now)
of Deidre's astonishment at sight of Naois - to
the astonishment of a man who comes
suddenly out of woods upon a vast quiet
estuary & his horse's hoofs startle the
sea fowls that were glassed - with step & [illegible]
BERRYFIELD COTTAGE
ASHFORD
PETERSFIELD

in the ebb. Oh, glorious. Yet I know I like
it because with great good luck I might have done it
myself.
Adieu Sylvanus with love to
Sylvana from your loving
Urbanus

Have you any book that touches well
on the mystic trance - its origin-
mystical visions etc? I ain't a
mystic myself & I want to know what
is possible before coming to the Story of
my Heart in which there are some
trance-visions or experiences. I know
Inge's 'Christian Mysticism' & Carpenter's
chapters in 'Adam's Peak to Elephants'