Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Elses Farm, The Weald, Kent. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/31
The Weald
Seven Oaks

27.ii.05

My dear Gordon
Of course I only meant
to say that I thought it just possible
(tho I knew that I was wrong too)
that you would like to have the credit
of verses of yours in 'Wales" even if
they were quoted in such intimate
relations with the context that it would
be difficult for me to mention your name.
I have thought since of putting in
footnotes to give sources of all
quotations from contemporaries - the
other being Sturge Moore and Ernst
Rhys. I think it would be only fair.
But you do transfix me as you
say you wish!
Yes, I wish I had reviewed
your poems. The enforced task
would have enabled me to read them
more carefully than I do now, so
that I, if not you, might have
been the better for it. But you annoy
me when you paise my reviews, which

are best when most irrelevant, & even then
poor derived stuff tho whence derived
I am not at present sure. I often wonder
whether my later writing is clearly xxx-
e. g. 'The Skeleton' and the 'Oxford'
characters. Sometimes I think not.
I saw Ransome last night & he
says you have been eloquent against
descriptions. What will you say of
my 15,000 word of landscape,
nearly all of it without humanity.
Except what it may owe to a lanky
shadow of myself - I stretch
over big landscapes just as my
shadow does at dawn, right over
long fields & hedges into the woods
& away! What will you say? And
I hardly care what anyone else says, too
Rathbone was right. But he
misunderstood Helen's writing; her
r's often looked like t's and so he
took them. We have got the thing right
now. But I defy you to discover
why I omit some of 'The Maids of
Caermarthen' by what I omit. I have
kept 3 verses, including the prettiest
base, and the first, the last. Now,
why? And supposing you are right,
do you approve?
I have just copied the last
2000 words of the book. I am, you
see, capable of anything. But I am
neither happy, nor relieved. Task work
is good for me. I am a thing of habits,
+ "Wales" [in margin]
& the regular + work of these lst three
months has been far easier than the
+ reviewing [in margin]
irregular = which has been nothing
of it in bulk.
So now I shall not have any more leisure
than before, I fear. But I can always
steal a day so long as I leave home
or start early for a walk (which is seldom).
So I shall see you several times in London,
I hope, before you come here. I
think you will find the right place for
hearing nightingales either in the
fields or in bed: last year in the
calm nights we heard them from the
house continually. I do want to see
you soon. Where shall it be? It
must not be at a picture gallery or
a restaurant where we know people -
I mean not with Ransome or his
acquaintances or mine. But I
am too possessive.
Helen's love & mine to you all -
It is 1 a.m. & I want to read
a little before bed because tomorrow
will be all reviewing. Where shall I
hear 'Somer is icomen in'? Oh
at Balmer's of course. I haven't
seen him for weeks now.
Yours ever
Edward Thomas