Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Elses Farm, The Weald, Kent. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/18
Elses Farm
The Weald
Sevenoaks
6. viii. 04

My dear Gordon
I have just come to the end of a review of
minor poets, and I have another one in hand. So you
will know how to forgive this letter. To thank you fittingly
for [illeg I ought to leave your command of a jewelled amd
blossomy vocabulary. I was not only very glad to get it, but
I am glad I have got it still which does not often happen
with letters, does it?

First & before I forget it Mr Arthur M Ransom
at 1, Gunter Grove , Chelsea S.W. He has quite
a good room with a bed delicately suggested by a tapestry cover and other things suggested by a Japanese screen. His books, some portraits, drawings by Colman Smith & some of Balmer's are there , & on the mantelpiece some of the drawings of 'An I.P.' and a great bulk of his Landlady's glass & china decorations , & in the [illegible ... illegible]
a large earthenware pot, with tap, containing
Ginger Beer, which his visitors always spill into his
fender & on to her Japanese umbrella which conceals the fireplace. There are also three chairs, a table & a floor,.
Smiles Ransome , whether in the company of his drams or in the solitude created by visitors who do not always smile. Also he says 'Bother' and even 'Damn'. He gets younger every day & in September he produces a book = which you may have seen. I have seen it & have laughted & sighed & wondered. I suppose that if a man can write such things he should be encouraged to publish them. That he should want to publish them, amazes me.
In book form, I can only endure them when I t hink
that he has made a tolerably good mould of sentences &c iinto which he may Some day find something to pour.
[illegible] now something about sugar in
prose , but this is prose in sugar . . . I am gping
to try to understand it before it is received by the Chronicle.

By the way, along with Ransome's comes a book
with my name on it. You know how little I want to publish
even when I like what I write. Well, this Publisher's
Adviser lured me into letting him have 10,000 words of bad, old
published

stuff, mostly written before 'Horce Solitarica,' just because he wanted to start with 3 or 4 books & couldn't if I refused. So I am trying to comfort myself by calling it something like 'Experiments'. If there is anything in it that you like, I will dedicate it to you. Perhaps I can send a proof,.

I look at "The Gate of [illeg]' often , & am
anxious to see it published so that I amy be forced to think about it more clearly than I have done yet. Why send copies to any papers except The Athenaeum, Spectator, Academy, Chronicle, Daily News, The World, & The Monthly Review?

The Saturday is amusing. I laughed at the notice
of 'Oxford' & now the review of Belloc comforts me
for his laugh wasn't quite cheerful. But it would be
impossible to justify more than or two(sic) of the pilloried sentences, don't you think? H.B. used to write for the 'Saturday'

The Story of Philaster is not copied yet. But i have promised to send it in before the end of the month.
It is very bad & I have destroyed much already. I decided,
by the way, that my murder was bad, & have cut it out.
Since I finished it, I have written two short papers,
one a kind of story (without incident except a silent death)
called 'The Listener' & the other 'A Complaint' (as the
destruction of an old suburban house I have for twenty
years). I ike your suggestions for myself very
much. Tonight I am going to sketch 300 words for
a [illeg ....illeg] on prose: but it is not for me to be 'concise,
[illeg], jewelled' , my dear Gordon . Mistery(sic) is
mine. Also I shall not forget The Imaginary portrait
with or without a landscape. But I don't think I
can do imaginary Conversation: what is more I can't attempt it. You see, I am no talker. When a person talks with me there are two monologues to be heard, not one dialogue. By the way, I am now known as The Eagle Cock (who blinks & bleats in Ballygawley Hill) : which is cruel of you

I will not believe that Shelley is [illegible] & effusive
except in "I am a Cythra' , 'Rosamond & Helen' , "The [illegible[ Plant' & a few more. Also I will nto prove that he wasn't for I don't read him. He is part of myself.
i.e. I agree with you entirely
You are quite right / about 'The Tables of the Law' & The Adoration of the Magi' But they have a grave & purposeful look about them which does not quite suit their real irresponsibility. And as it stands , 'The Tables of the Law' is not of apiece ; it might easily have been longer or shorter

8 viii 04
I can't go on as I meant to do ; I was interrupted by an unexpected visitor yesterday. & have much work
lingering. I attempted to do the poem in prose , but
my to I see clearly what I am writing about - i.e. to see anything as a whole & not merely as something with detail here & there. makes it a failure at present. And even in detail it takes me long to get past the obvious or Conventional of that &c to the right one & one that is more right How fine Sturge Moore's detail is!
I am just reading 'Pan's Prophecy' his last booklet.

Goodbye & give Helen's love & mine to
all in West Knowe

I am ever yours
Edward Thomas