Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Bearsted Green, Maidstone, Kent. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/15
Bearsted Green

Monday 23.v.04

My dear Gordon,
I have just asked
the 'World' to let me review
your poems: so do not forget
to ask Oldmeadow to send a
copy there.
The house is getting desolate.
It makes me feel that I have to get
ready for that imperfect existence-
which I live when I haven't a [illegible]
that I have grown into. Somehow I
don't think I can grow into many
more. I have succeeded three
times - in London before I was
married; in Oxford: and here - And
it's against my nature to change.
Still, it is only a year ago that I met
you . . . . . . . so perhaps all
will be well.
Someday I am going to write
about a land that I know-
This land of sudden [illegible]sleep-
torpor, exhaustion, breathless heaviness,
close-curtained from the world by mouse-soft mists...
Then you will have your revenge! Meantime,
I must kill my beautiful hero. He is
to have a name out of some Elizabethan-
play - Polydore or Philaster or Cardenio,
I think - Also I am going to do
a paper on a landscape & a character
therein - Each illuminating the other.
It was good to have you here. But
since you were here so little & I
was so restless - it is even better to
remember that I had you here.
Goodbye. I am ever yours
Edward Thomas