Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Bearsted Green, Maidstone, Kent. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/12
Bearsted Green
nr Maidstone

17.iii.04

My dear Gordon,

Is is not easy for me to think about
the future, even about next month. It all
seems to improbable & every day seems to be
the last, so tired and unconcentrated am I.
But now I promise myself that I will leave
here for Cartmel on or about April 13 or 11.
It is most pleasant to think of, & I thank
you & all yours for asking me. You know I
am no traveller. I am always wanting to
settle down like a tree, forever. But I have,
except my body & clothes, already spent so
much life at Cartmel that I feel I am not
untrue to myself in taking them as well. You
will let me have an hour or two a day for work,
won't you? It may be quite unavoidable.
You will find me, I fear,
somewhat hard of speech & hearing in the
matters you & I really care about. For all
my life I have been i the hands of those
who care for other & even opposite things; &
they have tried to teach me - or by my
own imitative nature I have tried to learn - to
say much & smartly about things I care
nothing for. Perhaps after all they are
the only things one can ever sum up &
be satisfied with in conversation. And this
reminds me of what you say about your own
isolated positions away from fellow artists.

I know well the desire & the apparent need;
for work that depends always & entirely upon
a man's own invention & impulse always
let the artist down into deep waters of
misery now & then., & at those times
I have sought the company of many and
various men, & yes I have always been alone
& unaided; all I have got from them has been
experiences which I never use. I have
tacked my soul empty to a man who (as I
had not the wit to discover) answered me
with his tongue; not one man, but a score:
I suppose, as I hinted just now, that my
lack was obscure - in 'clouds of glory'
if you like. Well, are you likely to have
better luck? Your work seems to me to be
a far lonelier flows than mine, & another
artists might change you or swamp you,
but couldn't help you to develop - I think-
for the more health of the brain, a variety
of social intercourse should be good: & I
wish you were able to try it. But with me,
social intercourse is only an intense form of solitude,
and as solitude is what I have to avoid, the
means are yet to be found. Does this un-
comfortable falls comfort you all? But
your poor wrist - that is worse than all my ills.
It is horrible, plain fact that might appal as
Berkleian.
I am glad if you like 'the rapture of the fight'.
I hardly ever do. I look forward to writing
& look back upon it joyfully as if it were an
achievement & not an attempt - very often.
But while I write, it is a dull blindfold
[illegible] through a strange lovely land; I seem to
take what I write from the dictation of someone
else. Correction is pleasanter. For then I have
glimpses of what I was passing through as I wrote.
This very morning the sun was shining, wide &
pale gold & warm as it has done for two weeks, &
the church bells suddenly beginning to ring were
at one with it apart of Spring, & they set
me writing; for I could not go out, as I
have a touch of Helen's illness & am over weak;
but at one, I became dull with the dulness of
ecstasy ( I suppose). I don't know what the
essay - which pretends to be an episode - is
going to be like, but some day I may publish
a volume & give an essay to each of my friends,
as Lionel Johnson did with her verses, & this
shall be yours. It is called 'The Skeleton'
& is (roughly) two pictures: first a beautiful,
many-sided youth in Spring, & next his skeleton in
Autumn. & I, or the teller of the story, have
murdered him. It is so simple in scheme that
it will be difficult to make it effective. Also, I
am hampered by my long silence. For I have
accumulated so much material that I am tempted to
use too large a part of it.
Your letter makes me think you do not
know how much of 'Oxford' is imaginary. Only
one of the dons is taken from life, & he is
the one like William Morris: the original is
F. York Powell, a distant cousin of mine, as I
have just discovered. The college servants are
all imaginary: so are the undergraduates &
except the one who 'achieved everything but success." Of the College Garden only a
fragment is visible & that is Wadham Garden.
Philip Amberley (are you sorry?) never
lived & never died & never taught me this
easy script - which is descended from
a style founded on a 14th or 15th century monkish
hand & sometimes used by a brother
of mine who has been trained as an artist.
Helen is just back & looks quite well.
She and I send our love to you all.
Ever yours
Edward Thomas