Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Rose Acre, Bearsted Green, Maidstone, Kent. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/6
Rose Acre
Bearsted
nr Maidstone

22.xi..1902

My dear Gordon Bottomley,
I am so pressed for
time that I don't know if I shall be able
to finish thanking you for your letter,
your [illegible] verses, your copy of
William Morris's bed verses, & for
revealing to us your dear scribe. I
haven't time or leisure (and unhappily
I know very well the distinction between
the two) to send you a letter. So I
am sending you a book of sonnets* which
you may like. They are too windy &
Rossetyish, I think: but there are lines
that raise them above mediocrities; and they
seem to me very well constructed. They
perhaps suggest that the author meant
far more than he expresses. He is, by the way,
a poor, bookish, bank-clerk, & the
most perverse complete 'idealist'
I ever met, & if he is apt to mistake
the first faint thrills of indigestion for
an understanding of Plotinus, who is

*[marginalia in G. B. hand]
By Jessie Berridge:
he afterward became a clergyman.
there among truthful men that would refuse
Dyspepsia a place among the muses?
As for John Dyer, let me make a
few quotations which are the best form of
criticism unless one is a University
Ealeusion lecturer:-

'No pridely brambles, white with woolly theft?-
'Rolling by ruins hoar of atient towns-
'Nor what the peasant, nor some lucid wave,
Pactolus, Scionpio, or Meander slow,
Renown'd in story with his plough up turns'
'The pilgrims oft, 'mid his oraison hears,
Aghast, the voice of Time disparting towers.'
'Be sull of Courts! be great who will;
Search for Peace with all your skill:
Open wide the lofty door,
Seek her on the marble floor:
In vain you search, she is not there;
In vain ye search the domes of Care:
Grass flowers quiet treads,
On the meads & mountains heads,
Along with pleasure close alloiyed,
Ever by each other's side,
And often by the [illegible] ring till,
Years the thrush, when all is still,
Within the groves of Crongar Hill
Please let me see "The Mickle Drede'
when you can.
As to your 'regrettable diction;, I
agree that it must be accepted 'as
something inherent'. At the same time
I shall always blame it where it seems to
me not to be effective. A style
maybe many things: it must be
effective, & I blamed that of 'White
Nights' because it was not invariably so.
I look forward to seeing your dear
Emily with you in the spring. So does
Helen.
May your logs be fragrant &
sparkling & your nuts sweet, your
house wind-proof, & your sighs all
happy.
Edward Thomas

Bronwen is one of our many beautiful
Welsh names. Here are some:-
Blodwen, Ceridwen, Mafanwy,
Eiluned (pronounced Eileened, a form of
Lynette), and Olwen. All are old &
all are still used. Olwen! Olwen!