Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Wick Green, Petersfield, Hampshire. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/171
WICK Green
Petersfield

31.x.12

My dear Gordon
Thank you for Emiily's letter.
Helen & I were thinking of you and
Holmbuy just now so I must send
you a word. The month has not been
good for letters because I have always been
either busy or anxious. Now, however,
things are a little better & for the moment
I see that I can keep going. We have
newly settled to move in the Spring - with
a new labourer's cottage that will just
hold us with half our furniture. I
ma keep my hilltop study but the
chances are I shall fix myself alone
in London for about half the year. It
seems necessary partly to ensure work &
partly to give Helen peace, since I
am a [illegible] nuisance & a considerable one
when I am working & rather worse
when I have no work to do. Just now
I have got some reviewing again. What
is more I have started a fiction!
it is a loose affair held together is at
all by an oldish suburban house,
half memory, half fancy, and a
Welsh family (mostly memory)
inhabiting it & collecting a number
of men & boys including some I
knew when I was fourteen to fifteen. The
silence allows me to see all
memories up to the eye of 20 & so
far I have indulged myself freely. I feel
however that it will be better than isolated
long sketches, each helping the
other, & the same characters reappearing;
& more honest than the other
psuedo-continuous books I have written.
I hope it will get finished or drafted
before the year is out.
I look forward eagerly to hearing that
you are at Holmbuy. I recall the
turnings out of the Portsmouth Road
to Ockley & try to invent a place for
you among the pine trees. De la Mare
stayed once at Ockly I remember.
He is a too busy man now, reading for
Heinemann & reviewing multifariously
& never quite unpacking in our scanty
meeting. I shall try to get you & him
to meet though, & you would like
Locke Ellis too, who has a nice young
rich wife & an old house near
East Grinstead now & is amusing himself
with a picture shop of the Adelphi,
Clifford Bix is 100 miles away near
Bath but just off to Siena. He is a
local magnet, cricketer, theosophist, and an amusing talker who knows
poetry because he likes it. He will probably never write any. He edits
an occultish quarterly - Orpheus -
which Cecil French contributes to, & also
his brother Amdo Bix, a most excellent pianist & composer, who writes
verse & stories under the name of
Dermot o'Byrne.
Goodbye & I hope to hear
good news of you before long. You
must have enjoyed the good parts of
September & October. I only watched
them. With our love to you &
Emily.

Every yours
Edward Thomas