Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Steep, Petersfield, Hampshire. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/186
Steep
Petersfield

22.v.14

My dear Gordon,

This is chiefly to ask if you will be
free early in July because Helen & I may very
likely take a week's holiday then & come to
you for part of the time - if you are free.
I hope you are liking the new house,
but I haven't heard. I meant to have written
2 months ago. But I returned home before the
end of February & worked hard. Then all April
I was away chiefly with Mervyn & Bronwen in
Wales & near Robert Frost in Herefordshire -
also near Abercrombie & Gibson by the way.
And now I am again working hard, mostly
at uncalled for little Welsh pictures of
a plain perhaps lucid kind, in my later
manner, if it is a manner. So I have
my usual excuses for not writing anything but a
request for news of you & Emily. At least I hope
you will be well enough to write but too long
enjoying the sun to do more than say so. Let it
be done quickly.

This moment I am expecting a telegram from
Guthrie to say he is at home, & if so I shall cycle
over. I don't want to waste every one of these
glorious days in writing. He is busy, I believe.
He meant to go to town to seek work but seems to
have put it off.
I found Abercrombie curiously like
Ransome in some ways - I liked him. But he
doesn't look well. I should say takes no care of
himself & is not quite the kind of man that
needn't & will get along somehow without. Gibson
& I are too conscious of what we used to think of one
another. I like his later work, but
temperately. What imbeciles the [illegible] are.
I think Frost will do something. In fact he has
done already - one or two things in his first book
were very good. I have seen a lot of him.
But I can't gossip on paper - so goodbye -
forgive this unseemly ending at the bottom of
a page. With love to Emily Yours ever
E. T.