Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Wick Green, Petersfield, Hampshire. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/152
Wick Green
Petersfield

25 xi. 10

My dear Gordon
I sent you my book a few days
ago & hope you did not think it was
in reply to your letter - while I was very
glad indeed to get. It is so long since you
have been able to write & of course I
have succumbed to this temptation not to
write myself, I know. I often wonder what
I should do if I could be quite free. For
example what what shouldI write? Not books
entitled by publishers 'Feminine Influence
in the Poets' & the the like. It is a wretched
wretched book but full of material you only
like to have gathered together. - Yes you
did thank me for HAR, I feel sure. At
best I never mined anything I expected.
There is little news. Ramone's 'Poe'
is very poor stuff. But he is to do a
Wilde for the same little Jew (trained in
the House of Eveleigh Nash). He wants

me to be another, but there is little inducement.
I am just setting about Maeterlinck with
a sorry heart - can you help? and have
undertaken to do a book, like Bellois 'Old
Road', on the Icknield Way which
runs from Norfolk through Cambridgeshire
Buckinghamshire Berkshire &
Wiltshire into Dorset...
We are all well but do not take the
cold coming as it seems to soon after the long lovely Autumn. Helen is herself again
& the baby goes on as well as possible.
I saw Guthrie lately, he seemed
better & cheerfuller though Mr Guthrie is the
same I believe. He has done some very good
things for Osinaston's books. I see a good deal
now of Ralph Hodgson. You would like him
such a vigorous & simple nature, careless
generous & in some way unfortunate - did
you read hi 'To deck a woman' in the
j'Saturday'? I thought it his best:
monotonous & of a Tennysonian finish
perhaps, but most intenselywrought - Forgive
me ending with the sheet. As usual I write at
midnight to save myself from falling asleep.
With Helen's love to you both with mine
Ever yours Edward Thomas