Letter from Edward Thomas to his wife, Helen Thomas. Archival reference: 424/1/1/1/1/167
10.5.1900
My dearest friend,
I should like you to be photographed with the infant, if you are willing. Only be sure to leave off your spectacles. It was great triumph to have drawn praises from my cousin Lilla and Muriel:- what did Muriel say? And did you and she exchange any conversation?
Things are very dull with me now: bit by bit I am becoming incapable of writing a letter, and ultimately leave Haynes’s epistles unanswered. My work is quite bad, too.

The paper returned came from The Speaker. Literature is still silent and I think I must stir it up with a record paper - the one on Shelley admired by The Speaker. For I really must earn some money having been penniless the whole term.
With love to all at home and kisses for Merfyn and yourself my own sweet little one.
Ever and wholly yours,
Edward
Surely do more than 4 hours a day. Much time is wasted in talk with Maine besides, I can’t resist the temptation of going up to college at least once a day, and sometimes I spend a whole evening with Elsey. The fact is I am afraid of only two things:
1. The mental strain of the exams which is now just 4 weeks off.
2. A plough.
I confess I have given up hope of anything above 4th class. You see I shan’t (probably) be able to achieve that lucidity and health of brain which might supply the place of abundant information:
Because I have seldom except on Sundays anyone to take walks with . Elsey is coxing the eights. O Brien is rowing in it. Maine doesn’t walk. Davies is in love with a town girl. Macalistair has got typhoid. Morgan is still at Wooton Bassett and even talks about shirking scholars on account of ‘ill health’. And I dont much relish a walk alone in this melancholy Oxford country.
By the way I hear the Logans are coming to Oxford for eight weeks - the 24th of May. I have almost persuaded Gwen also to come up with Dulcie for a day after my schools. Of course Maine would relish her society very much.