Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Berryfield Cottage, Ashford, Petersfield, Hampshire. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/106
Ashford
19 vii 08

My dear Gordon
I took your letter to town with me thinking to
find the leisure there that doesn't dwell here, but I
left my letter unwritten & seem to have lost yours.
I am sorry to have lost it & hope I haven't. Yet that need
not being Excuse - every letter I write to you does need one.
The fact is I have just finished Jeffries (all but index
& preface) ; & have today & yesterday compiled a
monstrous bibliography for those who come after me.
Life is not long enough to tell you how I have enjoyed copying
out - being unable to amend and too poor to destroy -
inumerable rants, vaguenesses i.e I wonder
could you help me, would you, with the proofs ?
So far you have made all the books that have passed through
you, hands perfect in that way. And with the index to
back my colossal intellect & true English endurance I
should be, unaided, worse than ever. Think of it -
and now comes "The South Country" & "Borrow".
I shall do the "South Country" first (both have to be
finished by Christmas) because I want to make it
the better book ; the other must be bad. Yet so
far I have no scheme , no frame on which to
hang my landscapes &c , & I have promised Dent
to make one & also to scatter real place names

plentifully. Is it going to be done ? If only my
Physician had remade me instead of just ybnajung
me. Physic being in vain, I am reduced to
1/4 hour of dumbbells , 2 hrs steady walking, , daily , &
the old abstinences from alcohol, butcher's meat , sugar
& tobacco. If that does not keep there are to be
heroic methods .

Cornwall is a long way behing me now. I had
five whole days - from 5a.m. to 9p.m. - Of
sulight & sea wind walking down the coast from
Tintagel to >St Ives & round Land's End to Penzance ;all
meals out of doors , cream & fruit & little else ; no
books ; in fact nothing but breathing & seeing,
I think. Then two days in London robbed me of most
of the results excepting note book. - Almost the
finest things I saw were the water over green rock &
purple weed in a cove near Zennor where I bathed &
the ittle circle of upright stones at Boscawen Un(sic)
where Welsh legend says the bards used to meet -
they were in a quiet little remote field of ling grass
& no cattle or any intruder & they looked as if
nobody ever went to look at them close & had been
there all that time quite obivious & unaffected , so
that their antiquity was a most extraordinary thing,
like a real destruction of time (unaided in my case
by any historical knowledge or archeological surmise)

Monday
You will forgive me for posting this with

even the apology incomplete when I say I began the
"South Country" today & am tired. I hven't got
a scheme for it yet but [illeg] wrote a long passage
that will have to be fitted in. There are to be more
characters than ever, I think, & I have one or two
women in view. So send me some advice or
warning or vaticination(sic) - I fear Helen
can't reach you this Summer , & I dare arrange
for nothing until my work is well in hand again.
With Helen's love & mine to you both , Ever yours
Edward Thomas