Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from c/o Waun Wen School, Swansea. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/48
℅ John Williams
Waun Wen School
Swansea

23.xi.05

My dear Gordon,

I got a promise at the Academy
and Chronicle of your books & probably I shall
get it from one of them. That was on Monday.
On Tuesday I came here & I have been fiercely tired
ever since. Swansea is a big rather notably ugly
town & what with my not very intimate
acquaintance with my host I am being reduced to
inaction. Everything is against me. A ride off
lives an old Aunt whom I remember seeing when I was 4: two miles off is an old Lincoln friend
whom I had not seen since 1900. I have seen them
both & they have plumbed me with languid & unpleasant
reminiscence, & altho the Welsh mutton is
good my food is thus not altogether bracing.
Also the merriest man I ever knew - Watcyn
Wyn - the bard who wrote The Maid of Llandebie &
The Maids of Caermarthenshire - is to be buried
today: and on Sunday I am to be taken in my
bowler hat & collar to a Welsh chapel in the town.
And I have still a lame foot & cannot

confidently start a long walk. Of all these blessings
my temperament makes the best as you know it
would. So now can't write?-
I saw Baliner on Monday & enjoyed
an hour or two with him & his brother. His brother
is charming - his clean & reddish hands,
his shining collar, cheeks & eyes, the perfect white
parting of his hair, as he sat at the piano, were
fascinating in a way. On Tuesday morning I
saw Ransome for a little while. He read me a
story about a tramp a clay pipe & a wife in which
a small pretty notion was insisted up to distraction.
He also talked about the Lady whom he has promised
to marry. He complained that he could not 'get
anything of himself into' his stories: a
natural complaint.
My host is a schoolmate. The school is
adjacent & now I have a master's whistle
assembling a crows of ragged children & see
him with miniature ferocity giving silly little cuts
with the cane to boys who are healthy enough to
ignore his commands. So I end.

Remember me,
I am ever yours
Edward Thomas