Settings: Edna Clarke-Hall's house near Upminster.

A- Hare Hall B- Great House, Hall Lane.

While Edward was at Hare Hall Camp near Gidea Park, East of Romford, he was three and a half miles from Edna Clark-Hall, an hour's walk at most for him. I'm sure he would have avoided the road, even then, and gone through parkland and fields.
The relationship between Edward and Edna was always something I felt very tentative about: having first heard of it, then learned a little more from Alison Thomas's work, I based everything else on the poems, his and hers. Matthew Hollis had access to Edna's diary, so long after I had written my novel I was able to see that I hadn't been far out in my speculations - but the account in A Conscious Englishman is fiction, more speculative than anything else in the novel.

It was clear that Edward enjoyed her company - and what a welcome change from the bare barracks hut her house must have been!



Great House

From A.C.E:

He looked up at the tall chimneys of the fine eighteenth century house, its many sash windows set in mellowed brick walls. William, Edna’s husband, was a very successful barrister. He could imagine Edna in such a house, enjoying its venerable romance. Would he be welcome, he wondered.

He tugged the iron pull and heard the bell deep inside the house, then footsteps coming to the door. He knew suddenly how eager he was to see Edna again and to watch her surprise, and, he hoped, pleasure at seeing him. But Edna was in London that day, the servant who answered the door told him.

After a moment they recognised each other. She remembered Edward from the old days.

‘The mistress has two boys now, Mr Thomas – Justin and Denis. How is your little boy?’

‘Not so little. He’s fifteen and staying away from all this’ – he gestured at his uniform – ‘in America at the moment. But I have daughters too, one just thirteen, the other only five. Well, I’ll look forward to meeting Mr and Mrs Clarke-Hall soon. My apologies to them for arriving with no notice.’

Edna Clark Hall and her beautiful house.

No wonder Edward was drawn to visit when he could.

Characteristically, Helen wrote to her after Edward's death that she was glad he had been able to have that respite from the spartan uncongenial camp.

There are several poems written at the right time that I believe refer to Edna. The most obvious one is Celandine. The central stanza is framed by stanzas that emphasise, for me, Thomas knowledge of himself - Edna is a fantasy, almost.

Celandine

by Edward Thomas

Thinking of her had saddened me at first, Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame, A living thing, not what before I nursed, The shadow I was growing to love almost, The phantom, not the creature with bright eye That I had thought never to see, once lost. She found the celandines of February Always before us all. Her nature and name Were like those flowers, and now immediately For a short swift eternity back she came, Beautiful, happy, simply as when she wore Her brightest bloom among the winter hues Of all the world; and I was happy too, Seeing the blossoms and the maiden who Had seen them with me Februarys before, Bending to them as in and out she trod And laughed, with locks sweeping the mossy sod. But this was a dream; the flowers were not true, Until I stooped to pluck from the grass there One of five petals and I smelt the juice Which made me sigh, remembering she was no more, Gone like a never perfectly recalled air.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Publishing matters: I have to appear on Radio Oxford on the morning of 10th February - a first for me and very scary.


I was delighted to find two reviews on the Amazon site.

The Edward Thomas Fellowship Newsletter arrived today, with a flier about the book and an extract rather in need of proof-reading but never mind. Frank posted (from the Cherwell Boat House, lucky thing) that he was finding lots of orders suddenly arriving as a result.

I received a heart-warming message from Richard Goodman, an American author and teacher I admire and write to occasionally- author of that quietly perfect book, French Dirt, and of New York: a memoir and Bicycle Journeys: through New York after 9/11.



Richard Goodman

And from Dr Keith Green of Sheffield Hallam University, author and composer. He is setting some Thomas poems to music.

My one-time lodger 'Keef''.

It's a really enjoyable spin-off of publishing, I'm finding, how people are pleased for you.

Settings:A Soldier-Poet: Edward Thomas enlists and trains.



Artists' Rifles HQ, 17 Duke Street, Euston: The recruiting office was in Albemarle Street.
An extract:

'He travelled up to London by train and walked fast to Albemarle Street, hunting for a brass nameplate – ‘The Artists’ Rifles.’ A printed poster was pinned to a sandwich board on the pavement, announcing ‘Recruiting Office.’ The regimental symbol printed at the head showed Mars and Minerva intertwined. He looked up at the sky for a moment, then turned, breathed deeply and walked through the open door.

He was attested fit by the Medical Officer the following day. He had passed the first test that he’d set himself.' (A Conscious Englishman.) *

On the day he 'passed the doctor' he completed the important poem below, For These. Edward describes it as 'a prayer'.

He had agonised for months about whether he should follow Robert Frost to America or enlist or at least 'do something' for his country threatened and injured by war.

'All I can tell is, it seemed to me that either I had never loved England, or I had loved it foolishly, aesthetically. Something, I thought, had to be done before I could look composedly again at English landscape, at the elms and poplars about the houses, at the purple-headed wood-betony with two pairs of leaves on a stiff stem, who stood sentinel among the grasses or bracken by hedge-side or woods-edge. at he stood sentinel for I did not know, any more than what I had to do.’ E.T.

His journey through the cities of the Midlands and the North, collecting the thoughts expressed by ordinary people during the early months of war, led to him speculating about why a man volunteered:

'On his last day he saw some recruits, lean pale young men in their dark clothes and caps, with occasionally the tanned face of a farm worker among them. Why had they enlisted – because of the posters, urging them to fight for King and country? Under pressure from employers? From girl-friends? Or to follow their friends?

He had a sense that a man joined up for inexplicable reasons, making a leap beyond rational thought. Then afterwards he would explain himself to his parents and friends in the old conventional terms about fighting for king and country – but surely that was simply too poetical and too self-conscious to be real? (A.C.E)'

So many reasons why Edward Thomas took that first step toward his death at the Battle of Arras. Some would add an episode of cowardice/ common-sense witnessed by Robert Frost in confrontation with a game-keeper.

After initial training on Hampstead Heath where his map-reading skills were recognised he was sent first to High Beech, Epping Forest, training camp. No doubt he spent some leisure time here in the King's Oak.

Then he was sent to Hare Hall Camp, near Romford , Essex, where he was to stay for a year and a half.

From Liverpool Street station the train took him east through gentle, orderly countryside to Romford and on to Gidea Park halt. November trees were black and bare against the horizon.

Hare Hall camp was built in the grounds of a Georgian mansion. Tall elms and horse-chestnuts at the entrance, instead of the barren wire he expected, declared its past as a country estate. There were guard boxes certainly, but a pretty eighteenth-century lodge too. Planted all over the gracious parkland between some great oaks were new white bell tents. A line of wooden barrack huts stood at the centre of the camp.

'His first impression of a great house and park soon faded as he was drawn into the changed life of Hare Hall. Exercises, parades, routines, the new way of passing time. Much of his life was spent in lecture huts, the canteen, the reading room and the mess. Hut Number 3, a sound wooden hut sleeping twenty-five men, was home. The park became a site for compass exercises, and the great Georgian house was the remote home of the most senior officers, of whom he was in awe.' (A.C.E)




The Poem: For These
Edna Longley sees irony in the poem. I wouldn't want to quarrel with Edna Longley, goodness knows, but I think I'd call it realism.

For These

An acre of land between the shore and the hills,

Upon a ledge that shows my kingdoms three,

The lovely visible earth and sky and sea

Where what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills:

A house that shall love me as I love it,

Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash trees

That linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinches

Shall often visit and make love in and flit:

A garden I need never go beyond,

Broken but neat, whose sunflowers every one

Are fit to be the sign of the Rising Sun:

A spring, a brook's bend, or at least a pond:

For these I ask not, but, neither too late

Nor yet too early, for what men call content,

And also that something may be sent

To be contented with, I ask of Fate.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Conscious Englishman

7th February, Publication Day: It began with a friendly message from Frank hoping I'd enjoy the day, 'just one step on a long journey.' Then a reminder to read and sign the contract and to meet shortly to plan a launch party. He writes in his blog, justthoughtsandstuff, about Thomas and about publishing the novel.

I thank him and StreetBooks very warmly for so much help, guidance and efficiency.

The novel is available in the States now, via Amazon. I am very curious to know how my portrayal of Robert and Elinor will be received.

In the garden at Steep: Edward Thomas's 'Old Man', 'Digging' and 'Sowing'.

(This may be the last week of publishingmyedwardthomas before changing to this readingmyedwardthomas.blogspot.com, on publication day, 7th February.)




'Old Man' or Southernwood.

After Adlestrop, 'Old Man' is probably Thomas's best-known poem. It almost existed in prose form three weeks before the poem, in mid-November 1914, prose which is close to poetry, the poetry 'trying to get out' as it did on 6th December.
An extract from the novel:

'Myfanwy was watching him from the porch. She reached out to break off a sprig from the top of the grey-green shrub called Old Man or Lad’s Love growing there and sniffed at it absent-mindedly.

‘Baba – how many times must I tell you not to do that!’ Myfanwy looked gravely at him and ran off, through the gate into the Dodds’ next door. The two gardens formed the boundary of her world; he wondered what she would remember of it. He had thought so intensely in recent years about his own childhood, but he found that these thoughts would only take him so far. Some memories were too elusive for thought. This shrub, the scent of it, tantalised him with the mystery of what it was, what memory it was, that was eluding him.

The shrub was still only half the height of Myfanwy because of her habit of picking a stalk and sniffing it whenever she went in or out of the house. He’d written about it only a few weeks before in his notebook – he would look it up once the pear was pruned. The enigma of those contradictory names pleased him, but it was the elusiveness of memories that was the compelling interest of the subject for him. He had almost visionary memories of certain gardens he’d known as a child, when with your back to the house the garden path stretched on for ever. He would mould those thoughts and notes into a poem, a long poem without too clear a structure, just as the scent led him to ‘Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end.’ '

OLD MAN

Old Man, or Lads-Love, - in the name there's nothing
To one that knows not Lads-Love, or Old Man,
The hoar green feathery herb, almost a tree,
Growing with rosemary and lavender.
Even to one that knows it well, the names
Half decorate, half perplex, the thing it is:
At least, what that is clings not to the names
In spite of time. And yet I like the names.

The herb itself I like not, but for certain
I love it, as someday the child will love it
Who plucks a feather from the door-side bush
Whenever she goes in or out of the house.
Often she waits there, snipping the tips and shrivelling
The shreds at last on to the path,
Thinking perhaps of nothing, till she sniffs
Her fingers and runs off. The bush is still
But half as tall as she, 'though it is as old;
So well she clips it. Not a word she says;
And I ca only wonder how much hereafter
She will remember, with that bitter scent,
Of garden rows, and ancient damson trees
Topping a hedge, a bent path to a door
A low thick bush beside the door, and me
Forbidding her to pick.
As for myself,
Where first I met the bitter scent is lost.
I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,
Sniff them and think and sniff again and try
Once more to think what it is I am remembering,
Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,
Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,
With no meaning, than this bitter one.
I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray
And think of nothing; I see and I hear nothing;
Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in wait
For what I should, yet never can, remember;
No garden appears, no path, no hoar-green bush
Of Lad's-love, or Old Man, no child beside,
Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate;
Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end.

On 'Digging-( Today I think/Only with scents') and 'Sowing' - what can I say? Poems that many readers of Thomas like best, and understandably. 'Digging' is the more complex of the two - 'thinking with scents' is surely addressing the 'mind/body division' - while 'Sowing' delights in the day and the activity. Edna Longley says, "in this 'perfect' lyric about perfection, physical and psychic ease seem one." I love it and use the last lines as the title of Helen's memoir in the novel.

Digging

(c.illustrationcupboard)

To-day I think
Only with scents, - scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,
And the square mustard field;

Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;

The smoke's smell, too,
Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.

It is enough
To smell, to crumble the dark earth,
While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth.

Sowing
IT was a perfect day
As sweet and dry was the ground
As tobacco-dust.

I tasted deep the hour
Between the far
Owl's chuckling first soft cry
And the first star.

A long stretched hour it was;
Nothing undone
Remained; the early seeds
All safely sown.

And now, hark at the rain,
Windless and light,
Half a kiss, half a tear,
Saying goodnight.

Last July's allotment - the point of it all.

Reading Edward Thomas,'A Conscious Englishman'.

Steep and around: Edward Thomas country - Churches.



Prior's Dean Church and yew tree. (From Petersfield Post - Tom Muckley)

There is a good case for putting two poems at the centre of this post.

'The Manor Farm' was one of two poems of his own which Edward included in his anthology, 'This England', a pocket-sized book intended to be taken by soldiers to the front. The other was 'Haymaking', set in Dymock and in summer. Edna Longley writes:
'Like the anthology itself, they seem designed to suggest 'some of the echoes called up by the name of England' and to counter wartime rhetoric that took England's name in vain. Thomas's Summer and Winter scenes, set in long perspectives, aim at a deeper form of cultural resistance.'

Here is an extract from the novel:

On Christmas Eve he began to write about walking in the first February sunshine down towards the glowing rose-coloured old bricks of Prior’s Dean manor house. It was a modest seventeenth century house, three stories high, with diamond-paned windows. Its thatched farm buildings stood alongside. The winter sun brightened the mossy tiles and the windows sparkled; white doves perched on the roof enjoying the new warmth. The only sound was the gentle swish of tails from three carthorses leaning over a gate. As it was Sunday they were at rest.

The church was small, smaller than a barn, but beside it stood a great ancient yew tree, its complex trunk sculpted and hollowed into deep red caverns. The harmony of house, farm, church and tree, the lives of animals in that Sunday silence – the timelessness, the renewing of it all by the thaw – .....'

And the poem, written from notes of: 'the end of the first warm day in February ....at Prior's Dean, where the Elizabethan house looks across at the primitive little Norman church and its aged yew.' (Whiteman). 

The Manor Farm The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills Ran and sparkled down each side of the road Under the catkins wagging in the hedge. But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun; Nor did I value that thin gilding beam More than a pretty February thing Till I came down to the old Manor Farm, And church and yew-tree opposite, in age Its equals and in size. The church and yew And farmhouse slept in a Sunday silentness. The air raised not a straw. The steep farm roof, With tiles duskily glowing, entertained The mid-day sun; and up and down the roof White pigeons nestled. There was no sound but one. Three cart-horses were looking over a gate Drowsily through their forelocks, swishing their tails Against a fly, a solitary fly. The Winter's cheek flushed as if he had drained Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught And smiled quietly. But 'twas not Winter— Rather a season of bliss unchangeable Awakened from farm and church where it had lain Safe under tile and thatch for ages since This England, Old already, was called Merry. * Steep church itself is part- Norman with a rather odd-looking Victorian belfry. Every year near to March 3rd(Thomas's birthday) the Edward Thomas Fellowship meets in Steep for a walk and ends the day with its annual meeting in the church with readings and music..



The Manor Farm The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills Ran and sparkled down each side of the road Under the catkins wagging in the hedge. But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun; Nor did I value that thin gilding beam More than a pretty February thing Till I came down to the old Manor Farm, And church and yew-tree opposite, in age Its equals and in size. The church and yew And farmhouse slept in a Sunday silentness. The air raised not a straw. The steep farm roof, With tiles duskily glowing, entertained The mid-day sun; and up and down the roof White pigeons nestled. There was no sound but one. Three cart-horses were looking over a gate Drowsily through their forelocks, swishing their tails Against a fly, a solitary fly. The Winter's cheek flushed as if he had drained Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught And smiled quietly. But 'twas not Winter— Rather a season of bliss unchangeable Awakened from farm and church where it had lain Safe under tile and thatch for ages since This England, Old already, was called Merry. * Steep church itself is part- Norman with a rather odd-looking Victorian belfry. Every year near to March 3rd(Thomas's birthday) the Edward Thomas Fellowship meets in Steep for a walk and ends the day with its annual meeting in the church with readings and music..

The Manor Farm

The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills

Ran and sparkled down each side of the road

Under the catkins wagging in the hedge.

But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun;

Nor did I value that thin gilding beam

More than a pretty February thing

Till I came down to the old Manor Farm,

And church and yew-tree opposite, in age

Its equals and in size. The church and yew

And farmhouse slept in a Sunday silentness.

The air raised not a straw. The steep farm roof,

With tiles duskily glowing, entertained

The mid-day sun; and up and down the roof

White pigeons nestled. There was no sound but one.

Three cart-horses were looking over a gate

Drowsily through their forelocks, swishing their tails

Against a fly, a solitary fly.

The Winter's cheek flushed as if he had drained

Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught

And smiled quietly. But 'twas not Winter—

Rather a season of bliss unchangeable

Awakened from farm and church where it had lain

Safe under tile and thatch for ages since

This England, Old already, was called Merry.

*

Steep church itself is part- Norman with a rather odd-looking Victorian belfry. Every year near to March 3rd(Thomas's birthday) the Edward Thomas Fellowship meets in Steep for a walk and ends the day with its annual meeting in the church with readings and music..

On the south wall are(or were) two small memorial windows, commissioned from Lawrence Whistler in 1978, the anniversary of Thomas's birth.

The left represents a contended Thomas, walker, gardener. The right is the depressive but perceptive Thomas on moving house, into the New House at Wick Green where the wind and mist added to very troubled years, and the window leads down to Arras.
More sadness - that window was smashed in 2010 but may be replaced.

'A MEMORIAL window inside All Saints’ Church in Steep has been smashed by vandals.

Intruders broke into the church sometime overnight between Tuesday, September 28 and Wednesday, September 29 by hurling a piece of masonry from the churchyard through a lancet window in the south wall.
The window, designed and engraved by Laurence Whistler, commemorated the famous Steep war poet Edward Thomas.
Police are investigating the crime, but in the meantime the vicar of Steep, the Rev John Owen, and fellow members of his parochial church council are finding out if the window can be repaired.
Churchgoer David Dobson said: “It was smashed into smithereens, but the pieces have been carefully collected and the original design of the window still exists. They are deciding whether to commission a copy, or whether to consider a different window altogether. Whatever they decide, there is a clear need for greater protection for the windows.” ' Petersfield Post

The New House

NOW first, as I shut the door,
I was alone
In the new house; and the wind
Began to moan.

Old at once was the house,
And I was old;
My ears were teased with the dread
Of what was foretold,

Nights of storm, days of mist, without end;
Sad days when the sun
Shone in vain: old griefs and griefs
Not yet begun.

All was foretold me; naught
Could I foresee;
But I learnt how the wind would sound
After these things should be.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blog: From the 7th of February the name of my old blog Publishing my Edward Thomas changes to 'Reading Edward Thomas, A Conscious Englishman.' The address is readingmyedwardthomas.blogspot.com
I will try to run the two together and identically for a while and hope the change will be smooth.

ACE publishing. A week to go before publication on 7th February

Frank Egerton and I met on Monday for updating - review questions, a launch plan, Amazon activity, - unexpectedly they have put the novel on sale in the Book Depository pre-publication, unusually for small press publications. It even has Look Inside - so useful it must be admitted, almost like being in a proper book-shop!
Frank mentioned entering for prizes following Linda Newbery saying that it should be entered for the Guardian First Fiction prize.
We also looked at the contract between us, left with me to study.
My one anxiety has concerned small errors I have found in the novel which I hadn't noticed before in spite of really trying to check: my neighbour and former teacher Kate Clanchy said when I mentioned this to her, 'Yes, they only jump out at you when it is in book form.' Frank assures me that few readers will notice, and they will be corrected in the next edition, probably in late spring.