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Edward Thomas (1878 - 1917)
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Philip Edward Thomas was born on March 3, 1878 in London, the eldest of six sons. His parents were of Welsh descent; his father Philip Henry Thomas, was a civil servant with the Board of Trade. Edward's childhood was spent in London except for his school holidays, which were spent with relations in South Wales or Swindon. He was sent to St Paul's School, London, in January 1894. At first he was unhappy there, but he settled down, and later appreciated the opportunities the school had offered.
Edward's knowledge of natural history started during his childhood. He went for long walks, collecting butterflies and birds' eggs, and noting details of the flowers, trees and butterflies he saw. From these early notes he published articles at the age of seventeen. His first book, The Woodland Life, was published in 1897.
In the autumn of 1897 Thomas went up to Oxford, winning a history scholarship to Lincoln College. In June 1899 he married Helen Noble, daughter of his early mentor James Ashcroft Noble. Their first child, a son, was born six months prior to Thomas's finals. Despite the fact that he was financially dependent on his father and now had a family to support, Thomas never deviated from his ambition to write - his father wanted him to enter the civil service.
During the next few years Thomas earned a living as a writer, although it was a rather precarious living. He wrote essays, biographies, topographical books, reviews and introductions, as well as editing anthologies. He felt trapped into a sort of writing that was unfulfilling and stifling by his poverty and family responsibilities, which led to feelings of bitterness. In order to escape the bouts of depression, sheer hard work and frustration, Thomas would stay with friends or go off on solo walking and bicycling tours of England and Wales. Throughout all his moods and absences his wife Helen remained loving and patient.
In 1914 a small group of Georgian poets - Lascelles Abercrombie, Wilfred Gibson and John Drinkwater - were living in and around the Gloucestershire village of Dymock. On occasion Rupert Brooke stayed, and the four poets wrote poems for a quarterly magazine, New Numbers, which was published by the group from Gibson's house. The group, along with other poets, became known as 'The Dymock Poets'. In the spring of 1914 the American poet, Robert Frost, and his family arrived in the area and moved into a cottage called 'Little Iddens', near the village. Already known to the others by virtue of his reviews of their work, Thomas, together with his family, arrived at Dymock in the late summer of 1914, a few days after war had been declared. The Thomas's lived next door to the Frosts, and for the few weeks they were there Eleanor Farjeon also stayed nearby.
The now legendary friendship between Edward Thomas and Robert Frost grew up at this time. The two men went for long walks in the surrounding countryside, and in the evenings the group of poets would gather to eat country food, drink the local cider, play cards, charades and word games, sing much-loved folk songs and to read poetry and prose. During this time Frost, who admired Thomas's prose, encouraged Thomas to write poetry. Other friends - notably Walter de la Mare and W H Davies - had made the suggestion before, but Thomas, too full of self-doubt aroused by his prose work, had never made the attempt. Thomas respected Frost more than any other poet living and his advice, in combination with the sense of danger that clouded everything he valued, finally persuaded Thomas to try writing poetry.
Thomas wrote his first poem in December 1914. All 143 of Thomas's poems were written between December 1914 and January 1917 when he went to France. Those of his poems which were published during his lifetime were published under Thomas's pseudonym, 'Edward Eastaway'.
During the eleven months between August 1914 and July 1915 Thomas was indecisive about whether to take his family to America to live in New England, near the Frosts, or whether he should enlist. Finally he made the fatal decision to enlist, he was passed medically fit in July 1915 and he joined the Artists Rifles - as Owen did two months later. Three months after joining up Thomas was a Lance Corporal instructing officers at Hare Hall Camp, near Romford, Essex. Owen arrived there for training in November. During the ten months Thomas spent at Hare Hall he composed over forty poems.
In August 1916 Thomas was commissioned in the Royal Garrison Artillery and on September 20 his unit was sent to the Royal Artillery Barracks at Trowbridge, Wiltshire. After a fortnight's leave Thomas was sent to Lydd in Kent for further training. He was unexpectedly given Christmas leave with his family, before arriving on January 15, 1917 at the mobilisation camp at Codford on the Salisbury Plain. On January 29 he wrote to Helen from Southampton saying that once "over there" he would "say no more goodbyes . . ." (1)
The battery arrived in bitterly cold weather at Le Havre. Thomas's first few days were spent either in overhauling the guns or censoring the men's letters. For the next three months Thomas wrote to his wife, Helen almost daily. On February 4 the battery entrained, arriving at Mondicourt two days later. On February 9 Thomas and half of the battery were sent to Dainville, where they were billeted on the Arras Road. A few days later Thomas was sent as Orderly Officer to Group 35 Army Artillery at the Head Quarters in Arras. Thomas rejoined his battery on March 9 and spent the next four weeks at Observation Posts at Ronville and Beaurains.
On Easter Monday (April 9) 1917 the first day of the Battle of Arras opened with a huge artillery bombardment. At 7.30 am Edward Thomas, who was standing at the Beaurains Observation Post, was killed by the blast of a shell which exploded nearby.
Relatively little of Thomas's prose has survived, although some titles were reprinted in the 1970s when a revival of interest in turn-of-the-century writers occurred. On the other hand Thomas's poetry, which embodies similar virtues to the prose, has become popular.
In a sense all of Thomas's poems are war poems, not merely through being written during the war. Sometimes they openly recount the impact of fighting in France on the Home Front - as in the dialogue poem As the Team's Head Brass; at other times the references are more subtle, such as The Green Roads which sketches the tenuousness of wartime life. Lights Out, inspired by a bugle call, records the hopes and fears of an individual soldier who expects to die.
As Andrew Motion indicates in the Oxford Companion to 20th Century Poetry, the strength of Thomas's poetry lies in its ability to indicate, subtly and discretely, the emergence of a recognisably modern sensibility. Thomas's poems act as a link between the old and new in a manner at once more profound than his Georgian contemporaries, and more often and more steadily than Ivor Gurney.
Thomas's poems itemise particular ways of life and idioms in their account of country life. Their reflections on the passage of time describe how these ways of life and idioms are destroyed. When Thomas began writing poetry at the age of 36 his 'voice' was already mature, and despite the fact that for many years after his death Thomas was regarded as a 'poet's poet', the tact of his rhythms and the careful scrutiny of his gaze mean that he is gradually becoming better known as one of the most influential poets of the 20th century.
(The following books are available (those that are links are available from Amazon) for those who wish to read more about this reluctant poet: Eleanor Farjeon's book of letters from Thomas together with her commentary Edward Thomas : The Last Four Years (Oxford, 1958) is enjoyable and brings both Thomas and Farjeon alive (also available from Amazon US), R George Thomas's Edward Thomas (Oxford, 1985), Stan Smith's critical study Edward Thomas (Faber & Faber, 1986) or Helen Thomas's memoir Under Storm's Wing (Manchester, 1988). For more on the group of poets known as The Dymock Poets, Sean Street's fascinating book The Dymock Poets (Seren, 1994) is available. For those interested in 20th Century poetry as a whole, the Oxford Companion to 20th Century Poetry (Oxford Univesity Press, 1996) is recommended.)
Some of Thomas's poetry is online at The Richmond Review or it is possible to buy Thomas's Collected Poems.
Visit the Edward Thomas Fellowship website.
1 - A Deep Cry, Anne Powell (ed.), Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1998, p.207.
http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/thomas.htm
Edward Thomas