Publishing my Edward Thomas

News -A new destination for Edward Thomas pilgrims.

Unveiling of the plaque at 113 Cowley Road, Oxford, Edward Thomas's first lodgings away from home, on May 16th 2015  at 2pm. All welcome. There will be some readings,  a walk into Oxford and maybe tea in the garden on our return.

Edward Thomas and Oxford -  Recognition at last -the long-awaited plaque commemorating Edward Thomas's  first lodgings in Oxford.

As I live in Oxford and have lived in or around the city since the mid-sixties it is important to me and I believe it was important to Edward Thomas, but he did not have a care-free time at University. He left school at just seventeen, his father insisting that he studied at home for Civil service entrance, but instead he set off to walk from London to Swindon, taking notes for the book that became A Woodland Life. He'd already had a dozen articles published in national journals and was earning money from them; this gave him courage to stand up to his father and the Civil service idea was dropped - instead he was able  to apply to Oxford.

He had been encouraged in his writing by James Noble, writer and critic and father of Helen. Helen and Edward fell in love, and on her twentieth birthday became lovers. Biographers agree that for young people of their class this was not usual.

In the autumn of 1897 he went up to Oxford to work for a scholarship while living in lodgings at 113 Cowley Road, as a non-collegiate student.  It is an ordinary Victorian house, unfortunately rendered and with modern Upvc windows, though the rear garden speaks much more of the 1890's. It belongs to a housing  association which, after encouragement from local MP Andrew Smith,  co-operated

keenly with the Edward Thomas Fellowship (www.edwardthomasfellowship.org) in forwarding the project. The Fellowship would appreciate donations to help with the costs - details on the website.

Graffiti shops, Cowley Road, by Jane Hope, www.janehope.co.uk

If you're not familiar with it, today Cowley Road qualifies for the word 'vibrant' - restaurants, bars, shops of every ethnicity, a live music venue, small independant cinema, a well-known early health-food shop, Uhuru, very trendy community market - so much I can't begin to describe it.

 

East Oxford overall is also becoming the creative heart of Oxford, especially though not entirely, for younger artists and writers. What it's not known for is its architecture or for more established literary connections (Gerard Manley Hopkins referred to East Oxford as Oxford's 'base and brickish skirt'.)
Not like North Oxford which is peppered with blue plaques.

 I have very much wanted to see the house, 113, marked in some way.  A young stone-mason, Richard Morely, happened to be living there, and we talked about the possibility of  doing something, with the help of the Edward Thomas Fellowship. (Richard remains in Oxford and can be contacted for commissions - morleymasonry@hotmail.com)
The wording was agreed and a design made. Delays happened. The design has been altered now to a portrait shape but the wording remains the same and Richard has  been given the go-ahead.

 Oxford 'Entrance'

The non-collegiate scheme was demanding.  Edward had to pass exams in Greek, Latin and logic with Mathematics, and failed three times to pass what was in effect the Oxford entrance exam. He went to lectures in the morning, walked in the afternoon, worked for the rest of the time.

 

Edward wrote very loving letters to Helen almost daily,

'I am very happy with you, very content, and very hopeful.... you alone are beautiful. I can often doubt whether what I see is beautiful; but I know....{unfinished}

  He took long walks into the country  - 'Late flights of larks were singing and darting about in the last gardens of the town and the first fields of the country.'  -,wrote 'verses' and wanted her opinion, asking if she thought them ludicrous. He treated her as an intellectual equal at that time, suggesting reading they could discuss later.

 Many letters are sexually charged, and one refers to the rights and wrong of 'preventatives' - contraception. In others Edward is distinguishing lust from love, saying that love lasts and also allows room for other things, whereas lust is obsessional and allows room for nothing else.

As always though, he worked hard and eventually won the history scholarship he needed to go to Oxford 'proper', to Lincoln College to read history.

There was of course no such thing as 'English literature' in conservative Oxford; it carried an association of dissent and belonged in Liverpool and London. But it's clear that Edward spent a good deal of his time reading literature, for pleasure and because he was still selling his articles to journals.

From The Word, (which goes on to concern something quite different from the formal learning at its beginning):

From THE WORD.

 

There are so many things I have forgot,

That once were much to me, or that were not,
All lost, as is a childless woman's child
And its child's children, in the undefiled
Abyss of what can never come again.
I have forgot, too, names of mighty men
That fought and lost or won in the old wars,
Of kings and fiends and gods, and most of the stars.
Some things I have forgot that I forget.