POET'S PROGRESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 234, 2 October 1937, Page 1 (Supplement)

POET'S PROGRESS.

WRITER AND PUBLIC. LESSONS FROM EDWARD THOMAS. (By CYRANO.) Those who criticise New Zealand for not encouraging native literature might be asked to consider the case of Kdward Thomas, an Englishman. I make the suggestion purely in the relative sense; I do not mean to imply that New Zealanders should not busy themselves a lot more with their writers. What I have in mind is a comparison between English and colonial conditions. I have said more than once in this column that even in England, with a population thirty times larger than ours—and an English writer always has the chance of success in America as well —the number of men who live by pure literature alone is very small. Edward Thomas tried to do this and failed, and in failing suffered acutely. So did his devoted wife. The story of his life is interesting for several reasons. It reveals the mind of a poet. It shows how difficnlt life is for the artist who is dependent on his art, and what descents from his desire are forced on him by his daily needs. Some may think that it raises, too, the- question whether a man is justified in asking a woman to share such a life of financial uncertainty and mental and spiritual strain. A Poet's Choice. Thomas' reputation rests 011 his books about out-of-doors England and on his poems. He has been compared with Jefferies and Ruskin. As a poet he is known most widely by anthology Methuen's "Anthology of Modern Verse," the most popular of its kind I should say, contains two of his best —"Out in the Dark" and "Words." The latter, written late in his life, contains a lovely concentration of his passion for the English countryside and the English language :

Out of us aTT That make rhymes, Will you choose Sometimes — Ag the winds use A crack in a wall Or n drain. Their joy or their pain To whistle through— Choose me. tfou English word#? I know you : You are light as dreams, Tough as oak. Precious as gold. As poppies and corn, Or an old cloak; Sweet as our birds To the ear. . . . To his passion for words and landscape Thomas sacrificed comfort. He was the **on of a* civil servant, a Welshmail, who wa« eo wrapped up in his work and hiti intellectual interests outside that he lost the confidence of his sons. Edward was from boyhood interested in the countryside, and an occupation within walls became abhorrent to him. As a youth he fell in love

with the girl he married while etill at Oxford, and the strange and moving story of their life together may be read in this well-compiled book before me and in Helen Thomas' frank records.* She was a woman of strong character and deep understanding, and she needed every ounce of these defences. Thomas' father wanted him to go into the Civil •Service but the son, bent on a literary life, refused. Perhaps the father argued that the two careers were compatible; there are so many authors in the Civil Service to-day that they have a society of their own. Literature and Poverty. The young people married on almost nothing, with no prospects of a steady income, and what literary free-lancing may mean with a wife and family to support you may learn here. The constant anxiety about household bills; the search for work; the enforced acceptance of jol>s that you don't care about, and the exclusion of those near your heart; the lips and downs of mood; the fravinj of nerves, leading to domestic quarrels— these occurred in the Thomas household.

Thomas, forced to do hack work to help himself and his family, suffered frequently from a melancholy that sometimes became despair. He would turn on the woman he loved. Once he took up a revolver and went out to shoot himself, but could not press the trigger. His father got him a paid po-;t as secretary of a Welsh Commission on Monuments, a subject in which Kdwar:! was keenly interested, but instead of walking about Wales he had to work in a London office, and after three months he resigned. He could bear neither the confinement nor the thought that his father had obtained him a position for which he was paid more than he deserved. One wishes he had thought more of Helen. It is a question which suffers more—the thwarted literary man or his wife. Helen was a real heroine. Yet Edward Thomas had fine qualities. He was affectionate and lovable. And his honesty was uncompromising. There was not an atom of pose about him; he was a man. Into Soldier. At length came the war. and a complete change for Thomas. He refused to hate the Germans and greatly angered his father by saying that they were as brave as the English and that cold steel would bring fear to any man's heart. When Thomas said the same sort of thing to Ralph Hodgson, the poet, in a London restaurant Hodgson rose tip. called Thomas a Teuton, kicked over chairs and tables, and left the place, never to speak to Thomas again. Many men felt like that. But Thomas sa-.v the danger to his beloved England and in 1915 he enlisted. In putting on his uniform he put off his cares and entered the happiest period of his adult life. There must have been many like him. The Army took them into a new world, where old worries were forgotten in the definite job in hand. W'th Thomas the sensitive introspection remained. sav« his biographer, but the old despair gave way to calm and quiet acceptance. It i« to the war period that his poetry belongs; he was writing until the end. He threw himself with enthusiasm into his military work. His knowledge of the countryside stood him in such goo.l stead that he was offered an instructor's

job, which might have meant safety for the rest of the war, but he declined. When he went to France he was offered office employment, but once more he refused the indoor work that he disliked, and he asked to be allowed to go back to hie guns in the open air, among the trees and birds and in the rain.

There, while he directed his battery in an advance, he was killed. He had felt it was coming. On his last leave he had put everything in order at home, arranging his letters and manuscripts and clippings, "his face pale and suffering while he whistled." On their last evening together he read Shakespeare's sonnets and "Antony and Cleopatra" to his wiT-$ and when he left next morning he gave her his poems copied out. I have never read anything of the kind more moving than the account of the last meeting of these two who loved each other «o long and so well, and now, in the shadow of death, had reached perfect understanding.

The Harvest. When Thomas died there were 30 books of prose to his name, the work of "20 years, and hie poems were in the Press. He was recalled by the critics as a hack writer, a man who wrote too much. Then came the poems, and there was a revaluation. Since then, in the words of another poet, his reputation has grown deep rather than wide. Would it have been better for Edward Thomas if he had been able to work without financial anxiety at his elbow? Would he have been more successful as an artist if he had not married Helen? Who can say? Is it not possible that his good work wa« the product of struggle and suffering, just as—so a London critic remarks —-the immediate horror of war brought the best out of Wilfrid Owen? The good work and the story of the struggle are available for our study. •Edward Thomas: a Blojrrnphy and a Bibliography by Robert P. Eckert (J. M. Dent and Song).