Keep Innocency: Edward Thomas and Fatherhood

Abstract

On 11 November 1985 a service was held at Westminster Abbey to mark the unveiling of a memorial to commemorate the lives of those poets who fought in the First World War. Among the speakers was the Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, and it was on this occasion that he described Edward Thomas, one of sixteen poets to have their name inscribed on the memorial stone, as ‘the father’ of modern poetry.1 Hughes’s remark tends to be interpreted as a reference to the way in which Thomas’s poetry continues to shape the work of those who came after him. But Hughes’s view of Thomas as a paternal figure serves as a timely reminder that he was also a father in a literal sense and, moreover, that his bond with his children acted as an important stimulus for his writing. Guy Cuthbertson notes that: In his poetry, Edward Thomas is frequently a father, a father of three children, and this subject is one that seems to have influenced Hughes and other father-poets. For instance, the well-loved ‘Full Moon and Little Frieda’ is reminiscent of the equally well loved poems by Thomas about Myfanwy, poems like ‘Snow’ and ‘The Brook’.2