Helen Thomas July 11, 1877 Liverpool, England April 12, 1967 Eastbury, England Writer, memoirist Helen Thomas was the wife of Edward Thomas (1878 1917), one of England s most prominent poets in the first decades of the twentieth century. She was emotionally devastated when he died in combat in April 1917, and she turned to writing to deal with her grief. Her two-volume autobiography, As It Was (1926) and World Without End (1931), describes their life together and offers a detailed portrait of what life was like on the British home front during World War I. In her memoir, Thomas did not use the real names of the people she described, but it was obvious that she was writing an intensely personal account of her life with Edward. In 1972, under the supervision of Thomas s daughter Myfanwy, an edition was issued with a key to the characters names. Uplifted by the success of her books, Helen Thomas recovered from her depression. During World War II (1939 45), on her farm, she sheltered mothers and children who were evacuated from London during the German bombing. She died on April 12, 1967, fifty years and three days after the death of her husband in battle. It is a great trial to me to write to inform you that your husband was killed this morning.... He has been so much my support through this difficult and to me, uncongenial work, and he has been so wise and kind in the help he has given me. John Thorburn, in a letter to Helen Thomas dated April 9, 1917, relating the death of her husband, Edward Thomas, in battle; reprinted in Dictionary of Literary Biography. 157
From Wife to Widow Helen Thomas was born as Helen Noble in Liverpool, England, on July 11, 1877. She was the youngest of four children of James Ashcroft Noble, a literary critic who wrote for the leading journals of the day. When Helen was five years old, she moved to London with her family, and a few years later they moved to Lancashire, in northwest England. She described herself in her memoirs as a delicate child prone to asthma and croup, but she enjoyed going to the theater and studying violin. When she was ten, the family moved back to London. Her first job was as a nursery governess for a European family living there. When Helen was eighteen, she and her girlfriends formed a literary research society whose practice was to visit authors and artists in their homes. It was on one of these visits that she met Edward Thomas. They were married in 1896 and had three children: a son, Philip Merfyn, and daughters Bronwen and Myfanwy. Edward Thomas s first book, The Woodland Life, was published in 1897. After he and Helen were married, he had left Oxford University to pursue his writing career, even though it meant financial hardship for his wife and child. They moved to Wales, where Helen taught at Beadles, a progressive coeducational boarding school. Edward and Helen enjoyed life in the Welsh countryside and made the acquaintance of many poets and authors, including the American Robert Frost (1874 1963), who was visiting them in 1914 when World War I broke out. The following summer, Edward Thomas decided to enlist in the Artists Rifles, a special air service regiment. He became a lieutenant and was transferred in 1916 to the Royal Artillery. It was during this period that he began to write his war poetry, but only a few poems were published before he was killed by shellfire at Arras, France, on April 9, 1917. Capturing Life on the Home Front Helen Thomas wrote in her autobiography that her husband s decision to enlist was not looked upon favorably by her colleagues at the Beadles school. She wrote, When I told a leading member of the staff that Edward had enlisted, he said disapprovingly, That s the last thing I should have expected him to do. How I hated him for that remark, and hated more 158 World War I: Biographies
A Transatlantic Friendship: The Thomases and Robert Frost When Britain went to war on August 4, 1914, Edward and Helen Thomas were spending a summer holiday with American poet Robert Frost and his wife, Elinor, in Herefordshire, where the two couples had rented adjoining farmhouses. Edward Thomas and Robert Frost had only recently met, but they quickly became close friends and had a significant influence on each other s careers. At the time, Frost was unknown in his own country, and he had recently brought his family to England, where two of his poetry books, including his important collection North of Boston, were published by British publishers. Thomas wrote some favorable reviews of this collection, and these helped establish Frost s reputation both in England and the United States. Frost returned to America in 1915, but he served as an important mentor to Thomas during a crucial period between 1913 and 1915 when Thomas was depressed over his writing career and was thinking of divorcing Helen (Frost advised him not to do so). Helen Thomas described her husband s friendship with Robert Frost in World Without End, though she did not use Frost s real name and disguised her husband as David. She wrote, Our friend was a poet. Between him and David a most wonderful friendship grew up. He believed in David and loved him, understanding, as no man had ever understood, his strange complex temperament. The influence of this man on David s intellectual life was profound. Robert and Elinor Frost did not like the way Helen Thomas had described Edward in her memoirs, and the Frosts broke off friendly relations with her. In the 1950s, Helen tried to arrange a reconciliation, but it was unsuccessful. the schoolmaster smugness from which it came. In another passage, she described Edward s dislike of military life: [H]e hated it all the stupidity, the injustice, the red tape, and the conditions of camp life. But he worked hard to perfect himself in the job he had undertaken, to become a proficient soldier, and it was with real pride that he brought home his first stripe for me to sew on his sleeve. Helen Thomas s detailed narratives provide an invaluable view of life on the British home front during World War I. Her lyrical descriptions of life in the Welsh countryside during Helen Thomas 159
These men sort sacks of potatoes as the country faces food shortages. Helen Thomas s writings captured the problems, such as food shortages, that people on the home front faced during the war. Reproduced by permission of Hulton Getty/Archive Photos, Inc. this period are in stark contrast to the horrible scenes that were unfolding on the battlefields in France, just a few hundred miles away. Remembering when war broke out in 1914, she wrote that no excitement disturbed the peace of that beautiful orchard country, with its wealth of choicest apples, pears and plums hanging red and golden and purple from the branches of innumerable fruit trees. Such descriptions symbolized the mood of the British people at the time; to them it seemed that the war was happening in a faraway place, and they did not think it would last a long time. Helen also wrote a moving account of her last glimpse of Edward as he left their village to join the army: A thick mist hung everywhere, and there was no sound except, far away in the valley, a train shunting [moving on the tracks]. I stood at the gate watching him go; he turned back to wave until the mist and the hill hid him. I heard the old call coming up to me: Cooee! he called. Cooee! I answered, keeping my voice strong to call again.... I put my hands up to my mouth to make a trumpet, but no 160 World War I: Biographies
sound came. Panic seized me, and I ran through the mist and the snow to the top of the hill, and stood there a moment dumbly, with straining eyes and ears. There was nothing but the mist and the snow and the silence of death. It was this kind of narrative, full of personal details, that made Thomas s writings so meaningful to British readers, who could identify with an author who had shared their own feelings during the war. By focusing on her feelings and not on political or diplomatic issues, Thomas endeared herself to the British public, who bought her books in great numbers during the 1930s. Writing Her Way Out of Despair Edward s death in April 1917 dealt a devastating emotional blow to Thomas. She described her initial grief in a journal entry as these terrible days that so nearly were utter despair. It took her several years to get over her depression. Friends suggested that she try to put her feelings down on paper, and the result was two autobiographical volumes: As It Was and World Without End. As It Was was published in 1926 under the initials H. T., and World Without End was published in 1931. A combined edition of the two volumes was published in 1935 and reprinted in 1956 and 1972. After her husband s death, Thomas tried to make a new life on Edward s small military pension. She rented a cottage at Otford but moved to London at the suggestion of her doctor, who thought she needed the company of friends and access to cultural attractions. With the success of her books, she recovered her emotional health and moved to a farm in the 1930s. For the last thirteen years of her life, she lived in a thatched cottage at Eastbury, on the banks of the river Lambourn. She died there on April 12, 1967. For More Information Books Helen Thomas. In Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 216. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Group, 2000. Thomas, Helen. As It Was. London: William Heinemann, 1926; New York and London: Harare, 1927. Helen Thomas 161
Thomas, Helen. World Without End. London: William Heinemann, 1931. Thomas, Helen, with Myfanwy Thomas. Under Storm s Wing. Manchester and New York: Carcanet Press, 1988. Thomas, Myfanwy, ed. Time and Again: Memoirs and Letters by Helen Thomas. Manchester: Carcanet, 1978. Web sites Evans, William R. Robert Frost and Helen Thomas: Five Revealing Letters. [Online] http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/library_bulletin/ Apr1990/LBA90Evans.html (accessed April 2001). Helen Thomas. Encyclopedia of the First World War. [Online] http://www. spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/wthomash.htm (accessed April 2001). 162 World War I: Biographies