text: Several anecdotes of Davies's time with the Thomas family appear in a brief account later published by Thomas's widow Helen. In 1911, he was awarded a Civil List pension of £50, later increased to £100 and then to £150.
  Davies began to spend more time in London and make literary friends and acquaintances. Despite an aversion to giving his own autograph, he began a collection of his own.  The Georgian poetry publisher Edward Marsh helped him to obtain that of D. H. Lawrence, which Davies was particularly keen to have, and subsequently arranged a meeting between Davies, Lawrence and Lawrence's wife-to-be Frieda. Lawrence was initially impressed but his view changed after reading Foliage and he later described Davies' Nature Poems as "so thin, one can hardly feel them."
  By this time Davies had a library of some fifty books at his cottage, mostly 16th and 17th-century poets, among them Shakespeare, Milton, Worsdsworth, Byron, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Blake and Herrick. In December 1908 his essay "How It Feels To Be Out of Work", described by Stonesifer as "a rather pedestrian performance", appeared in The English Review. He continued to send other periodical articles to editors, but without success.