text: Davies's book Young Emma was a frank, often disturbing account of his life before and after picking Helen up at a bus-stop in the Edgware Road near Marble Arch. He had caught sight of her just getting off the bus and describes her wearing a "saucy-looking little velvet cap with tassels". Still unmarried, Helen was pregnant at the time. While living with Davies in London, before the couple were married, Helen suffered a miscarriage. Davies initially planned on publication of the book, and sent it to Jonathan Cape in August 1924. He later changed his mind and asked for its return, and for the destruction of all copies. Cape in fact retained the copies and, after Davies's death, asked George Bernard Shaw as to the advisability of publication. Shaw gave a negative reply and the work remained unpublished until after Helen's death in 1979.
  The couple lived quietly and happily, moving from East Grinstead to Sevenoaks, then to Malpas House, Oxted in Surrey, and finally to a string of five residences at Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, the first being a comfortable, detached 19th-century stone-built house. Axpills (later known as Shenstone), with a garden of character. He lived in several houses, all close to one another, in his last seven years. His last home was the small roadside cottage Glendower in the hamlet of Watledge. The couple had no children.
  In 1930 Davies edited the poetry anthology Jewels of Song for Cape, choosing works by over 120 poets, including William Blake, Thomas Campion, Shakespeare, Tennyson and W. B. Yeats. Of his own poems he added only "The Kingfisher" and "Leisure". The collection reappeared as An Anthology of Short Poems in 1938.
  Decline and death
  In September 1938, Davies attended the unveiling of a plaque in his honour at the Church House Inn; poet laureate, John Masefield, gave an address. Davies was unwell; the unveiling was his last public appearance.