T. E. Lawrence to C. M. Doughty

27. IX. 23.

Dear Mr. Doughty,

I'm reading Mansoul: it's not ended yet, for my reading time is only snips and snippets of time: but I want to give you my opinion that the added parts work perfectly into the old, and fill it out to a much better roundness. There is a strange finality across the whole poem, which makes a queer impression on me as I read it. What to call it (the impression) I don't know. I feel less human as I read, as if I'd been taken out of the world of living things, and had been made part of the hills or woods.

Probably I won't feel like this when I end the book: which is why I'm sending you this interim note on the power with which you have written it.

I mentioned Lord Hartington to you, didn't I, once in Eastbourne? He has just written to me asking for an introduction to you. I've replied that you have moved, and that he needs no introduction. If he can still come (Kent is not, like Eastbourne, a place where he visits of necessity) you will find him very good. His brother-in-law, Harold Macmillan, would like to come with him.

My regards to Mrs. Doughty. I hope that Merriecroft succeeds well.

Yours ever

T. E. Lawrence