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T. E. Lawrence to Mrs Thomas Hardy
[Karachi]
16. 4. 28
Dear Mrs. Hardy,
You should not have bothered to answer my letters: you
know that these letters to the person left behind when someone dies are
such vain, inadequate things.
One thing in your letter pleases me very much: you say you have failed
him at every turn. Of course you did: everybody did. He was T.H. and if
you'd met him or sufficed him at every turn you'd have been as good as
T. H. which is absurd: though perhaps some people might think it should
be put happier than that. But you know my feeling (worth something
perhaps, because I've met so many thousands of what are estimated great
men) that T.H. was above and beyond all men living, as a person. I used
to go to Max Gate afraid, and half-unwillingly, for fear that perhaps it
would no longer seem true to me: but always it was. Ordinary people like
us can't hope (mustn't presume to hope) that we could ever have been
enough for T.H. You did every thing you could:
more than any other person did: surely that's not a bad effort? You
thought him worth more: I agree: but life doesn't allow us an overdraft
of service. We can give just all we've got.
The biography is a very difficult thing. They will trouble you very much
about that. Do not let these troubles go in too far. What he told you,
on November 28, that he'd done all he meant to do, absolves you from
infinite toil. He will defend himself, very very completely, when people
listen to him again. As you know, there will be a wave of detraction,
and none of the highbrows will defend him, for quite a long time: and
then the bright
young critics will rediscover him, and it will be lawful for a person in
the know to speak well of him: and all this nonsense will enrage me,
because I'm small enough to care. Whereas all that's needful is to
forget the fuss for fifty years, and then wake up and see him no longer
a battle-field, but part of the ordinary man's heritage.
You say something about giving me something that was his. You'll
remember I have an inscribed Dynasts, which is suffering the Indian
climate. After all, I am, too; and so must the book. I don't want to
lock up a treasure against a day of enjoyment which may never come: but
if you really have anything else, then please keep it for me, if you
will be so good. It will be to fall back upon, if some white ant, or
flood or accident robs me of this one which I have. Only I feel that his
older friends have so much more right. I only came at the eleventh hour.
Please do not answer all this: it's just me talking to you, as I used to
do in Max Gate, while we waited for him to come down. I wish I hadn't
gone overseas: I was afraid, that last time, that it
was the last.
Yours ever
T E Shaw
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