T. E. Lawrence to H.S. Ede

Cattewater
Plymouth.

20.3.29

Dear Ede

Here we are. Cattewater proves to be about 100 airmen, pressed tightly on a rock, half awash in the Sound: a peninsular really, like a fossil lizard swimming from Mount Batten Golf Links across the harbour towards Plymouth Town. The sea is 30 yards from our hut, one way, and 70 yards the other. The Camp Officers are peaceful, it seems, and the airmen reasonably happy. That is good hearing, for me, as I have to share their good fortune.

About your Gaudier book. It's really very good. Gaudier is quite clear, and so is she. They both come, very intensely, through what you have written. That means you have done it well, in the large sense. In the smaller sense, syntax and the power of paragraphing, you have not done so surely. I could pick holes in any page; but the little things can be learnt, and are learnt, by going on writing: whereas the big thing, which is right in this case, comes right by instinct. So you are fortunate, and will probably write another book, after this one, and it'll be better than this. Do not leave Garnett to correct anything you can achieve yourself, by taking pains. Your own work is better, the more thoroughly you do it, for nobody else will really care as much as for this book as you do. That's the way, always.

Yours

T.E.S.