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T. E. Lawrence to F. L. Lucas
Cattewater
Plymouth
26.3.29
I don't want to
write tonight, but I must. I'm on Fire Pickets all this week (i.e.
distracted and oppressed) and can't settle down to read or write. However
if I don't write you'll wonder what's the matter.
Your letter about
The Mint delights me because it is really useful. Detailed criticism is
the only useful kind. Ever so many thanks. Now I'll run through it and see
if there are notes to reply. [18 lines omitted]
Others besides
yourself have been troubled by the gap between Depot and Cadet Cottage.
I was very unhappy at Farnborough, and decided not to put it on record.
[10 words omitted] After it I had 2½ years Tank
Corps, which is a different subject, and would I think only confuse the
R.A.F. picture. From the Tanks I returned for three days to Uxbridge,
the R.A.F. Depot, and went thence to Cranwell, as I describe. That gave me
the chance to carry the story straight through. Do you think I ought to
expand the 'explanation' into greater length, and detail the Farnborough
and
Tank Corps digressions? I have some raw notes: but they are pretty grim
reading.
My bowels have twice or thrice destroyed my poise of stoical
indifference, which is proper to a man of action! A bit of a handicap,
is funk: to people of the V.C. class, in which reputation would put me!
Of course I know, in myself, that I'm not a brave person: and am not
sorry. Most brave people aren't attractive.
In 'Last Post' the all
clear signal I handed down the but was that Corporal Abbinett was again
in bed! Sorry. Too much compression there, apparently.
I do think that
conscious, deliberate exercise is an evil thing: but I didn't class
'prostitution' as important. There are so many prostitutions that one
can't take them tragically. [7 lines omitted]
I would like to say much more
about Trenchard some day. A very noble and unusual person.
We do regard
flying as a sort of ritual: more an art than a science, it is.
Unreasonable to expect other people to feel like that, of course: but it
is not an unpresentable Crusade: compared with the Lord's Sepulchre.
You
don't like my saying that the old Depot is reformed away: and wish for a
moral. But I tried not to moralise or condemn more than the instruments
through whom the system worked. As a victim I have hardly the right to
condemn.
I am glad you feel the difference between Cadet College
and
Depot. E.M.F. said that Cadet College didn't 'come through' as a happy
place. I re-read the MS, before it went to you, and was inclined to
disagree with him.
It seemed to me to contain better
'bits' than the
first two
parts. No doubt they are too 'bitty': a whole Cadet College would be
longer than Depot.
Speed is a wonderful thing. I wrote a string of
articles about bike rides: but the Motor Cycle paper would not take them
- so this is the sole survivor. Last Saturday I had a good run up to
London (235 miles) and returned on Sunday. Averaged over 40: and touched
94 at times. A nobly running bike.
Of course one is always apart
and
intact: but to see another airman in the street is (for me) like one
ship sighting another at sea. The sea becomes not lonely, all at once.
Yes, I would like the dedication of your novel: everybody
would. You are a very good writer. Your poems (of which I'll write to
you when I feel less unworthy of them) prove it. They are a delight.
Yours
T E S
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