T. E. Lawrence to G. W. M. Dunn

Plymouth

15.XII.32.

Dear Dunn,

I got to my cottage last Sunday and in turning over the pile of books, lit upon the Blunden 'Owen': so I dragged it down here and duly posted it off to you.

Owen is a very beautiful technician, with great power of saying, (not to mention seeing) things. [2 lines omitted] Sassoon has told me a lot about him. Owen was a decent fellow, very modest and not tolerant.

I hope it makes up for the Eliot essays. they went to you because they are interesting, I think. I did not read them all, because many of them have already passed my eye in other publications. He writes freely for the Criterion and other papers, you know. His Dante I have as a small book. It is excellent.

Many of the other essays are not good. He has a confused and knotty mind, and makes more mess of a simple subject than any other conceived human being. I don't know any critic who more darkens the mists and confuses the faults of his authors. After an hour of Eliot I thank God for Arnold Bennett!

Bertrand Russell is foolish, I think. Silly. A fat-head: but there was his book stuck in my locker, and it did help to pack out the
Eliot parcel. Poor Owen went off lonely, by himself. I nearly sent you Figgis Children of Earth - an Irish novel of great scale: but I feared your mind was above novels.

Music? We have none here. Wireless is a very false-toned caricature of music, I think. Gramophone is my stand-by, and a
magnificent stand-by, surely. A Ginn gramophone which broods over my cottage and fills it with the sound of strings, when I want. Mostly old stuff: Beethoven quartets and concertos by anybody.

Yours,

T.E.S.