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T. E. Lawrence to Edward Garnett
13 Birmingham St.
Southampton
1.8.33.
So long since I wrote. So long since I went to Hilton. "Mr.
Garnett" said the village postman importantly "is gone to Spain".
"Mr. Garnett is unfortunate" I replied, for it was a lovely green day
under the trees; and the postman deflated.
Now one advantage of writing so seldom is that I have two things
to say. The first concerns The Mint, whose copyright vests in the
R.A.F. Chief of Staff for the time. Geoffrey Salmond, who was unlike
any other Chief of Staff, was reading it when he died, and in the
confusion of his papers The Mint was lost. So there goes one
typescript. I amuse myself imagining some scandalised staff officer
filing it away in the Ministry.
And my other thing is an airman poet. I do not know if he is
good or not. Both, I think, in patches. But he is a mechanic, and
clouds and engines enter his verses naturally, as things he feels. I
get warm then: but chill off again when he gets magniloquent, or
chalice-ridden. He has read too much of Hopkins (G. Manley. H) and
finds sense in his imagery, where I see only formation. Dunn, his
name is. I have asked him to type out some of his poems, and they
will come to you for judgement. I know you do not much read poems,
but all the better. It will be a change.
My reading this year? In poetry the new de la Mare, which is an
advance: and Auden (in spots) Spender (ditto) Archibald McLeish
(fluid and good). By the way, did anything ever happen to one
Henderson (?) who published through Cape a long poem of W. Raleigh
sailing amongst the stars?
In prose. Eimi by Cummings. Not so good as
The Enormous Room,
for his style disintegrates and not integrates, this time. Too
pointillé. But the best things I've ever read on modern Russia, all
the same. Then The Book of Talbot, an act of worship by Violet
Clifton. Very whole-hearted. A life of his boyhood, by a Blasket
Islander: too full of unshed tears, but good enough. Log of the Sea
by Felix Riesenberg. His notebooks, re-written by a sea captain who
had taken pains to learn writing. Captain Bottell by Hanley. Not
quite a success, but nearer it (damn him) than any book he has
hitherto written. Rather a vintage year, for books.
John Buchan puzzles me. Did you read his latest? He takes
figures of to-day and projects their shadows onto clouds, till they
grow surhuman and grotesque: then describes them! Now I ask you - it
sounds a filthy technique, but the books are like athletes racing: so
clean-lined, speedy, breathless. For our age they mean nothing: they
are sport, only: but will a century hence disinter them and proclaim
him the great romancer of our blind and undeserving generation? You
have only to try and read Walter Scott, after Buchan, to feel the
rolling of the years.
Enough rubbish. My pen will dry before I get the envelope written.
T.E.S.
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