T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 84

- 5 - Lady Constance Malleson mentioned me, I am told, in her memoirs as a person she would like to meet. According to what you tell me of her novel, she is still wishing. If ever we do meet, she will be disappointed. I crop up, sporadically, in the books of today: always briefly and seldom gratifyingly. Highest marks yet reached - Lady Chatterley's Lover and a parade by Yeats to Coughty's poems. None of them would be called "lifing from life". Revision is a privilege of the artist, in which he has the pleasure of improving his work. The blemishes he removes are those which only his eyes see. The blemishes he does not see are remarks by the world later. He can't help revising ... I re-write all my stuff at least three times in holograph, before typing ... and it is all rusted, rides and idlies or thorns, as the case is. The merit of a book lies in the conception. O'Riordan I knew only by Adam of Dublin, or some such book, years ago. How a Barcelos study has gravitated onto your suggestion. I have read the first few pages and shall go on with it - when some anonymous borrower returns it to my bed. Books here are common, and everybody takes (the ...lorn, when he remembers it) whatever he likes thelook of. I can't understand the Irish fecundity in letters - unless it is a feeling that it's time their country did something after the silence of the Middle Ages! Also these infections are catching. When Yeats, Moore and A E lived together in Dublin, no wonder the young took fire. The old are an inspiration. I will read Wandom,Wandos. Yours, T.E.S. (P.S.) I liked your little prose book, and the airmen are horrifying it and reading it along. I wish you had analyzed more specimens, a la Vernon Les. The secret of conveying feelings lies in the arrangement of words, so often. You can get speed by economising in introductory notes, for instance: and pathos in a falling close." ------ Plymouth. 21.iii.06. 'Dear J.B. It is not very good to try to argue a technical or literary problem by letter. You do not like the Falcon: nor do I, greatly. You think it below the belt, I think it fair. Let us leave it. There are so many better books - though I cannot put "Poleon Passes" amongst them. It seems to me a mean performance. He niggled all through. And it is null. I had four tris before I finished it. A pity, for O'Riordan is better than that. Napoleon was better too! ...psilon