T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 327

To H. Williamson, Shallowford 13 Birmingham Street Southampton 14.v.34 This is a s lendid surprise. I had scarcely imagined you settled in America for months. The letter, the cotton- bales, the excellent nuts(I eat one per a week, ritually, as I visit my cottage where they are stored) had all confirmed me in that feeling of your being gone. I dislike people going very far away. They seem to lose their actuality, their roots. I fancy that con- tact with plain men, one's equals, is a necessity for mental health. Theg "place" us. Sorry about the book - or rather, about the U.S.A. verdict upon its prospects. I expect the Falcon has frightened the publishers over there. You handled them too freely, perhaps. If you can become objective again, for a spell, it will give us something deeper and more exciting than what you have written before, I hope. The subjective shot is pendetal exercise, but temporary in its value: or temporal, rather, for its significance seems to ebb and flow with the times. Good for now, often in 20 years; interesting again after sixty years. Where- as the objective stuff does not date. However you have the gift of twisting surprises out of ordinary words and situations and happenings: so none of your writing can fail to give at least technical plea- sure. Sometimes I would wish you one skin more, for plea- sury, wear, however. Your writing costs you too much. I should like to come to your valley-country: but there are five target boats to put through their paces now in close succession: and after them six dinghies: and in any hours that I can snatch between the boats I must visit my cottage, for that half-ruin and wholly unfinished place must be cleaned up enough, by this winter, to act "home" to me in the spring. Larch next visit is F.B.S. from the Air Force: very bad, I think, this freedom will be at first: but then it should be a safe feeling, to