T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 330

To R.Williamson. 13 Barmingham St Southampton 24.V.34 Dear H.W. I have spent the evenings of rather more than a week in delightedly reading Winged Victory, the Yeates book. It is admirable: admirable: admirable. Criticisms first. Purple passages too ... : they stickout and so are skipped, being also too long. If a few lines being purple, he must be purple suddenly, unexpectedly, and briefly. That way he lures his readers into swallowing them with the rest of the soup. Some ungrammatical sentences: too many rare words of classi- cal derivation: too many conversations replete with 1922 ... in 1918 there were the arms of what wind, we now say aloud - but then they were thoughts, only. Special pleasures. The feeling of flight when they play among the clouds, and spin the earth about their props, the frolic play. The character-drawing, of Tom and of the other earlier and developed pilots. The bitter his development, the better his drawing. He does not bundy-bash violently enough. A great and special pleasure is the irony of the develop- ment of Tom. The flimid climber is masterly: and it was good to send him sick with P.H.O. earlier. I take it that much of his took is reality, including the hospital disasters. Some of the men-in the-distance I recognise, faintly. A regret to me - the absence of the other ranks: but of course an officer never sees them. How fortunate the R.A.F. has been to collar for itself one of the most distinguished histories of the war! And how creditable that it deserves it. I'm afraid the book is too late for its public, and that it may not be sufficiently sold to reward Yeates for his merit in writing it. Admirable, truly admirable. An imperishable pleasure. Yours T.E.Shaw. I've been reading an uncorrected proof, of course.