T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 361

To Major F Yeats Brown. C. IX. 27 Karachi 6. IX 27 Dear X-B Your sex declared itself thrice:- 1) By a review in the Spectator, in which you uttered some truths about war books in general; and an amazing over-estimate of "Revolt in the ... in particular. ii) By your going on a journey across Europe with Wrench; who is as safe and sure as the Landseer lions in Trafalgar Square. iii) By a letter from your replacing angel in Essex St. But she called you "Major": that chrysalis state between the Captain and the Colonel. I should prevent this. It is a pity our positions are so far apart. In England I could have been some slight use, occasionally, to you. You have missed (Spectatorially)good chances of better reviews in Harold Nicolson's "Some People", & Durell Figgis "Irish war". You should read "Children of Earth", the April, Leland novel of Kiggis'. Ol'Flaherty is a tallow dip compared with this. Figgis was a very great man. Also by being in England I'd have missed the last task you've sent me: that of trying to sum up H.G. Wells as an artist: for his short stories are works of art: but 1200 pages of them! It is difficult to see all that quickly. Also I am still laboring through the slogg, or Heklust. When I have finished Hakluy..., and Penzers rather fatuous "Ocean of Story", and Wells, then I'm really finished; for I take it you'll have agreed to send me no more. The reading of that attempt to interest your readers in D.H. Lawrence was worse, as a show-up of my dumbness as critic, even than ambition arrested. I'm sorry. It shows that one doesn't write good reviews merely by being interested in books. E.M. Forster has taken the last shine out of my hopes as a judge, by producing that splendidly farseeing little set of lectures on the Novel. Have you read them? Are they out? I've studied them again ..& again, lately, without exhausting their value. By the way your departure seems to have left the financial department in a muddle. They have sent me £4. 4. 0