T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 614

All Cambys likes csddy cgood LH 4/13/4-2 To Geoffrey Keynes, 11 arkwright Road, Hampstead, N.W.3. Wolverhampton 28.1.34. Dear G.K (So styled to distinguish you from J.M.C., that financial chisel) Yes, Ernest is in a bad way. He seems to have blown up suddenly in November, in Syria. I know him only slightly - a metallic last year, after sixteen years - but suddenly he sent me several wild letters, and cables. He dashed back to England, and came to see me at Southampton. With him (and clearly in charge) was a J. Rickman, who introduced himself as a mental specialist. He told me, apart, that it was a bad case of brain-storm. I asked for directions, and he told me not to dash his hopes or beliefs abruptly, but to distract him by discussing other subjects, and by keeping on the move. So I walked about Southampton and the Forest, and we talked - often well - about everything on earth. He abandoned common-sense whenever the talk touched on women, or sex, or poetry, or himself or myself. All these subjects appeared through magnifying glasses. He has sent me almost illegible (through bad typing) transcripts of his poems. These come to about 250 close quarto pages of typescript. They do not in the least resemble Shakespeare; Browning is the obvious influence. They are very wild, argumentative, ejaculatory, interjectory. They deal too plainly with copulation and physiology for any normal public. Some of them are medical, some lyrical, some psychological. All very spasmodic. They are a sequence, and tell a story, when read in order. They record more rapture than they convey. Hardly any one line is a jewel - but the longer the unit, the better they run - (William Morris/ also wrote few single lines). I have suggested interspacing the poems with prose notes; and then it would become like the Vita nuova. Dora, the new girl, ...koke, G.B.S. and his other interests (including us) are dealt with extravagantly, and not to our tastes, I fancy. "What is the poetry worth?" I don't know. Lens than he thinks, but the story and mood