T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 261

To James Hanley 2. VII. 31 All to Hanley, 2 books, bushels of myself Plymouth Dear Hanley This has been a scramble, for the posts are slow, and I have therefore had it only yesterday and today; and by chance these have been hard days for us (much flying, and peoples to lay, and a good deal of heavy stuff to move) so that I am more astir with tiredness than "life", and must go off tonight, to reach you before Sunday. They work us fairly hard, in the R.A.F. It is not like the peace time navy. We have enough to do, always, in fine weather. Now about it. I'm not a reviewer, and my notions of a book take time, like muddy water, to settle down and clarify. It is not, nothing, like all of yours. It goes rather higher and further, in Fr. modernis long soliloquy! there is real thought in that, and the torrent of idea flows well and brilliantly. This seems to me bigger than any other of your writing I have yet seen. But it is astonishing, and how plain & poor the Venus of Melos would seem, with her arms! Work that is not ended is so hard to judge; but you should take it as a good sign that I badly want to read more of it - all there is. You must work very fast; yet your writing is all good, clear & fitting, and when necessary beautiful. Yet all your own. You have been delivered from the cliché's - if the "viols" on page 10 are real. I heard the Dolmetsch crowd once, playing what they called viols, and thought them pretty foul. Also your essnests puzzled me. There were three of them, quite close together, once as a verb, once an adjective and once a noun. I fancy you overdid 'em. Otherwise your writing is just a transparent medium, through which what you want to say slips invisibly and silently into my mind. I like that; it seems to me the essence of style. I don't find the development of "Sheila Moynihan" as yet fulfils your ms. note above the title. Priests - yes. Innocence - yes; grasping greedy - fathers, rather than mothers, so far. Poor Mrs. M. was baby-racked, and couldn't care, surely? "Cold-ice-cold and hungry English mistress." - not yet! not in the first 130 pages! Something cold wouldn't be out of place, after the hotness you have given us. Your character-drawing is superb, here & in Boy and in the last voyage, and Drift, and in the story of the two