T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 295

2 To H. Williamson (ctd.) 2/4/58 I tried to write. Is a technical delight, all the more perfect for being imperfect, here and there. If you write it out again, and make a few emendations, and think of it, you'll rob us of a rounded and gracious object lesson, and deprive us of what might have been a new and very lovely hobby on another subject. Now a confession. In the '30s we live in a com- munism which is voluntary and real, so as soon as the fat stag arrived we dismembered it. I haven't an idea who has him, but of the seven hundred fellows of us in ..., one, in all infallibly returns after a few days, an after many days; nothing ever goes really astray, nor is anything wasted. They are like towness on desert islands, nothing to taste all the book fruits they see on ..., the splendid shores of ill the shape, but afraid to taste, without some guide to tell them what's edible. Being almost book-blind, themselves, any guide is wel- come. So they assume that all we books are edible. I suffer, once in a way, as now; but generally I'm delighted that they should find me of use. I like these fellows enormously. We are really the same kind of creature - or would have been if I'd had a natural life, and not ... of extravagant experience - and the nearer I can creep back towards them the safer I feel. They give one a root in the ground. Your philosophy interests me. I haven't got so far myself; being so English as I am, gives me a distrust for systems of any kind, and I don't believe I could think out anything worth while. When I try to think, it lasts about five minutes, and then digresses along some pathway of drama, and if I try to understand any reputable philos pher, I find myself either lost or yawning in half an hour. You seen to have grappled yourself with some success, a judge only by what you tell us of your privates. I would like to see them; but will not ask you to lend them, if you'll let it rise at a push to loan me a other, if you'll keep in borrowed, and read to death by all the city-handed, and discussed tawdry in half a dozen rooms; and I'll do them worse if like man's for all my reading has to be done prone in bed or better, on my bed in barracks. This common life is not fit for literary sense; but from some who aren't of a nature literary from the folly of thinking themselves so. I'll promise to tell you what I think of anything of yours I read; the Old Stag for certain, and others 634