T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 299

To H.Williamson Miranshah 11.vii.28 Dear Williamson Thank you for Rutter's books on Mecca and Medina. They are most modestly good: very human, and fair, and fresh. The entire absence of great-mindedness is very charming. I wonder who he is? Some very queer fish, I should say, who has lived for a long while on the wrong side of the world. The public are (so Cave says) swallowing the Path- way avidly: I have sent for a copy: but so out of the way is this place that I'd not heard of its being out till Cape's letter, the post before yours. Rutter books. You say the pathway is unhappy stuff. Well, so is all my writing: let not us inveterate be pity of our im- potencies behind the licked envelopes of letters. You'll laugh to hear that I still pick up Tarka often, read a few pages & lay it down. I find ... it holds more than I thought, even at first: and what I said first the first time was "teemlcan": a variety, I'm tole, of pressed beef. The public pressure on you to write another book before you feel inclined to think of a pen seriously, must be horrid. Yours TSEliot