T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 318

To H.Williamson Plymouth 1.11. 31 Dear H.J. I have had my annual leave, all 26 days of it, shut tight in a London room translating the Odyssey: and on the last day of it I finished the last book, landed it in to the publisher, and trundled home. Thank heaven it is done. It was on my nerves. Only I have wasted all my leave. For quite a while I have wanted to write to you, about the Dream officer Women. There are a group of us here in camp who read: mostly my books, for I'm a person upon whom books naturally flow. First one, then another, then lastly myself, (for I was Odyssey- fridden and swore I would not read line till it was over) read it, and confessed that to our minds you had written nothing so good before. Not Tarka: Tarka is rather more than a book: it is such chiselled prose and so strange. But the Dream is a full-blooded book of man & woman, very hot, rushing and life-like. The charac- ters so good: the places so good. Your Nate-Castle, was it?- a creation. Folkestone in armistice year, the faculty itself. Your men so good: all of them. The chief woman feels like a living being. It's an awfully good book, and I hope the sales and critics have felt it. You have, in it, come wholly out of your ivory tower. Only in the tower could you have written Tarkai but life is better outside the tower than in. Does the Dream finish the Maddison books? I suppose so. New York will have prompted you to interests so far from your dead self. Only take my assurance that the Dream is very rare & fine and strong. I wonder what you are doing? This sorrowful weather shuts everyone indoors, and will have made your shallow- fords too deep to cross, all the summer. I'm afraid of of coming to see the place, with a nume so lovely. If only you lived at Winston Mudbank, the next valley to ours of the flym! To tell you the truth, some reluctance holds me con- stantly in camp. Here I feel in a setting, and appreast likes. Outside - well, I (feel, deleted) am hasty to