T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 329

To B. Williamson. 13 Birmingham St Southampton 24.V.34 Dear H.W. I have spent the evenings of rather more than a week in delightedly reading 'Inset Victory', the Yeates novel. It is admirable: admirable: admirable. Criticisms first. Purple passages too purple: they stickout and so are skipped, being also too long. If a step, he must be purple suddenly, unexpectedly, and briefly. That way he traps his readers into swallowing them with the rest of the soup. Some unpurposematical sentences: too many rare words of classical derivation: too many anachronisms. He replewe with 19c.s icons. In 1918 there were the germs of most of what he soy cloud - but then they were thoughts, only. Special pleasures. The feeling of flight when they play among the clouds, and skim the earth about their sports. The character-drawing, of Tom and of the other familiar winged people - valueless except his development, the better his drawing. He does not ......care, evidently enough. A great and special pleasure is the irony of the development of Tom. The flnna prayir is insisting to send him sick with P.U.O. earlier. I take it (with ef a certain liberty, including the hospital chapters. Some of the men-in the-distang, fighting, fairly. A regret to me - the absence of the other range: but of course an officer never sees them. How fortunate the R.A.F. has been to collar for itself creditable that it deserves it. I'm afraid the book is too late for its public, and that it may not be sufficiently sold to reward Yeates for his merit in writing it. Admirable, truly admirable. An superlastie pleasure. Yours T.S. Eraw. I've been reading an uncorrected proof, of course.