Correspondence – Page 34

3

To H. Williamson (Utd.) 2/4/28

If you send them; but do discount my opinion. The
Arab business was a frock in my living; and if I did
the wonders they ascribe to me, then I was wholly
by accident, for in normal times I’m plumb ordinary.
Only it seems
I don’t believe the yarns they tell. Only public opinion about
oneself, punic opinion about
oneself, I hope, by refusing to accept public opinion about
oneself. [illegible]

I wonder what you will do about money. Parks will
not have made much; & the more carefully you write
the less you are likely to earn. Do you notice how
the writers who are very careful made-are so often
crap-artists writers, Dickens, I’m thinking of, and Tol-
stoi, and Balzac: though Balzac rewrote all his nov-
els in proof, &but he wasn’t thinking about their
form, but the forms of the characters in
them. I wish i could think clearly enough about all
the writers of the world. I think it’s more than a
lying chance which makes one seem good and another
bad; if only there was an absolute somewhere by the
final standard by which everything could be measured.
At present we have ever so many surveys of literatures:
but they aren’t so much surveys as sentimental jour-
neys across it. For a survey we must have a meas-
ured base: and instead of that we have just opinions
& opinions.

My brain is like a damp sponge, so I’m going to
stop. After I’ve read the Old Chap I’ll send you a
proper letter, if I can.

Yours
TLC