T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 596

LH 9/13/42 25.iii.27 Obviously Celandine has been the major artist during February. You have been too busy with Brown Phillips and Harold's to create. However everything has its turn. Please congratulate her. The family is now symmetrical. You have a new member. All's well. The latest press-extract laid anonymously on my bed is from the daily sketch, and says that daily you get more like me. How you have two good reasons for ceasing that process. Have mercy on Christopher and Christabel! The other businesses in order. ("What other businesses?" you say. Well of course, the daughter isn't mine. And her glory does not blind me to the giddy course of a book I wrote some years ago: a book which, like your children when they can walk, causes its parent anxiety.) Picture show. Excellent. I rejoice that the proceeds are so great: and that you've got a big Dobson. He's good, isn't he? though I don't think his busts are as good as yours. By the way: - Dobson: - here is an idea. Do you meet him often? Years ago I lent him a Thesis by Isaac Frere, This is a book hard to get. I'd like to re-read it. If he still has it would you recollect, and get it up, and send it me book-post? But I want your equally done tactfully, so that if Dobbs ... lost it, or sold it, he will not be at once stricken in conscience, and so hate himself. If it is missing, no matter. If it can be found it will be very good. Ulysses is a compendium of literary technique, which every man concerned in books should study consciously: and I have leisure here. Banged (Arnold) said that Ulysses reduced novel reading to penal servitude. Ha. Ha. The old rogue talks! Poyg. Harrods? I hope you did it. Life is low brutish and beastly, and authors and artists must live. I don't care if is Ramsgate or happens in Trousgrove or Bromsbury or North Waddington so long as I'm in Karachi or Kutch or Krakatau. Ha. Ha. When I had ... series of three pictures from the Leicester Gallery (in a letter from an irl at Cranwell) I laughed and said "Like the resting leading lady's jewels", leaping at once to the "Like the resting leading lady's jewels".