T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 599

19.V.27 Dear K. Somebody, Celandine probably, sent me the Ulysses I craved for. These long dreary slow-marching books are invaluable friends in Drigh Road. Arnold Bennett, whose critical judgements I took as gospels, (till he broke a giddy me last week with D.H.L. as a stylist - a stylist ye giddy goat? The greatest liar in all my writing is a style: to replace the echoes of Oxford and academic respectability of my prose)) said the perfect word about Ulysses, when he spoke thus, forms had made novel-reading a form of penal servitude. But penal servitude is in character at Drigh Road. I hope you continue steadily. They say that Porto Fino and TEL represented you in Paris. A little like steak and onion: Its sea and sky were lovely in your big room. Rothenstein, provoked kindly by you, wrote to me. I answered him. Remember me to Dobson, if ever you are forgiven for carrying off his (ex-my) Ulysses. Tell him I am reading it steadily. Everything is steady in the world now except Arnold Bennett, who totters. Yours T.E.L. D.H.L. of course is a quite prodigious fellow: and it's a sin against decency and ... for A.B. to let the unhappy likeness of our names bracket us publicly. If I could have published "Revolt" under any other name I'd have left D.H.L. writing an ode to a pet rabbit in his sole use. It's like writing ... and signing it Shakespeare.