T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 638

To F.L. Lucas, Cambridge 336171 A/C Shaw R A F Mount Batten Plymouth 12.IV.30 I don't think you will be hurt by my slowness in reply; as the letter you sent me was really written for yourself and to yourself. In certain cases there's nothing else to be done. A civil war breaks out, and you wonder and argue and fight: while the neutrals look on hoping only for peace, as no peace can be so cruel as civil war. So all I can say is that I hope very much you solve your problems. I think; I hope; that they do not matter much, compared with the real scale of existence. Meanwhile they will sting and seize you into an activity that may be harmful if it is so excessive as to drain you of normal life for long afterwards. I've seen that with others -- with Robert Graves particularly; who would get wrought up, and produce a real flash of anger -- and then sink, like a battery too suddenly discharged. Sometimes I think that nothing which happens to us can matter, as we are insignificant things; and then the focus changes and I see that though insignificant we are the only things, and so perhaps they do matter; but its rather as gross & mice would have been if there had been nothing greater than frogs & mice -- no Iliad behind them. Enough of paraphrase. I don't see why R M P should worry about your marrying or not marrying again. That's a trifle which Solomon repeated 400 times, with only boredom for punishment; and you will not be bored while you have matters to edit and rooms to write. One good effect of your trouble (good for us, & for your reputation, which may be, like mine, larger than its original) will be a second volume of poetry. Your "Death Press" was a booklet; and poets write a whole book; or two or three books. So write swly, and be glad that you can, at 40. Most poets are dead after 30. The later budding is the best. Also that novel? I suppose it is held up? Sorry. Bits of the Greek one have stuck in my mind, ever since; that does not sound very gainius, but it is more-or-less praise. So many hundreds of books that I have read since then.