T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 77

To John Brophy, Lolvin House, King Edwards Road, Ruislip, Middlesex Mount Batten Plymouth. 23.8.33 Dear J.B. Of course I agree with your argument; but I question the premises. Heroines cannot write about themselves except with that sense of the tragic that you deplore; and cannot write about others than themselves. You might perhaps here them leave writing alone; but the literature of disease is more interesting, I fear, than all the healthy books. Dostoevsky v. Galsworthy! Like you, I put Williamson very high as a writer. He can make pubs and turnips interesting. Lady Constance Malleson mentioned me. I am to a, in her memoirs as a person she would like to meet. According to what you tell me of her novel, she is still liking it is over we do meet, she will be disappointed. I grow up, expectantly, in the books today; always briefly and seldom gratifyingly. Highest marks yet reached. Lady Chatterley's Lover and a preface by Yeats to Gogarty's poems. None of them could be called "lifting from life". Revision is a privilege of the artist, in which he has the pleasure of improving his work. The blemishes he removes are those which only his eyes see. The blemisher he does not see are remarked by the world later. We can't help revising ... I re-write all my stuff at least three times in holograph, before typing .... and it is all wasted work. Gilding lilies or thorns, as the case is. The merit of a book lies in the conception. O'Riordan I knew only by Adam of Dublin, or some such book, years ago. Now a Napoleon study has arrived, sent as your suggestion. I have read the first few pages and shall go on with it, when some anonymous borer returns it to my bed. Books here are common, and everybody takes (and returns, when he remembers it) whatever he likes the look of. I can't understand the Irish fecundity in letters unless it is a feeling that it's time their country did something after the silence of the Middle Ages! Also the infections are catching. When Yeats, Moore and A E lived