T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 82

- 3 - Plymouth 7.3.33 "Dear J.B., I have been away for a few days, and find your letter waiting here. Beyond knowing that you had left London, I had no inkling of your movements. However, Liverpool isn't so bad: and any job is good, now-a-days. I'm afraid it is too far from Plymouth for my visiting. The Fid'ty. gave me a boat-design- and building job, and that takes me all along the S. coast, and keeps me busy." Books? I have not read so much lately. The letters and last poems of D.H., (letters revealing and lowering; poems very fine: uncommonly fine, with bad spots. What a poor character and big writer!) Your fowls Falcon I have not seen or heard of. I know Paber (Geoffrey) and have helped him with opinions, occasionally; but he did not offer me that. Let me ask it, will you? H. Williamson is writing a Devon guide-book now, or so he told me. The Rocky Road I read and liked. I must read it again (and it is in my cottage, 100 miles away!) before venturing to tell its author my view upon it. I remember some points too clearly, and others less so. Patience, I will report. The Inland ... prose book I have not heard of, and would be glad to borrow. Unwilling Passenger had a beauty of candour that was wonderfully restful. I agree with you upon its merit, as one of the finest photographs of war. The author (Thomas I think his name ... I don't think the candour is innocent, either) must be a most remarkable figure in the R.A.A.F.! Guests of the Nation is good. So was the Shattered Dome, and not: at all rhetorical. I haven't seen Stuart's last book. Is he a dud? O'Flaherty began very well, and then got conceited and wrote himself into the mud. Cage has dropped him, and is may stimulate him to do better. Otherwise he is finished. Irishmen usually begin with a great rush and then die away. G.B.S. and Yeats are exceptions, and Swift, I think. But no Irishman goes much further, after he is 20. Crozier I haven't met: and his book on the war in France did not fetch me. Will try and write better when I have more time. Yours T.F.Shaw. Regards to Mrs. J.B. Has she written lately? My ignorance "is absence from books, not wanton."