|
T. E. Lawrence to Henry Williamson
277 words omitted
[18-21 March 1930] I have been too long,
perhaps, over The Patriot's Progress: but after my first reading
of it everybody in the Hut got hold of it, and I only saw it again
yesterday, when I read it for the second time.
It is all right:
that is the first thing to say. To do a war-book is very hard now, after
all that has been written, but yours survives as a thing of its own. I
heaved a great sigh of relief when it was safely over. I like it all.
Your writing scope
grows on me. This book is a tapestry, a decoration: the almost-null John
Bullock set against a marvellous background. It is the most completely
two-dimensional thing possible - and on the other hand you give us your
cycle of novels (about yourself, I dare say) which are as completely
three-dimensional, full of characters as a Christmas Pudding of almonds,
with the background only occasional, and only occasionally significant.
I am convinced, by both Tarka and the P.P. that you have
many other books to write before you repeat yourself and become a
classic.
I sandwiched the
P.P. between readings of Her Privates We. The P.P. is
natural man, making no great eyes at his sudden crisis: whereas Her
Privates We shows the adventures of Bourne, a queer dilettante, at
grips with normal man in abnormal circumstances. The two books
complement each other so well. Yours is the first quite unsentimental
war-book - except perhaps for its last page, and nobody could have
resisted that kick of farewell. I should have thought less well of you
without that touch of irony here and there.
The incidental
beauties of the book - the dew-drops on its leaves - are so common as
hardly to be seen. That, I feel, is right in a book whose restraint is
so strong. You seem to be able to pen a good phrase in simple words
almost as and when you please. You beat Bunyan there, for he got to the
end of his P.P. without throwing in a deliberately fine phrase. I
noted with pleasure. . . [omission noted] I begin to suspect that you
may be one of those comparatively rare authors who write best about
people or things other than themselves. I hope so, because it is the
sort that lasts longest, unless one is a very deep man, like Dostoievsky,
and can keep on digging down into oneself. I hope you aren't that,
because it means misery for the artist, and the two roads happiness and
misery, seem to be equally within our choice, and it's more common sense
to be happy.
Tarka and
this P.P. are better than your novels, I think, because you get
further outside the horrific convolutions of your brain in each. The
objective, as somebody would probably say, which is the classic rather
than the romantic manner.
I have enjoyed the
P.P. very much. The Hut fellows say that it isn't properly named,
it being not a 'bloody bind' like that Bunyan chap's stuff. 'Bind' is a
lovely word: mental constipation. [omission noted] I shall run out before that
and see you. I swear it. Does not your postcard address still live in my
breast pocket? (right breast, alas: a pencil holds the honour of my
heart's pocket!)
Note
Full text, 831 words, in Letters
Vol. 9 pp. 87-93.
|
