Page:FM Bailey letters from LA Bethell.pdf/27

Letter 16, 24th September 1936 you could overcome your reluctance, the full story should make an epic. Queer that both your Russian friend and I should have

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been struck, identically, with the “Lawrence” parallel. It was fairly obvious to me, the tree that they were barking up all the time when he was in the Air Force at Nowshera. The Fritzes and the Frogs couldn't leave the topic alone – though, Lord knows, it was no intimate concern of theirs as it might well have been that of the Russians. I even remember seeing a “post war Lawrence” story – with illustrations in full – in one of the more décolleté French magazines: gaunt man on a camel, led along by a soi-disant Central Asian girl, bare to the waist and very “prominent”. How inevitable is the French style: they always seem to drag horizontal exercise, or a strong hint of it, into everything they write.

Amusing to hear your notion of a “quiet time”; gathering bunches of tigers and fistfuls of leopards,

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in a kind of parenthesis. The Maharajah’s 77 tigers and 24 panthers, in one camp, to his own gun! I can't think where you people find them all. It must be a regular cat farm.

All quiet on this front. Steady continuous daily hard work, but of the most varied description. To keep up the standard of the magazine contribs, and refuse to vary by a hair's breath. But Lord! You should see the rubbish that comes daily to my table. I've opened(?) “sex”, but nothing else. Even murders are a very steady supply. I reckon I cast out 95%; of the remaining 5% only about one passes J.H.B. and G.W.B. So you can imagine what the bulk is like.

Once more, very many thanks for the enclosed. Let me know (a p.c. will do) if it reaches you safely because, if it doesn't, I shall be able to tumble over the post office folk. And if you do manage to fly back this summer, mind you halt here on your way to Norfolk, and break bread with me and Jim.


 * Very sincerely


 * L.A. Bethell

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Letter 16, 24th September 1936

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24 . IX. 36

Dear Mrs. Bailey,

I am full of apologies.

When, on Friday last, E. rang up at this office and failed to get me, I was away for two days seeing my wife off at Southampton on her way to South Africa – a combination of circumstances that also sent clean out of my mind my previous