Industrious Apprentice, working hard so as to be able to marry his master’s daughter.
Glad the book seems to be working itself out amiably. For God’s sake, though, don’t overdo the psychoanalytical part. It’s not your natural style. Don’t listen to that Challenger woman, but write your own stuff. The other kind of thing wants writing (forgive me) fearfully well if it’s to be any good, and even then it is rather dreary and old-fashioned. Glands, my child, glands are the thing, as Barrie would say. Prenatal influences and childhood fears have gone out with compulsory Greek.
A Don who encountered a Maenad Was left with less wits than the Dean ’ad; Till the Dean, being vexed by a Gonad, Was left with less wits than the Don ’ad: This shows what implicit reliance We may place on the progress of Science.
Talking of Science, I have brought up all standing by Nicholson’s book on The Development of English Biography . According to him, “pure” biography is doomed, and we are to have the “scientific biography,” which will in the end prove destructive of the literary interest. There are to be nothing but studies of heredity and endocrine secretions, economics and aesthetics, and so on—all specialised and all damned. This is where I get off: I only hope this infernal work will get itself published before the rot sets in. So back to the shop, Mr. Keats!
Yours, while this machine is to him,
Jack
On looking this through, I seem to be rather in a scolding mood. But it’s only because I think so highly of your stuff that I don’t want you to get sloppy and psycho. That kind of thing is all sentimentality, really. Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner; tout pardonner, c’est tout embêter.