TOWARDS THE GREAT SECRET
Sts,—In his notice of D. H. Lawrence's Complete Poems, Stephen Potter takes time off for a custom- ary 'reviewmanship' side-swipe at my father. Referring to the poem 'A man wrote to me . . he says: 'Above all. at this time. by the way [siel. Lawrence was furiously reacting against the would- be ,dominance of Middleton Murry . .' This is simply not true. The letter which had inspired the poem was written after a silence of some two and a half years. and the poem itself, far from being a boiling over of any furious reaction, is more in the nature of a resigned shoulder-shrug.
Legends die hard and the 'Murry-lago-Judas versus Lawrence-Othello-Jesus' version, which was, I believe, largely fostered by Catharine Carswell and Aldous Huxley, should now be decently interred. For those who wish to know the truth I recommend Harry 'f. Moore's biography of Lawrence, and for those who couldn't care less about such ancient feuds but are interested in Lawrence's poetic genius, I recommend my father's Love, Freedom and Society. There, incidentally, they will find that a number of the poems which Stephen Potter dis- misses airily as 'All negative,' are given the sympa: thetic attention they deserve.
COLIN MURRY The Arches, Albourne, Hassocks, Sussex
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