35, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
W.C.2.

16/4/19.

Dear Mr. Ezra Pound,

Since this book came out
I have wanted to send you a copy in token of my gratitude
for Cathay and in compliment, if you will accept it,
for what I conceive to be your aim and know to be your
achievement in living poetry. I have delayed, though,
until the journals have approved and the people bought;
not thinking that you would regard these two signs, but
lacking till now the confidence which they, inevitably,
have given me.

Though there may be reasons
for your disliking or finding yourself indifferent to
my poems, you will accord pity to them, I hope, for
having been reviewed in The Times, and favourably, as
a prose work.

February 1st.

Poste Restante,
Gabes,
Tunisie.

Dear Sir, Sir, Sir,

Ashwin has accustomed me to this name, and, though
coming from that quarter, that it shows a more modern intui-
tion than some names given you in THIS QUARTER. Your letter
took a month to reach here, and I have left it unanswered for
six weeks. I knew there was something on the way; but had
to despatch my 29th. volume to Rodker, publisher. That
rebuts a statement and answers a question. Ancient horribly,
less vast, and especially industrious: a bee-like industry,
b bee-like. Not all my books have been translations. I am
only hoping the original ones have not passed under your eye -
PROCREANT HYMN especially; don't care so much about RED WISE
and CROSSWORDS FOR RIPER YEARS - and been dismissed as of
no industry. Not that I love them. To get your note was a
very great pleasure to me. I recaptured an old, and not for
years experienced, stimulation and terror. It wasn't only
the Vicar of St. Mary A. who lost guidance when you left
London. As for this enclosure, it came. I am hunting for
an idiom. Obviously. I am much nearer Abyssinia than I
ever was ( this is the ideal Mt. Athos of your advice) but
further from her singers. When I am back at the B.M. in a
couple of months I'll dig out names, if any and still of use.
As for Rodker - his was the Casanova Society, but, through
no one's fault, it had to pass to Routledge. Now he is start-
ing as Honest-to-God-John-Rodker, Publisher, with a book on
Eunuchs, The Maleus, Restif, and my twelve tomes of THE
EASTERN ART OF LOVE. I have seen no verse since HYMNS.
DARTMOOR, published like MONTAGNERUSSE, in French only, is
his last book. I hope you'll extract from him. The long-
patient spouse wishes to say that she has spent years in
endeavouring a beefsteak pudding which shall contain a vortex
22ft. long. In an interval she translated four chapters (damned
well) of a book on the Physicals of Love, only to find that
someone had foregone her. I have seen a lot of J.G. Fletcher
in the last years - he is charming and does not turn green
and walk out of the house so much now. Ashwin is married
(ko ! ko ! ), kept a pub, then a tobacco and sweet shop in
Balls Pond Road. A gay letter just received tells us he has
given up the last and is going to start the world again with
£75.

Warm salutations and wishes for the review,