I liked George. For one thing he was the only person in the whole of that hellish camp with whom I could exchange a word on any topic but booze, “tarts,” “square-pushing,” smut, the war, and camp gossip. George was very enthusiastic about modern painting. His own painting, he told me, was “pretty dud,” but in peace time he made a good living by writing art criticism for various papers and by buying modern pictures, chiefly French and German, on commission for wealthy collectors. We lent each other books from our scanty store, and George was quite thrilled to know that I had published one or two little books of poetry and had even met Yeats and Marinetti. I talked to him about modern poetry, and he talked to me about modern painting; and I think we helped to keep each other’s “souls” alive. In the evenings we played chess or strolled about, if it was fine. George didn’t go square-pushing with tarts, and I didn’t go square-pushing with tarts. So on Saturday afternoons and Sundays we took long walks over that barren but rather beautiful Dorset down country, and had a quiet dinner with a bottle of wine in one or other of the better country inns. And all that kept up our own particular “morale,” which each of us had determined not to yield to the Army swinishness. Poor George had suffered more than I. He had been more bullied as a Tommy, had a worse time in France, and suffered horribly from that “tightness” inside, that inability to confide himself, induced by his singular home life and appalling mother. I feel quite sure he told me more about himself, far more, than he ever told any one else, so that eventually I knew quite a lot about him. He told me all about his parents and about Elizabeth and Fanny, and about his childhood and his life in London and Paris.