Some friend, beforehand, had made known the date of his coming to Norman Douglas, who had taken a room for him at 10 lire a day at the Pension Balestri (called the ‘Cavalotti’ in the introduction to Magnus's Memoir of the Foreign Legion). Douglas and Magnus were themselves living at the Balestri. In that same introduction we read how on the dark, wet, wintry evening, after his through journey from London, Lawrence found the kindly and practical note of directions waiting for him at Cook's, and how on his way to the Piazza Mentana he was overtaken at the Ponte Vecchió by, Douglas with Magnus in tow. No account of the days that followed could hope to rival that given by Lawrence in the Magnus introduction. He said to me once that he considered this the best single piece of writing, as writing, that he had ever done.

On the evidence contained therein, it seems to me that Lawrence's activity with the typewriter, which, on a third visit eighteen months later, was to cause so much amusement—of the friendliest sort—in both Douglas and Rebecca West when they welcomed him again to Florence, was not of the precipitate order they fancied. It was more probably an endeavour, with Magnus's Memoir in mind, to provide his 1919 impressions with the refreshed significance furnished by his 1921 arrival. The sordid tragedy of poor Magnus had been played to a finish during the period between the two visits.