Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to S. L. Newcombe
[aged seven][Karachi]
24.2.27.
Monster,
Look how your envelope wandered over the whole wide East! But it caught me up at last, like the Hound of Heaven. Your picture is that of a ferocious imp. Rifle and equipment! I'll try and send you a photograph of me like that. I look bloodthirsty too, then. You should hear (or rather you shouldn't hear) what airmen mutter beneath and above their breaths when the officers tell us to come out and play with them publicly! It's a dreadful insult for an airman to be disguised as a soldier. Even for a moment. And we look such jokes. You see I haven't managed to get a real photo of myself. There is a camera in our room, but its owner isn't very good at using it, yet. However he is getting better. And meanwhile here is what is called a bust of me. A bust is a thing appropriate in my case. I have deserved, provoked, encouraged, more than one bust in my day. This one was done by an artist called Eric Kennington, in England last December. So it is quite the latest. In gilt brass. That also is appropriate, as a metal. You will have to learn that word APPROPRIATE. It keeps on bobbing up today.
Love and brickbats to yourself. My regards to your mother. Tell your father I salute him with both hands.
T.E.S.
| Source: | DG 509 |
| Checked: | dn/ |
| Last revised: | 9 February 2006 |
T. E. Lawrence chronology
1888 16 August: born at Tremadoc, Wales
1896-1907: City of Oxford High School for Boys
1907-9: Jesus College, Oxford, B.A., 1st Class Hons, 1909
1910-14: Magdalen College, Oxford (Senior Demy), while working at the British Museum's excavations at Carchemish
1915-16: Military Intelligence Dept, Cairo
1916-18: Liaison Officer with the Arab Revolt
1919: Attended the Paris Peace Conference
1919-22: wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1921-2: Adviser on Arab Affairs to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office
1922 August: Enlisted in the Ranks of the RAF
1923 January: discharged from the RAF
1923 March: enlisted in the Tank Corps
1923: translated a French novel, The Forest Giant
1924-6: prepared the subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1927-8: stationed at Karachi, then Miranshah
1927 March: Revolt in the Desert, an abridgement of Seven Pillars, published
1928: completed The Mint, began translating Homer's Odyssey
1929-33: stationed at Plymouth
1931: started working on RAF boats
1932: his translation of the Odyssey published
1933-5: attached to MAEE, Felixstowe
1935 February: retired from the RAF
1935 19 May: died from injuries received in a motor-cycle crash on 13 May
1935 21 May: buried at Moreton, Dorset