T. E. Lawrence

Contents lists



1888-1910

1911

1912

1913

1914

1915-16

1917-18

1919-20

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

 

T. E. Lawrence to F.N. Doubleday

---

Cattewater
Plymouth

28.VI.29

Effendim,

I have done ten days solid duty in camp, and am again free to go out: only instead of that I write you a line, to recall that very golden day we had. Do you know, It was all exquisite? Kingswood, Kipling, Knole, Ashdown Forest, the lunch. Years since I drove, lordly, in a pleasure car: the R.A.F. has its transport, of course, but that is hardly driving. The leisure of our progress along the roads, and the warmth and good talk inside the car all left a happy feeling. It was a great, exceptional day: and as it gets more distant I perceive my debt to you an increasing one. You is plural. Mrs. Doubleday at last loses the distinction of a postscript. She made half the pleasure of that trip. I hope that you and she also still enjoy it.
Of course it isn't so rare a pleasure, for you. You (and she) would have to join the Air Force to squeeze all the flavour out of luxury. Only when one person is as happy as I was, the other two must have felt some sunshine.

The R.A.F. here appears to value my services. At least I work all day at its jobs. Just I have half an hour in the morning, before breakfast, which I keep for my own reading. I make the half-hour, by getting up before reveille. One can't read in odd half-hours: reading is to soak oneself hour after hour all day in a single real book, until the book is realler than one's chair of world: but I've done most the The Brook Kerith in these half-hours: and tasted the Heinemann life (only half-kind to him, that book is. It feels as though the poor little man hadn't been properly understood) and read all Enid Bagnold's Happy Foreigner. That last is surprisingly distinguished. I give her full marks for a good book.

Frere-Reeve wrote to me, two excellent letters, about good printing. I shall go to see him, when, or if, I get leave in October. I have a design of sliding down some odd day (Dear, it will be an odd day!) if he permits it, and I achieve it, with Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Shaw to look at Kingswood. You would like Mrs. Shaw. She is quaint and comfortable, and fresh, and kind. G.B.S. is exciting, per contra. Together they are like bacon and eggs, and harmony in blue and silver. I fear I talk nonsense.

Do go on writing your memoirs. Put in that story about the roses pinned to the pickets. Dictate quite a lot, for then that dry sparkle will cling to the words. Pens are stiff things to hold, and they make our words too mannered.

Not to spoil the pleasure ship with work I put a business request on a spare sheet. Remember me very much to Mrs. Doubleday. Tell her to start imagining another excursion for next time. If its only 1/10 as good as that it'll be good enough.

Yours,

T.E. Shaw

I've had twinges of conscience, since that perhaps I tempted you to overdo things that day. I am so indecently fit and durable. I hope you were not ill or tired, even.

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