Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Major R. H. Scott
[Aba el Lissan]
27.8.18
Dear Scott,
I’m very sorry for bothering you, but I find my personal plans changed, and am without transport. So I rang you up today and asked you to get Sh. Yusuf to buy me (at N.0. expense) four v.g. riding camels, complete with saddlery, to hire me two Ageyl servants, give them a month's flour and rice, £10 and send them up to Aba Lissan most urgent. Then I'll be off. My bodyguard is as usual spread out over about a thousand miles of Arabia. I hope old Yusuf will do it without bothering you at all. If they get off from Akaba on the 28th they will be here on the 29th and that will be top-hole.
Feisal wants £2000 in notes. Will you send them up, if you have them and debit it to Special Grant? If this is not easy, please debit it to September, pending Cairo approval (asked for) of a gift to Feisal of £12000 in paper.
About blasting gelatine. Last consignment sent up was gelignite which is different. Will you see if there is any of the former, and if so let Aba Lissan know? I'll send down two camels then for it. A small baggage column of mine will turn up about Aug. 30 in Akaba, asking for Lewis gun and things. All easy.
We are involved in rings and rolls of dates, meandering at least eight times with a mazy motion, and I haven't the least idea if we are at last going to get anywhere and do anything or not. My head whirls. Salute the elect from me.
Yours
T. E. Lawrence
I just remembered that a lot of stuff for me, camel saddles and what-nots from Jidda, and tents from Egypt, are about due. If there are any such in Akaba will you send me up word?
L.
| Source: | DG 246-7 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 14 January 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