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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to V. W. Richards
2 Polstead Road
1. Sept. [1919]
Dear V.W.R.,
Your metaphysics are of the exact tone necessary to drive me to eat: so I went out and bought a sausage roll, that being in my mind the form of expression of eating least sensuous.
Seriously I want to talk over these things with you when we meet. I haven't the jargon required for putting them on paper. The final success - and the emptiness of it - in the Arab Front threatens to make me think, which would be a disaster.
I'm out of the army today: and today I have paid for 5 acres 2 roods 30 poles of Pole Hill: that is the whole upper field, down to the rudimentary hedge. I haven't yet got the conveyance, so am not yet the legal owner, but they cannot draw back from the bargain, and as far as I'm concerned it's finished. I feel years more settled in mind, and hope that we will acquire merit there together. When we meet next (or even before) we'll have to make up our serious minds how to tackle Gardiner. I have not yet been able to buy the hedge from the Chingford Estate, and am so short of funds temporarily that I am not pressing them vigorously.
I hope to have about £300 more in six weeks time, and we must then interview builders. The anti-aircraft station fate is still uncertain. The Air Ministry and the War Office cannot decide who is in charge of London air defence. I just thought I'd write and tell you of the Hill: and also that I've borrowed your Bradley. I'm not studying it, but find gobbets (e.g. the discussion of space) most stimulating and suggestive. How pleased Bradley would be if he knew I approved of it.
a rivederci.
L.
| Source: | DG 280 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 23 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