Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to D. G. Hogarth
14, Barton Street
7.6.22.
You know Carruthers' address. He was very honourable about Doughty, and has edited Shakespear honourably. Do you think he'd like the enclosed? Your copy of the whole will come later, but this lot covers the scrap of traverse which I once worked out and sent him. If he doesn't want it I'd like it back. I'm conscious of a horrible word about geographers in the middle of it: but perhaps he'll excuse it. There's been a bad habit lately among Arabians (Butler and Aylmer, Leachman, Shakespear, Philby) of dehumanising their journeys. This I'm in revolt against, though I'm afraid my own treks are rather barren of life: however I had the excuse of a main preoccupation with the war. In peace time a leisurely person could pick up a mass of good stuff.
These chapters run from Wejh to Nebk in Wadi Sirhan. My translation is rather individual. I try to keep some of the phonetic variety one meets.
If C. is interested I've got a mass of photographs of the section covered. They are all bad for we had to carry them for 3 months before they could be developed: and the heat blistered them all.
Tell him that of course I don't want this stuff circulated. I have no intention of publishing any part of it: but it may interest him. I don't think that there's much more than this and the compass readings in my notes. And here's a list (N. to S.) of the water supplies I noted in Sirhan. It has only an academic interest. By the way Philby proposes (at Jauf) to go across to Bagdad! He's done all Sirhan from Azrak southwards now, and is establishing landing grounds and car tracks. Soon everybody will be running down for weekends - like Biskra.
T.E.L.
[37 Arabic names of water holes omitted]
| Source: | DG 341 |
| Checked: | jw |
| Last revised: | 5 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