Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Robert Graves
Sunday, 24th Sept.
Dear R.G.
I went to 14 Barton St. on Friday last and found your Feather Bed [omission]
I wish everyone had calmness after their storms, perhaps because I hate noise more than any other thing in the world - and fear animal spirits most. So some day do write a sunset poem for my benefit. Did I ever show you my private anthology? Minorities, I called it. You are not in it yet, because you haven't done that special note which runs through it.
About myself I came to a milestone, or rather to a crossroad, and turned off the old one. The Arab thing is finished, and is passionately unwholesome in my own eyes, and I wanted a fresh direction. So I enlisted, as once I laughed to you that I would, and am peaceful for the moment, a passenger in a recruits' squad. It's an odd line for me - physical activity and manual labour - but the pilgrimage is made up of such curiosities and I don't suppose that I'm going to be permanently affected by anything I don't want. It makes me no longer master of my body and I can't do or write, or even read, much now-a-days.
As for address: when I'm fixed up anywhere I'll give it you. Meanwhile 14 Barton St. but it may take very long to reach me. People think I've gone abroad, and of course I'm glad they do, for the papers would make a laugh out of this job if they heard of it.
L.
By the way James Thomson's Sunday up the River is most excellent, isn’t it?
| Source: | B:RG 21 |
| Checked: | jw |
| Last revised: | 8 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