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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Mrs Thomas Hardy
21.5.23.
Dear Mrs. Hardy
I'm afraid I'll come on Saturday next at tea-time! De la Mare is known to me only by his books - but he should be delightful, if he lives up to them: and most good people are better than their books.
It sounds greedy, always to come when you ask me: but your house is so wonderfully unlike this noisy room that it is difficult to resist, even for it's own sake: and then there is Mr. Hardy, though you mustn't tell him so, for the thrill is too one-sided. He has seen so much of human-kind that he must be very tired of them: whereas for me he's Hardy, and I'd go a long way even to see the place where he had lived, let alone him living in it.
There, you will think me absurd: but still I'll arrive on Saturday!
Yours sincerely
T. E. Shaw
| Source: | DG 424-5 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 28 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