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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to E. Palmer
10.XII.25
News for you. Clouds Hill is to be evacuated in the early spring. April or May perhaps. You will be warned in ample time, and Robinson may help you in the taking-over board. There will still be a gramophone and some records there.
Our hut now has a little musical box: and E.M.F. advised me to the ownership of a new German firm's records (complete) of the Kreutzer and Spring Sonatas. They are magnificent. You will laugh with satisfaction to hear that nobody in B. Flight likes them... barring of course the last-joined A.C.II. However, his taste is the only one which concerns me. When I hear that you are my tenant they will be sent you for preserving.
I went down to Cambridge last Sunday, and there E.M.F. sat, large as life, but sad-looking, wasted almost, in another man's rooms in King's, the splendiferous college with the extra-splendiferous (and rather horrible) chapel. We talked about you and Middleton, and the world generally. M. writes more letters to him than you do. Then M. always was talkative.
I didn't dare ask about the Scarlatti piano scrap. Have you given it him? I don't want it sent by post, for it might break, and the Brunswick people will not be able to make any more, having lost the matrix. Do let him have it before Xmas, with our best regards. How is your new C.O.? Has B.B. gone, and is the R.Q. troubled? Any news of Jeffrey? He sent me a letter, which was as cold and correct as a fishes' kisses. (? a fish's kiss, a fish-kiss: fishes-kisses?...) Your Xmas plans? I had a great idea of some time in London, and was given the keys of a flat in Brook Street, off Berkeley Square. 'Very posh.' Unfortunately no leave was offered me. So I'm at Cranwell instead, general fatigues... Crashed off the Brough last Monday: knee: ankle; elbow: being repaired. Tunic and breeches being replaced. Front mudguard, name-plate, handlebars, footrest, renewed. Skid on ice at 55 m.p.h. Dark: wet: most miserable. Hobble like a cripple now.
S.
Your posting? a false alarm? presumably.
I've asked A.W.L. to plant trees round the hill-top… calling on you for Edkin's help if necessary, unless his own market gardener at Bournemouth plays up.
My respectful salutations to L/C Willis.
| Source: | DG 486-7 |
| Checked: | mv/ |
| Last revised: | 12 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