Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Lionel Curtis
Cranwell
14.XII.25
I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead.
This completes the quotation referred to. It freezes: it snows: it blows. I'm cold as cold. The running rivers of my brain are all a-frozen. Don’t expect coherence till a thaw sets in.
The sweater: the Canadian sweater? I'm almost sure it's there. I can feel it, by hooking a finger between the third and fourth buttons (next above the belt) of my tunic. But this is sense-evidence only. To make sure, I should have to unbutton my tunic, and look: and the wind is howling so terribly about this hangar that I don't dare.
You said something, when you sent the royal thing, about motorcycling, and Canada: but it must have been made for work in the Flights at Cranwell. They offer me huge prices here, for it: packets and packets of woodbines: spare pairs of boots, a 'civie suit'.... I refuse them all, frozenly waving one frozen hand, in icy refusal. Of course I should have written and told you: but… but… but…
It's cold.
Your envelope is perfectly addressed.
T.E.S.
| Source: | DG 487-8 |
| 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