Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Edward Garnett
Cattewater
Plymouth.
14.3.29.
There, the address is easier than the usual Air Force address. I like the look and feel of the little place, too; but the cold is killing: just that.
I could not deliver Lady Chatterley to you, though I tried twice: and I didn't post it, not feeling sure of the little mountebank. You may be evil-seen by him.
So eventually I dumped it on Garnett III, who has promised to return it you. I liked spots of it: but the whole hadn't very much meaning for me. Of course it is outside my particular experience - thank the Lord.
As for The Mint*: that too I dumped on G. III (why use him as an angel, I wonder?) who knows F.L. Lucas and thinks him a good critic. Incidentally he has written some V.G. poems, lately published by the Woolfs.
Maurice Baring asked if he might see The Mint. I agreed vaguely. The word can be carried away on the breath of the wind, as Homer would say, if you do not wish to hear it! I am neither for it nor against it.
Yours
T.E.S.
*which Dawnay dumped on me on Sunday last - no, Sunday week!
| Source: | DG 643 |
| Checked: | dn/ |
| Last revised: | 20 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