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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Bruce Rogers
Mount Batten
25/3/30
Dear B. R.
When I've said I'm sorry, that is all the English language appears to provide in
the way of sympathy with other people's deep water. It is good news that Mrs.
Rogers is over her first operation: but it will be a vile time of waiting for
you, and the waiting is so much harder than the suffering. I do hope you both
come out of it on the right side.
Here are the sheets of Book XII. I had to hack them about a good deal. They were jerky and not very good.
The title page I like. Its simplicity is of the most rich. The date is not too hopeful: it gives me 12 months (incidentally I am still labouring at Book XIII, which will not go straight, anyhow) which may be enough. I like the roundel just there, and the little singing man. It looks about right. Yes, I think it is all good. Here it is, to encourage you again.
Your talk about accelerating the printing is rather formidable. it is thanks to the slowness of Walker's man that I'm not the brake on your roiling chariot.
Good news that the gold difficulty is over. That means so much off your shoulders
It is going to be a surprisingly good book, I fancy.
Yours
T.E.S.
The horizontal rod of the chariot may be just a stay for the yoke. Some harness man might say. I don't like the idea of a tripping-line for the yoke. At speed the chariot would turn over and over if it were pulled. I'm surprised at Ricketts - usually a careful draughtsman: but perhaps no horseman!
| Source: | BR1 [58-9] |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 14 July 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