Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to F. N. Doubleday
Mount Batten
Plymouth
2.9.30.
Effendim,
I have been slow in answering your letter, but I was occupied in gathering some money, which I have thrown (or rather, reserved for throwing) into Purdy's lap. In fact I have written to him this week for a spare shaft and gear wheel for my boat-of-boats. It is very good of you to have told him I'm all right. He will trust me about bills. All the more needful, you see, that the trust is not misplaced. Now I have £10 in hand, so all is well. Boat-owners should be millionaires, I fear. You should get a Purdy boat, and have Mrs. Doubleday drive you over the water. On hot days (phew, it has been hot here for a fortnight, a little taste of heaven, which I feel will be sub-tropical) to run at 40 m.p.h. over the rise and fall of a tired sea-swell is the most refreshing feeling in the world.
So good has Plymouth Sound become, in consequence, that I have done little else but enjoy myself for three weeks. Since you left, until this last period, summer was only a wet ruin. Now all is well.
New York, so the newspapers say, has had heat-wave upon heat-wave. I hope that is true, and that life at Oyster Bay has been open-windowed, leisurely and iced: while the sweating myrmidons in Garden City behind the scenes have been struggling with giant presses, rolling off dollar books by the half-million. The dollar books will be a benefit to the whole world, if they succeed: and if they fail, you will have dropped most nobly. After 50 years of success you are entitled to lose money grandly. After all, what fun would there be for Nelson, if you left him no markets to conquer? and with a name like, that, Nelson Doubleday, conquering becomes not merely an instinct but a duty.
I say, have you considered acquiring all the rights to Noel Coward? [16 words omitted] He writes English like Congreve, and when G.B.S. goes, will be the main force in the English theatre. I should nobble him, if nobbleable, on both sides of the Atlantic: if I were a publisher: but Lord, what a rotten publisher I should be.
Mrs. Doubleday has the final paragraph: and at once I think of both your healths. I hope she is well: and strong enough to do all she wants for you. Your lack of mobility makes hers so very important and so she is tempted to over-push her strength.
I flew over Kipling's garden last Saturday, and again yesterday, on my way back here from Folkestone. We tilted the Moth up on one wing-tip and spun round and round over his garden. I wonder what he said: and can guess it nearly. That's where you and I have the advantage over Mrs. Doubleday. She couldn't guess, ever, what an angry poet would say!
Yours
T.E.S.
| Source: | DG 695-6 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 2 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