Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to R. V. Buxton
29.12.30
Dear Robin
I hope you are hunting strongly. I am not. All my non-R.A.F. hours go on the musted and fish-smelly Odysseus.
My speed-boat busted a gear wheel and a propellor shaft: so I wrote to the makers for a spare, and asked them how I was to repay their kindness, they being near New York. They say that my Bank can arrange it.* Probably it can: though as dollars change from day to day it seems difficult. Something fresh my sending money to the States. Usually we receive it thence. All's fair, I suppose. Anyway the boat is good.
I may be in London next month, and will call at the new House - not that you'll be there, but I'd like to see how it feels, in use. I expect everything has settled down. I hope it works as well as it looks.
Yours
T.E.S.
* The exact phrase they use is 'You may pay us with a draft drawn on your Bank'. Now, how did they know I had a bank?
| Source: | DG 708-9 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 31 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