T. E. Lawrence

Contents lists

1888-1910

1911

1912

1913

1914

1915-16

1917-18

1919-20

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

Updated June 2012

T. E. Lawrence to Mrs Lionel Curtis

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13 Birmingham Street
Southampton

1 August 1933

When I write Mrs. Lionel Curtis on an envelope, my pen struggles in my fingers to write Mrs. Lionel Tertis: but is there a Mrs. L. Tertis? Do try to meet her, and go with her to one of those comic receptions where a footman sings out the guests' names. They would go to the tune of John Brown's Body.

You were very good with your telephoning John to catch him right away. It should be this afternoon. Why did I not warn you that with John an appointment broken is like a grain of sand on the sea-shore - at Sandown, not Southend, of course. Common, I mean, not rare. He is incalculable: but with infinite tact and patience the fish can be landed. And what a fish! I think he will luxuriate in Lionel's head. You and I will be disturbed. We got to know the Prophet in the forties, when he still roared. John will see him silvery in the fifties, lace like and impalpable and fringed. Alas, it will be an unfamiliar prophet: but it will survive. Do you realise that posterity will call me beautiful, on the strength of those two John pencil sketches so artfully published by me in my books? I could wish the prophet the same fate, if I were an optimist.

Blickling - of course. I never thought of it. When your croft was burned, I had imagined your relapsing cosily into little Cliveden's modest splendour. But Blickling is far far more grand: and the Marquess has so many other houses [7 words omitted] that you do him a kindness to air one or other. Excellent.

Will you send me a line when the operation is over, to say if they are doing well?

Yours

T.E.S.

Note:
Blickling, Norfolk, country seat of Lord Lothian

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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