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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Geoffrey Keynes
13 Birmingham Street
Southampton
10.2.34
Dear G.K.
I return the S.S. proof-pulls. Thank you for the sight of them (and for the return of the Too True off-print). These script engravings are very beautiful, very delicate. Slow to read and impossible to glance over in one blink of the eye, the way one usually swallows short poems the first time, to see if they taste good. These have to be read word for word, and one of them 'Degrees of groping thought', didn't stand up, in my mind, to such syllabic treatment. I like the others, and shall like the book, if I ever get it! Sometimes I feel inclined to curse all rarities: though S.S. has been generosity itself in giving me book after book.
So don't worry about Meynell's opinion. If I were perfectly candid I should describe them as too good an idea for the general!
I think they seem to go a little ahead of The Heart's Journey... at least 'Vigils' does. A very lovely poem, technically done. I am looking forward very much to reading them all.
If he does, as we hope, 'go on' now, after his marriage, we shall be fortunate. But if the poor man turns happy instead and writes no more - why, he has deserved it, surely. [9 lines omitted]
| Source: | DG 789-90 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 16 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