Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Jock Chambers
13 B/ham St.,
S'ton
5.3.34
Dear Jock,
Indeed, yes, Clouds Hill, house and land and tuum and all loose things inside it and outside it is yours when you please. Any month this year. Changes? None indoors, I think, and few outside. The pool is filled to the brim, and the spring down to 300 gallons per day: but it rained last night. Hallelujah!
There is a whole chestnut tree to cut up. Pat finds it too much for his single self. He is busy roofing in the pool: still a skeleton roof. Pool not yet finished: its lining coat of cement lacking. We hurried to fill it, instead, fearing a drought. I do not know about bathing in it. Depends on the size of the spring. Consult Pat before taking the plunge!
I cannot say so far ahead where I will be in April. Here, most probably; but the R.A.F. disposes.
Liddell Hart commits me to calling old Foch 'a frantic pair of moustaches': but I think it was a Clemenceau mot. 'More teeth than brains' was as far as I got.
Au revoir
T.E.S.
| Source: | DG 791 |
| 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