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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to C. J. Greenwood
13 Birmingham Street
Southampton
16.4.34.
Dear Greenwood
I began the Campbell first - last week, because I have been in the North for three weeks and am only just back. And having begun it, I finished it in three sittings. The first interval I said 'There are fools and damned fools... but even that doesn't include Campbell'. The second interval I changed mood and said 'There's more in this than folly. It's good in parts'. And now that it is all over I slip back towards my first mind. D.H.L. threw away his reason - but it harmed him. It is all very well feeling hard and quick and hot - but feeling cannot be put on paper convincingly except to the already converted (and who wants to talk to his disciples) without brains and logic and argument to back it up. Roy Campbell makes an ass of himself all through. A pity - because clearly he isn't a real ass - only synthetic.
It's the fashion now, I suppose, this naivety. Liam O'Flaherty writes himself down as a simpleton pure; and so did Gertrude Stein in an awful autobiography. Did you ever read it? She admitted to having owned a Ford car for months without understanding it - seemed rather proud of this - darned fool. A Ford!!! [23 lines omitted]
| Source: | DG 799 |
| 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