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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to S. L. Newcombe
13 Birmingham St.
Southampton
Wednesday
[? 17 April 1934]
Dear Object,
You have caught me in a bad week. I don't think I can get there on Thursday (tomorrow) anyhow. There is a boat job fixed for that day. If it fizzles I shall try to snatch my bike and run over - and it would be latish afternoon... fourish or fivish... but it is so unlikely that I beg of you to go for a walk instead. Not that there are many walks in Bournemouth, but if you take a bus first, it can be managed.
Failing Thursday (and almost certainly we fail on Thursday) then there remains Saturday. Saturday is much more probable. I shall try to get there soon after lunch, about twoish.
Never heard of glandular fever. Probably you wish you hadn't. I expect I've had it, and never knew it.
These modern doctors are getting so clever that hardly any body of their clients is ever well.
Ice cream sounds like a good diet. Could you mix them, or did they give you that plain stuff that doesn't taste, except of frozen snow? Otherwise you could have walked into a Lyons and amazed the girl by going completely through the Sundae list.
Well... improbably Thursday... probably Saturday: store up a great packet of cheerfulness for me, as I am feeling very fat and ugly.
Yours
T.E.S.
Note. S. L. Newcombe, then
aged 14, Stewart Newcombe's son.
| Source: | DG 799-800 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 17 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