T. E. Lawrence

T. E. Lawrence to Siegfried Sassoon

13 Birmingham Street
Southampton

6 Sept. 1934

Dear S.S.

I should have sent the Belloc book so long ago, but the idea settled in the depths of my mind that I owed you two copies of the Bruce Rogers Letters (to raise the disposal-value of your Odysseys by 8%) and it was a long time before I could get to my cottage and collect the two copies. Don't try to read them. They are sale-room items, only.

The Belloc gave me some fun. I was sorry he had not pulled it together and shaped it into one tight poem before printing it: and as a water-drinker I incline to smile a little at these wine-palates. They deprive themselves of the faculty of judging between waters, by coarsening their throats with fermented drinks - and that is a loss to their tastes. But H.B. writes with such bragging ferocity that I love him. What a man. I wish I felt as strongly about something.

I hope your grass and trees are enjoying some rain - and yourselves too. Getting wet is better than getting sun-burnt, usually: that is, when deliberate.

In March I become a lay-resident in Dorset.....and then let us meet (not too arrangedly) somewhere. I'd like you both to see my cottage, because it fits me, as Heytesbury seemed to fit you.

Yours ever

T.E.S.

Notes:

• Hilaire Belloc, An Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine (London. Peter Davies, 1932)

• Letters from T. E. Shaw to Bruce Rogers (Privately printed, 1933)

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