T. E. Lawrence

Contents lists

1888-1910

1911

1912

1913

1914

1915-16

1917-18

1919-20

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

Updated June 2012

T. E. Lawrence to Mrs Thomas Hardy

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Clouds Hill

Easter Monday [22.4.35]

Dear Mrs Hardy

I am sorry I missed you the day you came - as also at Max Gate, a week after, when I tried in turn to find you.  The Indiscretion proved charming. I like the appealing simplicity of the prose... like, and yet a very poor relation, of the sweeping sentences that make up Jude. I understand why he kept it unprinted, yet it is not a thing to be ashamed of. If only T.H. had found time and will to follow up Jude with yet one more work, it would have linked his prose, in power, with his poetry.

You have made a beautiful little book of it. I have enjoyed the reading, and enjoy the possession.

I am worried now about Mother and Bob in China. The troubles are touching their area. They are both longing to come home, now.

Clouds Hill is going to be all right as a living place, I fancy. The last three weeks have almost been unbroken peace. I feel very indisposed to do anything more; and very tired.

Philpotts-Hardy, the rhododendron is is good flower at the moment, leading his hill side by a month or two towards the promise of colour. I hope you will be able to see him, some day. Except for Wednesday (when I have to go to Hythe, to my old boat-yard) I shall be here continuously now, I hope... though in disorder, as the place is unfinished, and I potter with job after job. But please come, if you are in Dorset soon.

Yours ever

T E Shaw

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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