T. E. Lawrence to his mother

Aigues-Mortes

Sunday. 2 August 1908

Dear Mother,

I had better begin from my last letter before Vézélay. This I found superb but rather in sculpture than in proportions. The carvings were the finest early work I had met till then: since (?) you'll hear. From Vézélay I rode to Nevers, arriving on Friday. It is a quaint rather than beautiful town, with a good renaissance ducal palace and a fine cathedral. I telephoned from here to Dunlop in Paris for a new tyre, which after anxious waiting arrived all right on Monday: since then all has gone like a marriage bell in the way of punctures, and I am generally happy. The cost was however immense:- with telephoning: carriage: fitting, etc. it cost nearly 20/-: result is I'm afraid I'll be short later on: in fact I am rather disgusted with my cost to date. The hotels all charge 2 f. for a bed, and at least 2 for dinner (I don't like going to any but fairly decent places, with money). My litre of milk staggers them for breakfast (I always order it the night before, and it is amusing to watch their efforts to convince me I'm mistaken "Monsieur does not mean a litre: it is too much" etc.), but not sufficiently to persuade them to charge less than 75 c. to 1 f. result 5 f. are gone by the morning: add some fruit or milk in the day, post cards (now total over 100) and postage, repair-bands, solution, tips for show places, an occasional bath etc. and you have a fair 7 f. per day: I had really hoped to do it cheaper. 6/- a day is absurd for one. (I have changed a note quite successfully by the way: pocket proved admirable).

From Nevers I went by Moulins to Le Puy. Tell Father I had a 20 mile hill up into Le Puy. Part of my ride was up a superb gorge, with river foaming in the bottom, and rock and hill on each side: it was the finest scenery I have ever come across: truly the Auvergne is a wondrous district, but not one for a cycle: I'll take a walking tour there some day I hope. The volcanoes (all extinct of course) are queer, being plumped down all over the country, without any order or connection. They are very diverse in material (sand, rock, etc.) and look ugly. At the same time the needle of which I sent you a p.c. is an impressive peak. It rises from the town of Le Puy where I was delightful to get 3 p.c. from Will and you and 1 from Scroggs: at the same time I am disgusted at what I fear was my mistake in antedating your departure for Jersey: but a trip like this upsets one's ideas of time. In the Auvergne by the way there are few if any trees and in parts to make a garden they have piled the stones from the ground in a wall around it. A garden our size would have a wall 5 feet thick, and 4 feet high so made. From Le Puy I rode up for 10 miles more, (oh dear 'twas hot!) consoling myself with the idea that my sufferings were beyond the conception of antiquity, since they were a combination (in a similar climate) of those of Sisyphus who pushed a great weight up hill, of Tantalus who couldn't get anything to drink, or any fruit, and of Theseus who was doomed ever to remain sitting:- I got to the top at last, had 15 miles of up and down to St. Somebody-I-don't-want-to-meet-again, and then a rush down to 4000 feet to the Rhône. T'was down a valley, the road carved out of the side of the precipice, and most gloriously exciting: in fact so much so that with that and the heat I felt quite sick when I got to the bottom. I slept that night at Crussol, a fine xii century castle on a 500 feet precipice over the Rhône. Next day via Valence to Avignon, glorious with its town walls and papal palace, (Popes lived there 90 years, and built an enormous pile), and passed thence through Tarascon to Beaucaire, which I saluted for the sake of Nicolette, into Arles. The thing in Arles is the cloister of St. Trophimus: it is absolutely unimaginably fine with its sculptures and its proportion: all other architecture is very nearly dirt beside this Provencal Romanesque, when the scale is small (Provence has never done anything big in anything at all). I have seen the three best (almost the only 3) examples at Arles, Montmajour, and St. Gilles, and am absolutely bewildered. The amphitheatre (Roman) at Arles is magnificently and gigantically ugly, as everything of that sort must be: Nimes is I believe better (that is for tomorrow). From Arles I rode to Les Beaux, a queer little ruined and dying town upon a lonely 'olive sandalled' mountain. Here I had a most delightful surprise I was looking from the edge of a precipice down the valley far over the plain, watching the green changing into brown, and the brown into a grey line far away on the horizon, when suddenly the sun leaped from behind a cloud, and a sort of silver shiver passed over the grey: then I understood and instinctively burst out with a cry of "θαλασσα, θαλασσα"¹ that echoed down the valley, and startled an eagle from the opposite hill: it also startled two French tourists who came rushing up hoping to find another of the disgusting murders their papers make such a fuss about I suppose. They are disappointed when they heard it was "only the Mediterranean"

From Les Beaux I descended to Arles, and thence to St. Gilles -Aigues-Mortues. I reached here late last night, and sent you a pencilled p.c. It is a lovely little place, an old, old town huddled along its old streets, with hardly a house outside its old walls, still absolutely unbroken, and hardly at all restored or in need of it. From it St. Louis started for his crusades, and it has seen innumerable events since. Today it is deserted by the world, and is decaying fast: its drawbacks are mosquitoes, (a new experience for me, curtains on all the beds) and the lack of a cheap hotel. It is however almost on the sea, and exceedingly pleasant, (above all if one could get acclimatised quickly to these brutes, I'm all one huge bite). I bathed today in the sea, the great sea, the greatest in the world; you can imagine my feelings: the day was lovely, warm, a light wind, and sunny; the sea had not our long rolling breakers, but short dancing ripples, the true άνηριθον γελασμα.

"And from the waves sounds like delight broke forth."

The beach was hard sand as far as the eye could reach, and sand rippled like the waves themselves: t'was shallow, and all most lovely, most delightful

                           I love all waste
And solitary places, where we taste
The pleasure of believing all we see
Is boundless, as we see our souls to be:-

You are all wrong, Mother dear, a mountain may be a great thing, a grand thing, "but if it is better to be peaceful, and quiet, and pure, pacata posse omnia mente tueri, if that is the best state, then a plain is the best country": the purifying influence is the paramount one in a plain, there one can sit down quietly and think, of anything, or nothing which Wordsworth says is best, one feels the littleness of things, of details, and the great and unbroken level of peacefulness of the whole: no, give me a level plain, extending as far as the eye can reach, and there I have enough beauty to satisfy me, and tranquillity as well! that one could never have in mountains: there is always the feeling that one is going up or down: that one will be better, will see clearer from the top than from the valleys; stick to the plains Mother and all ye little worms, you'll be happiest there. But for my bathe - that was a lovely time. I hope I'll "hear the sea breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony" on such a day as this, and also at the time of the setting sun. It was as warm as may be pleasant and the water refreshingly delicious: I felt that at last I had reached the way to the South and all the glorious East; Greece, Carthage, Egypt, Tyre, Syria, Italy, Spain, Sicily, Crete... they were all there, and all within reach... of me. I fancy I know now better than Keats what Cortes felt like, "silent upon a peak in Darien". Oh I must get down here - further out - again! Really this getting to the sea has almost overturned my mental balance: I would accept a passage for Greece tomorrow:- and there I am going to Nimes:- I suppose it cannot be helped: well I am glad to have got so far. The heat is great, I was almost going to say excessive, especially between 11 and 3. Everybody wears tinted glasses (even the children) and stay within closed blinds till within 3 hours of sunset. Now (9 p.m.) all the world is awake and in the streets, killing mosquitoes: fruit I find almost a necessity, but only pears and peaches procurable, and dear: however I am a disciple of Blake

Abstinence sows sand all over
The ruddy limbs and flaming hair
But desire gratified
Sows seeds of joy and beauty there.

So I take plenty and keep cool and well, albeit copper coloured, and I think thinner: I will write again next Sunday at any rate if not before: till when, expect a couple of p.c.'s only. Shall get to Carcassonne on Wednesday I hope: and may all be well there just as here: love to all:

N.E.D.

Note:
1. θαλασσα - the sea