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T. E. Lawrence to his family
Cairo
12 February 1915
Address
Intelligence Office,
Cairo.
Well, here goes for
another empty letter: my bicycle is here: very many thanks for getting
it out so quickly: I wish the W.O. would send out maps equally promptly.
You ask about the other people in the Office: well Newcombe and Woolley
you have heard of. There is Hough ex-consul at Jaffa... pleasant and
nothing more: there is Lloyd, an M.P. (I should think probably
Conservative, but you never know) who is a director of a bank, and used
to be Attaché at Constantinople. He is Welsh, but sorry for it: small,
dark, very amusing... speaks Turkish well, and French, German and
Italian: some Spanish, Arabic and Hindustani... also Russian. He is
quite pleasant, but exceedingly noisy.
Then there is Aubrey
Herbert, who is a joke, but a very nice one: he is too short-sighted to
read or recognise anyone: speaks Turkish well, Albanian, French,
Italian, Arabic, German... was for a time chairman of the Balkan League,
of the Committee of Union and Progress, and of the Albanian Revolution
Committee. He fought through the Yemen wars, and
the Balkan wars with the Turks, and is friends with them all. Then there
is Père Jaussen, a French Dominican monk, of Jerusalem. He speaks Arabic
wonderfully well, and preceded us in wanderings in Sinai. We praise his
work very highly in the Wilderness of Zin. He is very amusing,
and very clever: and very useful as interpreter...
There is also Graves
The Times correspondent, and very learned in the Turkish army
organisation. I think that is about all. We meet very few other people,
except officers on business... see a good deal of them, from General
Maxwell downwards. He is a very queer person: almost weirdly
good-natured, very cheerful, with a mysterious gift of prophesying what
will happen, and a marvellous carelessness about what might happen.
There couldn't be a better person to command in Egypt. He takes the
whole job as a splendid joke.
The Turks are off
for the time being. The troops that attacked us last week were from
Smyrna (Turks) and from Nablous and Jerusalem and Gaza: there were no
men from Aleppo, and very few from Damascus: our prisoners are very
comfortable, and very content here: when they have been a few weeks in
idleness they will be less pleased.
Lady Evelyn Cobbold
turned up, on her usual winter visit to Egypt.... I am to have dinner
with her tonight.
Dr. Mackinnon is
here: he is doing medical work, and Dr. Scrimgeour of Nazareth is
looking after the prisoners.
Cox is being paid
15/- a day for me: so I hope that my account
there will be clear. There are no carpets in Cairo that I want to buy:
you don't get good ones under £50 here: so don't expect anything at
present... perhaps when I get back to Carchemish
N.
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