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T. E. Lawrence to Eric Kennington
Grand Continental
Hotel
Cairo.
1 October. [1921]
Dear Kennington,
Your letter today.
It made me realise that I never wrote to you from Jidda to explain my
wire stopping W. & G. Peccavi: always I have. Why does a person who
fails to write letters feel unfit to live? There's nothing wrong in it:
and the feeling is sterile, because it does not make one write. Now I
owe you two or three letters.
The reasons for
stopping work are three. I do not know their order of magnitude. A lump
of money I was expecting has not (probably will not) come. My house in
Epping has been burnt down. In the leisure hours of this trip I have
read half the manuscript of my book: and condemned it. Not good enough
to publish, because it isn't as good as I can make it, (unless I deceive
myself).
The stoppage is only
to prevent too big a bill this year. Next year I will have more money,
and will be able to carry on. Meanwhile I'll he barely solvent. Penury
is as mean an ill as toothache. The job will go through none the less.
I'm glad you find it good: am looking forward to seeing Ghalib on my
return.
The return is yet
vague. Tomorrow I go to Trans-Jordan, to end that farce. It makes me
feel like a baby-killer. The last two months I've been in the Red Sea,
and things are not ended there. I'd like to come home before ending
them: if I am to end them. So perhaps at the end of October? God knows.
The preface I have
now forgotten all the sense and shape of, except that it was too long.
As it is forgotten it must have been light, and little-thought-on. Aden
is not good for work: and I'd written a good one in London after seeing
the collection, and left it buried somewhere. However I hope the show
goes well. Prefaces are only excuses (by the salesman) for charging a
shilling for the catalogue.
What more? Nothing.
I'm bored stiff: and very tired, and a little ill, and sorry to see how
mean some people I wanted to respect have grown. The war was good by
drawing over our depths that hot surface wish to do or win something. So
the cargo of the ship was unseen, and not thought of. This life goes on
till February 28 next year.
Au 'voir
TEL
Note. W & G - Whittingham & Griggs, who were to print the colour
illustrations for Lawrence's projected edition of Seven Pillars of
Wisdom.
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