T. E. Lawrence to Eric Kennington

10.4.22

Dear Kennington,

I'm afraid Lenin isn't coming: or Trotsky, only people like Litvinoff, Tchicherin & Co, who look like woodworms. I don't know any of them, but if you want to try for them you'd better take this note in your own hand and get through with it to Sir Edward Grigg, who is secretary to Lloyd George, and one of the men of reason. If you tell him that you a member of the Round Table (mine, not his) and show him this scrawl he'll do what he can: how much that is depends on the way the Conference goes. It's likely to be rather more than any other foreigner can do.

I've had my tenth resignation to Winston rejected, and am sitting in my attic, writing at the never-to-be-presentable-published-or-finished book. Your Arabs disturb the course of work in the Colonial Office as much as ever. Lady Cowdray has hopped the Kensingtons out of Milbank, and Aitken wants two or three Arabs on loan to brighten up his modern room. About July I hope to get Whittingham & Griggs on to do a block of four. I discover that Ageyli is necessary for myself: he's V.G. I'll settle when you come back. I hope all's well. Aloes are rather shock-headed friends.

E.L.

It's easier to do creative imaginative work under 30: though you can go on doing it after, if you have

(i) a memory of what youth was like

or (ii) an incapacity for fixed ideas.  

Very often after 40 the hardness of the thirties breaks down, and men become artists again, till nearly 60. I personally at 33 notice very little change in myself since about 1914.                    

 L.

 Can't find Dobson: but he is rumoured alive and fit.