T. E. Lawrence to D. G. Hogarth

29.10.22.

The delays of getting me here are so great that I asked A.J.B. to write to you direct: however it seems by today's note from you that Ll.G. did it after all. That's decent of him as a last act. I'll write and say thanks:- for I suppose that's the answer to my request. I wish he had warned me and saved you the bother of getting up the memorial.

Here's the Feisal paper back - with only a trivial change. I think it contains all there is to day in matters of fact.

I'm a private - or rather a photographic-aircraftsman-second-class: and reasonably miserable at it. Kennington has done me ten comic pictures for the Seven Pillars, and six or seven wonderful imaginative things in colour - drawings, Blake-like, of states of mind. One, illustrating dysentery, is as powerful a thing as I have ever set eyes on: and there is a lightning-coloured picture of the night over Tafas which is almost painful, in spite of its beauty. He's also done a good head of Boyle. Roberts has done a gorgeous McMahon, and I hope to put him on to Wingate (in red chalk). Would you let yourself come in to the gallery? So far only Young has refused to sit, and I'm going to put in a white page saying so baldly.

If you can sit I'd suggest Wyndham-Lewis as your executioner. An artist of great power, and if he would, capable of making a splendid thing of it. He is very fast, so that one sitting (in London) would do the trick. I'm trying to get hold of him, but he is so often abroad.

With all the drawings (over 50 now) I feel less and less inclined to publish the whole work, and almost decided not to publish anything. My mind wobbles between the need for money and the desire to be withdrawn, and it's a pitiable exhibition on my part. I wish the beastly book had never been written. Garnett's reduction is in my hands, and is a good one: but it's a bowdlerising of the story and the motives of it, and would give the public a false impression. I don't like the notion of doing that. It's a favourably-false impression, you see.

E.L.