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T. E. Lawrence to Sydney Cockerell
29.xii.25
There, Christmas is
safely over, without my running down to Cambridge. The road is a
tempting one, which explains my thinking of it; but the snow and ice
made riding impossible. I hate going to people's houses on Christmas
day, because it's a family festival, if a festival at all, and merely a
false sentiment for single people. In camp they make it an excuse for
eating a lot, and drinking too much, the usual police regulations being
lifted, so that drunkenness goes unpunished. Yet at Cranwell this year I
have been very fortunate. The rest of 'B' Flight went on leave, so that
I have the hut to myself. Sixteen beds at choice. Sometimes I feel like
the last survivor of a sinking doss-house. Still it is very pleasant to
have a solitary bedroom, and quiet, and lack of talk. I even lent away
the gramophone, so that there should be no disturbance, and passed my
spare time reading T. S. Eliot's collected poems (he is the most
important poet alive) and correcting the proofs of an old-fashioned book
you can guess the name of. It's odd, you know, to be reading these
poems, so full of the future, so far ahead of our time; and then to turn
back to my book, whose prose stinks of coffins and ancestors and
armorial hatchments. Yet people have the nerve to tell me it's a good
book! It would have been, if written a hundred years ago: but to bring
it out after Ulysses is an insult to modern letters - an insult I
never meant of course, but ignorance is no defence in the army!
It was very good of
you to ask me down: and I would have looked in at tea-time if the
road-conditions had been possible. I have no fear of mud or rain: but
ice-ruts, with a blizzard continuing on top - No, that's not
motor-biking weather. Lincolnshire is a very wintry country: the weather
is still awful.
Some time next year
I'll try to turn up again for a moment.
Yours
T.E.S.
I didn't tell you
about Lucas, did I? E. M. Forster had him in a room at Kings for me to
look at. The man is magnificent, a mental athlete. If he is ever sent
down or divorced he will write glorious books. Well worth your knowing.
S.
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