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T. E. Lawrence to Sydney Cockerell
May 27th, 1927
Dear Cockerell
I'm glad you are
over your influenza. It is becoming an annual and universal complaint in
England. Something will really have to be done about it. Odd I've never
been luck enough to get even a touch of it. When we are ill they let us
rest, and the fellows who have experience of hospital here all praise
it. It can't be like the service pest-houses in England, can it?
The last four
sentences all end with the word it. C.M.D. would have firmly
disapproved. I've always wondered what the old man did think of my
stuff, which he finally read at Merriecroft, at his own request. I've
always fancied that its matter shocked him as much as its manner!
Beazley is a very
wonderful fellow, who has written almost the best poems that ever came
out of Oxford: but his shell was always hard, and with time he seems to
curl himself tighter and tighter into it. If it hadn't been for that
accursed Greek art he'd have been a very fine poet.
My gold dagger is
always turning up in odd places: once in The Times: then at my
bank: now in All Souls and the Ashmolean. It belongs to Lionel Curtis,
who paid Spink's price for it! It was made in Mecca, in the third little
turning to the left off the main bazaar, by an old Nejdi goldsmith whose
name I fancy was Gasein. But I begin to forget that period. There are so
many better days, in Dorsetshire and at Cranwell, to dwell upon.
Your figure of
22,000 for the sale of Revolt astonishes me. At 30,000 the
accumulated royalties will pay off the last of my debt to the Bank. I
will then be worth just nothing! A freedom-giving state, no doubt: but
one can't very well travel comfortably on it!
I shall be with you
in spirit on the lawn at Max Gate in July. In a week it will be his
birthday. I keep on hoping that he will be alive (and not a burden to
himself) in 1931 when I'm due back. It is selfish to want old people to
go on outliving their health and strength: but somehow T.H. is
different. I'd like his head to exist for ever, like the head and arms
of G.B.S. They are supreme works of art.
Your ever
T.E.S.
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