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T. E. Lawrence to H.S. Ede
20.1.28.
Dear Ede
Indeed I'm getting steadily worse as a letter-writer: but if you sat in
Drigh Road (where at this season there is absolutely no grazing for a
camel) your hump too would shrink, and you would be chary of exercise.
Instead I picture you and Aitken sitting on the steps of the staircase
by the Sargents, and fishing out portfolios from a brown flood with bent pins and broomsticks. It will be amazingly
good for the Tate to have lost all its cellar-collection by an Act of
God. I can see 'Lost in Flood' in Aitken's neat handwriting ticketed
against purchase after purchase of the Chantrey bequest. Besides you'll
now be able to decorate your dining room again. Good luck to the Tate.
It deserves it!
Of
course your view of death is right, and all that: but it will not save
you from a sense of loss when someone you like goes. I had (and perhaps
still have) a hedge full of trees: they are old: and whenever one falls
I miss something of what used to be the shapeliness of that hedge. So
Hogarth is part, a great part, of the background of my life fallen away.
He was my realisation of Oxford, the concrete thing which Oxford stood
for in my mind. Now Thomas Hardy has followed him into that very rich
company. I am sorry for T.H.'s going too, though less so, for T.H. had
perfected himself in his work, and went into the grave very poor in
spirit. Whereas Hogarth put so much of his force into the acts of
living.
My
Christmas passed quietly, in the guardroom, where I was one of four on
guard. The camp was drunk, as a body: so the guardroom was a good place.
I often go there on a holiday, swapping turns with some convivial
fellow.
No,
I've not been to Kashmir. As a matter of fact I have reasons for staying
put: reasons which have kept me within the boundary of our camp since I
have been here. So I have not even seen Karachi - which is very far from
Kashmir.
My
next port of call will be, I hope, Southampton in 1930 or 1932. It seems
only a little way off now. The first four years, so the R.A.F. says, are
the worst.
Yours
ever
T.E.S.
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