T. E. Lawrence to

30/VII/29

Dear B.R.

I've had a long immersion in Schneider Cup Race details - I'm one of the R.A.F. clerks for that - but am in a lull: all preparations made, on paper. Next month we start doing the things, and will be frantically busy till mid-September: and then I want to get some leave, and break the back of the Odyssey.

Meanwhile for your letters. I have several to answer.

3/VII/29. Hobbes' summaries turned down: very well. I'll draft some, and you shall adapt, alter, and reject as you please. The summaries are not text, but signposts and typography: so we should share them.

Numbering the pages by the summaries - no, I don't think that is necessary. Nor is it necessary to mark the Greek lines, I think. After all, our text is for reading rather than for reference. No, it's neither. Our pages will be looked at and gloated over by those who love printing. It will be too good a book to read. The book on the authorship of the Odyssey does not really carry Butler any further. The argument-on-Trapani is needless: I could find as book-like a seascape here in the Sound: it is neither Trapani nor Phaeacia. The feminine authorship is a possibility: either an unsexed woman or an unsexed man. My feelings are for the second, as I can't see a woman drawing Penelope so meanly. But it's an open question, and unimportant, I think, as it will never be more than circumstantial evidence. Only certainties matter with authors. My hopes of ever getting to Daneway recede. It will be for the late Autumn, perhaps. I am so sorry. It is wonderful to see how much work the R.A.F. give me here. Of course I like doing their work, and would be quite happy doing it, if I hadn't agreed to do the Odyssey for you, at the same time. In India there were heaps of leisure hours. Here too few: but after September it will be easier. I have told my officer that! must have my winter evenings free.

Book III. Lines 324-328.
 

'Wherefore I would have you visit him, sailing in your ship with your crew: but if you refer the road, a chariot and team are at your disposal, with my own sons to guide you to tawny Menelaus, in Lacedaemon the very fair. Make your appeal to him with your own lips, for then he will heed and answer truthfully out of his stored wisdom, not thinking to play you false.'

I have done these lines before: they must have been dropped in one of the text's four or five copyings. When I see it in its context, there may have to be slight changes in the beginning and ending to make it fit smoothly.

The proof herewith. Your alterations are very slight. I do hope you are not cramping yourself Type metal is so much less elastic than text; and detail alterations, such as printing necessities impose, are all finally for the good. I don't feel much confidence in the emendations of the Press's own reader, however, judging by sample.

I'm keeping the second proof as it may be handy for reference. Book IX stands still; to begin on it again I must read all I can of my earlier stuff to get back into the stride. The final revise is the proof I'd really like. I'm very much afraid you are going to beat me, now that you have started. You will be clamouring at the hut door for copy: and I'll be inside polishing boots, or otherwise being unhelpful. I'll do my best, as soon as this flurry of RAF work passes.

Yours

T.E.S.

P.S. It reads only so-so: old, I fancy, and a bit thin and tired. Yet I was fresh and easy in mind, in Miranshah and Karachi, while I did it. Perhaps the other books are better. I have not made very helpful alterations: I feel that you are going to pull this about quite a lot so that there isn't much sense in my gauging a correction to an em or en.

Mrs. Bernard Shaw sent me the Drinkwater poem, which [words missing here will be added ASAP]