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T. E. Lawrence to The Hon. Francis Rodd
Ozone Hotel,
Bridlington,
Yorkshire
23.XI.34 Dear F.R. By the accident that a friend of mine was passing my old
lodgings in Southampton as my older landlady was handing your letter
back to the postman, it reaches me here, only ten days late. I expect
to work in Bridlington (on the ten Air Force boats that are refitting
for next season) till the end of February when the R.A.F. goes on its
way without me.
I shall feel unutterably lost without my blue covering. Twelve
years it has been, of engrossing work with a very happy companionship
for the off-duty hours. Few war-relics have been so fortunate as I in
the aftermath.
I've even saved money and Robin Buxton has invested it for me until
it brings in more than 25/- a week. So if you bogeymen (I read the New
English Weekly!) don't crash the solar system shortly I should be able
to live at peace in my cottage, with all the twenty four hours of the
day to myself. Forty-six I am, and never yet had a whole week of
leisure. What will 'for ever' feel like, and can I use it all?
Please note its address from March onwards - Clouds Hill, Moreton,
Dorset - and visit it, sometime, if you still stravage the roads of
England in a great car. The cottage has two rooms; one, upstairs, for
music (a gramophone and records) and one downstairs for books. There
is a bath, in a demi-cupboard. For food one goes a mile, to Bovington
(near the Tank Corps Depot) and at sleep-time I take my great sleeping
bag, embroidered MEUM, and spread it on what seems the nicest bit of
floor. There is a second bag, embroidered TUUM, for guests. The cottage looks simple, outside, and does no hurt to its setting
which is twenty miles of broken heath and a river valley filled with
rhododendrons run wild. I think everything, inside and outside my
place, approaches perfection.
Now to business. That enclosed message ought to have been
instantly dealt with, by a plain Yes or No. Will you please say No,
for me, but not a plain No. Make it a coloured No, for the Elizabethan
of [Blank's] naming has given me a moment of very rare pleasure which
I shall not tell to anyone, nor forget.
Please explain how by accident it only came to me tonight, when I
got back after work, too late to catch the evening mail from this
petty seabord town.
These newspaper praises lead a fellow to write himself down as a
proper fraud - and then along comes a real man to stake himself on the
contrary opinion. It is heartening and I am more than grateful.
There - please work all that into your 'NO': explain that I have a
chance (if only I have the guts to take it) of next year possessing
all my time.
Yours ever T E Shaw.
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