| Lawrence
of Arabia - Not with a whimper...
A Rare Beast
[Larger
Image]
| TO D. G. HOGARTH
Easter Day [April 1] [1923] Tank-town
Yesterday fatigues for us ran short at 10 A.M.
(usually their ingenuity keeps us at it till near noon): so I leaped for
my bike, & raced her madly up the London road: Wimbourne, Ringwood,
Romsey, Winchester, Basingstoke, Bagshot, Staines, Hounslow by 1.20 P.M.
(three hours less five minutes). Good for 125 miles: return journey took
10 minutes less! *
......
I should have said that I bust the bike, just
outside camp. Ran over a broken glass bottle at speed, burst front tyre,
ran up a bank & turned over. Damage to self nil; to bike somewhat.
There goes my power of breaking bounds!
L.
|
* An average of 44.5 m.p.h. for the round trip of 250 miles.
Dem Bones
| TO E. (Posh) Palmer
August 25th 1925
On Friday early they sent me to a doctor. He
said 'Have you ever had... ... ....?' 'No sir' 'Have you ever had... ...
....?' 'No' (less confidently). 'Have you ever broken any bones?' This
was my chance: I poured over him a heap of fractured fibulae, radii, metatarsals,
phalanges, costes, clavicles, scapulae, till he yelled to me to stop. So
I stopped, and he made clumsy efforts to write them all down
Letters No. 271
|
A Melancholy Joy
| TO LIONEL CURTIS
14.V.23 Tank-town
.....
.... When my mood gets too hot and I find myself wandering beyond control
I pull out my motor-bike and hurl it top-speed through these unfit roads
for hour after hour. My nerves are jaded and gone near dead, so that
nothing less than hours of voluntary danger will prick them into life:
and the 'life' they reach then is a melancholy joy at risking something
worth exactly 2/9 a day.
.....
E.
|
The Phantom Hacker
| TO LIONEL CURTIS
27.VI.22 (but actually 1923)
......
...... That's as irrational as what happened on our coming here, when
I swerved Snowy Wallis and myself at 60 m.p.h. on to the grass by the roadside,
trying vainly to save a bird which dashed out its life against my side-car.
And yet had the world been mine I'd have left out animal life upon it.
......
E.
|
Despoiled
| TO BERNARD SHAW
20.xii.23 Clouds
Hill
......
My noble cycle, the poor beast who allayed
my 'shrinking nerves' was taken out secretly by a beast who left her broken,
in a ditch: and she is too ruined to mend, even if I could like her again.
So I'm not able to go abroad without public leave and a rail-ticket, now.
Yours ever
T.E.S.
|
The Thieving Beast Revealed
| TO E. PALMER
10.xii.25 Clouds
Hill
......
Crashed off the Brough last monday: knee: ankle:
elbow: being repaired. Tunic and breeches being replaced. Front
mudguard, name-plate, handlebars, footrest, renewed. Skid on ice
at 55 m.p.h. Dark: wet: most miserable. Hobble like a cripple
now.
S.
(post script omitted) |
The Annual Step-off, 1926
| TO DICK KNOWLES
3.xii.26 Uxbridge
Depot
......
I managed to squeeze out 1/2 an hour in Clouds
Hill: and 1/2 an hour at the Hardys. I had meant to come to you last
Sunday, and started about 7.30 A.M. but Islington streets were greasy (I
had to see G.B.S. on the way) & I got into a trough in the wood paving,
and fell heavily, doing in the off footrest, kickstart, brake levers, 1/2
handlebar, & oil pump. Also my experienced knee-cap learnt another
little trick. Alb Bennett took the wreck for £100. I
limp rather picturesquely ...... Yours
T.E.S.
|
Kismet
Lawrence rode into
Bovington Camp on his Brough motorcycle and sent off this telegram:
| TO HENRY WILLIAMSON
[Telegram; postmarked 13 May
35]
Lunch Tuesday wet fine cottage one mile north
Bovington Camp
SHAW
|
and was riding back
to Clouds Hill when he came on two errand boys, riding pedal cycles in
a dip in the road. He swerved violently to avoid them, lost control, was
thrown over his handlebars and received severe injuries to the brain. His
physical vitality was so great that he lay unconscious for nearly five
days before he died of congestion of the lungs and heart failure.
The evidence at the inquest
revealed a curious contradiction. Corporal Catchpole of the R.A.O.C. who
was standing about 100 yards from the road, near Clouds Hill, saw Lawrence
on his motor-cycle, travelling at about fifty or sixty miles an hour, pass
a black private car, going in the opposite direction, just before he heard
the crash. The two boys, whose evidence about times was confused, had no
memory of a car passing them.
Mr. Cairns, the brain surgeon,
stated that had Lawrence lived he would have lost his memory, been paralysed
and unable to speak.
Lawrence was buried at Moreton
Church on May 21st.
His bust by Eric Kennington
has been placed in the Crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, a recumbent figure
in Arab dress by Kennington has been placed in the ancient Saxon St Martin's
church at Wareham, and his cottage at Clouds Hill now belongs to the National
Trust and is shown to visitors.
|
| I am not a very tractable person or much of a hero-worshipper, but
I would have followed Lawrence over the edge of the world. I loved him
for himself, and also because there seemed to be reborn in him all the
lost friends of my youth. If genius be, in Emerson's phrase, a "stellar
and undiminishable something", whose origin is a mystery and whose essence
cannot be defined, then he was the only man of genius I have ever known.
John Buchan
Author of The Thirty-nine Steps and Governor-General of Canada |
| " - the popular verdict that he is the most remarkable living Englishman,
though I dislike such verdicts, I am inclined to accept - "
Robert Graves
Introduction to Lawrence and the Arabs, 1927 |
Most of the letter excerpts and quotes above are from
The
Letters of T. E. Lawrence of Arabia Jonathan Cape 1938, and
Selected
Letters of T. E. Lawrence Jonathan Cape 1938, both edited by David
Garnett.
Photographer of the Kennington effigy unknown.
Photograph top of page from Lawrence and the Arabs
Jonathan Cape 1928 by Robert Graves. |
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