T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 515

338171 A.C. Shaw Room 2 E.R.S. R.A.F.Depot Drigh Road Karachi. 22/11/27. Dear Isham, Your letter is, I think, about the kindest thing I've ever had - I cannot imagine how you get through life - & it's your principle to lend a hand to every breakdown you see on your road. Meanwhile, please believe that there's one very grateful one, here. I'm answering your letter in the Rations Shop office, where I work; it's not in office hours; and I'm doing it, because this is the only paper the great but niggardly Indian Government issue for the use of the Aircraft Depot, & it will not carry ink. Generally, not having a secretary, I find it an easier matter to write my letters. Also I don't type well. I cannot take your offer of a job, of course. It would not do to work for any friendly person, in the first place. Then it's not a literary but, and my writing is better than the stuff turned out by the majority of retired Army officers, so many of whom, in England, put off boredom by what Peacock would have called "the Pleasure of Composition"; but it's not the smallest pretensions to literature - or is it litter to it's lit - ... Even I am not ashamed to own that I have never yet seen or read a line of any of Boswell's books. I would have read them, had I met one in a disengaged moment, for reading is my greatest occupation. When, inevitably, work has run out for the time. And if you are good enough to send me your Boswell book, I'll enjoy it; he must have been a pretty good writer, judging by the way the proper people speak of him. You are, so say the English papers, very lucky in the swag you carried off from Malahide. I hope it is as good as they say. You talk of having ten years work on it - which is a colossal thing to face. My ambition as you know is to get back to England, and the sooner the better after the mess attending my Revolt in the desert has settled down. I had to publish the little thing, as it was my only realisable asset, and I was very much in debt. To dodge its repercussions I had to come out here, away from every shadow of an enterprising Press.