T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 545

COPY. A.C. 2. Shaw. Room E S R E R.A.F. Drigh Road, Karachi. India. 10 - VIII - 27. Dear Isham, Last week and this week your two very good letters came to me. It is most kind of you. I'll comment on the second:- No, I enlisted before there was any question of a de luxe edition of my war-book. My "pat-riony" was spent on ... justice. ... was poetic justice. not of my making, but of my inhe...ing. That was ... in seeing. That I had no share in making just met what I had no share in ... That was a long time ago, now. I ran right out of money in April 1922, and went along with great difficulty till August, when Trenchard let me into the Royal Air Force. My capital was then fifteen pence, and I'd been half-fed for weeks. I've signed for twelve years: and should be discharged in 1935. My de-luxe edition was financed by a banker friend of mine, to whom I gave a security of its original pictures, its subscriptions, to whom I gave security of its original pictures. (Annual value of and the title deeds of some land I have in Faser-. Capital value £3000 land - £50 a year, which mostly goes in rates: capital cost or more, as building land. I do not want it built over). of the Seven Pillars was £15,400 of which £5,500 was covered as above. Balance of £7000 has been met by the sale of Revolt in the Desert through Doran and Jane. The whole liability is now discharged, and I owe nobody anything. Yes, I hate the East. It holds bad memories for me: and I am old enough to grudge my spending more years away from England where only I feel at home. This is my fifteenth year abroad. Yet I had to ask the R.A.F. to put me on foreign draft, since the personal publicity unavoidable in connection with the sale of "Revolt in the Desert" made have rendered my life intolerable and my presence here, until the my C.O., in any garn in England. I am called overseas. The R.A.F. will let me fuss of my books has died down in the Press, and it will not le safe for me to return before core here in peace, and it actually did be no better off as a free agent. So actually Id found life in the R.A.F. not at all bad, after getting used to the rather bare conditions, and the excessive number I got used to the rather bare spell is ended, and I get home again, I of miles. When this foreign shall be quite happy. Revolt in the Desert has sold enormously, and made a small fortune. I executed a deed by which its first receipts paid off my ...