T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 553

SOFL. 2. 2. 22. Dear Mr. Somer, Your letter relieved me. I'd had a feeling that Isham had paid too much altogether for those proofs; and now I'll believe he's to unload them on you, without loss. With delight that he's been able to pass them on to you without knowing me, and which is splendid, for you have bought them without knowing me, and in the fair market, and I'm not guilty. In producing the Seven Pillars I was trying to learn a little about printing; and that accounts for the very long time it was in ... 1924: and the book not in proof. Your first chapter was set up but I had only our half-holidays and spare evenings in camp, for my private work. Palmer was my half-section in the Tank Corps, the other storeman in the Quartermaster's stores. He saw me working on the proofs, for years, and bagged a set from those sent me for correction. I do not know if it's getting very, not terribly dirty. Some ghosts were, E.W.P. is P.P. Forster, a very fine modern novelist. You probably know him. He is a friend of Palmer's and mine: and helped Palmer sell his "French copy even he was hard up". Lots of people have found my book useful in that way! I hope, if there's a copy for me, to profit by their example in 1930 when I get back to England. I left before the binders had done their work, and so haven't seen any completed copy; and I can't make out (there have been several deaths and muddles intervening) how the supply met the demand. I fancy there should be two sharp copies. One of them is claimed, if so; and the last would be mine. Let's hope the book's value does not slump right away, meanwhile. It's bound to come down a bit, for the book-collectors are run it up on the idea that there are only 100 copies (which is not at all true) and that it's obscene: which also seems to me untrue. I don't think it's much good, as a work. Like the performing dog, it's wonderful that an English Colonel should write at all, rather than that he write well. But people got excited, and praised what they had not seen. Yours sincerely, T.E. SHAW.