T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 571

To W.E. Jeffrey Jeffrey aku as Ah medusagar Plymouth. 2. IX. 31 O Praise-God* This is my Christmas letter. Which Christmas? I don't know. This one I think. It is freezingly cold, with a N.E. Wind and torrents of rain. All this summer has been so. Your song was played lately by two pianists; but I have nobody to sing it to me. Perhaps when you come home? I wish you could get your step. Top of the roll for 17 months? All this making Cpl. on the letter. Do you remember Grey, a Pte & l/c. in the Orderly Room at Depot in 1925? I saw him in Bovington last week, and he is now a Sergeant, just home from India. I passed through Bovington, filling up at the garage, after a night at Clouds Hill. The cottage is much as it was, only cleaner, for my Mother has been living there off & on, for the last year. She likes it. So do I, but from a distance. Through it still my constant home. In 1935 I am for the street, & may then try to settle at Clouds Hill myself, & turn into a swede. H.B. has a child, sex unknown, and is said to be happy with his wife, who is very young for him. Sergt. Knowles died lately. Mrs Knowles continues to live in his cottage at Clouds Hill. I like that air; not that it is Beethoven, but B. could not have written it, any more than you could have written the C major. So there we are. Each in his bit. And the words? Better, probably, than the singers want. It is not good to sing real poetry. Gets in the way, & sticks in the throat. Yours T.E.S. * Christian name of Mr Barebones, M.P. in the Rump Parliament.