T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 669

LH 9/13/42 A.C. S. Shaw Room 2 E R 3 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 "patrimony" was spent over another d.bt, not of my making, but of my inheriting. That was poetic justice. What I had no share in making just met what I had no share in spending. 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 - by capital when was firm pants, & 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 security of its original pictures, the subscriptions, and the title deeds of some land I have in Essex. (Annual value of land £50 a year, which mostly goes in rebate to ... value £3000 or more, as building land. I do not want it built over). Total cost of the Seven Pillars was £12,500 of which £6,500 was covered as above. Balance of £7,000 had been met by the sale of Revolt in the Desert through Doran and Cape. The whole liability is now discharged, & I (word crossed out) 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 eat the bit, & to put me on foreign draft, since the personal publicity unavoidable in connection with the sale of "Revolt in the Desert" would have rendered my life intolerable,and my presence a cursed nuisance to my C.O.,in any camp in England. I am exiled, therefore, until the fuss of my books has died down in the press. The R.A.F. will let me in 1935: and it will not be safe for me to return before. So actually I'll be better off as a free agent.