T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 133

12. x. 25. I have been trying for a week to get a few minutes of Government time in which to answer your last letter. At last it dribbles: and so there is no flying. I've propped your letter before me and will answer it seriatim. (i) The last 3 paras of Chap 157 as finish. Yes, I suppose they should be. I will cut off the abridgement there: but I dont like shifting the incident two days later. The book, as a work of memory, is doubtless full of inaccur- acies: but I've followed my recollection as exactly as I could, never falsifying an event. Victory is a disillusion- ment. You suggest that death will be, too. Rather a joke if so. An idea there for a short story: a day of judgement all full of bitter laughter. (ii) The compression of Bks VIII & IX. Well; no doubt some history falls out: but the book is only a narrow selection of the crowed events of a year, and it is a matter only of degree. And the Seven Pillars is too long. Only a literary athlete can finish it. (iii) The people I hate writing about my stuff are the G. K. Shorters: the cousins of Tosh Street. Your stuff pleases me, and I should normally feel delighted that you were interested enough to write anything. The outcome of the Arab Revolt, however, was painful: and so I dont run to see its his- tories. I wish it had not happened. (iv) Quotation... I meant to ask you not to lift such an entire incident as my night in Deraa when the Turks got me, etc. The "military" chapters have already been pub- lished entire in the Army Quarterly: and you can do what you please with them. The enclosed slip is entirely harmless. (v) Snapshot of myself. Willingly, if I had one: but I never collected such things. Nor have I ever been profession- ally photographed since I was 25 age. When people ask me for a photograph I refer them to the ... Galleries, Kings Road, Chelsea, who have photographs of four or five pencil heads of me by Augustus John. I havent any of them in hand, or I'd send you one. Two are beautiful drawings. They have, I think, all been published in picture papers: (or all except one in R.A.F. uniform ... which you have had, since I'm still in the R.A.F. You may say it might suit you like). (vi) Descriptive quotations. By all means: Only the death of Tallal (having been published in U.S.A.) has been quoted,