T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 181

To Rosa Davies Thursday, 28 Feb' 35. Dear P.D., On Tuesday I took my discharge from the R.A.F. and started southward by road, meaning to call at Bourne and see Manning : but today I turned eastward, instead, hearing that he was dead. It seems queer news, for the books are so much more intense than ever he was, and his dying doesn't, cannot, affect them. Therefore what has died really? Our hopes of having more from him - but that is greed. The writing them was such pain - and pains - to him. Of late I had devoutly wished him to cease trying to write. He has done enough; two wonderful works, full-sized, four lesser things. A man who can produce one decent book is a fortunate man, surely? Some friends of mine, in dying, have robbed me : Hogarth and Aubrey Herbert are two empty places which no one and nothing can ever fill. Whereas Doughty and Hardy and Manning had earned their release. Yet his going takes away a person of great kindness, exquisite and pathetic. It means one rare thing the less in our setting. You will be very sad. My losing the R.A.F. numbs me, so that I haven't much feeling to spare for the while. In fact I find myself wishing all the time that my own curtain would fall. It seems as if I had finished now. Strange to think how Manning, sick, poor, fastidious, worked like a slave for year after year, not on the