T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 231

To R.A. Fontene, Anemoen, Ereding, Isle of Wight. Miramshah Fort Waziristan 30.x.28 Dear Mr Fontene After so many Weeks you will not expect me to revive. Indeed I hardly do: but perhaps it is better late ... not at all. I wish I were prompter. Your MS lies on the Office Table. I see, partly, what Faber & Gwyer stumbled over:- or I think I do: and I'm trying to work myself up to attack the problem, as a series of suggestions for a revision. Only my mind is a sort of gummy deposit, now-a-days. It hardly lives at all. I can just do my routine Air Force day, and fall, tired out, into bed. It will be cold, here in the hills, this winter; and I'm hoping to see if it is climate, or decay which holds up my activity. Your Salonika history I had heard of, from a friendly and indeed indignant on-looker. I wish there was something to do, in these cases: but the truth is that we are little things, and the currents set going by movements are too strong for the individual to breast aside. Guido's problem is beyond my help, I fear. Do you not realise that the Foreign Office relents for so much in all such appointments, and that I fought it for three years (when the Curzon was muddying the Middle East) and defeated it? It took its revenge by describing me as quixotic and unsound: any person I recommended would be ipso facto condemned. To have enlisted, and persisted in serving in the ranks for seven years, after middle-age and the attainment of some notoriety in other walks of life, mark me out as eccentric. I have sent your letter on to Lionel Curtis, a name you possibly detect. I have the greatest respect for his probity, his persistence, and his power: three good "ps". If there are two more "ps" less attractive, what am I to say? If Curtis will be interested in Guido, he can introduce him to the sort of males who do things behind the Official ring. His address is Halesoroft, Nr. Kidlington, Oxford. This was only an act of despair, on my part. Even my messenger, for my peace of mind, probably. It is so difficult, for my peace of mind, to keep out of the way. Yours T E Shaw.