T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 237

LH 9/13/42 - 3 - wish to do anything or see anyone; unless the thing is ordered. It slides, so far as I am concerned. Nirvana perhaps: but there isn't a desire for needing ... It's just a letting slide off all of myself except the physical. The other fellows are, as animals, so hugely more active and vital than myself, that my self-estimation justifies its lowly instinct. There are few animal spirits in me: and I'd not willingly have more." (undated) "What's the cause that you, and S.S. and I (from the S.S. to the rationalists) can't get away from the War? Here are you riddled with thought like any old table- ler with worms: S.S. yewing about like a ship aback: me in the ranks, finding squelor and mal-treatment the only permitted existence: what's the matter with us all? It's like the malarial bugs in the blood, coming out months and years after in recurrent attacks. Have you leisure, I'd like to send you the book I tried to write those years ago. S.S. read it; and grew kind to me, afterwards: which was a good comment: and if your mind is now accustomed to living, perhaps you would read it for me. My motive is the selfish one of wanting criticism. The margins are blank to write upon in pencil. The print is eye- destroying, the length of the book appalling: ... its sincerity, I fancy, absolute, except once where I choked the distinct truth, and wrote it obliquely. I was afraid of saying something, even to myself. The thing was not written for anyone to read. Only as I get further from the strain of that moment, confession seems a relief rather than a risk." I (R.G.) wrote a fanciful poem called The Clipped Stater. It was intended to cheer him up. It described how Alexander the Great, after his deification and apparent death, found himself caught up by his spirits and conveyed to China where his name was not known; how he was enrolled in the frontier-guard on the Great Wall; how he welcomed the experience of being a nobody; and how he felt when one day advancing to the pay-desk he was given a clipped and defaced silver piece, which turned out to be a stater with his own head on it coined from the bullion that he had once captured from the Persians at the battle of Arbela. One verse ran: "He will not dream Olympicly, nor stir To enlarge himself with comforts or promotion, Nor evade punishment when, font of temper, He has pulled the corporal's nose and called him "cur"!' He wrote back in enormous handwriting: Clouds Hill Moreton Dorset. 5.XII.24. Dear R.G. Alexander, God bless him, is V.V.V.V.G. Of course I laughed, laughed enormously, as I read him in bed in the hut. The troops stared. I showed one excellent one (my "half-section") the M.S.