T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 243

24.1.33 "I'm now a fitter, very keen and tolerably skilled on engines, but in no way abstract. I live all of every day with real people, and concern myself only in the concrete. The ancient self-seeking and self-devouring T.E.L. of Oxford (and T.E.S. of the Seven Pillars and Nimble ... dead." Not regretted either. My last ten years have been the best of my life. I think I shall look back on my 35-45 period as golden. Enough of myself: but understand that I enjoy books and pictures and sights and sounds more than I ever did: and new books and new sounds, still. Taste with me has not yet stood still, nor retreated into its past. I am alive and capable with most of our daily emergencies. Now regard yourself. Recall the hundreds of times we have met and talked. You cannot know how much I have seen in you, and learned of you - but please take it for written. E.C. has been a main current influencing my life, for nearly 15 years. Wherefore it is, and always will be, that any line from you matters more than screeds from others. I know you - almost: and I do not know S.S. or any of my other past. I think Frederic Manning, and an Armenian, called Altouyan, and E. M. Forster are the three I most care for, since Hogarth died." 30.VII.33 "I have fallen in love with concrete things, and get impatient with the mind, because it wanders so."