T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 291

The transcribed text is as follows: LH 9/13/42 To: Idris Robin White, R.B. From: cpt. Clouds Hill Morton Dorset 13. IV. 35. You will think this is a voice from the dead; and that is almost what it is. I left the RAF (time expired) a month ago, and feel like a lorn dog. Actually that hasn't driven me to letter writing; I find it a worse task than ever. When you has nothing to do, the idea of writing becomes wholly repellent. But for too years I have been carrying about with me a letter-headed notepaper, meaning to answer it, and the impulse resurges; and at last rasped into life by meeting four days ago a little man (name unknown; certainly a naval officer; probably Fleet Air Arm: "doin' a coyrse at the RAF school at Tewkesbury, now!" and darfted from the Lo-wor room. Can you place him from that?) who told me you were still on or in the Antelope. One warns in one ship sounds so incredibly persistent that I feel I must watch the moment and communicate with you. I hope it is true. The Antelope, as a folder from Lascars, Durpur and Newall on my table tells me, has their asbestos lagging or bag aroun pipes. She looks like a destroyer, otherwise but the photograph is mostly bow-wave and smoke. You will have forgotten your letter. It was mostly about the Bruce Rogers Odyssey, then a recent acquisition. I have my grave doubts about that book. The translation is too unfaithful; too deliberately unfaithful. The print too delicate. The founfcls neither true Greek nor new. Bruce Rogers got the ideas from books-of drawings from Greek Vases, and adapted freely. However there it is. The cheep edition has sold well: the States: and... (tear edition [for England]) is nearly all sold. The creak in the U.S.A. meant that none of the expensive copies went there: as at all, though 250 had been so earmarked. Consequently poor England was asked to absorb the lot. There are about 50 still unsold, I believe; but they are going. It was a pot-boiler, almost literally. The heater of my bath, and the bath itself, depended on it. All works well.