T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 332

To T. williamson (ctd.) 11.XII.34 he for the average. Of course he had an awful life. No Alvis, no country contentment, or comfort, anyhow. Few concerns aside from earning, and no war to fight: his back-ground, he learned a lot in those years, which makes us ........ially older and wiser than the old or the young. Stop burbling? All right, I'll stop. Let's get back to history. I am discharged from the R.A.F. (my life,that must, next March: and cannot make even the ghost of plans for afterwards. There is my cottage in Dorsetshire (Clouds Hill, there's "Wared") on the heath just north of Bovington Camp, between Dorchester and Wareham. I'll have to go there for my savings have not been very successful: I've had only £40/- a week. So I must sit under my own roof, and do nothing till I want to do something. Is that a programme? I hope an Alvis may visit me,for if you ever go to England, via E.Dorset is not much further than via the mist Plains. In my cottage is no food, and no bed. At night I fall there is a flea-bag, and I lay it on the preferedred patch of floor in either room. The ground-room is for be books, and the stair-room is for music: music being the trade-name for a gramophone and records. There are five acres of Rhododendron and fires every evening from their sticks. It sounds to me all right for living, but then so does your valley - yet you often throw yourself angri- ly away from it. Well, we shall see. But bring your own food. I shall have no cooking. It smells in so small a house & tiny house so awter near, slan! As I said, at the beginning, I have the advantage of you; for when I want a word with Henry Williamson, it is only the stretching of an arm to a shelf. If I want him objective, there's Tarka: subjective, there's the Pathn-ey or Voleun or Dream of Koman. I feel greedy, at having so much of so many people (though not the half I ...d should have had. Books have... from my hands wholesale while my back was turned. My cottage holds only the rags of a collection) and at taking them so much without making a return. (By the way, did I ever lend you the typescript of my R.A.F. book? Surely I did, poor return though it is: sometimes I sit on my chair amidst the books, afraid to open any of them, not having earned it. If only I could write like I read. Stop burbling again? All right, but this sea rushing and sliding in my ears won't stop. My room is a tower-mee room, over the harbour wall, and the waves roll all day like green swiss rolls over the yellow sand,till they hit ...