T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 455

To Hogarth Tank-town Easter-day. Yesterday fatigues for us ran short at 10.A.M. (usually their latest hour non): so I leaped for my ingenuity keeps us at it till the London road: Wimborne, Ringwood, blxe, & raced her madly up the London road: Wimborne, Ringwoods, blxe, & raced her madly up the London road; Wimborne, Ringwoods, Romsey, Winchester, Palingsstoke, Bagshot, Staines, Hounslow by one-per-minute! (three hours less live minutes). Good 125 miles: 1.20 P.M. (three hours less live minutes). Return journey took 10 minutes ...i In London I went straight to the Alpine Gallery. John's thing of you is wonderful. Might have been drawn by a drunken giant who never did anything after eating a mammoth. I doubt whether he's ever done anything so strong before. Ingram (that tipsy-man who presides at the receipt of custom) thinks it's the height of John: and the critics have all been hit by it. That's wonderful, for on the other three walls are such portraits the oils as very few artists have ever been able to show. Yours isn't beautiful: it's savage: but the performance of it is so masterly that one forgives the fugginess & splash of the whole work. Was he drunk? Anyway for once John has worked with his bravest data, letting everything rip. It is (as it should be) the biggest thing in my portrait gallery. What shall happen to it? John sends it to Barton St. when the show ends. i All returned, (of course: I don't know it you'd like it in your house. One's Self-portraits are rather hard to live up to, I fancy. Besides Mrs. Hogarth won't like it. I hope you'll see the show. The other things are mixed, but average is amusing. The big decoration is almost mad. I felt my eyes dancing with it, & preferred to look at Mme. Suggia, who is just a great portrait. It's good that John should boast such a nicety too. The wall with you in ... its middle is all spotted with drawings of me in various incarnations. One looks like a budding serpent.... It's a pity Trenchard didn't see it before he deified to see. Don't like the Army. It's so unlike the R.A.F. No feeling for it in the ranks. Everyone is here because he is broke, & they want not (as I... one) nothing from their service, except food,pay, & little work. In the R.A.F. people talked of their technical jobs, & of flying, & of the future of the air, half their time. .L. No leave from here till August, & uncertain then. So won't reappear yet, unless I buy out, which on one head I'd be glad to do. I should have said that I bust the bike, just outside camp. Ran over a broken glass bottle at speed,burst front tyre,ran up a bank & turned over. Damage to self nil: to bike somewhat. There goes my power of breaking bounds!