T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 528

539171 A/C. Shaw, M.A.C.P. Miranshah, Waziristan, India. 10/10/38. Dear Mr Emery Walker & Wilfred Norton, A most solemn, business letter this must be -- copy to Drinko Ooorra. I try to ishme, copy to me -- It is a comment on your letter of August 31 to you. Your terms suit me - if ishme agrees - and I'll do my best to earn the pay as you offer for a version of the Odyssey, which shall be as good a version as I can do. It will not satisfy Homer or a Greek scholar, but if you print it as nobly as I expect, the critics' gyst will be too darrated to pick holes in it. One proof will suffice for my correction. my dirty work is done in manuscript & typescript. I want the Press to consider itself entitled, moreover, to strike out or alter any thing in my text which displeases it. There is no question in "copy", nor asterisk nor pause. Put it by, fix the inelasticity of your type, without reference to me. I will endeavour to be prompt with the instalments. You are wise to keep the half-roo till it is finished. My life is not one to guarantee or insure. I asked for two years to give room for minor accidents or engagements. I will ask you to promise each other not to associate in public or private, any of my names (Shaw is reel, Ross and Laurence were assumed ones) with the translation during, y life-time, without my per-mission. The twenty- fifth English version of the ... is hardly a literary event; so I hope to get away with it, without publicity, of which I have had a surfeit. We must think out some pseu h...drum name to put to it, if anyone asks a question about the person who did it. Also, I am not a scholar. If I read Greek, it is for pleasure. I fear my version will inevitably try harder to convey my pleasure, i.e.: to be an exa.t mould of t.e Greek. 378