T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 529

338171. A/C. Shaw, R. A. F. Miranshah, Waziristan, India. 10/10/28. Dear Mr Emery Walker & Wilfred Merton, A most solemn, business letter this must be ,- copy to Bruce Rogers, copy to Isham, copy to me :- It is a comment on your letter of August 31 to B.R. Your terms suit me - if Isham agrees - and I'll do my best to earn the money 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 you or me or B.R. but if you print it as nobly as I expect, the critics' eyes will be too dazzled 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, empowered and entreated to alter any thing in my text which displeases it. There is no sanctity in "copy", nor asterics nor bones. Cut it to fit 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-fee 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 engrossments. I will ask you to promise each other not to associate, in public or private, any of my names (Shaw is real, Ross and Lawrence were assumed ones) with the translation, during my life-time, without my permission. The twenty- fifth English version of the Odyssey 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 hundrum 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 err, rather to convey my pleasure, than to be an exact mould of the Greek.