T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 551

About your queries from L.T.'s book:- I was in the Royal Tank Corps, between March '23 and August '25 and was transferred from it to the R.A.F. Exchanges from Service to Service are not difficult to arrange. Of course, as you know, Lowell Thomas was not with me on any ride or operation in Arabia. I do not know how long he was in the country, for he arrived while I was up-country, and I had gone up, I think, a fortnight before he left... there some ten or fourteen days, in all; of which we were together in Akaba for perhaps three. The rest of his book is gossip from here and there, or extract from "Travels". My bag of MSS I forgot on the station at Reading, when changing trains for Oxford. It was not an ebony box, but a brown bag. Chose Shaw at Tanjore. The Recruiting Staff Officer in the War Office said I must take a fresh name. I said "What's yours?" He said "No you don't". So I seized the Army List, and snapped it open at the first and said "Fight be the first ... syllabled name in this". The St. Joan dedication is to Private Shaw From Public Shaw I do not believe L.T.'s figures of 4000 lashes upon me. It is probably like his Arabian figures. If true it is open times too many. The telegram is utterly untrue. The house in Epping was burned down during the war, and has never been rebuilt. Please do not let anything I may have carelessly written to you about the R.A.F. give you the wrong impression that I am miserable or uncomfortable in it. It has been a real refuge to me, and I am grateful to the Air people for taking me in. The stigma are not in the least like soldiers, except in their standard of living. I like many of them, and Service life makes up for its roughness in many ways:- for instance one is never lonely - far from it; and it is soothing to know that one's bread and margarine is safe for the term of one's engagement, and that the standard ...ork expected of one is so reasonably low that one can be positively sure of meeting it. If I were working for any ordinary employer I would be always worrying if I were doing as well as he expected, and I desired. Cheap labour is let off easily. I am glad you are fond of printing. I think it is one of the richest things any man can do. Have you met J. ... ... BOMBY, one of the Directors of W. H. Smith & Son, the big English bookselller? He is very rich, and lives in Chelsea, in a huge and terrible house; but in the bottom of his garden is an ex-stable where he and two printers turn out the Ashendene books. I do not like it: (The (Caslon is my ideal) but his press-work is the finest ever, and his vellum copies the most sumptuous books in the modern world. Nor does his hobby cost him very much:- less than the upkeep of a day T bailor. He sells his work in small editions. You, I expect, will print your own edition, for the few who really care for good books, and will then let someone have stereos from your type for the million, who will want your new Boswells. You are a most fortunate person: but I shall not envy you: I 1929 sees me back in England, fit enough, and rich enough to have a motor-bike and ride it hard. That is my post-war pleasure.