T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 555

Need I repeat that I'm very grateful to you for getting me this damage? It is an astonishing one. Dear Ishaq Many thanks for the cheque. I am sorry that Karachi sent back your first one. Very wrong of them, indeed. So you think the staff good enough. That is astonishing. If this sort of thing continues, I shall wake up some morning in the belief that I am write! But not like Homer, I fancy. Still, there it is. That will mean nearly two years work for me: I hope to get through it by April 1930, barring accidents of the service. I shall, of course, do that first book over again, after I have done half a dozen books; so that it shall be like the rest, in tone. Some job. It shall be done as well as I can do it. Your publisher friend stands to lose money, if he has to pay B. R. anything like as munificently as he pays me. I am glad to hear that B. R.'s poverty is only comparative. The being poor has compensations, and is all right, so long as one is fed and housed and clothed, as we are in the R.A.F. But the not knowing where next to look for subsistence would terrify me. I starved in 1922; and don't want to repeat! I'll gladly leave the contractual part of the business to you; only please remember that the anonymity is dearer to me than the money--literally! Your private edition of the Boswell papers sound marvellous, but you mustn't think of endowing me with a set. Remember I have no place even to read them in, except my bed in the barracks; and to store them (as I have done my other books) in a friend's house in London is singularly unsatisfying. Send me a few proof ...