T. E. Lawrence | Autograph letter signed, to Leeson, anticipating his death in a motorcycle accident, 8 January 1930

Property of a Distinguished Collector

T.E. Lawrence

Autograph letter signed ("T.E. Shaw"), to B.E. Leeson

responding to another failed attempt at meeting ("...Don't harp on our ill-luck at meeting: there are meetings & meetings. It might be like indigestion, or it might be on the open road, your Rolls doing a cool 60 and me a hot 90. That, now, would be ill luck..."), describing his life in the RAF, which is restrained socially by his teetotalism ("...The drunker others are, the more a worm one feels...") so much time is spent on his translation of The Odyssey ("...I work five hours daily, & more on half-days, Sundays, & holidays, translating a book for a richissime American..."), and explaining that he has only left camp twice in recent months to get his hair cut, adding as a postscript ("The Air Ministry have forbidden my flying! Dogs..."), 2 pages, small folio, RAF Mount Batten, Plymouth, 8 January 1930, with autograph envelope

Lawrence's correspondent, B.E. Leeson, was a veteran of the Arab Revolt and a former airman. He had joined 14 Squadron of the RFC in January 1917 as an Observer with the rank of Lieutenant. The squadron was then providing aerial support to Arab and British forces from Rabigh, north of Mecca in the Hejaz, and later from Wejh. Leeson's personal connection with Lawrence came in late April, when the two men had been part of a small group who spent a week exploring a remote valley, Wadi Hamdh, to recover a crashed B.E.2c biplane. The temperature was 118° in the shade, the country was waterless, and their car constantly had to be cut free of thick dry brushwood. Leeson was subsequently invalided out of Arabia. The two men had remained in contact but had not met for twelve years.

PROVENANCE:

Phillips, 14 March 1996, lot 400