T. E. Lawrence | Autograph letter signed, to Leeson, on the speed of his motorbike, 11 October 1929

Property of a Distinguished Collector

T.E. Lawrence

Autograph letter signed, to B.E. Leeson

explaining that the speed of his motorbike gave him time for a detour to Manchester to visit Leeson, but he had not been home when he arrived ("...It is often like that in a grey world..."), continuing "Life otherwise is rather accidental. I have met many hard looks and bad words from the great men of the R.A.F. lately. My head is bowed & not bloody", 1 page, small folio, 14 Barton Street, London, 11 October 1929, with autograph envelope

"...I was trying a new thing for George Brough, and its engine had run so remarkably that I was half an hour in advance of schedule..."

Lawrence's trip to Manchester will have been made on his new 1929 Brough Superior SS 100, christened George VI. He was visiting B.E. Leeson, whom he had not seen since they served together in Arabia in 1917. Leeson 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. By 1929 he was a successful married man: when Lawrence visited, he encountered Leeson's maid. 

LITERATURE:

Brown, T.E. Lawrence: The Selected Letters, pp.429-30

PROVENANCE:

Phillips, 14 March 1996, lot 399