Beschreibung:

LAWRENCE, T.E. Autograph letter signed ('T.E.S[haw]') to an unidentified friend ('P[...]'), Southampton, 7 November [19]33, in pencil, one page, 2°. Provenance : Halsted Billings Vander Poel (1911-2003). A REPROACH FOR FAILING TO REPLY TO LAWRENCE'S OFFER TO BUY 'THE JOHN': 'No reply. Out upon you. Worm. Serpent. Wolf. All the animals in the Ark, in fact. May they haunt your dreams'. Lawrence continues with a laconic account of an idyllic day at Clouds Hill including 'Handel's Water Music inside, and the Jupiter Symphony. Toast...', urging his correspondent to visit him and to 'answer sensibly about the picture, at once'. Lawrence first sat for Augustus John in 1919, and John's pencil head of him in Arab dress was used for The Seven Pillars of Wisdom . A number of other portraits followed, in pencil, charcoal and in oils and it may be to one of these that the letter refers. The letter is dated during one of Lawrence's visits to Southampton from the RAF research station at Felixstowe, when the repairs and improvements to Clouds Hill were almost complete. Apart from the initial letter 'P' the name of the addressee of the letter has been heavily cancelled in pencil and is illegible. An envelope (not in Lawrence's hand) bearing the names of Percy J. Dobell and A.E. Dobell, booksellers in the Charing Cross Road is with the letter, but Percy is not mentioned in Wilson's biography or in the Letters , and there seems no obvious reason to identify him as Lawrence's correspondent.