‘Working in an architect’s office, sir.’ (This was true enough. Sir Herbert Baker had lent a room of his office in Barton Street for Lawrence to write Seven Pillars in.)
‘Why did you join the Air Force?’
‘I think I must have had a mental break-down, sir.’
‘What! What! Sergeant-Major, take this man’s name; gross impertinence!’
The next day Lawrence was ‘up’ and was able to explain that the Wing-commander had misunderstood him.
At school in Uxbridge—the Royal Air Force makes much of education—the master, a civilian, asked the recruits to write a confidential first essay, for his eye alone, giving details of previous education. As he was obviously a decent and sincere man, Lawrence wrote truthfully that he had got scholarships and exhibitions from the age of thirteen onwards, which had helped to pay school and university bills until he had taken honours in history and been elected to a research-fellowship in political theory. That later events arising out of the War had constrained him to enlist and that he found himself over-educated for his present part in life. The master respected the confidence and instead of lessons gave Lawrence books to read in school hours and a quiet place to sit in.
A month after being dismissed from the Air Force he re-enlisted, with War-Office permission, in the Royal Tank Corps. He had got a qualified assurance that if he served without incident for a while in the Army, his return to the Air Force might be considered. He remained in it for more than two years, stationed near Dorchester. He found life rough but made many friends among the soldiers and was fortunate to be near Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hardy, to whom I had the satisfaction of introducing him.
It happened more than once that journalists and celebrity hunters would break in on Mr. Hardy’s quiet and meeting there a little figure in clumsy khaki with a quiet, almost filial regard for the old poet, would not give him a second glance. Whereas, as Mrs. Hardy has told me, ‘they would have given their ears, almost, for a conversation with him had they known who he was.’
Lawrence was never without a Brough-Superior racing motor-bicycle. Each year he used to wheedle a next year’s model from the makers—and ride it to death—to report on it. He nicknamed his machines ‘Boanerges’ (sons of thunder) and they carried him well. He had five of them in four years and rode 100,000 miles on them, making only two insurance claims (for superficial damage to the machine after skids) and hurting nobody. The greatest pleasure of his recent life has been speed on the road. The bicycle would do a hundred miles an hour, but he is not, he says, a racing man. The first time that he really let Boanerges the Third go, in the early dawn on a long stretch of road near Winchester, he was curious to see the speed-dial make two complete revolutions. It did, and broke with a scream, so he flattered himself that he covered an unknown number of miles beyond the hundred an hour. But this was not his daily practice.
He wrote to me in a letter: