Beschreibung:

LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935). Long autograph inscription to Mrs [Jessie] Liddell Hart signed ('T.E.S.'), 6 March 1934, on front free endpaper of Liddell Hart, T.E. Lawrence. In Arabia and after (London: Jonathan Cape, 1934), 4to, morocco-backed boards, the volume also inscribed by 18 other friends, colleagues and comrades of Lawrence, and with two photographic reproductions of portrait drawings of Lawrence by Augustus John tipped in, each signed on verso by the subject ('T.E. Shaw') and dated 23 September 1929. Provenance : bookplate of Liddell Hart
LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935). Long autograph inscription to Mrs [Jessie] Liddell Hart signed ('T.E.S.'), 6 March 1934, on front free endpaper of Liddell Hart, T.E. Lawrence. In Arabia and after (London: Jonathan Cape, 1934), 4to, morocco-backed boards, the volume also inscribed by 18 other friends, colleagues and comrades of Lawrence, and with two photographic reproductions of portrait drawings of Lawrence by Augustus John tipped in, each signed on verso by the subject ('T.E. Shaw') and dated 23 September 1929. Provenance : bookplate of Liddell Hart; [ with ] two autograph letters signed by Lawrence ('T.E. Shaw') to Mrs Liddell Hart, 14 Barton Street, London, and Bridlington, Yorkshire, 18 September 1929 and 25 February 1935, in the first referring to the John portrait reproductions, 'I have no photographs of myself. The ordeal of going in cold blood to be taken is too fierce ... John is a very lovely artist, and his beautiful lines atone for the shortcomings of my face as a "juvenile lead"', the second letter written on the eve of his departure from the RAF and expressing the vagueness of his plans, 'Tomorrow a.m. I leave here, and leave the R.A.F. and I do not know anything beyond it. If the weather allows I shall cycle slowly down England to my cottage, stay one night there, and go further ... I feel unfixed and in the air', together 2 pages, 4to ; and related letters by Augustus John (2), Robert Graves and two others. Lawrence's typically self-deprecating inscription in Liddell Hart's biography conveys his apologies 'for taking, in ink, the prior place that he never did (or will) take in real life. Print is a joke, first, but turns serious, as time passes. It will be very sad if posterity is deluded by its fondness for colour into believing that he did, deliberately, one tenth of what this book ascribes to him. Chance, the help of others, the fatuity of enemies -- to those what merits there may have been'. The accompanying inscriptions include WINSTON CHURCHILL ('I gladly join myself to the distinguished company here represented'), David Lloyd George, Jan Smuts, Edmund, 1st Viscount Allenby, Hugh, 1st Viscount Trenchard, George Bernard Shaw ('I am the real, proper, original SHAW ... I had no part in the adventures described in this volume, and on the grounds of probability think it unlikely that they ever occurred'), John Buchan, Augustus John H.G. Wells and others.