Three autograph letters signed, to B.E. Leeson - photo 1

Three autograph letters signed, to B.E. Leeson

Lot 206
21.09.2023 10:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 3 810
AuctioneerSotheby´s
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1028508
Lot 206 | Three autograph letters signed, to B.E. Leeson
Estimate value
£ 3 000 – 5 000
Three autograph letters signed, to B.E. Leeson

i) signed “R”, congratulating him on his engagement and settled life, but not his choice of motorcycle ("... [the Overland] does not go like my S.S. 80, which is the beloved of all the camp..."), which he contrasts to his own life ("...I'm not engaged, nor manager, nor official: but in the Tank Corps as a private. Employment exclusively fatigues. Today Sergts. Mess. Yesterday transport yard. Only flies in the pudding are the weekly or fortnightly guards. Guarding nothing without arms is amusing for about two hours, & then palls..."), lamenting his treatment by the air force (“I curse the R.A.F. which kicked me out into this life”), 2 pages, 8vo, 14 Barton Street, London, 28 September 1923

ii) signed T.E. Shaw,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

iii) signed “T.E.S.”, summarising his current life ("...I still boat-build for the RAF and stir up trouble and suspicion. Also I seem to retain my news-value. Yet another 'life' of me (bad, too) appears in the spring..."), and making clear that a formal dinner at Leeson's club would not suit his ascetic lifestyle ("...I have no dress clothes, no money for them or for the railway fares, nor leave this year, no leisure, and a distaste for dining well. Perfection is fish & chips in a newspaper. Fourpence, and no sitting down..."), 2 pages, folio, 13 Birmingham Street, Southampton, 21 December 1933, 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.
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