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QOTD: Lawrence of Clouds Hill
“You wonder what I am doing? Well, so do I, in truth. Days seem to dawn, suns to shine, evenings to follow, and then I sleep. What I have done, what I am doing, what I am going to do, puzzle and bewilder me. Have you ever been a leaf and fallen from your tree in autumn and been really puzzled about it? That’s the feeling.” — T.E. Lawrence, Letter, May 1935
A legendary spy and warrior, and perhaps one of the early twentieth-century’s “most interesting men” wrote these words a few short weeks after retiring from military service, just after he had refused a knighthood from the King, and only days before he died in a motorcycle accident.
Thomas Edward Lawrence (born one-hundred twenty-nine years ago today) was forty-six years old, a fact which brings home how absurdly young he was when he started his work for British intelligence (he was twenty-five, and only thirty when the First World War ended), and he’d retired to Clouds Hill, a small brick cottage in the heart of Dorset to tend his garden, the centerpiece of which was a massive, rambling rhododendron that had been gifted to him by the novelist Thomas Hardy and his wife.
Although he’s known as a recluse, and, in general, as a rather odd duck, his later Letters point to a sweet disposition, a desire to socialize, and an interesting range of acquaintance.
But after his discharge from the Royal Air Force, he was clearly at a loose end and didn’t quite know what to do with himself, writing in March: “I wander about London in a queer unrest, wondering if my mainspring will ever have a tension in it again. So, I’m not cheerful actually, but sad at losing my R.A.F. existence. It was good, and I felt useful.” And, in April this, (to Mrs. Thomas Hardy), “I feel very indisposed to do anything more; and very tired.” And, to Nancy Astor, just ten days before he died, “There is something broken in the works, as I told you: my will, I think.”
He was fond of comparing himself to a falling Autumn leaf, drifting through the air and down to the ground, puzzled and bewildered as to what was happening to it, and he did so again here:
I’m ‘out’ now, of the R.A.F. and sitting in my cottage rather puzzled to find out what has happened to me, is happening and will happen. At present the feeling is mere bewilderment. I imagine leaves must feel like this after they have fallen from their tree and until they die. Let’s hope that will not be my continuing state.
For good or for ill, it was not to be his “continuing state” for very long. Two weeks later, he was out joyriding on his beloved Brough Superior SS100 motorcycle (pictured below) in the Dorset countryside, and he swerved to avoid two boys walking along the road in the opposite direction. He pitched off his cycle onto his head, and suffered a devastating injury.
Lawrence was in a coma for six days before he died. One of his attending neurosurgeons was Hugh Cairns, who used the experience as the foundation for his research into the frequent head injuries and unnecessary deaths of motorcycle dispatch riders. The motorcycle crash helmet developed from his work, and soon became a commonplace accessory in both the military and civilian worlds.
Lawrence’s funeral, in the tiny hamlet of Moreton, was attended by Winston and Clementine Churchill, E.M Forster, Lady Astor, and several other luminaries who were close friends and correspondents. This obituary from the New York Times sheds some light on what type of man Lawrence was, and the esteem in which he was held by his friends (although for my own part, I can hardly get past the bit that tells me Lawrence was attended by the King’s physician, Sir Farquhar Buzzard. Monty Python, please call your office).
Thomas Edward Lawrence, August 16, 1888–May 19, 1935
I have to say that I have greatly enjoyed retirement, ever since it came around for me. I welcomed the unwinding of my own “mainspring,” as I was no longer on call 7x24x365, likely at any moment to be whisked away from what I was doing because of a suspected intrusion into the hospital computer system; a malfunctioning piece of equipment that was preventing life-saving patient care from occurring in a timely way; a doctor who was scratching his online, malware-laden, porn itch on my network in one of the on-call rooms, or posting patient-identifiable photos and other information on-line without permission (yes, it does happen); or some other mind-boggling technical or human calamity, perhaps with serious legal, financial, or career-limiting implications.
And I’ve never been too concerned with leaves that fall from the tree, either. I know they rot into mulch and are absorbed back into the ground (I’ve heard that there are people who actually rake them up, but I dismiss this as sheer fantasy), and I have faith that, next Spring, buds will form on the trees, and the cycle will begin anew.
I’d love to hear retirement stories from the Ricochetti who, like me, have passed “a certain age.” Do you enjoy it? Are you bored? What do you do? Do you have too much, or too little, to do? Can you even imagine how you ever found time to get your job done before you retired? And anything else you care to share. (If you’re not yet of that age, are you looking forward to it, and counting the days, like @Arahant’s dad? Or do you dread it?)
And, by the way, if the historians among us would like to opine on Lawrence of Arabia, his life, his adventures, and his legacy, I’d love that, too.
Published in General
PS – For those not yet here: Do what you can while you can.
Had a friend looking forward to travelling with his 5’er after retirement, but one week after retirement died. My brother, OTOH, is retired and he and his wife are just as active as they can be – travelling, visiting, so on. I enjoy his travelogues.
We were anticipating similar, but the wife can’t travel any more at all. Rarely is able to help out in the kitchen. This is not a complaint, not seeking a pity party – some may not understand, but I may truthfully say with King David that the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. This is, rather, a reminder to redeem the time, for you do not know what tomorrow may bring (Luke 12:19-21; Prov. 27:1)
Amen to that.
Quite well, thank you. And Nuclear Physics was my favorite engineering class. Talk about some serious thermo going dynamic. I need to get up from this chair and attend to the thermodynamics of supper at the moment.
I think I can try to address (however obliquely) both thermodynamics (my favorite subject when I studied molecular biology and biophysics at Yale, a long time ago) and poetry in this very brief poem, which I dedicated to my oldest son, his lovely wife, and their two wonderful children —both way too young to try a martini!
I had to put a few asterisks after the title; that was the only way I could get a space between the title and the poem’s first line.
THERMODYNAMICS OF THE MARTINI
***
An abstract algebra of winter trees,
an alphabet, as one can plainly see,
is offered us, now that the bumblebees
are sleeping. Phoebe, could you sing for me,
while sunlight lifts the branches? Can this be
the Heaven I was promised at eighteen?
In comments, you can use Shift-Enter to do a line feed rather than a full paragraph. Unfortunately, it does not work when posting a new conversation, and every new line defaults to a new paragraph for some reason that only @max knows.
Oh, I dunno, took them almost two thousand years to catch up to the Romans, as far as plumbing and central heating go . . .
I think I can understand this. Thanks for what you do.
But unlike the Romans, they were always willing to follow commerce to strange places. Not much on conquest; less on taking control; but not hard to pull away from their own…