Ivor Catt,

121 Westfields,

St. Albans AL3 4JR

3sep97

Peter C Metcalfe, T E Lawrence Society,

Dear Peter,

I have the nasty fear of your waking up from a dream, pinching yourself, and deciding that you were somehow drawn into a Syd/Ivor mesh, which really contributed much less than you thought to the Lawrence saga. You realise that I am too close to judge, so I feel vulnerable, unable to judge how much to press. I know you have reassured me, but I will never be confident, whatever you may say.

Your copy of the Syd autobiog (up to 1935) is complete but bitty, but probabl;y sufficient for your needs. If not, ask me to print out my computer, complete version and send it to you. It would cost me a pound or two in all to do so.

Thank you for your 30.8.97 note with copy of yours to Margery. I trust you will not mind my desisting from reading the latter. If I really must, then tell me so.

Syd confused Lawrence stepping down from high places, with his own lowliness and imagined spurning of high places.

Syd's reactons were far faster than anyone else. If I tried to work with him, he would smash my fingers. He would undertake a job very quickly, and get most angry if I held back, thought it over, and then came up with a better approach when he was half way through the job. He protested that I should have told him my idea at the start! His chicken runs were notoriously untidy.

Syd's fingers were seemingly 50% wider than anyone elses, which made him clumsy.

When Syd arrived back late from work, he would ring the front door. I would dash to the door, too late to catch him, by now ringing the back door. Rush there, and he had dashed back to the front door. In the end, he would ask angrily why nobody came to answer the door after he had had a hard day's work.

Syd would arrive home from an exhausting day's outing on his little motor bike (car too expensive), with all the food and thermos his wife had prepared for him untouched. He was too impatient to stop and drink the coffee; preferred to get home quicker, exhausted. But he did then want sympathy for his exhaustion!

I felt so sad when he handed over the tools to me when we were working on cementing the front drive. This had never happened before. His approach to doing a job with me was to rapidly conclude that I was malingering, and charge ahead alone. He showed his age by letting his fatigue rule over his impatience. I felt very sad when that happened, probably when he was aged 55. Never before would he hand over a tool, 'knowing' that the other person would just dawdle about and delay the job.

Syd would not buy the usual minimal tools when he owned his own house for the first time, at the age of 56. He did not even buy a manual drill brace. He kept to the gimlet. He would join bits of wood together with nails rather than screws, and would never have got down to a mortice, or the like. His picture framing was appalling, and they were stuck up there on the walls.

Syd would recount stories from his past life with tremendous enthusiasm. Enid complained that they were always exactly the same; if only they had grown, she might have enojoyed them, she said! "Group Captain Briggs-Smythe. Real gentleman." 30 seconds pause. Then; "Very fond of me!" We used to secretly crack up when we heard this for the umpteenth time, but not let on in front of the awed visitor, or even point it out to Syd. Or if we did, he would sulk, which we very much did not want him to do, preferring the roaring enthusiasm. Please realise that no such animal as a very fine gentleman who was not very fond of Syd existed. And vice versa. Living with Syd, Enid decided that her reactions were excessively slow, which they were not, and so never risked learning to drive.

Syd's approach to financial problems was to shout his head off for three hours, to the effect that the family finances were dire, but more or less lose interest when Enid managed to get him to hear her suggestion that a written, budgetary approach be embarked upon. Then nothing from him until the next 2 hour explosion some six months later. Very exciting! He had made his point, that money mattered, and we then got back to our lives. What the family finances really were, was not very much part of the commotion.

Syd's bad knee restricted his joining in outdoor pursuits with his son, but he did the best he could.

Syd was truly dedicated to music. He would practice the difficult bits in his tenor parts for hours, much to our pleasure. His dedication in mastering "like waters to death unto death ever dropping" (Brahms) stuck with me, so that when I came to sing it 20 years later, I was overcome with emotion. I could still hear his voice and his love of the music. His voice was beautiful. He always sang only in large choirs, occasionally in 8 voice madrigals. Never solo. He worshipped David Wilcocks, as I did when I sang under him in Cambridge. His daughter married a composer/lecturer in music.

On retiring, he got into the common stupid trap of ex-officers, of growing vegetables on a recalcitrant patch of land. For class reasons, he could not sell any, and he could not get day labour work. However, his wife could tutor by the hour, and he would grudgingly allow that she helped with the money.

On retirement, he used his poultry as an excuse for never being away from home for more than a few hours. He became increasingly attached to his home; the opposite of his earlier life. But Japan was a massive influence.

He had a lot to contend with with his wife's menopausal and other nonsenses later in life. He said he was at a loss over how to deal with them.

Late in life, half blind, Syd pumped sludge out of the cesspit for his damned veg garden, and they all feared he would fall in and die. None of them (wife, daughter next door, son in law,) thought to build a grid to fit the hole, which solved the problem. I did it in 30 minutes. Syd and Enid gave themselves health problems by pouring the cesspit sludge over their veg garden. Daft.

Enid's tragedy was of a brilliant mind unfulfilled. She asserted she had brought up two very able children. Margery claims she was lazy.

I regret the failure of both Enid and of Margery to deliver what they were capable of. I feel that in the case of Margery, she got sidetracked into social climbing. However, I have an over-developed urge to contribute, as you have seen.

Syd achieved in abundance, according to his abilities. If I had got hold of him and tutored him at an early age, I could have made something of him academically. However, the whole system, including marrying a brilliant mathematician, continually drove him to withdrawal from academic effort, and feeling of inadequacy. I could have got him over this, had I had him at the age of 8, or 12, or 16, or 18. But I wasn't born. (I have been schoolteacher and also lecturer.)

Yours sincerely,

Ivor Catt