Goodbye to all That by Robert Graves — Read

THE first time I met Colonel T. E. Lawrence, he happened to be wearing full evening dress. That must have been in February or March 1920, and the occasion was a guest-night at All Souls', where he had been awarded a seven-years' Fellowship. The formality of evening dress concentrates attention on eyes, and Lawrence's eyes immediately held me. They were startlingly blue, even by artificial light, and never met the eyes of the person he addressed, but flickered up and down as though making an inventory of clothes and limbs. I was only an accidental guest and knew few people there. Lawrence, talking to the Regius Professor of Divinity about the influence of the Syrian Greek philosophers on early Christianity, and especially of the importance of the University of Gadara close to the Lake of Galilee, mentioned that St James had quoted one of the Gadarene philosophers (I think, Mnasalcus) in his Epistle.

He went on to speak of Meleager, and the other Syrian-Greek contributors to the Greek Anthology, whose poems he intended to publish in English translation. I joined in the conversation and mentioned a morning-star image which Meleager once used in rather an un-Greek way. Lawrence turned to me. 'You must be Graves the poet? I read a book of yours in Egypt in 1917, and thought it pretty good.'