I met T. E. Lawrence first at a guest-night at All Souls’. Lawrence had just been given a college fellowship, and it was the first time for many years that he had worn evening dress. The restlessness of his eyes was the first thing about him I noticed. He told me that he had read my poems in Egypt during one of his flying visits from Arabia; he and my brother Philip had been together in the Intelligence Department at Cairo, before his part in the Arab revolt had begun, working out the Turkish order of battle. I knew nothing about his organization of the Arab revolt, his exploits and sufferings in the desert, and his final entry into Damascus. He was merely, to me, a fellow-soldier who had come back to Oxford for a rest after the war. But I felt a sudden extraordinary sympathy with him. Later, when I was told that every one was fascinated by Lawrence, I tried to dismiss this feeling as extravagant. But it remained. Between lectures at Oxford I now often visited Lawrence at All Souls’. Though he never drank himself, he used always to send his scout for a silver goblet of audit ale for me. Audit ale was brewed in the college; it was as soft as barley-water but of great strength. (A prince once came down to Oxford to open a new museum and lunched at All Souls’ before the ceremony; the mildness of the audit ale deceived him—he took it for lager—and he had to be taken back to the station in a cab with the blinds drawn.) Nancy and I lunched in Lawrence’s rooms once with Vachel Lindsay, the American poet, and his mother. Mrs. Lindsay was from Springfield, Illinois, and, like her son, a prominent member of the Illinois Anti-Saloon League. When Lawrence told his scout that Mr. Lindsay, though a poet, was an Anti-Saloon Leaguer, he was scandalized and asked Lawrence’s permission to lay on Lindsay’s place a copy of verses composed in 1661 by a fellow of the college. One stanza was: The poet divine that cannot reach wine, Because that his money doth many times faile, Will hit on the vein to make a good strain, If he be but inspired with a pot of good ale. Mrs. Lindsay had been warned by friends to comment on nothing unusual that she met at Oxford. Lawrence had brought out the college gold service in her honour and this she took to be the ordinary thing at a university luncheon-party.