trained by Lawrence as a photographer, came on a visit with him to
England. They enjoyed Oxford, particularly the sport of bicycle riding,
which was new to them. They had women’s bicycles because of their long
robes, and got into trouble for the delight that they took in bicycling
round and round the policeman who stands in the centre of ‘Carfax,’ the
principal cross-roads of the city. They slept out in the garden.
Their one regret was that they could not take the hot-water-taps back
with them: Lawrence could not make them understand that these would not
work in a Syrian mud-brick village as they did at No. 2 Polstead Road,
Oxford. And they would stand in the public lavatories and stroke the
white glazed ‘beautiful beautiful bricks.’
Among the women for whom Lawrence has had the greatest respect was
the late Miss Gertrude Bell, one of the great English travellers in
Arabia before Lawrence’s day. (Among these, by the way, who include
Palgrave, Doughty and the Blunts, he does not reckon Sir Richard
Burton who, he says, did not travel single-mindedly as the others did,
wrote so difficult an English style as to be unreadable, and was both
pretentious and vulgar. Among non-English travellers, he speaks highly
of Burckhardt and Niebuhr.) Gertrude Bell visited the Carchemish camp
one morning in 1911 and since news of her coming had arrived before
her, the village was in a great state of excitement. At the time there
were only three Englishmen in the camp: Dr. Hogarth who was married,
Mr. Campbell-Thompson who was widely known to be engaged, and Lawrence
who wore the red tasselled belt to his white flannel shorts which
marked the bachelor in those parts. It was decided by the diggers
that Gertrude Bell was coming to marry Lawrence and all preparations
were made for a festival. When, therefore, she said good-bye the same
evening and prepared to go off there was a great clamour. It was
thought that she had refused Lawrence and so insulted the village.
Lawrence managed to quiet them down by an ungallant but successful lie
before stones were thrown and Gertrude Bell, who had been puzzled by
the demonstration, never learned the truth until Hogarth told her
some years later: it amused her greatly.
There were two digging seasons at Carchemish: between June and
September the local harvest claimed the workmen, and between November
and March the rains rained and the snow snowed and the Euphrates
flooded the lowlands into a marsh. In the off-seasons Lawrence did not
usually return to England but wandered instead all over Syria and the
Near East studying antiquities, learning Arabic and getting in touch
with the members of the various Arab Freedom societies of which an
account will be given in the next chapter. He had already begun to take
steps for the fulfilment of his schoolboy ambition to help in the Arab
Revolt. But his immediate object was to collect information for writing
a history of the Crusades. This is another book that he has never found
time to write. He did, however, complete a travel-book called ‘Seven
Pillars of Wisdom,’ later destroyed in manuscript, about seven typical
Near-Eastern cities: Cairo, Smyrna, Constantinople, Beyrout, Aleppo,
Damascus, Medina.
He was, among other things, a student of world-politics and saw that
the alliance between the Turks and the Germans would have dangerous
results. The Constantinople-Bagdad railway was part of a German scheme
for establishing an Eastern Empire with the Turks as allies. He had
already paid a visit to Lord Kitchener pointing out the danger of
letting the Germans get control of the port of Alexandretta which is
in the crook between Asia Minor and Syria, but Kitchener told him that
he knew all about it. He had repeatedly warned the British Foreign
Office of the complications that would follow—the French had ambitions
for the control of Syria too—but Sir Edward Greys pacific policy
allowed no alternative. Kitchener’s final words to Lawrence were that
within three years there would be a world-war which would settle this
lesser question with a greater. ‘So run along, young man, and dig
before it rains.’ It has been said that Lawrence’s way of calling
public attention in Europe to the concealed threat to world-peace in
the building of the railway that linked Berlin with Bagdad was this:
that he loaded sections of drainage pipes on mules and transported them
by night to the hills which commanded the bridge; that he mounted them
on piles of sand to resemble guns; that, as he expected, the Germans
observed them through field-glasses, got excited and wired to Berlin
and Constantinople that the British were fortifying the hills; that the
European press was excited for days. There is no word of truth in all
this comic-paper stuff. To begin with, Lawrence had no drainage pipes
at his disposal.
The following are extracts from letters of Lawrence from Carchemish.
The first is dated September 1912:
‘To-day is the end of Ramadan, and they are surging in and out of the
courtyard firing revolvers, and bringing me portions from the feast
going on in the village. I have twelve sheets of bread, wrapping
up twelve packets of parched corn, with grapes and cucumbers in
abundance. But I can’t yet talk Arabic!
‘There is a splendid dress called “of the seven kings”:—long parallel
stripes of the most fiery colours from neck to ankle: it looks
glorious: and over that they wear a short blue coat, turned up at the
cuffs to show a dull red lining, and they gird themselves with a belt
of thirteen vari-coloured tassels, and put a black silk and silver
weave of Hamath work over their heads under a black goat-hair
head-rope. You have then only to add a vest of gold-embroidered silk,
and white under-tunics to get the idea of one man’s dress (I have
forgotten Kurd knitted socks in nine primary colours, and red shoes),
and there are ninety and nine, all different, eating a sheep before
the door!
‘All is well here (after bad waves of cholera and smallpox) and I
expect to get back at Christmas.’
The second letter is dated December 1913:
‘I have gradually slipped down, until a few months ago when I found
myself an ordinary archæologist. I fought very hard, at Oxford and
after going down, to avoid being labelled: but the insurance people
have nailed me down, now.... I have got to like this place very much:
and the people here—five or six of them—and the whole manner of living
pleases me. We have 200 men to play with, anyhow we like so long as
the excavations go on, and they are very splendid fellows many of
them—I had two of them, head-men, in England with me this summer-and
it is great fun with them. Then there are the digs, with dozens
of wonderful things to find; and hosts of beautiful things in the
villages and towns to fill one’s house with. Not to mention Hittite
seal-hunting in the country round about, and the Euphrates to rest in
when one is over-hot. It is a place where one eats lotus nearly every
day.’
In the winter of 1913 Dr. Hogarth was asked to suggest an archæologist
who might join the surveying party in the peninsula of Sinai—the
desert between Palestine and Egypt in which Moses kept the Jews
wandering until he had made a fighting people of them. He recommended
Woolley, but Woolley could not spare the three months that he
was wanted for, so he and Lawrence went together for six weeks and
divided the work between them. They got on well with the surveyor,
Captain Newcombe, an Engineer officer who afterwards was in Arabia
with Lawrence, and made important discoveries of ancient remains.
They mapped out, not too seriously perhaps, the probable route of the
Israelites’ marches and found the place which may have been Kadesh
Barnea where Moses struck the rock and water gushed out. They went as
far as Petra and Maan in Arabia, places that figured importantly in
Lawrence’s campaign four years later. Their report appears in a book
called _The Wilderness of Sin_, published in 1914 by the Palestine
Exploration Fund. The survey could not be complete without certain
bearings taken at the Red Sea port of Akaba, but the Turks had refused
permission, for military reasons. Lawrence told Newcombe that he would
go and look at Akaba. He got there without opposition and took what
notes he wanted. Then he had a sudden desire to explore the ancient
ruins on a little island called Faroun Island which lies a quarter of
a mile from the coast. He asked permission to use the one boat that
was on the beach. The Turks refused and a large party drew the boat up
on the beach so that he could not possibly move it. That did not stop
Lawrence. In the middle of the day when all Turkish soldiers go to
sleep he made a raft out of three of his large camel water-tanks. These
copper tanks hold eighteen gallons apiece and measure about three feet
six inches by one foot three inches, and are nine inches deep; they
make excellent rafts. The wind took him safely across and he inspected
the ruins, but he had difficulty on the return journey. The water was
full of sharks, too.
The survey, it should be explained, was ordered by Kitchener for
military purposes. But it was disguised as archæology. The Palestine
Exploration Fund got permission from the Turks for it and the task
of Lawrence and Woolley was, they found on arrival, to provide the
archæological excuse for Newcombe’s map-making activities.
II
A brief description of Lawrence:—He is short (five feet, five and a
half inches), with his body long, I should judge, in proportion to his
legs, for he is more impressive seated than standing. He has a big
head of a Norse type, rising steeply at the back. His hair is fair
(not blond) and rather fine: his complexion is fair and he could go
unshaved longer than most men without showing it. The upper part of
his face is kindly, almost maternal; the lower part is severe, almost
cruel. His eyes are blue grey and constantly in motion. His hands and
feet are small. He is, or was, of great physical strength: he has been
seen to raise up a rifle at arm’s length, holding it by the barrel-end,
until it was parallel with the ground—yet no one would suspect him
of being more than tough. In Arabia he won the respect of the desert
fighters by his feats of strength and agility as much as by his other
qualities. The pass-test of the highest order of fighters was the feat
of springing off a trotting camel and leaping on again with one hand on
the saddle and a rifle in the other. It is said that Lawrence passed
the test. Of his powers of physical endurance the story will tell.
Here are a few first impressions of Lawrence; difficult to
reconcile:—‘_That_ commonplace looking little man!’ (a poet). ‘Face and
figure of a Circassian dancing-girl’ (an American journalist-lecturer).
‘A little man with a red face like a butcher’ (Royal Tank Corps).
‘Face like a cheap writing-pad; a proper swede-looking (i.e. bumpkin)
chap’ (Royal Air Force). ‘A comical little x—’ (Royal Tank Corps). ‘A
young man of considerable physical beauty: it is the sober truth that
I have not seen such burnished gold hair before or since, nor such
intensely blue eyes’ (a visitor at Carchemish). ‘A very quiet, sedate
manner, a fine head but insignificant body’ (a major of the Camel
Corps).
He has a trick of holding his hands loosely folded below his breast,
the elbows to his sides, and carries his head a little tilted, the
eyes on the ground. He can sit or stand for hours at a stretch without
moving a muscle. He talks in short sentences, deliberately and quietly
without accenting his words strongly. He grins a lot and laughs seldom.
He is a dead shot with a pistol and a good rifle-shot. His greatest
natural gift is being able to switch off the current of his personality
whenever he wishes to be unnoticed in company. He can look heavy and
stupid, even vulgar; and uses this power constantly in self-protection.
When he first joined the Royal Air Force he was sent one day to nail
down carpets under the direction of an Air-Marshal’s wife. She had
known him well, but Lawrence to avoid general embarrassment did not
wish to be recognized, and so she did not know him. As a matter of
fact he is hardly ever recognized in uniform by people who used to
know him. The tight collar and peaked cap are a disguise and there is
nothing immediately remarkable about his appearance, no irregularity
of feature or gesture or carriage. When the current is not switched
off there is a curious feeling of force whenever he is in the room,
a steady force, not an aimless disturbing one, and the more powerful
because it is so well controlled; so that those who do not accept him
as a friendly being are apt to fear him. I have even heard it said
‘Lawrence must have direct dealings with the Supernatural.’ This is,
however, nonsense. The power is from within and not from without. I
have noticed that he dislikes being touched; a hand laid on his
shoulder or knee is an offence; he can understand the Oriental notion
that ‘virtue’ (he would, I think, call it ‘integrity’) goes out of a
man when so touched. He will never shake hands if he can avoid doing
so nor will he ever fight hand to hand. He does not drink or smoke.
This is not due to deliberate teetotal conviction or because he regards
these things as poison, but principally because he has no occasion to
drink or smoke. Most people begin drinking and smoking out of mere
sociability: Lawrence always avoids sociability of any sort. He is
uncomfortable with strangers: this is what is called his shyness.
He regards drinking, gluttony, gambling, sport and the passions of
love—the whole universe for the average man—as unnecessary; as, at the
best, stimulants for the years when life goes flat.
He avoids eating with other people. Regular mealtimes are not to his
liking. He hates waiting more than two minutes for a meal or spending
more than five minutes on a meal. That is why he lives mainly on bread
and butter. And he likes water better than any other drink. It is
his opinion that feeding is a very intimate performance and should
be done in a small room behind locked doors. He eats, when he does
eat, which is seldom, in a casual abstracted way. He came to visit
me one breakfast-time on his racing motor-bicycle: he had come about
two hundred miles in five hours. He would eat no breakfast. I asked
him later what the food was like in the camp. ‘I seldom eat it: it’s
good enough. I am now a storeman in the Quartermaster’s stores, so
I don’t need much.’ ‘When did you last have a meal?’ I asked. ‘On
Wednesday.’ Since when apparently he had some chocolate, an orange and
a cup of tea. This was Saturday. Then I think I put some apples
near him, and after a while he reached for one. Fruit is his only
self-indulgence. (Shelley, by the way, had this casual habit of eating,
though he did not thrive on it like Lawrence: and he had Lawrence’s
gift of entering and leaving a room unnoticed if he wished.) It is his
occasional habit to knock off proper feeding for three days—rarely
five—just to make sure that he can do it without feeling worried or
strained. One’s sense of things gets very keen by this fasting, he
finds, and it is good practice for hard times. His life has been full
of hard times.
Lawrence also, when his own master, avoids regular hours of sleep. He
has found that his brain works better if he sleeps as irregularly as
he eats. In the Royal Air Force he is always in bed at ‘Lights Out’
and sleeps until after midnight. Then he dozes, thinking more or less
until reveille. At night, he finds, the minds of others are switched
off and that gives his mind longer range, free of their vibrations. He
avoids as far as possible all social relationships, all public events.
He joins no clubs, societies, groups. He answers few letters but the
immediately pressing ones and not always those. On visiting Oxford in
1922 after two months prolonged to six in the East, he found his table
stacked with correspondence; perhaps two or three hundred letters.
He had given orders to have nothing forwarded. He read them all
carefully and sent off a single answer—a telegram: the rest went into
the waste-paper basket. Usually he will answer a pre-paid telegram.
Or, it would be more true to say, he will use the reply-form, though
not necessarily to the sender. He _never_ answers a letter addressed
to him as ‘Lawrence’: this warning may save some of my readers money
in stamps. When he does write a letter it is not of the sort that
finds its way into the waste-paper basket. A Lawrence letter is
always practical, considered, full, helpful, informative. This sort of
thing ... ‘When you go to Rheims, go alone. Sit down at the base of the
sixth pilaster from the west on the south side of the nave aisle and
look up between the fourth and fifth pillars at the third window of the
clerestory on the north side of the nave....’ (1910).
He is one of the rare people who have a sensible attitude towards
money. He neither loves it nor fears it, for he has found it useless to
help on the two or three occasions when he has greatly desired things
worth while. He can be a financier if and when it pleases him: for the
most part he is not bothered about his bank-balance. At the moment he
has no bank-balance at all, and has taken great care not to make a
penny out of any of his writings on the Arab Revolt. Apart from this
he has done his best to earn money with his pen, and has made £35 in
four years’ anonymous effort. He calls these earnings the jam on his
Royal Air Force bread and butter. He writes with great difficulty and
corrects much; and takes no pride or pleasure in anything that he has
written. Most of these earnings are from translation-work and none
of them from creative or original writing. He never intends to write
another real book. He usually writes, by the way, in indian ink because
it makes a good mark on the page. His handwriting is unpretentious and
at first sight almost schoolboyish; but always legible. It varies very
much with his mood, from large and square to small and narrow, from
upright to a slight backward slant. I believe that the one thing that
he likes is to find some one who knows more than himself or can do
something better than himself. To such a person he will attach himself
and learn all that is to be learned. And if he meets someone who
can actually think faster or more accurately than himself and can
even anticipate him in his apparently erratic but most carefully
considered behaviour, so much the better. At the same time he has a
savage conviction of his own general insufficiency which he will not
allow to be contradicted by particular occasions on which he has been
proved to excel others. It is not modesty but a sincere faith in his
own unworthiness suggesting the cries in the Church Litany and will not
stand contradiction.
Perhaps his most unexpected personal characteristic is that he never
looks at a man’s face and never recognizes a face. This is inherited;
his father one day stepped on his toe in the street and passed on with
an apology, not knowing him. He would not recognize his mother or his
brothers, even, if he met them without warning. Long practice has made
Lawrence able to talk for twenty minutes at a time to whoever accosts
him without betraying that he hasn’t a notion who the person is. Yet he
can remember names and details of taste and character, and words and
opinions and places vividly and at great length. He does his best to
see people; but is constantly getting into trouble for not recognizing
and saluting officers when they are out of uniform; for nobody is
willing to believe his excuses.
He has never been dogmatic about any creed or political conviction: he
has no belief in a philosophic Absolute. He has no use for crowds or
any person whose only strength is that he is a member of some society
or creed. He clearly also expects people to find themselves and be true
to themselves, and to leave their neighbours to do the same: he would
wish every man to be an everlasting question-mark. He can be relentless
to the point of cruelty: the shock of his anger, which is a cold
quiet laughing anger, is violent. To hear him, say, dismissing an
impostor who claims to have served during the War in the East in such
and such a unit, or reminding a bully of men deliberately sent to their
death by him in such and such a province, is a terrifying experience.
But when the offender is gone, the anger goes too and leaves no trace.
Lawrence does not like children (or dogs or camels) in mass, in the
usual sentimental way. He likes a few children (as also a few dogs, a
few camels). From the rest he shrinks. He is afraid of them, and he is
sorry for them, as for creatures forced, without having their wishes
consulted, into an existence in which, if they are good creatures,
they will necessarily find disappointment. This will not prevent him
at times from talking really to a child, treating it as an independent
person and not merely as a clever echo of its parents.
He has, it seems, no use for the human race as such or interest in its
continuance. He has no sentimentality about universal brotherhood, like
Swift; he has no use for the works of men. And has come to this view, I
think, by the same road as Swift, by an overwhelming sense of personal
liberty, a largeness of heart, and an intense desire for perfection so
obviously unattainable as hardly to be worth starting for.
We may conclude that when, in 1922, his dislike of the crowd became
too strong and he saw that it was becoming a definite limitation
for him, when he found in fact after the apparent triumph of the
Arabian adventure that in avoiding the mask of a popular hero he was
withdrawing more and more and becoming unwholesomely interested in
just being himself, he took a violent course-he enlisted and bound
himself to a life in which he was forced perpetually to be a member
of the crowd. The Army and Air Force are the modern equivalent of the
monastery, and after five years he does not regret his choice of a
life as nearly physical as an animal’s, in which food is provided, and
drink, and a round of work in harness and a stable afterwards until the
new day brings a repetition of the work of yesterday.
[Illustration:
description: Photo full shot 3⁄4 view of Lawrence in shorts
standing against a wall
caption: ‘AIRCRAFTMAN SHAW’
in ‘Scruff order’
_Copyright_
]
What is called Lawrence’s ‘love of publicity’ can best be explained as
a burning desire to know himself, for no one can be himself except by
first knowing himself. To publicity in the sense of what is published
about him he is indifferent; he is never more than amused at what
he has read about himself. But it ceases to be amusing to him when
he meets people who believe all they read about him and act as if
legend was truth. He denies the legend, and they say ‘how modest these
heroes are’: and he is nearly sick. He does not believe that heroes
exist or ever have existed; he suspects them all of being frauds. If
he is interested at times in what people may think of him this is
only because their opinion may show him what sort of a man he is more
clearly than any amount of self-examination can. He has been often
accused of vanity because he has sat for his portrait to so many
artists and sculptors—he has only four times refused to sit—but it is
the opposite of vanity. A vain man has a very clear view of himself
which he tries to force on his neighbours. Lawrence sits for his
portrait because he wants to discover what he is, by the effect which
he produces on the artist: so far from being vain he clearly has no
picture of himself at all except a contemptuous one. He accepts the
view that he is a complete humbug and play actor; chiefly, perhaps,
because people who are themselves humbugs and actors see him so in
their own likeness.