T. E. Lawrence

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"Lawrence of Arabia" redirects here. For the motion picture, see Lawrence of Arabia (film).

Image:Thomas Edward Lawrence-Lawrence of Arabia.JPG Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO, Legion of Honour (August 16, 1888 – May 19, 1935), professionally known as T.E. Lawrence and, later, T.E. Shaw, but most famously known as Lawrence of Arabia, gained international renown for his role as a British liaison officer during the Arab Revolt of 1916 to 1918. His very public image was in some part the result of U.S. traveller and journalist Lowell Thomas's sensationalised reportage of the Revolt, as well as Lawrence's autobiographical account, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Many Arabs consider him a folk hero for promoting their cause for freedom from both Ottoman and European rule; likewise, many Britons count him among their country's greatest war heroes.

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Early years

Lawrence was born in Tremadog, Caernarfonshire, North Wales, of mixed English and Scottish ancestry. His father, Sir Thomas Chapman, seventh Baronet of Westmeath in Ireland, had escaped a reported tyrannical wife to live with his daughters' governess, Sarah Junner, with whom he had five sons. The couple lived at 2 Polstead Road (now with a blue plaque) in Oxford, under the names of Mr and Mrs Lawrence. Their son Thomas Edward attended the City of Oxford High School for Boys. In about 1905 Lawrence ran away from home and served for a few weeks as a boy soldier with the Royal Garrison Artillery at St Mawes Castle in Cornwall; he was bought out.[1]

From 1907, Lawrence was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours after submitting a highly-acclaimed thesis entitled The influence of the Crusades on European Military Architecture – to the end of the 12th century, for which he did archaeological field research in France and Damascus.

On completing his degree in 1910, he commenced postgraduate research in medieval pottery with a Senior Demy at Magdalen College, Oxford, which he abandoned after he was offered the opportunity to become a practising archaeologist in the Middle East. In December 1910 he sailed for Beirut, and on arrival went to Jbail (Byblos) where he studied Arabic. He then went to work on the excavations at Carchemish near to Jerablus in the northern part of Syria, where he worked under D.G. Hogarth and R. Campbell-Thompson of the British Museum. It was while he was excavating ancient Mesopotamian sites that he met Gertrude Bell, who had an influence on him for much of his time in the Middle East.

In the late summer of 1911 he returned to England for a brief sojourn and, by November, he was back en route to Beirut for a second season at Carchemish. Prior to returning to work he worked briefly with William Flinders Petrie at Kafr Ammar in Egypt. At Carchemish he was to work with Leonard Woolley. He continued making trips to the Middle East as a field archaeologist until the outbreak of World War I. His extensive travels through Arabia, his excursions, often on foot, living with the Arabs, wearing their clothes, learning their culture, language and local dialects, were to prove invaluable during the conflict.

In January 1914 Woolley and Lawrence were co-opted by the British military as an archaeological smokescreen for a British military survey of the Sinai peninsula. At this time Lawrence visited Aqaba and Petra. From March to May, Lawrence worked again at Carchemish. Following the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, on advice from S.F. Newcombe, Lawrence did not enlist immediately, but held back until October.

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The Arab Revolt

Main article Arab Revolt

Image:Feisalirregulars.JPG Once enlisted he was posted to Cairo, where he worked for British Military Intelligence. Lawrence's intimate knowledge of the Arab people made him the ideal liaison between British and Arab forces and in October 1916 he was sent into the desert to report on the Arab nationalist movements. During the war, he fought with Arab irregular troops under the command of Emir Faisal, a son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca, in extended guerrilla operations against the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence's major contribution to World War I was convincing Arab leaders to co-ordinate their revolt to aid British interests. He persuaded the Arabs not to drive the Ottomans out of Medina, thus forcing the Turks to tie up troops in the city garrison. The Arabs were then able to direct most of their attention to the Hejaz railway that supplied the garrison. This tied up more Ottoman troops, who were forced to protect the railway and repair the constant damage. In 1917 Lawrence arranged a joint action with the Arab irregulars and forces under Auda Abu Tayi (until then in the employ of the Ottomans) against the strategically-located port city of Aqaba. On July 6, after a daring overland attack, Aqaba fell to Arab forces. Some 12 months later, Lawrence was involved in the capture of Damascus in the final weeks of the war.

As he did before the war, during the time he spent with the Arab irregulars, Lawrence adopted many local customs and traditions as his own, and soon became a close friend of Prince Faisal. He especially became known for wearing white Arabian garb (given to him by Prince Faisal, originally wedding robes given to Faisal as a hint) and riding camels and horses in the desert. Lawrence gained extraordinary respect from the Arab populace.

During the closing years of the war he sought to convince his superiors in the British government that Arab independence was in their interests, to mixed success.

In 1918 he co-operated with war-correspondent Lowell Thomas for a short period. During this time Thomas and his cameraman Harry Chase shot much film and many photographs, which Thomas used in a highly lucrative show that toured the world after the war.

He was made a Commander in the Order of the Bath and awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the French Legion of Honour, though in October 1918 he refused to be made a Knight Commander. In the words of King George V, "He left me there with the box in my hand."

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Postwar years

Immediately after the war Lawrence worked for the British Foreign Office, attending the Paris Peace Conference between January and May as a member of Faisal's delegation.

Lowell Thomas's show then gave Lawrence great publicity. (It was seen by 4 million people.) Until then Lawrence had little influence but newspapers began to report his opinions. Consequently he served for much of 1921 as an advisor to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office.

Lawrence was ambivalent about Thomas's publicity (calling him a "vulgar man"), though he saw Thomas's show several times. Starting in 1922 Lawrence attempted to join the Royal Air Force under the name "Ross". His cover was soon blown, however, and he was forced out of the RAF, changed his name to "Shaw", and in 1923 joined the Royal Tank Corps. He was unhappy there and repeatedly petitioned to rejoin the RAF, which finally admitted him in August 1925. A fresh burst of publicity after the publication of Revolt in the Desert (see below) resulted in his assignment to a remote base in British India in late 1926, where he remained until the end of 1928, forced to return to the UK after rumours began to circulate that he was involved in espionage activities.

He purchased several small plots of land in Chingford, built a hut and swimming pool there, and visited frequently. This was demolished in 1930 when the Corporation of London acquired the land.

He continued serving in the RAF, specialising in high-speed boats and professing happiness, and it was with considerable regret that he left the service at the end of his enlistment in March 1935. A few weeks later he was mortally injured in a Brough Superior motorcycle accident in Dorset, at the age of 46, close to his cottage, Clouds Hill near Wareham (now run by the National Trust and open to the public). He died six days later.

Although some sources mistakenly claim that Lawrence was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, only his bust was placed there, in the Crypt. His final resting place is the Dorset village of Moreton.

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Writings

Lawrence was a prolific writer throughout his life. A large proportion of his writing was epistolary; he often sent several letters a day. There are several collections of his letters in print, the editors' expurgations in places obtrusive. His correspondents included many notable figures of the time, including George Bernard Shaw, Edward Elgar, Winston Churchill, Robert Graves, and E.M. Forster. The many letters he sent to G.B.Shaw's wife, Charlotte, offer a very revealing side of his character.

Lawrence translated Homer's Odyssey and The Forest Giant, an otherwise forgotten work of French fiction. He also authored The Mint, a memoir of his experiences as an enlisted man in the Royal Air Force. Working from a notebook kept while enlisted, Lawrence wrote of the daily lives of enlisted men and his desire to be a part of something larger than himself: the Royal Air Force. The book, with its sparse and sharp prose, is stylistically very different from Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It was published posthumously.

Seven Pillars is Lawrence's masterpiece. In 1919, he was elected to a seven-year research fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, and this provided him with support while he worked on the book. As a whole, the book is a memoir of his experiences during the war, but parts of it also serve as essays on military strategy, Arabian culture and geography, and other topics. Seven Pillars is an immense work, extremely dense with complicated syntax, but Lawrence clearly communicates through his prose and the book is stunningly beautiful, poignant, and at times even comic.

Lawrence re-wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom three times; once "blind" after he lost the manuscript while changing trains. As to the truth of his narrative, with Lawrence it is always difficult to untangle reality from mythology, and the man himself seemed to enjoy mingling fact and fiction; his complex relationship with himself results in passages which alternately belittle his accomplishments and influence and expand on his role in the revolt. Seven Pillars is a fascinating work as an autobiography, a study of history, or psychology.

George Bernard Shaw helped Lawrence edit the book, aiding him especially with grammatical errors. In the preface to Seven Pillars, Lawrence offered his "...thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Shaw for countless suggestions of great value and diversity: and for all the present semicolons."

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Sexual orientation

While his works include one notably homoerotic passage, the details of his sexual orientation and experience are contested. The field is divided between scholars working to restore the history of same-sex erotic relationships, who identify a strong homoerotic element in Lawrence's life, and those, including his official biographer, who are seen as "attempt[ing] to defend Lawrence against 'charges' of homosexuality" [2].

Image:Dahoum - Selim Ahmed 2.jpg Image:TE Lawrence authorized biography cover.jpg

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is dedicated to "S.A.", with a poem that begins:

"I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When I came."
(Some editions of Seven Pillars give the last line of this stanza as "When we came"; the 1922 Oxford text, however, has "When I came". This poem was heavily edited by Robert Graves.)

On the subject of the war, Lawrence said: "I liked a particular Arab, and thought that freedom for the race would be an acceptable present."

Though it has been argued that these initials identify a man, a woman, a nation, or some combination of the above, the explanation that has gained currency at the present time is that S.A. is "Selim Ahmed", nicknamed Dahoum, a fourteen year old Arab with whom Lawrence is known to have been close. The two met while working at a pre-war archaeological dig. Lawrence had the boy move in with him, carved a nude sculpture of him which he placed on the roof of the house, and brought Ahmed on holiday to England. The two were separated in 1914, and were never to see each other again as Dahoum died of typhus in 1918. Boston University professor Matthew Parfitt maintains that "In Seven Pillars, and more explicitly in his correspondence, Lawrence suggests that his distaste for the entire exploit in its last triumphant days was owing largely to news of his friend's death."

Others maintain that Dahoum was merely a close friend of the type common in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which often involved non-sexual physical contact. Lawrence himself maintained that "S.A." was a composite character.

In Seven Pillars, Lawrence claims that while reconnoitering Deraa in Arab disguise he was captured and tortured. Many critics have read this account as describing homosexual rape--and have used this to suggest that Lawrence was homosexual. The facts of the event, beyond reported accounts that Lawrence did bear the scars of whippings from some period, are unrecoverable. Lawrence's own statements and actions concerning the "incident" were ambiguous, contributing to the confusion. For example, he removed from his war diary the page containing the daily entries for the November 1917 week in question, so that no one ever saw that page and whatever words it may have contained about Deraa.

Reports from a man whom Lawrence hired to give him beatings, make it clear that he had unconventional tastes, notably masochism. Years after the Deraa incident, Lawrence embarked on a masochistic program of physical rehabilitation, including diet, exercise and swimming nude in the North Sea. He recruited younger men from the service and told them an elaborate story about a fictitious uncle who, because Lawrence had stolen money from him, demanded that he enlist in the service and that he be beaten. Lawrence wrote letters purporting to be from the uncle ("R." or "The Old Man") instructing the men in how he was to be beaten, yet also asking them to persuade him to stop this. This treatment continued until his death (Mack 1976). The authenticity of some of these claims and reports is disputed, but others are certain.

The accusation that Lawrence repeatedly exaggerated his feats has been another persistant theme among Lawrence biographers and other researchers. The list of his rumored "embellishments" in Seven Pillars is very long, though many such allegations have been disproved with time. However, some exaggerations by him are certain, for example, his alleged crossing of the Sinai in two days, which actually took him three days, and his alleged number of battle wounds, which in reality were very few. Other exaggerations by him are therefore likely.

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Lawrence's vision of the Middle East

Image:Lawrence map800.jpg A long-lost map of the Middle East belonging to Lawrence has been put on exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London. It was drafted by Lawrence and presented to the British Cabinet in 1918.

The map provides an alternative to present-day borders in the region, based on sensibilities shown by the local population. He includes a separate state for the Armenians and groups the people of present-day Syria, Jordan and parts of Saudi Arabia in another state based on tribal patterns and commercial routes.

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Trivia

Image:Lawr5.jpg

  • According to Lawrence's RAF enlistment medical file of March 12, 1923, he was 5 ft 5.5 in (1.66 m) tall, weighed 130 lb (59 kg), had "scars on his buttocks", "three superficial scars on lower part of his back" and "four superficial scars left side." He was also circumcised.
  • A road in the Mount Batten area of Plymouth, where Lawrence was stationed, has been named Lawrence Road in his honor.
  • The character of Private Napoleon Meek in George Bernard Shaw's Too True to Be Good is inspired by Lawrence. Private Meek is depicted as being thoroughly conversant with the language and lifestyle of tribals. He repeatedly enlists with the army, quitting whenever he is offered a promotion.
  • Portrayed twice on film, by Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia and in a made-for-TV movie, A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia (1990), by Ralph Fiennes, both of whom are much taller than the real Lawrence - O'Toole stands 6'2"/1.88 meters while Fiennes stands 6'1"/1.85 meters.
  • His favorite weapon was a Colt Peacemaker revolver. As recounted in Thomas's With Lawrence In Arabia, Lawrence, while on a pre-war archaeological trip to Mesopotamia, was attacked by an Arab bandit intent on stealing his gun. However, the Arab did not understand the revolver's firing mechanism, and was forced to leave Lawrence unconscious but alive. After this incident, Lawrence's weapon of choice was the Peacemaker, and he almost always carried one for good luck.
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See also

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Bibliography

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References

"Creation Out of the Void: The Making of a Hero, an Epic, a world: T.E.Lawrence", by Victoria K. Carchidi, 1987, diss. U.Pennsylvania (Ann Arbor, MI University Microfilms International).

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External links

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