For his writing was a composite process, of three phases. During the bursts he drafted his narrative from memory, writing only on one side of each sheet of paper—he used a large loose-leaf ledger of unruled sheets. Then he referred to his diaries and notes, and rewrote his narrative on the opposite pages with the aid of this historical check. Lastly, he undertook a literary revision and “planed it off into one smooth run.” The process took almost as many days as the original draft had taken hours.
Yet the book, of ten “books,” was almost finished when he left Paris at the end of the summer. He had been demobilized in July, but as he was already attending the Peace Conferences in a civil capacity, it made no difference save by relieving him of the fetters of uniform—which he had always worn lightly. In November he was elected to a seven years’research fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, for the purpose of writing something on the history of the Middle East. This fellowship was intended as a means of enabling him to complete his book. He did not, however, go into residence but continued to work at it in Barton Street, Westminster, where his friend Sir Herbert Baker had allowed him a room on the top story of his office.
Then, just before the end of the year, he took the bulk of the manuscript with him on a trip to Oxford, carrying it with other belongings in a bag of the kind that bank or government messengers use. Having to change trains at Reading, he went to the refreshment room, put the bag under the table—and forgot it when he went to catch his train. As soon as he reached Oxford he telephoned back to Reading, but the bag had disappeared. No trace of it has ever been found—T.E. hopes now it never will be.
Even at the time of the loss his first reaction was one of relief and he joyously told Hogarth, “I’ve lost the damned thing.” But Hogarth who, together with Meinertzhagen and Alan Dawnay, had read the manuscript in whole or part, was greatly upset at the news and vehemently insisted that Lawrence must settle down to write it afresh.
The demand imposed an ordeal from which any writer might have shrunk—the fear of such a loss is the phobia of many authors—but Lawrence overcame his repugnance and recovered the lost ground rapidly with the aid of his photographic memory, assisted by his outline diaries. Sitting in his attic in Westminster he worked in prolonged bursts as at the original drafting. By the spring of 1920 the eight lost “books” had been rewritten, the surviving two revised, and the book completed.
This stupendous effort was not inspired by the normal cause of such haste—the desire for early publication. T.E.’s primary purpose in writing seems to be the evacuation of his own mind, rather than the nourishment of others—in his own time at least. He has written three books, only one of which has been published. Before the war he wrote a book based on his travels in the Near and Middle East, only to destroy the manuscript. That book, incidentally, was also christened the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a title drawn from the 9th chapter of the Book of Proverbs—“Wisdom hath builded her house: she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” The passage continues—“She crieth upon the highest places of the city, Whoso is simple let him turn in hither . . . Forsake the foolish and live . . . If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself.”
The pre-war book was descriptive, with an underlying moral; from the post-war book a philosophy emerged. The first dealt with the life of seven cities; the second was a sepulchre to hold the ashes of a life that was past, but from which wisdom had passed on.
It seems to have been a combination of this memorial sense with his artistic sense that led T.E. eventually to produce the book. But there was a long interval between the second rewriting and production. Still dissatisfied with the style he not only pruned and polished the manuscript but continued a study of literary technique that was characteristic of his thoroughness. He sought to obtain from his numerous literary friends, who included some of the greatest masters of English prose, an explanation of their principles and method of composition. He admits that the result was somewhat barren and that although he found a common “attitude,” there was small evidence of a conscious technique, save among amateurs. Thus the technique which he himself developed was evolved mainly from his own theorizing—it gradually became so much part of himself that even his casual letters are artistic productions.
By the light of this self-evolved theory he revised his draft during 1921 and 1922, while in the East and in London. When the new draft was finished he burnt the old, with the aid of paraffin and a blow-lamp, in Epping Forest—a tedious process, he confesses. A few pages, the only relics that remain, were bound up in the new manuscript. Of this he then had eight copies (five of which survive) printed verbatim at the Oxford Times Press. He had them printed merely because it seemed as cheap as to have them typed—the total cost for some 330,000 words, two columns on a page, was about eighty pounds. And to guard against any chance of extra copies being preserved, he sent sections to press in “haymaking order”—intermixed. The eight copies, he reckoned, would suffice for his friends who desired to read the complete record. But the circle of friends who had this desire was wider than he had reckoned, and their pressure put a greater strain on his intention than he could resist, when combined with his innate love of beautiful printing—typography had for him no less an appeal than topography.
The decisive impulse came from Gertrude Bell who, having read the book, craved to possess a copy, and urged him to consider printing the book privately for his friends. He consented, not only to oblige them but because such a course would enable him to give the same care to the book’s production as to its writing. The price was to be thirty guineas a copy. Thus the term “friends” became enlarged to include the wealthy friends of his friends. And as subscriptions lowed in, his vision expanded. He could produce a volume finer even than he had contemplated, and he arranged that a group of artists under Eric Kennington’s direction would illustrate it. Thus the cost rose by degrees to ninety pounds a volume. Rather more than a hundred were printed for subscribers besides those, all imperfect in some small detail, intended for presentation to his friends and wartime comrades, at a total cost of some thirteen thousand pounds.
AQABA
His own resources were quite inadequate to meet such an outlay, but friends backed the venture, the lead being taken by Robin Buxton, who had commanded the Camel Corps at Mudauwara and was now a director in Martin’s bank. To cover the inevitable debt that the limited edition would now incur he arranged with Buxton that a public edition of reduced content should be printed.
All these developments and arrangements consumed time, and Lawrence needed time for the further re-writing he now undertook. While he did not add any fresh material, he made extensive textual changes, guided by the stylistic aim of achieving greater conciseness and a perfected shaping of the sentences. He also cut out one or two stories. The effect was to reduce the book by fifty thousand words.
This hypercritical revision was a lengthy process, all the more so because it had to be carried out in his leisure time as a private in the Royal Tank Corps at Bovington, 1923–24, and subsequently in the Royal Air Force at Cranwell. It was here also that he prepared the abridged version, published under the title of The Revolt in the Desert. The task was carried out in a couple of evenings, with the aid of two fellow-airmen, by the simple process of cutting out the more intimate passages of self-revelation and experience, and linking the jagged ends loosely together.
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom was eventually issued in 1926. Some of the copies changed hands at extraordinary prices, one at least being offered for sale by a bookseller at £700. The Revolt in the Desert; which appeared in 1927, rapidly ran through five reprintings, but as soon as Lawrence heard from his publishers that the overdraft was ready to be cleared, publication of the English edition was stopped. Even so, the sales, swelled by those in America that had still to be credited, brought in royalties that not only recouped the debt on the Seven Pillars but left a large balance.
To the regret of his friends, T.E. would not touch a penny. By an arrangement he
had made before publication these proits were disposed of by a trust. One may add that in connection with the object his irrepressible sense of humour took a part. So it did also in his original demand that the French translation should bear an inscription saying that the profits would be devoted to “the victims of French cruelty in Syria.”
His reason for rejecting all personal profit and honours sprang partly from his fastidious sense of honesty, and partly from an acute sense of policy. The two motives seem so subtly blended that it is difficult to separate them. He had pursued an ideal; he would soil its memory if he accepted any personal recompense. He had also been the paymaster of a people, and he knew well that his bags of gold had served not merely as a maintenance but as a bribe. In such conditions the only way he could feel clean, in motive at least, was to cleanse himself of every particle of personal advantage. And by doing so he would greatly strengthen himself towards achieving his impersonal aim.
I remember him saying that having “posed as a sea-green incorruptible” he must be consistent in maintaining the pose. It was a pose for a purpose. But although he would contend that it was purely practical, in the deeper sense, the explanation does not seem to me to go deep enough. If he has carried his renunciation of profit to what seems a fantastic extreme, it has been because of the keenness of his inward perception. He could see spots that others would miss, and to satisfy himself was far more difficult than to satisfy the world. That personal sense of honour, moreover, was allied to a care for his country’s honour. The nearest approach to condemnation of others that I have ever found him make is when he speaks of Englishmen who were not above taking presents from the people they were sent to assist. T.E., in fact, is a “Crusader”—of peculiarly unhistorical purity.
His view of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom as literature is affected by this same habit of playing to bogey, of competing only against a self-created standard. Hence the praise that others have bestowed on its splendid prose, as well as on its descriptive and analytical power, brings little or no satisfaction to him. He was both amazed and amused, however, by the comment, of H. G. Wells that it was a great human document, without pretensions to be a work of art. T.E. remarks that it had “enormous pretensions.” His own criticism is the opposite—that the book is not a human document like Xenophon’s Anabasis but an artificial straining after art. He also terms it a “depressing” book, without any message.
For my part I would admit that it is depressing in a double sense. It sets a standard of sustained effect, in paragraph after paragraph, that makes another writer acutely aware of his artistic deficiencies. It makes the obscurities of human vision more depressingly obvious than could the bitterest indictment—T.E. is hard only on himself. The clearness of his light not only shows up the dust on the window pane, but makes this seem the irremovable encrustation of age. Thus to a conviction of futility it adds a sense of finality.
The message is there, but it is too painful to contemplate, even for the author. In concluding it he closed his life as T. E. Lawrence. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom bears no author’s name on the title page. The reason was a characteristic one—that it looked “cleaner”—his name was printed on the original title page but he rejected it in proof. Nevertheless there is a symbolic significance in the omission of his name. So also is there a symbolic fitness in the fact that the copies were initialled “T.E.S.” not “T.E.L.”
In that symbolism one may find a message of inspiration that is missing in the book. It remains as a graven pillar, but the wisdom has continued life in his new life. That fact refutes his implicit conclusion that nothing is worth while. He is the message, not his book.
CHAPTER XXII
FULFILMENT
“For wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it. . . .” (PROVERBS viii. 2.)
“WHY has Lawrence chosen to go in the ranks of the Air Force?” “How can a man of his gifts waste them in such humdrum work—surely he could find a better opening?” “Why doesn’t he at least take a commission?” “How can a man of his intellectual interests endure the drabness and discomfort of barrack-room life?”
These are the questions that always spring forth whenever and wherever his name is mentioned. To answer with certainty is impossible, but in the course of discussion as well as through the evolution of one’s own thought a perception of the probable explanation has come.
The most general idea—it has the wide currency of a legend—is that Lawrence condemned himself to servitude in the ranks as a kind of penance for his failure to secure the Arabs what he had promised them; that he sought by this degradation to wipe out the stain on his honour, or, quixotically, to make a personal atonement for his country’s breach of faith. His friends usually scout such a suggestion. I do not, entirely. There may be a masochistic strain in him, liable to gain strength as he loses strength in periods of abnormal strain. But if so, I am convinced that it is only a minor part of the explanation, and that if it had any influence on his original act of enlistment, it has none on his continuance in the ranks of the Air Force.
I believe that his renunciation is predominantly due, not to an idea of atonement, still less to a sense of failure, but to a sense of fulfilment, reinforced by a sense of futility.
His remarkably developed sense of proportion, and sense of humour—the second implies the first, but may go further—were, I conceive, blended elements in his decision. For the first, by giving a clear view of real values tends to produce an extreme disdain of worldly values, and the second finds exercise in correcting them—by means the more subtle as the sense of humour is the more profound. One aspect of T.E.’s sense of proportion is a love of real power that, with nourishment, produced in reaction such a passionate repudiation of the pomps and vanities of power as to become itself almost a vanity.
There was a further element that should not be overlooked in analysing the sources of the step that has surprised the public. I am sure that T.E. himself did not overlook it when weighing his future in the scales of his judgment. His self-perception was too sensitively acute for him not to be aware that the strain he had undergone had over-strained the delicate balance of his mind. The finer the adjustment, the finer the margin.
This compound explanation may become clearer if one briefly sketches the course of his career from 1920, subsequent to the expulsion of Feisal from Damascus.
It was not until after he had finished the second re-writing of his book in 1920 that Lawrence took full advantage of his fellowship and went into residence at All Souls. Then, unfortunately, in his case the disadvantages became more apparent. He has always been able to command good talk, but only in solitude could he work, and this he could no longer command at Oxford. The mysterious undergraduate who shunned company in pre-war days had now the magnetic attraction of a legendary figure—for visitors to Oxford, even more than for members of the University. He says that the only thing he succeeded in writing during his months in residence was the introduction to the new edition of Doughty’s Arabia Deserta.
Moreover, he could better afford the time that these visitors occupied than the money their entertainment cost him. The slender stipend of a research-fellowship—it has since been improved—might be a useful supplement for a young graduate of private means, but it was inadequate for the unavoidable expenses that Lawrence had to meet. Two hundred pounds a year did not enable him to show hospitality and keep a decent appearance. For the first time since boyhood, lack of money became a burden. The debit margin was not large, but it made all the difference between ease and inconvenience. He has several times remarked to me that the ideal, for a single man of his tastes, is to have an assured income of £300 a year—“enough for a place in town and country.” But Oxford was neither, and even if the margin had been covered I doubt whether he would have chosen to remain there. It did not offer the variety of humanity or the simplicity to suit his taste. His idea of a town and a country residence was a secluded attic in a pleasantly a
ctive quarter of London, and a primitive cottage in the rural depths of England. Residence at Oxford overtaxed his income without fulfilling his needs.
Relief came through a new opportunity of service to the old cause. Materially it was temporary, spiritually, it was lasting.
As the year 1920 drew to its close, events were vindicating Lawrence’s repeated warning of the dangers of playing fast and loose with national aspirations in the Middle East. A too inelastic adherence to our old Imperial policy and a too supple interpretation of our assurances had involved us in widespread trouble. At home the post-war boom was followed by a slump that, in reaction, raised an outcry to cut our loss and “clear out” of the new mandated territories.
At a meeting with Lloyd George, Lawrence discussed the mess and Curzon’s responsibility for it, suggesting that the only way to straighten it out was to relieve Curzon of responsibility. As Lloyd George made it clear that he could not remove Curzon from the Foreign Office, the alternative was to remove the Middle East from him. This possibility, once planted in Lloyd George’s fertile mind, soon fructified. The Colonial Office was a suitable department to take over control, if provided with an adequate head—the man counted more than the Ministry.
Winston Churchill, then the occupant of a post-war War Office, was offered the Colonial Office with an extension of its responsibilities. He consulted Lawrence on the problem of the Middle East, Lawrence, while anxious to see him accept the charge, frankly warned him that success would depend on a readiness to take risks—in particular to make an Arab King in Mesopotamia, and evacuate the British troops, handing over its defence to the Air Force, a less obtrusive and more economic type of foreign garrison than an Army. On such conditions Churchill might hope for success—a success, although Lawrence did not say it, that would not only ease Britain’s troubles and safeguard the future, but enhance Churchill’s prospects of attaining the Exchequer, the goal of his dreams. A chance to wear his father’s robes.
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