He was fond of climbing trees and scrambling over the roofs of buildings where none dared to follow. “It was on such an occasion,” one of his brothers informed me, “that he fell and broke a leg.” His relatives attribute his smallness of stature to that accident. He seems never to have grown since.
All his life he has been as irregular in his ways as the wild tribesmen of the Arabian Desert. Although he completed the required four years’ work for his bachelor’s degree in three years, he never attended a single lecture at Oxford, so far as I have been able to discover. He occasionally worked with tutors, but he spent most of his time wandering about England on foot, or reading medieval literature. In order to be alone he frequently slept by day and then read all night. He was entirely opposed to any set system of education. The aged professor who angrily admonished Samuel Johnson when a student at Oxford, “Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge,” would have been equally displeased with young Lawrence. The idea of obtaining a university education in order to take up a conventional occupation did not please him at all. His unconscious credo from earliest youth, like Robert Louis Stevenson’s, seems to have been that “pleasures are more beneficial than duties, because, like the quality of mercy, they are not strained, and they are twice blest.”
As a part of his early reading he made an exhaustive study of military writers, from the wars of Sennacherib, Thotmes, and Rameses down to Napoleon, Wellington, Stonewall Jackson, and von Moltke. But this he did voluntarily and not as a part of any required work. Among his favorite books was Marshal Foch’s “Principes de Guerre” ; but he remarked to me on one occasion in Arabia that his study of Cæsar and Xenophon had been of more value to him in his desert campaign, because in the irregular war which he conducted against the Turks he found it necessary to adopt tactics directly opposed to those advocated by the great French strategist.
As the subject for his Oxford thesis Lawrence chose the military architecture of the Crusades, and so absorbed did he become in this work that he urged his parents to allow him to visit the Near East, so that he might gain first-hand knowledge of the architectural efforts of the early knights of Christendom. In this he was encouraged by the distinguished Oxford scholar and authority on Arabia, Dr. David George Hogarth, curator of the Ashmolean Museum, a man who has had an important influence over his entire life down to the present day, and who even came out to Egypt during the war and acted as his intimate counselor during the Arabian campaign. Lawrence’s mother was reluctant to have him leave home but, after many weeks of pleading, gave her consent to his visiting Syria as a Cook’s tourist and allowed him two hundred pounds for the trip. His family was certain that he would return home after a few weeks, satisfied to settle down for the rest of his days and ready to forget the heat, the smells, and the inconveniences of life in the Orient. But on reaching the Near East he scorned tourists’ comforts and the beaten track. He entered Syria at Beyrouth and, shortly after landing, adopted native costume and set out barefoot for the interior. Instead of traveling as a tourist, he wandered off alone, along the fringe of the Great Arabian Desert, and amused himself studying the manners and customs of the mosaic of peoples who dwell in the ancient corridor between Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley. Two years later, when he finally returned to Oxford to hand in his thesis and receive his degree, he still had one hundred pounds left!
There were five boys in the Lawrence family, of which Thomas Edward was the second youngest. The eldest, Major Montague Lawrence, was a major in the R. A. M. C.; the second, William, a schoolmaster at Delhi, in India; the third, Frank, who finished Oxford and wandered off to the Near East with Thomas; and the youngest, Arnold, a star track athlete at Oxford, who is also interested in archœology, and for a time took his brother’s place in Mesopotamia. Both William and Frank gave their lives to their country on the battle-fields of France.
Since the war Major Montague Lawrence has taken up work as a medical missionary in China far up on the Tibetan frontier; their mother has also gone to this remote corner of Central Asia, while her youngest son is roaming around the museums of the world on a traveling fellowship from Oxford, studying the sculpture of the period of the decadence of Grecian art.
Several years before the war an expedition from Oxford, headed by Lawrence’s friend Hogarth, the great antiquarian and archæologist, began excavating in the Euphrates Valley, hoping to uncover traces of that little-known ancient race, the Hittites. Because of his intimate knowledge of their language and his sympathetic understanding of their customs, Lawrence was placed in charge of the digging gangs of unruly Kurds, Turkomans, Armenians, and Arabs. This expedition eventually succeeded in uncovering Carchemish, the ancient capital of the Hittite Empire, and there, amid the ruins of that long-forgotten city, Lawrence amused himself studying inscriptions on pottery and joining up the various stages of Hittite civilization. He and his associate, C. Leonard Woolley, director of the expedition, actually uncovered ruins which proved to be the missing link between the civilizations of Nineveh and Babylon and the beginnings of Greek culture in the islands of the Mediterranean, which extend back for five thousand years. The Ashmolean Museum at Oxford contains many exhibits “presented by T. E. Lawrence” before he was twenty years of age.
An American traveler and director of missions in the Near East happened to visit the camp of these lonely excavators. He gives us a vivid picture of his visit and an indication of how Lawrence received the training which enabled him to gain such an amazing hold over the desert tribes when the Great War overtook him.
“It was in 1913,” says Mr. Luther R. Fowle. “Easter vacation at the American College in Aintab had given us the opportunity to make the three days’ trip by wagon to Curfa, the ancient Edessa. After Curfa, we had visited Haraun, a few miles to the south, whither Abraham migrated from Ur of the Chaldees.
“Our return trip to Aintab was by the road farther to the south, which brought us to the Euphrates River at Jerablus, over which the Germans were building their great railway bridge, an essential link in the Berlin-to-Bagdad dream. On the western bank, a few hundred yards from the bridge, was the site of Carchemish, and there we found the quiet British scholar, who, under the stress of the war, was soon to turn from his digging among the ancient ruins beside the Euphrates to become a shereef of Mecca and leader of a vast Bedouin host in a successful war to throw off the Ottoman yoke.
“Mr. Woolley, the archaeologist in charge of the work of excavation of Carchemish, had just come, from the diggings, clad in his business dress of gray flannel shirt and golf-trousers. Lawrence, his youthful associate, also fresh from the works, was stepping lightly across the mounds of earth clad in what we Americans would call a running-suit and wearing at his belt the ornate Arab girdle with its bunch of tassels at the front, the mark of an unmarried man. But he was out of sight in a moment; and when we gathered for supper the freshly tubbed young man in his Oxford tennis-suit of white flannel bordered with red ribbon, but still wearing his Arab girdle, launched into the fascinating story of the excavations; of relations with the Kurds and Arabs about them; of his trips alone among their villages in search of rare rugs and antiquities, that gave opportunity for cultivating that close touch and sympathy with them that subsequently was the basis of his great service in the time of his country’s need. The meal was delicious and was served by a powerful, swarthy Arab in elegant native dress, with enough daggers and revolvers in his girdle to supply a museum. Soon he entered with the coffee, delicious as only Turkish coffee rightly made can be. And our British friends, who were hardly able to find interest in the Roman nut-dishes merely a couple of thousand years old and part of the rubbish to be cleared away before reaching the Hittite ruins, pointed out with pride that our little brown earthenware coffee-cups were unquestionably Hittite and probably not far from four thousand years old.
“I should not say ‘buildings,’ or even ‘building,’ but rather ‘room’ ; for we learned that the British Government, because of an
understanding with the Turkish authorities, had given permission to build only one room. Accordingly Woolley and Lawrence had built a room of two parallel walls about ten feet apart, extending fifty feet south, then thirty-five feet westward, and again fifty feet north. Closed at both ends, this giant letter U was indeed a room; and, although somewhat astonished, the Turkish Government had to concede the fact. Of course, the honorable inspector could not object if little partitions were run across to separate the sleeping portions from the dining-room and office, and in due time convenience demanded that doors be opened from various parts of the structure into the court. Thus it was that, when we first saw it, on the right was a series of rooms for the storage of antiquities and for photographic work; on the left were the sleeping-rooms of the excavators and their guests; and in the center was the delightful living-room with open fireplaces, built-in bookcases filled with well-worn leather-bound volumes of the classics with which a British scholar would naturally surround himself, and a long table covered with the current British papers as well as the archaeological journals of all the world.
“Around the fireplace we learned much of the good faith and friendship that existed between these two lone Englishmen and the native people around them. They insisted that they were safer on the banks of the Euphrates than if they had been in Piccadilly. The leaders of the two most feared bands of brigands in the region, Kurdish and Arab, were faithful employees of the excavators, one as night-watchman, the other in a similar position of trust. Of course there was no stealing and no danger. Had not these men eaten of the Englishman’s salt? Moreover, the evenhanded justice of the two Englishmen was so well known and respected that they had come to be the judges of various issues of all sorts between rival villages, or in personal disagreement. Never abusing their prerogatives, their decisions were never questioned. Lawrence had recently been out to a village to settle the difficulties arising out of the kidnapping of a young woman by the man who wished to marry her and who had been unable to overcome her father’s objections. Could any training have been better for the part he was to play in the great Arab awakening than these experiences among the native people?
“In the living-room was an ancient wooden chest which may once have held the dowry of a desert bride, but which now served as money-box and safety-deposit vault. Larger than a wardrobe-trunk, there it stood, unlocked and unguarded. It was full of the silver money with which to pay the two hundred men working on the excavations. But such was the unwritten law of the community, such the love of the workers for their leaders, and so sure and summary the punishment which they themselves would mete out to any of their number taking advantage of this trust, that the cash could not have been safer in the vaults of the Bank of England itself.
“All this contrasted sharply with the methods and experiences of the German engineers half a mile away, building the Bagdad railway-bridge across the Euphrates. They and their workers seemed fated to mutual distrust and hatred. The Teuton could not see why the Arab should not and would not accept his regime of discipline and punishment. The Germans were always needing more laborers, while the Englishmen, a few hundred yards away, were overwhelmed with them. Once when the latter were forced to cut down their staff they tried in vain to dismiss fifty men. The Arabs and Kurds just smiled and went on with their work. They were told they would get no pay, but they smiled and worked on. If not for pay, they would work for the love of it and of their masters. And so they did. Nor was the excavation without interest to those simple men. They had caught the enthusiasms of their leaders, who had taught them to share in the joy of the work; their digging was not meaningless toil for foreign money, but was rather a sharing of the joy of archaeology.
“We retired for the night, our minds filled with the stories of the East, in which Christian and pagan, Hittite, Greek, and Roman, the great past and the sordid present of these regions were mingled with the background of energetic German effort and the calm achievement by two modest and capable representatives of the British breed of men. We slept long and well on the familiar folding cots in our clean, mud-walled room; nor were our slumbers troubled by our bed-covers, Damascus yorgans of cloth of gold, upon which a rare arabesque on its background of dull red invited the eye to journeys without end. These ancient covers were some of Lawrence’s treasures, brought hack from his frequent trips to the Arab villages, when for weeks his whereabouts were unknown. It was during these journeys that he in native garb joined in the conversation of the village elders on the shady side of a tent, or came to understand and admire the Arab in quiet intercourse before an open fire, where, sitting cross-legged on the floor, when the coffee had been made and silently drunk, one and another spoke. While forty German engineers were building their bridge, which was to enable them to coerce these people in case they would not obey, one broad-minded kindly Englishman was unconsciously preparing to become the man who in the great crisis was to lead this people, not only to destroy the Teuton dream of conquest, but to break the centuries-old political servitude of the Turk.
“After breakfast we were examining the mosaic floor of the dining-room, a Roman fragment that these men had taken out whole rather than destroy it in their search for the Hittite antiquities hidden below. But just then word came of excitement at the ‘works.’ We hurried over to find the Arabs and Kurds closely packed around a large excavation. The Greek foreman was removing the age-old earth about a dark stone several feet square; and by the time Mr. Woolley had reached his side, he had determined which was the real face of the block. With practised hand, Mr. Woolley began to remove the last crust of soil which covered the treasure underneath. There was no one to command those peasants to go back to their work, for the spiritual fruits of discovery belong to all, to the Englishman no more than to the waterboy who left his donkey to find the Euphrates alone, while he joined the breathless group whose eyes were glued on Woolley’s jack-knife deftly doing its work. A burst of applause greeted the first appearance of something in relief on the hard rock. It was a hand I no—a corner of a building!—a lion!—a camel! Guess and conjecture flew about, to be greeted by approval or derision, always followed by quick, tense silence, while the jack-knife did its work. Soon Woolley’s trained eye revealed to him that it was a large animal standing in a perfect state of preservation and that he was uncovering its head. His feint to begin at the other end of the figure was greeted by a babble of protest from his workmen, not yet sure what the figure was. Woolley’s quick smile acknowledged the reception of his little joke, and back he went to the spot already uncovered. Soon head, chest, legs, body, came to light, and exponents of various theories—cow, horse, sheep—were still backing their claims in musical gutturals when Woolley’s hand returned to the head of the animal and with a few quick motions lifted off the earth which covered the perfect tracery of a magnificent pair of antlers; alive with the undying art of forty centuries, there stood revealed before us a superb stag. Such a discovery was worth a celebration, and unwritten law had ordained the nature of it. For the excavator nodded in response to the Greek’s whispered query; and, as he gave the awaited signal, two hundred boys from fifteen to sixty-five emptied all the chambers of their revolvers in the air. I wonder what the Germans thought as they heard the volley from their bridge; for, as I found out a few weeks later when I had galloped over for another visit with the Englishman, shots at the German place meant something far different. To-day, perspiring as much because of their intense excitement over the discovery of the Hittite stag as from their labors, the Arabs laughingly sat down to smoke the cigarettes which ended these celebrations, while the water-boy started wildly in search of his donkey, followed by the vigorous epithets of his thirsty friends, who knew that the full flavor of a cigarette comes only with a drink of cold water.
“Noon came all too soon; and it was Thursday, the pay-day. Friday was the Moslem Sabbath, and these Englishmen were too Christian in their relations with their Moslem workers to make them labor on their chosen day. Our drive to Aintab w
as short, and so we delayed to see the men paid off, on Lawrence’s assurance that it would be interesting.
“A table was set in the open court of the ‘room,’ and Woolley handed out the piasters to the line of workers. That was simple, but the men had learned to bring their discoveries in on pay-days, and they received cash rewards for everything turned in. Of course, the result was exceeding care on their part to lose or break no fragment in their work; and in fact rare discoveries were sent in from all the country-side on these pay-days. The excavators would glance at the article offered. One man would receive a ten-piaster bonus for what he brought in, perhaps more to encourage him than because it had any real worth; another would have a fragment of pottery smilingly returned to him by the judge, while his companions laughed at him for trying to pass off on the alert Woolley part of a modern water-jar. Never did the Englishman say, ‘I can pay you nothing for this, but I will keep it just the same!’ It was either paid for or returned to the owner. Occasionally a gold coin, bright as the Arab’s eyes, would reward some happy man; but whether he got the gold or a laugh, never was the decision of his master and friend questioned.
“As we tinkled across the plain to the rhythm of the bells on the horses’ necks, we had food for thought in what we had seen. If Britain governs much of the world, we wondered if it did not because of the merit, capacity, and good sense of her sons in all lands. Impressions of this chance visit to Carchemish were deepened by residence in Constantinople throughout the World War, where we watched the German play for the big stake, of which the Euphrates Bridge was but an incident. And the German lost because of the way he went after it.
With Lawrence in Arabia Page 3