Profile of T.E. Lawrence on Famous Like Me

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

Thomas Edward Lawrence (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, became famous 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.

Early years

Lawrence was born in Tremadoc, Caernarfonshire, North Wales, of mixed English and Irish ancestry. His father, Thomas Chapman, was a prominent member of the Irish aristocracy who had escaped a tyrannical wife to live with his daughters' governess, with whom he had five sons. As a boy, Lawerence lived at 2 Polstead Road (now with a blue plaque) in Oxford and attended the City of Oxford High School for Boys. From 1907, Lawrence was then 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.

On completing his degree in 1910, he commenced postgraduate research in mediaeval pottery with a Senior Demy at Magdalen College, 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. 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.

The Arab Revolt

Main article Arab Revolt

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 Feisal, 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 coordinate 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 Big Push", which resulted in the capture of Damascus in the final weeks of the war. Initially, he had told his CO that he, "did not want to be part of your big push!" But later, he realized "they would be coming for me" , so he agreed to lead the Arab Army.

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 Feisal. He especially became known for wearing white Arabian garb (given to him by Prince Feisal, originally wedding robes given to Feisal as a hint) and riding camels and horses in the desert. 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 which toured the world after the war.

Postwar years

Immediately after the war Lawrence worked for the British Foreign Office, attending the Versailles Paris Peace Conference, 1919 between January and May as a member of Feisal'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 achieve anonymity, joining 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 petitions finally bore fruit in August 1925. A fresh burst of publicity 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 continued serving in the RAF, specializing 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 killed 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).

Lawrence the author

Lawrence was a prolific writer throughout his life. A large proportion of his writing was epistolary and he often sent several letters a day. There are several large collections of his letters in print, some of which remain unfortunately expurgated by over-protective editors. His correspondents included many notable figures of the time, including George Bernard Shaw, Edward Elgar, Winston Churchill, Robert Graves, and E.M. Forster.

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."

Claims of homosexuality

Certain passages in Lawrence's writing, supplemented by reports from a military colleague whom Lawrence hired to give him beatings, make it clear that he had unconventional sexual tastes, notably masochism. While his writings include one notably homoerotic passage (see "Quotations" below), the details of his sexual orientation and experience remain unknown.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is dedicated to "S.A.", with a poem which 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".)

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."

The identity of "S.A." remains unclear; it has been argued that these initials identify a man, a woman, a nation, or some combination of the above. One specific claim is that S.A. is "Selim Ahmed", also called Dahoum, a young Arab who worked with Lawrence at a pre-war archaeological dig, with whom Lawrence is said to have had a close relationship, and who apparently died of typhus in 1918. However, others maintain that Dahoum was merely an extremely close friend of the mold common in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which often involved (non-sexual) physical contact. Lawrence himself, perhaps dissembling, maintained that "S.A." was a composite character.

In Seven Pillars, Lawrence claims that while reconnoitring Dera in Arab dress he was captured and sexually assaulted by the (male) Turkish garrison commander, but then escaped. There is controversy over this episode; some scholars have claimed that it is actually a sexual fantasy.

Trivia

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.

Bibliography

• Seven Pillars of Wisdom, an account of his part in the Arab Revolt. (ISBN 0954641809)
• The Mint, an account of his service in the Royal Air Force. (ISBN 0393001962)
• The Odyssey of Homer, translation from the Greek. (ISBN 0195068181)
• The Forest Giant, by Adrien Le Corbeau, novel, translation from the French, 1924.
• Crusader Castles, his Oxford Thesis. (ISBN 019822964-X)
• The Letters of T.E. Lawrence, selected and edited by Malcolm Brown. (ISBN 0460047337)
• The Letters of T.E. Lawrence, edited by David Garnett. (ISBN 0883558564)
• Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorised Biography of T.E. Lawrence, by Jeremy Wilson, 1989 (ISBN 0689119348)
• Lawrence and the Arabian Adventure, by Robert Graves, 1928 (Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc.).

Quotations

I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time... We shall never see his like again. His name will live in history. It will live in the annals of war... It will live in the legends of Arabia. — Winston Churchill, speaking of Lawrence

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. — Seven Pillars of Wisdom

The public women of the rare settlements we encountered in our months of wandering would have been nothing to our numbers, even had their raddled meat been palatable to a man of healthy parts. In horror of such sordid commerce our youths began indifferently to slake one another's few needs in their own clean bodies—a cold convenience that, by comparison, seemed sexless and even pure. Later, some began to justify this sterile process, and swore that friends quivering together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace, found there hidden in the darkness a sensual co-efficient of the mental passion which was welding our souls and spirits in one flaming effort. Several, thirsting to punish appetites they could not wholly prevent, took a savage pride in degrading the body, and offered themself fiercely in any habit which promised physical pain or filth. — Seven Pillars of Wisdom

All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas! — On Homer, letter of T.E. Lawrence

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