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T.E. Lawrence: Biography And Visits

Clouds Hill

T.E. Lawrence, was a hero during his life time, his reputation becoming more complicated since then. Malcolm Brown, one of his biographers has said: "One generations heroes are frequently the next one's rejects." (Introduction: The Life Of T.E. Lawrence) History is not set. In a sense it remains a living place, battles still being fought out.

Thomas Edward Lawrence, known as Ned, was the second son of an outwardly middle class and conventional couple living in late nineteenth century Oxford. Behind the conventional appearance of the family was a more unusual story: Thomas Tighe Chapman had actually left his severe and fanatically religious wife for the governess of their children, whose name is variously reported as Sarah Maden, or Jenner or Junner. The couple took the name Lawrence for reasons unknown, and then moved around the country, before finally settling in Oxford. T.E. was one of five sons born to the couple, Thomas being born in Tremadoc, Wales in August 1889.

 

Jesus College, Oxford

At school in Oxford Thomas developed a great interest in medieval history, and was an enthusiastic collector of brass rubbings. On his brass rubbing adventures trespass was sometimes committed. His schooling was interrupted by a mysterious period when he enlisted as an ordinary soldier in the Artillery. His father bought him out, his schooling continued, and he eventually went to Jesus College, Oxford. Here he organised hugely ambitious cycling expeditions in England and France, visiting various castles he was interested in, and joined the University Officer Training Corps. In the Corps he was an excellent marksmen, scout, and seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of energy on route marches. He wasn't a model soldier however, the sergeant major continually protesting about his scruffy uniform.

Young Thomas lived an almost monastic life at university, showing little or no interest in girls, or boys, despite interest being shown in him from both quarters. His attention was taken up by castles, and miles ticked off on his epic bike journeys. He prepared a thesis on the influence of the crusades on castle architecture, and travelled to Syria and Palestine during his summer holidays, making a long journey on foot to see the crusader castles there. He saw beautiful castles, walked himself to exhaustion, and suffered bouts of malaria, which he had picked up on a bike journey through France. Getting back to Oxford one of his tutors failed to recognise him.

 

The British Museum

Five months after graduating in 1910 he was off to the East again, as an archeologist on the British Museum dig at Carchemish in Syria. He worked here until the First World War started, leading a frugal and happy life doing work he loved. These four years were remembered by Lawrence as the happiest of his life. You will be able to see objects which Lawrence helped recover at the British Museum today, in the department of the Ancient Near East. Look for the bronze furnishings of a Sumerian temple, which include life size lions and a panel in high relief featuring the lion headed eagle Imdugud. These objects are to be found in room 56 of the British Museum.

Towards the end of 1913 war with Germany, and the Ottoman Empire of Turkey, looked increasingly inevitable. Lawrence was asked to join a project which would appear to be an archeological endeavour, but was actually designed to survey the Sinai Peninsula in preparation for the defence of the Suez Canal. Lawrence then went to work for British Intelligence in Cairo. This was a desk job, but Lawrence soon headed off on what was meant to be a short field trip to meet the leaders of Arab resistance to Turkish rule in the Middle East. The leader of the Arab revolt was Grand Sherif Hussein. Lawrence saw that Hussein's son Emir Feisal was most suited to leading the resistance, and developed a close association with him. Lawrence saw himself an an amateur soldier, and asked for a professional officer to be sent to work with Feisal. None was available, Lawrence being advised to stay where he was.

In the years that followed Lawrence worked with Feisal, organising and leading Arab operations against the Turks. Commentators later claimed that Lawrence over estimated his contribution, although the release of classified documents from the time seem to confirm that Lawrence's version of events was largely true. Official documents testify to remarkable desert journeys, during which railways were destroyed and Turkish troops defeated. The High Commissioner of Egypt was moved to request a Victoria Cross for Lawrence: he was actually to receive the CB.

Throughout the campaign it is thought by some commentators that Lawrence was aware of Allied duplicity regarding promises made to the Arabs. In return for efforts against the Turks the Arabs were assured self government after the war. In reality there was little desire to honour these assurances. Perhaps Lawrence laboured under a sense of guilt about this, knowing he was lying to friends who trusted him. His guilt seems to have made him take unnecessary risks, feeling that injury or even death would be what he deserved. A message to Brigadier General Clayton, which he did not send, reads: "Clayton, I've decided to go off alone to Damascus, hoping to get killed on the way." The story then goes that Lawrence was captured, beaten and raped by Turkish troops in Deraa, and there is some suggestion that he put himself in a position to be captured. Perhaps though this whole incident was a fiction, a imaginary punishment perhaps for imaginary crimes. It is not clear that Lawrence actually was leading a loyal band of romantic heroes to whom it was reasonable to feel deeply loyal, or whether he was actually leading a group of mercenaries. A.N. Wilson suggests in After the Victorians that Lawrence handed over £329 000 to tribal leaders between August 1917 and January 1918. This might suggest that loyalty was based largely on money.

When Arab forces finally entered the capital of Damascus in 1918, Lawrence raced his troops in to take the city before the British arrived. He was attempting to strengthen their position for the period of bargaining he knew would follow the war. He then returned to England, where he vigorously represented the Arab position to the British government. After setbacks and frustrations, he worked with Winston Churchill to achieve some measure of success for the Arabs. Feisal became king of Iraq, while Abdulla, another son of Sherif Hussein, became king of Jordan, his grandson Hussein ruling in Jordan today. In Syria, however, where the Arab capital of Damascus lay, the French took over. Certainly there was much depressing cynicism on both sides in these events, and it is possible that Lawrence could not resist the desire to somehow redeem the shallow, mean and cruel events of which he was a part. I'm not about to say where fiction starts and reality ends with the story of Lawrence of Arabia, but somehow the fictions, if that's what they are, are understandable. Perhaps they were the only thing that made life worth living. Fiction was as important to survival as the reality of a ruthless fight in a pitiless desert.

After his work with Churchill was complete Lawrence decided to withdraw from the world. His was a complicated personality, and he had been through a great deal. For whatever reason in 1922 he decided to change his name to John Hume Ross, join the RAF as an ordinary airman, and attempt to vanish. In the event his identity was discovered by the press, which had become fascinated by "Lawrence of Arabia." The furore that ensued caused the RAF to eject their reluctant celebrity in January 1923. Lawrence changed his name to Shaw and joined the tank corp, moving to Bovington Camp in Dorset, once again subjecting himself to the tough life of a recruit. It was a kind of self humiliation. To escape camp life he would ride his motorbike at high speed along "unsuitable" country roads. He also took on a derelict cottage at nearby Clouds Hill, slowly turning it into an artistic refuge, which still survives and is now owned by the National Trust. Through all of these years he was working on his account of his wartime years, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He would write at Clouds Hill, and receive guests such as E.M. Forster, Seigfried Sasoon and Robert Graves. Thomas Hardy and his wife were also good friends. All the while he carried on a campaign to return to the RAF. Finally after Lawrence started hinting at thoughts of suicide, the Prime Minster Stanley Baldwin stepped in personally to ensure his return to the air force in 1925.

By 1934 aircraftman Shaw seemed to have found relative happiness and stability working as an aircraft mechanic at an airbase on Plymouth Sound. Here he organised better rescue boats, and improved the sea planes in his care. He seemed to be recovering from the desire to hide. He began lobbying his MP, writing on a number of issues, such as the admission of Trotsky into Britain, and the abolition of the death penalty for cowardice in war: "I have run too far and too fast... to throw a stone at the fearfullest creature."

January 1935 was the last month of his service with the RAF. He knew that leaving the service would mean the loss of the companionship and support that had allowed him a measure of happiness in life again. After discharge he wandered for a while, trying to dodge the press, and then returned to Clouds Hill, where reporters still dogged him. At his Dorset cottage attempts were made to tempt him into jobs, as secretary of the Bank of England, or a job reorganising the military services. On the morning of May 13th 1935 Lawrence was riding his motorbike near Clouds Hill and swerved to avoid two errand boys. He flew over the handlebars and suffered a head injury. He was taken to Bovington Camp hospital where he died six days later aged forty six.

Since his death Lawrence's reputation has risen and fallen, and perhaps the subject of these battles would have appreciated them. Lawrence had a keen sense of history, feeling the past as a living force. On one of his raids in the desert Lawrence and his group took shelter in the ruined castle at Azrack. In The Seven Pillars of Wisdom he writes of nights spent at the castle, he and his friends telling stories of their battles and traditions:

"When these stories came to a period, our tight circle would shift over uneasily to the other knee or elbow; while coffee cups went clinking round, and a servant fanned the blue reek of the fire towards the loophole with his cloak, making the glowing ash swirl and sparkle with his draught. Till the voice of the storyteller took up once again, we would hear the rain-spots hissing briefly as they dripped from the stone-beamed roof into the fire's heart... Past and future flowed over us like an uneddying river. We dreamed ourselves into the the spirit of the place; sieges and feasting, raids, murders, love-singing in the night."