T. E. Lawrence: from dream to legend
This paper was written for a T. E. Lawrence
conference held in Oldenburg, Germany, in October 2009. It has been published in
German translation, as 'T. E.
Lawrence: Vom Traum zur Legende', in the catalogue to the
exhibition
Lawrence von Arabien; Genese eines Mythos
(Mainz, Philipp von
Zabern, 2010 pp. 17-26). This revised English version was posted in the Castle
Hill Press subscribers' newsletter on 2 December 2011.
This paper is about T. E. Lawrence. It will seek to understand why he did
what he did - by examining his abilities, his values, his motives, and his
self-judgements. It will not attempt to label him or explain his actions in terms
of theories such as Orientalism or Imperialism.
This choice of approach may require some justification. So let's look briefly at
the merits and shortcomings of theories about history.
Their merit is that they provide a structured basis for looking at the past. If
you take a theory as your starting point, people and events can seem to fall
neatly into place. You feel you have a better understanding of what happened.
Theories provide a convenient basis for writing student essays.
In reality, however, behavioural theories such as Orientalism are always too
simple. When applied to Lawrence, they usually focus on just a few aspects of
his background or character, silently ignoring other elements which,
collectively, could have been far more influential. Theories implicitly assume
that both conscious and subconscious motivation is logical, constant, and
mechanically interlinked. Their proponents tend to focus on evidence that
'fits', and to present historical context in ways that favour their argument.
When theorists start talking about groups of people, things get even worse. If
you visit The National Archives in London and read original documents about
Britain's policy towards the Middle East between 1914 and 1921, you will find
vivid evidence of differences in personality, background, viewpoint, objectives
and ability among staff in the various departments concerned. No manageable
theory of behaviour could account for all these individuals, let alone the
subtleties of their inter-relationships. Human interactions are a bad subject
for theory. For example, a man may normally be rational, thorough and
co-operative; but does 'normally' mean 'always'? Suppose he discovers one day
that his wife is having an affair with a colleague? or that he arrives to work
with bad toothache, or drank too much last night, or has flu? Human behaviour is
not constant, therefore human inter-relationships cannot be constant. Moreover,
'horse trading' plays a big part in real-world decisions: "We will give you what
you want in this matter, if, in exchange, you give us what we want in another
matter" - and the other matter is completely unrelated. No theory can predict
the effects of horse-trading.
More generally, one of the greatest barriers to understanding why decisions are
taken is over-simplification. Audiences - especially the wider public - quickly
lose patience with complex explanations. So it is always tempting to say:
"Lawrence did X because of Y". The truth is more probably that "Lawrence did X
because of A, B, C, D, E and F, and possibly also P, Q, and R..." In real life,
both motivation and reasoning are multi-factorial. Just think of major decisions
in your own life. How many were taken for a single reason? More difficult, can
you say with certainty that all your motives were conscious and thought-through.
Can you list them by order of influence?
That kind of stricture applies equally to the content of this paper. We may set
out to discover the factors that influenced Lawrence's decisions, but we will
surely fail to discover them all. There will be no way to measure the extent of
our success.
That said, we must try to understand the motives that led to historical
decisions, not least in order to expose false interpretations.
Also, the task is fascinating.
- - -
Thomas Edward Lawrence, the second of five sons, was born in August 1888. When
Queen Victoria died in January 1901 he was already 12. At the outbreak of war in
1914 he was 26. Eight years later, when he ceased to be involved with Britain's
role in the Middle East, he was 34. He achieved fame, therefore, while he was
still young. The values he brought to soldiering and diplomacy were values
acquired and developed during his youth, not the values of a seasoned old-timer.
If, therefore, we hope to understand the motives of 'Lawrence of Arabia', we
need to look at his life before August 1914.
Historical context is - or should be - the starting-point for any study of
biography. Lawrence was born more than 120 years ago. He grew up in a very
different society to the one we know today. What might this context tell us
about him?
Of course, one can't assume that someone who grows up in a particular period
adopts all its values (would that be true today?) But we need to be aware of
that environment, if only to distinguish between values that were commonplace at
the time and values peculiar to Lawrence.
Parts of the historical context between 1888 and 1914 seem particularly
relevant:
- Britain was a Christian country. Many more people than today attended church
regularly. Schools taught Christian ethics. Conduct was generally judged by
Christian standards.
- Britain was a great Imperial Power. British leaders expressed their sense of
moral responsibility to provide colonial peoples with competent and just
government. In terms of Christian ethics, fulfilling this obligation was the
only obvious justification for imperial rule.
- French imperial rule tended to replace the indigenous social structure and
culture in its colonies with French structure and culture. By contrast, British
colonial rulers practised 'indirect rule'. They tried to work through existing
structures, maintaining the status of local chiefs. As a consequence, they left
much local society and culture in place.
- Overt British patriotism was at its zenith. Upper- and middle-class young men
were educated to help rule and defend Britain's immense and diverse empire. They
were taught the virtue of leading by personal example. Organisations such as the
Empire Day movement promoted dedication to Britain's imperial calling. Lawrence
was one of many young men to volunteer for the Officers Training Corps when it
was founded in 1912.
- The obligation of personal excellence extended beyond values and attitudes to
physical fitness and outdoor activities. Athletic prowess was encouraged and
admired. Lawrence was an officer in the Church Lads Brigade. (When the Boy
Scouts movement was founded in 1907, too late for Lawrence, it quickly
flourished.)
- Women had very different expectations from men. In England, women were still
denied the right to vote. Few entered higher education, and that denied them
entrance to high-status professions (except in art and music). There were
brilliant exceptions, but in most cases women could not interact with men on
truly equal terms. Girls and boys were brought up with different interests and
educated at different schools. Outside the family, friendships based on shared
interests were usually with members of the same sex.
- Sexual abstinence was the only effective form of contraception, while
sexually-transmitted disease was prevalent and virtually untreatable. So middle-
and upper-class young men were taught that sexual activity of any kind - outside
the hallowed context of marriage - was immoral and almost certainly a threat to
health. In retrospect, many of these teachings seem absurd - but the alternative
was uncontrollable infection and large numbers of unwanted babies. To further
minimise these risks, society did its best to prevent single boys meeting single
girls without a chaperone.
- A corollary was devastating life-long social rejection of anyone known to be
illegitimate.
- Victorian England was adventurous and inventive. The industrial revolution had
launched the ever-accelerating advance of technology that we now take for
granted. During Lawrence's youth, engineering was still an exciting novelty. Its
achievements were celebrated as triumphs. He lived in a world only recently
transformed by railways and steam-ships. Motor-cars and aeroplanes were in their
infancy. Yet, while all this was taking place, a much older social structure
still survived. Outside the great cities, the agricultural hierarchy extended
from aristocratic landowners to servile labourers, as it had for centuries.
- Today, we tend to think of the Middle East as war-torn and oil-rich. Neither
was true before the First World War. Palestine, lost to Christendom in the
thirteenth century, had long been part of the Turkish Empire. In England it was
revered as the Holy Land. It was known mainly through travellers' accounts and
exotic images such as the lithographs by David Roberts published in the mid-19th
century. Oil was first produced commercially in Iran in 1911, and before the
First World War was also known to be present in parts of Iraq (then
Mesopotamia). It was not discovered in commercial quantities in Bahrain until
1932, and in Saudi Arabia until 1938. During the period that Lawrence was
involved, the prospect of oil discovery played no part in British policy towards
areas of the Middle East outside Iran and Mesopotamia.
This historical context is the background to more personal factors affecting one
young middle-class Englishman, T. E. Lawrence. What kind of person was he?
Looking more closely at Lawrence, I will focus in turn on:
- His family, then
- Lawrence himself, then
- His development during the years 1910-14.
The Lawrence family had a middle-class income, assumed by acquaintances to come
from investments, since Mr. Lawrence did not work for a living. Instead, he
enjoyed gentlemanly pastimes such as shooting and, in Lawrence's earlier years,
sailing. He was also a skilled amateur photographer, using a
professional-standard camera (now in Oxford's Museum of the History of Science)
to pursue his interest in church architecture. He was a keen cyclist - cycling
being at that time a popular middle-class sport. Like many men with a private
income, he was fairly indifferent to money - if not contemptuous - as he was
towards the world of commerce. His sons inherited that attitude.
Lawrence's mother was strong-willed and practical. He once described her as a
fanatical housewife. With five sons, she may have needed those qualities! The
family employed resident maids.
Both parents were deeply religious. The Lawrences attended St. Aldate's church
in Oxford and said prayers daily at home. St. Aldate's was renowned (then as
now) for its strongly evangelical approach.
Apart from church-attendance, Mr and Mrs Lawrence each had their own activities
and friends, which was not unusual at the time. Lawrence noted, however, that
they rarely went out together.
It seems that the five boys enjoyed a happy childhood, though Lawrence later
mentioned that personality-conflicts between his parents could cause tension.
The boys, too, were unlike one another. Lawrence, who by common consent was the
leader, was closest to his younger brother Will.
He was intellectually gifted. The mark-sheets of the public examinations he took
at the ages of 16 and 18 survive. They show high scores across a wide range of
subjects, and exceptional ability in English and religious studies. His results
put him among the best of several thousand contemporaries who sat the Oxford
Local Examinations. He went on to win an Exhibition (a form of minor
scholarship) to Jesus College, Oxford. In 1910 he graduated from Oxford
University with First Class Honours in Modern History. He then took up a
postgraduate award at Magdalen College, Oxford. After the war, he would be
elected to a Research Fellowship of All Souls College.
Relatively few Englishmen achieve such academic distinction, yet there are
different types of intellectual ability. Lawrence had an original, observant and
creative mind with a quick grasp of practical questions. He could absorb large
amounts of complex information and draw interesting conclusions. Yet he had
little taste for rigorous intellectual disciplines like mathematics or
philosophy. Like many born leaders, he seemed to form instinctive judgements
about people, knowing how they might react and what he could trust them to do.
Unlike some intellectuals, he also had strong practical gifts. He quickly
rejected the idea of becoming a professional academic. He admired fine
craftsmanship and derived creative satisfaction from manual work. While a
student at Oxford he came to revere the fine printing of William Morris. This
led to one of his lifelong ambitions - to run a fine press of his own.
To look at, he was not impressive - at least at first glance. He was only 1m 66
tall, and his head seemed rather large for his body. Short stature was a
disadvantage in competitive school sports, which he disliked. Instead, he
developed his prowess as a cyclist. He avoided all forms of competition, but was
proud of his strength and fitness and the distances and speeds he achieved on
his bicycle. These often-solitary exploits reflected one of the most remarkable
facets of his personality. He had inherited from his mother an iron will-power.
It extended his physical endurance far beyond the point where most people would
give up. Later, it would help him to be courageous in the face of danger.
By all accounts his eyes were remarkable. Many people found them commanding.
When he cared to use it, he had astonishing persuasive power.
He learned photography from his father, who was also probably responsible for
his initial interest in architecture. He studied the design and construction of
mediaeval castles and used photographs to record interesting details. For the
same reason he took drawing lessons from E.H. New, a noted architectural
draughtsman. His mind was naturally inquisitive. For instance, he admired
sculpture and, in order to appreciate it better, tried sculpting. Throughout his
life, his writing shows the observation skills acquired during his youth, and
his wish to understand the underlying structure and mechanism of what he saw.
With so much in his favour, Lawrence's short stature may seem a relatively
slight disadvantage. Yet taller people, who have no reason to think of their
height, almost certainly under-rate its influence. Lawrence was conscious of his
"littleness" throughout his life. In his own mind, it helped to set him apart
from other people. Perhaps it also spurred him to achievement (Napoleon and
Margaret Thatcher were both short). His letters contain ample evidence of
ambition, though in the pre-war years he seemed to lack any goal except writing
and travel.
Small stature may also have prompted an irritating trait he recognised in
himself: a tendency to seek attention through eccentric behaviour, particularly
when dealing with strangers. Victims of such treatment often resented it. At
least one of his wartime superiors felt that non-conformity was a serious
handicap in Lawrence's relationship with the military hierarchy.
There was, however, a far greater handicap to Lawrence's career. During his
childhood he discovered a shaming family secret: he was illegitimate. It is not
certain exactly what he knew before his father's death in 1919, but he certainly
knew enough to grasp the implications.
His father, whose real name was Thomas Chapman, was an Irish aristocrat who had
made an extremely unhappy marriage. Finally, he had eloped with his children's
governess, leaving behind his wife and four daughters. Using the assumed name
'Lawrence', the couple had lived successively in Wales (where Lawrence was
born), Scotland, Brittany, and Hampshire. They finally settled in Oxford.
Chapman's wife refused a divorce, so the Lawrences could never marry.
As
T.E. Lawrence reached the age where most boys develop career ambitions, he must
have realised how many doors were closed to him. The stigma of illegitimacy - if
the facts one day became public - would bar him from respectable society and
from any profession where social status was significant. It would also prevent
him marrying almost any woman from a respectable family. The more publicly
successful he became, the greater and more damaging would be the risk of
exposure.
Despite caution about attributing career decisions to single causes, some
factors are strong enough to be decisive. For Lawrence, illegitimacy may have
been such a case. Relatives of his father knew about the scandal. They preferred
silence to family disgrace. Robert Vansittart of the Foreign Office was both a
friendly acquaintance and Lawrence's illegitimate second cousin. When
Lawrence became famous even King
George V was briefed about the family circumstances.
Lawrence must always have feared that the secret would come out. With hindsight,
we can see that he chose to spend most of his life in occupations where the
potential damage would be minimal. He did not marry, and in private said that
his parents should have had no children.
More than this, he knew that he really was an outsider - someone who might at
any moment be rejected by the very people who praised his achievements. As a
result, he stood apart from British society and its conventions. He was his own
judge of what was right and wrong, of what was worth doing and what was futile.
He would never feel obliged to conform to an official policy he disagreed with.
As an illegitimate child, abhorrent to his father's family, there were no
influential relatives to help his career. To succeed, the young Lawrence would
have to build a pedestal of his own, and he alone would be qualified to judge
whether the achievement was worthwhile.
The career - perhaps pastime would be a better word - that Lawrence first chose
was archaeology. His mentor was D. G. Hogarth, Keeper of Oxford's Ashmolean
Museum. In 1910, shortly before Hogarth and Lawrence met, Macmillan published
Hogarth's memoir
Accidents of an Antiquary's Life
. In it, he wrote: 'Your true
Antiquary is born, not made. Sometimes an infirmity or awkwardness of body,
which has disposed a boy to shun the pursuits of his fellows, may help to detach
the man for the study of forgotten far off things; but it is essential that
there be inborn in him the type of mind which is more curious of the past than
the present, loves detail for its own sake, and cares less for ends than means.'
The description fits Lawrence, who had immersed himself in mediaeval history
since boyhood.
The final section of this paper traces Lawrence's involvement with the Arab
world.
First, a reminder of the different stages of this period.
- In 1909 Lawrence spent the summer in Syria and Palestine, visiting crusader
castles for his Oxford thesis.
- In December 1910 he went to Jebail to improve his Arabic, before joining the
British Museum's excavations at Carchemish, near Jerablus on the River
Euphrates. He worked at Carchemish until the spring of 1914.
- In December 1914 he was posted to Cairo, where he joined the Intelligence
Department. During the next two years, his personal interest in the region was
further developed through research and work on maps and intelligence reports. He
quickly became the department's expert on Syria, and was keenly interested in
the prospects of an Arab revolt.
- In October 1916 he was sent on an Intelligence mission to the Hejaz. This led
to a permanent attachment as British liaison officer with the irregular Arab
army commanded by Sherif Feisal. He remained with these forces until the fall of
Damascus in October 1918.
- During 1919 he was attached to Feisal's staff at the Paris Peace Conference,
where he worked closely with Feisal to promote the cause of Arab
self-determination.
- In 1921-2 he worked at the British Colonial Office as adviser to Winston
Churchill on Arab Affairs. He advocated the settlement of Iraq agreed at the
Cairo Conference in March 1921. He also helped negotiate the agreement that
ultimately made Sherif Abdullah ruler of TransJordan. He failed, however, to
persuade King Hussein of the Hejaz, nominal head of the Arab Revolt, to accept
the terms of a treaty under which Britain would have guaranteed the kingdom's
independence.
In the 'Epilogue' to
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Lawrence suggests that
his motives during the Arab Revolt were mainly personal, and gives a list. The
reality was surely more complex. What else formed him during these years?
In
his early years he travelled and lived among ordinary people. During part of
his childhood, while living in France, he had attended a French school and
spoken French with other children and their families. Later, as an Oxford
student, he had toured France on a bicycle much as a French student might have
done. On the same principle, he learned enough colloquial Arabic before his
first visit to the Middle East in 1909 to travel on foot and stay, like an Arab
traveller, in the homes of villagers.
In addition to photography and cataloguing pottery, his main responsibility at
Carchemish was managing the locally recruited workforce. In the eyes of the
villagers he was a civilian employer. That was a very different status to that
of an army officer or imperial official. His experience employing and motivating
Arab peasants at Carchemish was to be invaluable during the Arab Revolt.
Returning to Jerablus from a walking tour between digging seasons in 1911,
Lawrence became extremely ill. Two villagers who worked on the excavations
nursed him back to health. He believed that he owed them his life. Afterwards,
he made the more intelligent of the two, a boy nicknamed Dahoum, his personal
assistant.
It is evident from Lawrence's letters that he was strongly influenced in those
first years by the idea of the 'noble savage'. He felt that Europeans had much
to learn from the simpler lifestyle of the Arab peasantry - and even more from
the life of the Bedouin. He made a conscious effort, in the years before the
war, to explore Arab life and culture. Only later, during the war, did he lose
this kind of idealism.
At Carchemish he gained both understanding and respect for the people among whom
he lived and worked. He saw how the corrupt Turkish officials exploited them,
and wished they could be free to govern themselves. There was, he felt, a big
enough educated class in both Syria and Mesopotamia to provide Arab
administrations.
The war brought this issue into focus. What would happen to the Arab provinces
of the Turkish Empire, if Turkey were defeated? For Lawrence, the ideal solution
would be self-determination. He advocated that policy consistently throughout
the war, at the Peace Conference, and during his time at the Colonial Office.
Of course, he was a realist. He did not believe in Arab unity - there seemed
little likelihood, in the short or medium term, that the elites of Damascus or
Baghdad would accept rule from Mecca or any other Arab centre. Also, an
independent Arab administration would need a greater Power to guarantee its
frontiers, or it would not keep its independence for long. New states would need to call on outside expertise to assist their development. Nevertheless, in
the inland areas behind the Mediterranean littoral, no Power other than Turkey
could have any rational justification for imposing a colonial administration.
The French did not agree. France had long-standing imperial ambitions in the
Middle East, and seemed to believe that adding huge areas of desert to its
Empire would be a fit reward for its wartime sacrifice in Europe. To Lawrence,
replacing Turkish rule with French would make the situation worse not better. He
consistently opposed these French ambitions. In the end, France did impose
colonial rule in inland Syria, though that triumph was short-lived.
The other would-be imperialist was the British Government of India, which wished
to colonise Mesopotamia on the pretext that its fertile plains would solve to
the problem of Indian famines. In 1921 Churchill, advised by Lawrence, put an
end to that ambition.
Lawrence withdrew from Middle East affairs in 1922. Later letters show that he
continued to believe that self-rule was better than imperial rule, and that
great powers should not deprive another people of self-government - even if that
self-government was far from perfect.
Copyright ⓒ
Jeremy Wilson
2009, 2011