Something Old

Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.     

“LAWRENCE OF ARABIA – A Biographical Enquiry” by Richard Aldington (First published 1955)

 

[NB All page numbers in this review come from the original 1955 edition of this book.]

            In my last “Something Old” posting, I examined T. E. Lawrence (self-styled “Lawrence of Arabia”) in his own words by reading carefully his flatulent and pompous book Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It is the essential text if one wishes to understand this much-mythologised man. But the next-most-important book about Lawrence was published twenty years after Lawrence’s death. This was Richard Aldington’s Lawrence of Arabia – A Biographical Enquiry, which appeared in 1955. After two or three decades of books that praised Lawrence uncritically, Aldington’s was the first to debunk Lawrence methodically. Some years ago I wrote on this blog about Aldington’s 1920s novel Death of a Hero, and I pointed out that Aldington was a man of extremes, or as I put it, that he tended to write as if he were shouting at us. Richard Aldington (1892-1962 – born Edward Godfree Aldington) either loved and totally endorsed things, or he condemned and completely rejected things. There was no middle ground and no attempt to weigh up the pros and cons about people. His book on T. E. Lawrence does not concede any good whatsoever to the man. With similar absolutism, his biography of the other Lawrence, D. H. Lawrence, Portrait of a Genius But… idolises D. H. Lawrence, ridicules all his critics, and is in effect hagiography.

 

When Lawrence of Arabia – A Biographical Enquiry first appeared in 1955, it caused a rowdy controversy and was widely condemned by those who thought that Aldington was maligning a national hero. Certainly Aldington overstates his case, and on one particular, he expresses ideas that now seem very questionable. Even so, many of the things he says, then regarded as almost posthumous libel, have been confirmed by later researchers. The broad outlines of his critique are now widely accepted by all but patriotic mythologisers. In effect, his dyspeptic book was a necessary debunking which laid the foundations for more balanced views of Lawrence.

The major accusation Aldington aims at Lawrence is that Lawrence was a chronic liar. Aldington was the first to publicly note (what was still scandalous to many people in the 1950s) that Lawrence was an “illegitimate” child as were his siblings. His father was a minor aristocrat who deserted his wife and cohabited with a governess, Lawrence’s mother. This, as Aldington interprets it, gave Lawrence a life-long sense of shame so that he always had difficulty in making friends and was always looking for a father figure. While he was genuinely a talented child, he invented exaggerated stories and made up many which were accepted as the truth by more gullible biographers such as Robert Graves, who wrote one of the earlier hagiographies of Lawrence. Graves believed Lawrence’s nonsensical claim to have read all 50,000 books in the Oxford Union Library when he was a student. Lawrence was always vague when it came to dates and had the habit of saying he did something “before I was ten” which was easily turned into a marker of precocity. For example he claimed he had learnt Latin fluently before he was 4, claimed to have invented the type of bicycle he rode and exaggerated the mileage he covered in a cycle tour of France, all of which claims were untrue. Aldington goes on to prove that when Lawrence was a trainee archaeologist under the eminent Leonard Woolley, he exaggerated the extent to which he had travelled in Egypt and the Middle East. He had little real knowledge of the Arabian hinterland until he was engaged by the military.

In Aldington’s eyes these were, however, less important than the lies he told about his war service. First, says Aldington, Lawrence did not invent the “Arab strategy” of fomenting an Arab revolt to harass the Ottoman forces. He was given a job at the British bureau in Cairo and was privy to a number of strategic plans which he later claimed were his own. It was his superior Sir Ronald Storrs who concocted the idea of stirring up Hashemites. In May 1916, the Sykes-Picot agreement – the secret plan for Britain and France to carve up the Middle East at war’s end -  was already concluded before Lawrence was in any way connected with an Arab revolt. [Remember, all Lawrence’s activities in the desert were confined to 1917-18.] Says Aldington “preliminaries, which led to the rebellion, occurred before Lawrence even reached Cairo, as did Hussein’s refusal to endorse the Holy War. In other words, the rebellion of Sharif Hussein against the Turkish government would certainly have occurred if Lawrence had never existed.”  (Part 2, Chapter 2 p.146). Here, however, Aldington is overstating his case, as in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence himself does note that others had already thought of the “Arab strategy” before he was involved.

Lawrence, says Aldington, was a self-mythologiser, and notes “Whatever Lawrence’s part in the 1914 war it can probably never be estimated exactly because so much of the evidence rests on his own testimony. Lawrence has recorded that Lord Allenby could not determine how much of him was ‘genuine performer’ and how much ‘charlatan’ and Lord Wavell comments that Allenby never solved the problem; but he ‘always suspected a strong streak of the charlatan in Lawrence’. Lloyd George more vaguely hints a similar opinion.” (Part 1, Chapter 7 p.110) Lawrence’s first major engagement was leading a small Arab column up to capture the coastal town of Wejh. It was supposed to be a combined operation with the British Navy; but Lawrence dawdled and the town had been captured by the navy alone before he arrived. [I did note in my review of Seven Pillars of Wisdom that Lawrence himself records this event, but he makes up elaborate excuses for his non-engagement.] Lawrence did blow up Turkish railway lines but exaggerated how many; and besides, says Aldington, French and British engineers had already been doing this for two years before Lawrence appeared on the scene. Aldington notes that the D.S.O. (Distinguished Service Order) which Lawrence was awarded in 1918 was awarded on the basis of his own uncorroborated report concerning a very small engagement. Lawrence made his name for capturing Aqaba [Akaba] which had a very small garrison and Lawrence did not lead this attack but followed Feisal. [Again I think Aldington overstates – in Seven Pillars of Wisdom Lawrence admits that Aqaba was barely defended.] To dismiss the romantic notion that Lawrence’s war exploits were somehow the key to the Allies’ victory in the Middle East, Aldington frequently (and correctly) reminds us in detail that for most of the First World War, the bulk of the Turkish Army was occupied by its campaigns in the Dardanelles and the Caucasus; and most of the Allies’ success in Palestine and Syria was thanks to General Allenby’s regular British Army. Lawrence’s exploits had little or no impact on overall strategy.

Aldington was the first to spell out explicitly that Lawrence was homosexual by orientation – a truth that would upset few people now but that was blasphemy in the 1950s. Says Aldington, the adolescent water-boy Dahoum, known as Sheik Ahmed was “probably the great love of Lawrence’s life” (Part 1, Chapter 5, p.80) and most likely the mysterious “S.A.” to whom Seven Pillars of Wisdom is dedicated. The boy was about 15 years old, which raises the unpleasant possibility of paedophilia on Lawrence’s part. Aldington charts Lawrence’s homosexuality by many indicators, such as his inability to relate to women and his silly boyish pranks like putting up ridiculous “decorations” in order to mock a fellow archaeologist who had just got married (Part 1, Chapter 6 p.90). The only woman he seems to have liked in adulthood was George Bernard Shaw’s wife, who was more of a mother-figure. In Seven Pillars of Wisdom Lawrence sometimes openly declares his preference for male company and shunning women. It amazes me that anyone should have found Aldington’s revelations shocking in the 1950s, inasmuch as all the evidence is there for the reading in Seven Pillars of Wisdom itself. I can only assume that many of those who were shocked had never read what Lawrence himself had published.

Aldington says (correctly) that it was Lawrence himself who promoted and curated his own legend. While claiming to shun publicity and to be embarrassed by the fame he won after the war, Lawrence was in fact the chief deviser of his fame. Aldington dwells on this at length. The first person to promote the “legend” of Lawrence was the American journalist Lowell Thomas who photographed and filmed Lawrence in 1918 and who, after the war, gave popular lectures about Lawrence’s exploits. Aldington notes:“Mr Thomas showed a remarkable complaisance in playing up to Lawrence’s peculiar quirk of craving for notoriety while wishing the world to believe he hated it. How was it possible to reconcile with this contempt for vulgar publicity the undeniable fact that Lawrence was willingly one of the most photographed men of his time, and was always offering himself as a model to painters and sculptors?” Lowell Thomas later admitted that he had made up a “cock-and-bull story” that he had “tricked” Lawrence into being photographed. Lawrence was always ready to pose for his lens. (Part 3, Chapter 3 p.292)

 [Portrait of Lowell Thomas in 1918]

Further, says Aldington: “Having put into circulation… embellished stories through the credulity of one or more friends and profited by the renown as an extraordinary person they brought him, he would repudiate them sometimes… or complain that he was persecuted by publicity. His curious duplicity in this respect went so far that he persuaded Lowell Thomas and [Robert] Graves to publish statements freeing him from responsibility for the statements and stories he had given them.” Later he repudiated Lowell Thomas and pretended to have hardly known him. (Part 1, Chapter 7 p.107). And “While trying to preserve a reputation for shrinking modesty, [Lawrence] circulated through his friends exaggerated or wholly invented stories always to his advantage, stories which eventually got into print and now form the principle basis of his reputation, and in almost every case they were stories which could only have originated with himself.” (Part 2, Chapter 3 p.160)

Aldington remarks ironically: “There is one achievement which nobody can deny Lawrence, and that was his capacity to convince others that he was a remarkable man. Of course he was, but what was chiefly ‘remarkable’ was his capacity for self-advertisement. He was a soldier among writers and a writer among soldiers. He succeeded in impressing such eminent and different persons as Sir Winston Churchill, Mr E. M. Forster and Sir Lewis Namier. Unquestionably Lawrence was a determined and ambitious man, guerrilla fighter, and possibly administrator; but an immense legend was fabricated, largely by himself, from materials of uncertain substance.” (Part 3, Chapter 7 p.349) Aldington frequently refers to “The Lawrence Bureau”, meaning those who boosted Lawrence’s self-made legend.

Part of this calculated legend-building was the way Lawrence presented  Seven Pillars of Wisdom to the world in its first publication in 1926. He deliberately created a mystique around the book by withholding it and then first issuing it only in limited editions.

Then there is the demonstrable streak of sadism and masochism in Lawrence. He ordered what amounted to a war crime when he approved the killing of prisoners as his partisans took the village of Tafas. Post-war, Lawrence attempted to hide in the ranks, first in the Tank Corps then in the RAF, using different aliases – Ross and Shaw. As a ranker, Lawrence took to flagellation, routinely instructing a lower ranker to whip him. Aldington sees all this as both masochism and a continuing attempt to atone for his bastardy. Lawrence’s post-war verbal interventions in the Middle East were disastrous, and to the very end of his life (his motorcycle crash in 1935) he often made grandiose claims about having been offered, but turning down, high positions in state – all of which claims were pure fantasy.

So far, strident and sometimes dogmatic as Aldington may be, nearly everything he has asserted has been corroborated by subsequent researchers. But now we come to the major flaw in Aldington’s book. Lawrence, says Aldington, was first and foremost a British agent serving British interests. This is demonstrably true. However Aldington, very much a Francophile, regards the notorious Sykes-Picot Agreement as a right and proper post-war plan for the Middle East. Britain would take over Palestine and the Arab lands (and oil fields) to the east; France would take over Lebanon and Syria. This secret deal is seen by us now as an abhorrent piece of imperialist colonialism. Aldington argues that the British constantly tried to undermine the agreement and take Syria for themselves. As Aldington interprets it, Lawrence’s idea was to promote Feisal as the leader of his “revolt” so that he could be set up as a British stooge to “rule” Syria rather than the French. (He gives much persuasive evidence that the speeches Lawrence claimed to have given at the Paris Peace Conference, supporting the Arab cause, were never given.) He makes it clear that when Lawrence rode with his Arab skirmishers into Damascus, the British army had already cleared the way and Lawrence’s main aim was to forestall the French. (Part 2, Chapter 6 p.239) Indeed the Arab “victories” in 1918 consisted mainly of taking over towns that the Turks and their German allies had already abandoned under pressure of the British advances. The ostensible aim of Lawrence and the “Arabs” was to claim as many towns as possible so that they could make them part of a future Arab state. Yet at the same time (made quite clear in Seven Pillars of Wisdom), as a person who knew the working of the Foreign Office and the British Cairo Bureau, Lawrence was fully aware that the Arabs could never achieve this as he knew all about the Sykes-Picot agreement. Says Aldington “while some of the sympathy expressed [by Lawrence] for ‘Arab freedom’ was doubtless sincere, these ‘causes’ were in the main camouflage for the more realistic purpose of excluding the French as far as possible from the Middle East and establishing British influence throughout the area.” (Part 2, Chapter 6 p.244)

On the whole, this appears to be true. The only flaw in Aldington’s argument is that he assumes the Sykes-Picot deal was itself an honourable agreement.

And in the end, like Aldington, we do have to ask what good Lawrence ultimately achieved. Personally, I see his exploits as the First World War’s equivalent of the Second World War’s “Dam Buster” raid. As reported it was a stirring story, the Dam Busters captured the (British) public’s imagination and were a boost to morale. But in hard reality their raid achieved very little. Smashed German dams were repaired in double-quick time and the raid had virtually no impact on German war production. Lawrence’s Arab “revolt” achieved little, did not produce a united Arab state, and left behind a legacy of tension and repeated conflict in the Middle East. Aldington doesn’t make the comparison I have just made, but he does remark “Perhaps one reason why the public has preferred to listen to romantic tales of ‘Arabian knights’ instead of looking for the facts, is that the romance may be enjoyed without effort while the facts are so complex and minute, not to say tedious, that all but enthusiasts are apt to grow discouraged.” (Part 2, Chapter 2 p.141). As one who had served on the Western Front, Aldington was contemptuous of what he saw as “side-shows”. He remarks: “One cannot help asking if the Arab war (“a side-show of a sideshow”) was militarily worth either its cost or its damaging political consequences? Obviously those in control thought so at the same time or they would not have authorised it. Yet Allenby seems to have had his doubts, since in October, 1917, he sent for Lawrence and demanded to know what was the purpose of blowing up trains? Were they not simply a melodramatic advertisement for Feisal’s political ambitions? Indeed the whole objection to the ‘Arab war’ as expounded by Lawrence… is simply that it was a political demonstration, that militarily its aid was negligible, while time and again it failed to achieve what Lawrence promised.” (Part 2, Chapter 5 pp.197-198)

As I have already noted, despite Aldington’s dogmatism and refusal to recognise any good qualities in Lawrence, most that he reported turned out to be perfectly true and has never been credibly refuted. Hence I regard Aldington’s Lawrence of Arabia – A Biographical Enquiry as the second-most-important book about Lawrence after Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It was the book that set the way for more balanced biographies that acknowledged the many faults, failings and lies of Lawrence which had been overlooked by earlier  hagiographers.

One final point: one feels more sympathy for the fractious Aldington when one learns of the circumstances in which Lawrence of Arabia – A Biographical Enquiry was first presented to the public. Aldington suffered from a concerted campaign of abuse. I quote here from Wikipedia’s entry on Aldington:

“Prior to the publication of Aldington's book, its contents became known in London's literary community. A group Aldington and some subsequent authors referred to as "The Lawrence Bureau", led by Basil Liddell-Hart, tried energetically, starting in 1954, to have the book suppressed. That effort having failed, Liddell-Hart prepared and distributed hundreds of copies of Aldington's 'Lawrence': His Charges--and Treatment of the Evidence, a 7-page single-spaced document, This worked: Aldington's book received many extremely negative and even abusive reviews, with strong evidence that some reviewers had read Liddell's rebuttal but not Aldington's book.”

 

  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *

Some footnotes:

(1.)It is a dismal fact that many – perhaps most – people now form their views on what they believe is History from fictionalised films and television series rather than from reliable history books. I’m sure that more people think they know about Lawrence from having seen David Lean’s 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia rather than from doing some serious reading. The problem is that, spectacular and entertaining though the film is, it is also in great part fiction. It is filled with characters who didn’t exist in reality (mainly amalgams of three or four distinct real people). The character clearly based on Lowell Thomas is given the fictitious name “Jackson Bentley” perhaps because the real Lowell Thomas was still alive when the film was made (Thomas died at a ripe old age in 1981). Most offensive to modern eyes, nearly all the Arab and Turkish characters are played by European actors in dark make-up (Alec Guinness, Jose Ferrer etc.). And of course beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed, tall .young Peter O’Toole (6 feet, 2 inches) looks nothing like short, horsey-faced T. E. Lawrence (5 feet, 5 inches). As romanticisation it was very successful.

 

(2.)Books about Lawrence are still being churned out every few years. Checking a bibliography, I would say that there is now a level-pegging of romanticised, hagiographic books about Lawrence and harder-headed books debunking him. If you are so inclined, you can read uncritical rubbish like Alistair MacLean’s Lawrence of Arabia (which, admittedly, was aimed at juveniles) or Jeremy Wilson’s respectful Lawrence of Arabia – The Authorised Biography (published 1990), which is very much what its full title says. Following in the footsteps of Aldington, however, you can also read Philip Knightley and Colin Simpson’s The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia (published 1969) which judges that Lawrence was “a friend to the Arabs only insofar as they served Britain’s purpose”. Desmond Stewart makes a similar case in his T. E. Lawrence (published 1977). In reviewing Stewart’s book, the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper concluded that Lawrence was a fraud, a charlatan and “a giant humbug”. [Okay, this was the same Hugh Trevor-Roper who five years later endorsed  - and then regretted endorsing - the fake “Hitler Diaries”, but on Lawrence he was correct.]

(3.)Just a few years back, the generally-reliable commentator Rory Stewart produced a two-part BBC documentary called Lawrence of Arabia and his Legacy. His basic argument was that Lawrence genuinely believed he could create a united Arab state, but he was out-manoeuvred by the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Treaty of Versailles. Frankly, this ignores all the evidence that Lawrence was fully aware of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and its consequences before he engaged with the Arabs. However, Rory Stewart returns to sanity when he describes Seven Pillars of Wisdom thus: “In a sense [Lawrence’s] prose is the weakest part.  He is obsessed with a kind of slushy, late 19^th century decadent poetry.” Rory Stewart also notes Lawrence’s predilection for using unnecessarily recherche words. Quite so.

(4.)Against Aldington’s wishes, his book was first publicised gleefully in France as Lawrence le Menteur (Lawrence the Liar). A rather crude title, for sure, but basically truthful.