Lawrence of Arabia: the Authorized Biography of T.E. Lawrence. - book reviews

National Review, Oct 1, 1990 by H.W. Crocker, III

WHEN Thomas Edward Lawrence went to Arabia, he was an Englishman of evangelical convictions, an Oxonian scholar who had written a thesis on Crusader castles. In many ways he was a child of his times, whose character was to have been formed in accordance with the tradition of Englishmen who, in Kathryn Tidrick's phrase, "for a hundred years had quelled natives with a word."

These young men were taught, as Jeremy Wilson notes, "that women were a fit subject for romantic admiration, but that a desire for sexual gratification was sinful . . . . Young men of the ruling classes were taught that abstinence in general would prepare them for their duties; moral leadership would fall to those who could resist temptations to which others succumbed."

Lawrence took the ideal of self-denial further than most:

He tried staying awake for long periods and, in addition to vegetarianism, experimented with fasting. While he took no part in formal sport, he built up his strength and stamina by arduous cycling over long distances. He made no secret of his desire to subjugate his body to his will. E. F. Hall, whose rooms at Jesus Lawrence often used, recalled that: He came one evening into my rooms ...and began to fire a revolver, blank cartridges fortunately, out of the windows ...one glance at his eyes left no doubt at all that he told the truth when he said that he had been working for 45 hours at a stretch without food, to test his powers of endurance."

By the time he was 33 Lawrence had changed the course of history. He had led the Arabs in a successful revolt against the Turks-a revolt which left him many times wounded, once tortured, and once raped-and he had served as an advisor to Winston Churchill, in whose service he helped redraw the map of the Middle East.

Then came the break. He sought to escape his fame by serving in the ranks of the RAF under assumed names. He ordered ritual beatings for himself. And his mind teetered on the brink of nihilism. The homosexual rape he had suffered during the war, the discovery that he was illegitimate, the physical and mental stresses of the war, and the strains upon his sense of honor required in the negotiations for peace weighed upon him.

The romantic Victorian concepts that he

had so willingly adopted in his youth

were one by one falling away. His evangelical

Christianity had faded before the

war.... The vision of the "noble savage"

.. had crumbled during the Arab revolt:

"I was tired to death of these Arabs;

petty incarnate Semites who attained

heights and depths beyond our reach,

though not beyond our sight." He had

abandoned one of the fundamental tenets

of his Victorian upbringing: belief in the

progress of mankind, and now he had

concluded that romantic love, a concept

he had been brought up to revere, was

nothing more than animal lust.

Jeremy Wilson's authorized biography of Lawrence (authorized by his subject's brother, A. W. Lawrence) is a comprehensive view of the life of the "uncrowned prince of Arabia." Wilson's scholarship is unquestionably sound, and his graceful reticence in dealing with Lawrence's detractors and his private torments is admirable.

If Wilson can be faulted, it is only for downplaying the drama in the life of this wonderfully dramatic figure. Although his description of the war is extensive, it too often consists of one diplomatic cable following another, in-, stead of vivid portrayals of Lawrence on a camel, leading the Arab armies into battle.

After all, it should not take much imagination to bring these dramas to life. To unite the various Arab factions against the Turks, Lawrence himself had to become an actor-but one who had to pull off his performance in the real world, where lives were at stake, where indeed the entire Middle Eastern theater was in danger of being lost to the Turks, and where all hinged on Lawrence's ability to negotiate with sheriffs, fight on camels and in armored cars, and launch guerrilla campaigns.

But Lawrence never did go native," despite adopting Arab dress, and despite the sympathy he developed for Arab ways. Nor did he ever quite abandon his Victorian ideals; they only became distorted through bitter experience. He remained an English patriot who loved the music of Edward Elgar, and who confessed to Robert Graves: "there's a streak of vulgarity in me which passionately enjoys English gutters and mud and wet winds and firesides. Pure Dickens, all of that, yet it makes me want to live in England forever." And if he had dropped his illusions about romantic love, this did not lead him into debauchery but into a hatred of carnality and a longing for unselfish friendship.

Even in his abnormalities," Lawrence exhibited his loyalty to the old Victorian order. He was-like a good public-school lad-highly literate and literary, and concomitantly childish about money. He was masochistic, but that seems to be the result of having failed to meet his own unforgiving standards. Having endured extreme degradation, Lawrence believed he had lost his integrity," and this led him into behavior his friends found hard to understand-at the very time he had the whole world at his feet.