TE Lawrence

HOMOSEXUALITY AND ITS ROLE IN THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF TE
Was he homosexual or wasn’t he? It’s a question often asked about TE Lawrence. But it is not a question to which I will provide an answer here, for the simple reason that there is no convincing evidence to prove he was either a homosexual or to the contrary, that he was not. There are only a lot of suspicions and speculations for both positions, nothing more. Instead, I will deal with the label “homosexual”, the stereotype of evil and criminal behaviour that existed during TE’s lifetime and afterward, which forced friends and biographers to deal with this “unmentionable” subject. I will show that the arguments pro and con are not about homosexuality or the reality of TE’s life at all, but about proving or disproving evil and criminal behaviour, which was regarded as typical for homosexuals. Placing the heated and emotional discussion about TE’s homosexuality in the context of the views on the subject in his time will give a totally different perspective on a subject which still is very controversial in TE studies. This will be the first part of a series of articles on this blog, about manly love, homosexual behaviour and homosexuality, and the role they played in the life and legend of TE.

THE LABEL “HOMOSEXUAL”
The picture of homosexua­li­ty which emerges from the studies and biogra­phies of TE is simply astonishing. A homosexual is not a very nice chap. He is a pathologue and a per­vert, who indulges in secret vice. Having an unhappy twist, he is inde­li­cate, indecent, coarse, unclean, and physi­cally and moral­ly defor­med. His behaviour is impro­per, making smutty remarks and having queer friends.­­ Fortunately he is easy to recognize, because he displays manner­isms consistent with particular physiological traits, such as having wide hips. A ho­mo­sexual hates women, and makes diffi­culties with the wives of his friends. Women are not attracted to him sexually in any way, and therefore marri­age is out of the ques­tion. When living intima­tely toge­ther with groups of men, a homo­sexual is incapable of hiding his sexua­lity, and therefore he cannot have hetero­sexuals as tent- or room-mates. Still they are relatively safe from his perversion, since a homosexual can only have sex with other homo­sexuals, ot­her­wise it would be no fun. (*1) Staggering as this may sound, these views are typical of the norms and values that were dominant in the society of TE’s time. 

Homosexuals were different from the norm, and their otherness was perceived as being suspicious, dangerous and evil. They were considered to be a danger to society and consequently criminalized for their dreadful homosexual behaviour (“sodomy”). Applying the label “homosexual” (and later “gay”) to an individual “in these circumstances is not necessarily a reflection of their actual sexuality or sexual conduct, but upon the perceived state of their character; it is a label used to discredit and to confirm that the exclusion is deserved.” (*2) It was not just that homosexuals were bad people themselves, it was also the other way around: bad people had to be homosexual. It’s an old tradition which goes back to the Egyptians, Greeks and Persians, to consider the enemy to be effeminate. Consequently both enemy men and women were often raped, to prove the point. And we still find it in modern times, like for example in the executions of homosexuals in Iran during the revolutionary period of the eighties, when Ayatollah Khomeiny took over.

HOMOSEXUALITY AS EVIL: THE EXAMPLE OF IRAN
Between 1979 and 1984 there was a lot of outrage in the Western media about executions of homosexuals in Iran. After thorough investigation, however, it turned out that most of the people involved were not homosexual at all. They were murderers, rapists and drug smugglers, and since they were considered to be bad people already, they were labelled by the authorities in Iran to be homosexual too. The term “homosexual” was used as a negative label, referring to behaviour which clashed with the God-given order of society and with the social role pattern. It violated public decency, and was regarded as a typical example of the shameless and depraved decadence of Western society, whose permissiveness made license public, which would ultimately led to social chaos. “Homosexual” referred specifically to passive homosexual behaviour, which was considered particularly objectionable, because it topsy-turvied God’s creation, and threatened the God-given harmony between men and women, which is reflected in the social role pattern. And finally, it also referred to the public transgression of morals, the conscious refusal to hide behind the veil of secrecy, and thus openly challenging established norms and values. As in the story of Lot (and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah), homosexual behaviour had become symptomatic of evil behaviour in general. It would inevitably lead to chaos and decay, and therefore homosexuals were considered to be anti-social, and a threat to social order. Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-1989) alluded to this idea when saying that homosexuals were spreading the “stain of wickedness”, and should therefore be exterminated, since they were parasites and corruptors of the nation. Homosexuality was not only regarded as evil in itself, but also provided a convenient label for stigmatizing bad people in general. During this revolutionary period in Iran the term was used as a generic label, applied to persons who were considered, rightly or wrongly, to be criminals. It did not matter what they did exactly, it was enough to know they were anti-social and therefore evil. In this way, for example, political enemies were eliminated without any legal justification whatsoever. It is a historic tradition that in a situation of political, economic, and social instability, internal chaos will be blamed on outsiders and foreigners. And this made the homosexual a perfect scapegoat. (*3)

HOMOSEXUALITY AS EVIL: BIN LADEN AND TE LAWRENCE
The tradition of homosexuality being regarded as evil, and consequently being used to make bad people even worse than they already were, could also be observed after 9/11 when Bin Laden (1957-2011) himself was accused of effeminacy and homosexuality. Spy novelist John le Carré, for example, wrote, “The stylized television footage and photographs of this bin Laden suggest a man of homoerotic narcissism, and maybe we can draw a grain of hope from that. Posing with a Kalashnikov, attending a wedding or consulting a sacred text, he radiates with every self-adoring gesture an actor’s awareness of the lens. He has height, beauty, grace, intelligence and magnetism, all great attributes, unless you’re the world’s hottest fugitive and on the run, in which case they’re liabilities hard to disguise.” (*4) And Henry Porter of the Observer, adds TE in this picture, “Watching the al-Jazeera broadcast, we were all surely alert to the subliminal messages in the deceptive modesty of his glances, and to his neurotic effeminacy and self-love. It brought to mind the sexual ambivalence of T.E Lawrence who suggested … that truly dangerous men allow themselves to dream during daylight and then “act their dreams with their eyes open”.” (*5)

These statements show that the label “homosexuality” (and nowadays “gay”) is closely connected with stereotyped images of predatory, abusive, and psychologically disturbed people, thus making a “homosexual” into someone you would definitely not take home and introduce to your mother, since he “hangs round the school gates with the drug pushers and paedophiles waiting, along with the bogeyman, to steal the souls of innocent children.” (*6) And for some people TE is one of them. Ilana Mercer, a conservative blogger who is fiercely anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, for example, speaks of “Lawrence‘s whimsical writings”, of “Lawrence’s Arabian Nights inspired oeuvre” and of Seven Pillars being “a veritable mirage of lies”. She blames TE for being responsible for the foundation of Arab unity, which according to her was only based on “the romantic hallucinations of a British homosexual”. It is because of his homosexuality that we are now saddled with these “decadent” Arabs. “Lawrence’s personal habits were not mere peccadilloes, as the personal and the political were one to him. His bizarre psychosexual identification with the Arabs was the root of his political beliefs.” (*7)

HOMOSEXUALITY AS EVIL: THE ENGLAND OF TE’S TIME
In TE’s lifetime homosexual acts were a criminal offence. If proof of penetra­tion was provided, “buggery” was punished by penal servitude for a mini­mum of ten years up to life. Other homo­sexual acts, being acts of “gross inde­cency”, were pun­ished by up to two years imprisonment with hard labour, whether they were in public or in private. (*8) The prosecution and conviction of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) in 1895, and other homosexual scandals during the following decade, created a public image of the homosexu­al as “a cor­ruptor of youth”. The danger of unregulated male lust and the general moral decaden­ce of such behaviour, made homosexuality into a social evil which would only bring moral decline. It was even worse than just a conta­gi­ous social disease, since contemporary medical opinion considered it to be an ill­ness bordering on insanity. The days of intimate (often chaste) male friends­hips were over, and were replaced by an age of guilt and suspici­on. If accused of homosexuality, a man in public life fled the coun­try or killed himself.

Typical of the period was the outraged reaction of the father of the poet John Betjeman (1906-1984), when he found out that his son had been corres­ponding with Wilde’s friend, Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945). “He’s a bugger. Do you know what buggers are? Buggers are two men who work themselves up into such a state of mutual admira­tion that one puts his piss-pipe up the other one’s arse. What do you think of that?” And of course I felt absolu­tely sick, and shattered.” (*9) But this was nothing compared with the violent reaction of the father of writer Beve­rley Nichols (1889-1983), after he found out that his son had been reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). “He seemed to choke. The purple deepened on his fat cheeks. He turned to me with an expression of such mur­de­rous hate that I stepped towards the wall. “You filthy little bas­tard!” he scre­amed … “Don’t you dare speak to me … you … you scum!” He hurled the book at my head … he struck me across the mouth. “Now … you pretty little bastard … you pretty little boy, watch me!” My father opened the book, very slow­ly, cleared his throat, and spat on the title page. Having spat once, he spat again; the action appeared to stimulate him. Soon his chin was covered with saliva. Then, with a swift animal ge­stu­re, he lifted the book to his mouth, closed his teeth over some of the pages, and began tearing them to shreds … I could conceive no crime that could poss­ibly cause any man’s name to be so hated (and asked) “What did Wilde do?” “What did he do?” He shook his head; the crime was too terri­ble to pass his lips. “Oh, my son … my son!” he groaned. And sinking on to the bed, he burst into tears.” The next morning his father threatened: “If ever I catch you reading a book by that man again, or if ever I so much as hear you mention his name …. I’ll cut your liver out.” The name of the crime he wrote down on a paper, because it was “unfit for a decent man to say”. It said “illum crimen horri­ble quod non nomina­ndum est.” (“this horrible crime that dare not speak its name”) (*10) 

After the Second World War not much changed in regard to the attitude towards homosexuality. Homosexuals were still regarded as an alien class of humans, diabolical and separate from normal people. Politicians warned the public about the “insidious poisoning of Britain’s moral state” by juvenile crime and adultery, but in particular by “the vices of Sodom and Gomorrah”. To stop this plague, police agent-provocateurs were sent out to entrap homosexuals through solicitation. The Metropolitan Police even formed a special division solely to patrol public urinals, and consequently the number of prosecutions for homosexual offences skyrocketed. Even powerful and famous men (actors, politicians and lords) were paraded as examples in the press. In May 1952 The Sunday Pictorial devoted a full-page feature to help their readers recognize these “evil men”, and in 1961 it helpfully explained “How to Spot a Homo”. Readers could discern such a person by his sedate tweed jacket, suede shoes and pipe, or alternately by his telltale effeminate manner and mincing steps. These exposés reflected the anxieties born of the paradox that homosexuals, forced to live a double life, proved to be quite successful at it. They were considered to be the worst of the worst, and their lying and manipulating way of life made them even more dangerous. This belief was only confirmed by the case of the communist spies of “The Cambridge Four” (Philby, MacLean, Burgess and Blunt), which became public knowledge from 1956 onwards. (*11) 

It was in this atmosphere that family, friends, and colleagues of TE were suddenly confronted with public accusations of TE being a homosexual. It is understandable therefore, that they were extremely distur­bed and angered by this, since it was unimaginable to them that he was an evil person who belonged in jail. Corporal Jack Easton (1899-1990), who served with TE in the RAF in India (1927-1929), wrote the following to me when he was 90 years old: “Lawrence was a great, clean-living man and certainly not homo­sexu­al. I would stake my life that he was not a homo­sexual, but he has passed on, and is not here to defend him­self, but I also would like to say that who­ever said he was a homosexual, to me (it) is quite clear that they are homo­sexu­al themselves, and is trying to make excuses to say they are not, but nothing would make me say they are not when running down such a great man. I am sorry to say that no one has said he was a homosex­ual to me, as I certainly would let them know my feel­ings about Law­rence.” (*12)

POLITICAL ENEMIES
Rumours about TE’s supposed homosexual­ity already started during his lifetime. They came from people who resented his influence and reputa­tion, and more particu­larly from the politi­cal and military enemies he made during the Arab Revolt and its pol­itical after­math. TE was dis­credited for exaggerating his exploits, for his love of pub­licity and social eccentricity, and for his appal­ling and ill-man­nered behav­iour. An early example of the irritation his behaviour created is given by Lieutenant-Colonel Cyril Wilson (1873-1938), the British representative in Jeddah, in 1916. “Lawrence wants kicking and kicking hard at that, then he would improve.  I look on him as a bumptious young ass who spoils his undoubted knowledge of Syrian Arabs etc. by making himself out to be the only authority on war, engineering, HM’s ships and everything else. He put every single person’s back up I’ve met from the Admiral down to the most junior fellow on the Red Sea.” (*13) But the charge of homo­sexuality was not publicly expressed during his lifetime and even for a long time after­wards, probably to prevent cases of libel. Gossip about it, however could be found in private cor­res­pon­dences and club talk.

One of the groups who opposed TE’s political views on the Middle East, and felt threatened by his influence, was the so-called “Mesopotamian faction”, who wanted to keep Iraq as a British colonial possession. Among them was Colo­nel Arnold Wilson (1884-1940), who had been Ac­ting Chief Politi­cal Officer in Mesopotamia during the war. (*14) Wilson’s ambi­tions of becoming the next High Commissioner of Iraq were shattered by the remo­val of Bri­tish adminis­tra­tion, Feisal becoming King of Iraq in 1921. This was a conse­quence of the poli­tics of the Colonial Office, headed by Churchill and assisted in Middle East affairs by TE. Wilson felt he had been singled out by him as being respon­sible for the things that had gone wrong in Iraq, something for which he never forgave him. Afterwards he never missed a chance to denigrate TE and his achieve­ments. After reading Seven Pillars, he said “I dislike the man and hate the matter. The first three pages are sickening and go far to prove what, from his beardlessness, his love of dressing & being photographed in long clothes, & from other signs & from conversation I long suspected – namely that homosexual practices are Lawrence’s weakness – & the reason for his sojourn in the RAF & the Tankcorps.” (*15) It is not surprising there­fore that when he was asked to review TE’s Revolt in the Desert (1927) and With Lawrence in Arabia (1924) by Lowell Thomas for The Journal of the Cen­tral Asian Society, he made the most of it. TE’s book is described as “a gratuitous parade of the author’s amiable eccentric­ities, couched in the language of the private schoolboy.” (*16) With this review of 1927 Wilson became the first to publicly refer to TE’s suspicious inter­est in the “unmentionable”, although still rather implicitly. “”The bird of Minerva”, wrote Landor, “flies low and picks up its food under hedges.” Lawrence’s hermaphrodite deity flies lower than Land­or’s bird, and seems to have a pref­erence for the cesspool, but we must be grateful to be spared, in this editi­on, more detailed references to a vice which Semitic races are by no means prone. To most Eng­lish readers his Epipsychidion on this subject will be incom­prehen­sible, to the remain­der, unwelcome.” (*17) TE was not bothered in the least by Wilson roaring “like a bull from Basham”. (*18) He under­stood the politi­cal rancour behind “gar­bage mon­gering” of this sort, since Wilson had been in his way and therefore must have felt he was harmed greatly. (*19) 

More political enemies of TE could be found in both the India Office and the Foreign Office. They were irritated by what they regarded as irresponsible behaviour during The Paris Peace Confer­ence in 1919, and felt he had influenced Churchill in transferring Middle East affairs from them to the Colo­nial Office in 1921. For example, Field Marshall Sir Claude Jacob (1863-1948), secre­tary of the Military Depart­ment of the India Office, said, “I look on Lawrence as a fraud, and I am wondering when the bubble will burst.” (*20) An opinion that was shared by Sir Arthur Hirtzel (1870-1937), Secretary of the Political Department of the India Office, who said, “I don’t think I could have brought myself to work with Lawrence, who is as crooked as they make them. (…) He is rather like an overgrown schoolboy – full of wild “stunts”.” (*21) Finally, TE also made enemies with some French politicians and military, who blamed him for the harm he had done to their colonial ambitions in the Middle East. Colonel Edouard Brémond (1868-1948), for example, who served at the Military Mission in Jeddah (1916-1917), wrote of the suspicions that existed regarding TE, since “he was always strictly shaven in a country where the lack of a beard gave rise to suspicions which he was not spared.” (*22)

ENEMIES IN THE MILITARY
In England there were angry army officers too, who felt that TE had unduly grabbed most of the post-war lime­light. In their eyes he had distanced him­self from his proper place in society, through his unconven­tional and eccen­tric behav­iour, even enlisting in the ranks, when a Colonel! When asked about TE, they remarked, “but of course, he was a homosexual.” One of the officers who criticized TE had served with him during the Arab Revolt. Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) Charles Vickery (1881-1951) worked at the Arab Bureau (1916) and was artillery officer of the British Mili­tary Mission in the Hejaz from January to March 1917. From the moment they met, there was an immediate tension between them. TE regarded Vickery as a threat because of his status, being older and of higher rank, and also having a fluent knowl­edge of Arabic and a far greater mili­tary expe­rience, even ha­ving served in desert war­fare before. (*23) Vickery on his side con­demned TE openly as “a braggart and vision­ary”, and con­sidered him to be “mili­tary incompe­tent”. In his eyes, TE’s poli­tical approach to the Arab movement was “absurd”, and the Arab campaign he regarded as “professional suicide”.  According to TE, “(Vickery) was too worldly to like the Arab revolt  – indeed, no one but an enthusiast could have seen the ideal that lay behind its unpleasantness and puerilities – and the cold-blooded making use of an enthusiasm (my fashion) was equally beyond his understanding.” What made matters worse between them, was Vickery’s superior, colonialist and condescending attitude towards the Arabs, and his drinking, even becoming “a regal boon-companion”. (*24)­ TE was worried that this disrespectful and cynical attitude of Vickery­ would become a threat to his position, since he risked the contempt of the Arabs. According to some biographers, TE sought every oppor­tunity to humili­ate and under­mine his opponent in the eyes of Feisal’s troops, making his life imposs­ible and working secretly to have him trans­ferred to another front. (*25)

After the war Vickery was very hostile towards TE, spread­ing gossip around that he was a homosex­ual. According to Vickery, it explained TE’s ease in dealing with Feisal and the Arabs, since “The whole communi­ty is infec­ted and saturated with vices of which nature abomi­nates the idea”. (*26) In a conversation with the sculptress Lady Scott in February 1921, Vickery told her “the most hair-raising stories” about TE. “Says that it is common knowledge that he is a “royal mis­tress”, that that is the reason you never hear him spoken of in Arabia. When V referred to Hussain to him once, he replied “Don’t talk about that boy to me”. Once a rather beauti­ful young Arab came to him for a passport to Egypt and said he could pay, and produced a slab of gold as big as two man’s hands and said “That is the price of a night with Fai­sal” and so on. Countless tales! Well, well.” (*27)

HOMOSEXUALITY IN LAWRENCE BY HIS FRIENDS 
The first public reactions towards accusations of homosexuality were made in TE Lawrence By His Friends (published in May 1937). In this book of recollections edited by TE’s youngest brother Arnold Lawrence (1900-1991), two authors denied the rumours. Lowell Thomas (1892-1981), the man who stood at the basis of all the publicity about the “Uncrowned King of Arabia”, was very clear about these accusations. “There is one bit of false witness against Lawrence that I par­ticu­larly want to nail. That is the charge spread by cer­tain of his enemies that he was homosexual. In answer to this stupid canard I can say in the first place that any­body who has met thousands of men of all sorts and condi­tions can recognize a homosexual. If one has any prolon­ged contact with pathologues they are bound to give them­selves away sooner or later by a gesture, a phrase, an inflection, a peculiar fashion of enun­ciating the sibi­lants. I have met all sorts and conditions, including  several whose endo­crine imba­lance afflicted them with a sexual inver­sion. Further­more, my father is a physici­an. I passed many hours, weeks, months in Lawrence’s com­pany and never dis­cerned in him the slightest indicia of the homo­sex­ual. But you don’t have to take my word for it.” (*28) The other person to deal with the subject in Friends was Leonard Woolley (1880-1960), a famous archaeologist who knew TE from the Car­che­mish excavations (1912-1914), the Sinai desert survey (1913) and his intelligence work in Cairo (19­14-1915). He starts his article in Friends by describ­ing TE’s relationship with Dahum (1896-1918). Woolley states that the Arabs “were tolerantly scandal­ized by the friendship” of this Eng­lishman of 24 and this handsome Arab boy of 15. Par­ticular­ly after Dahum came to live with TE, and posed naked as a model for a gargoyle which TE was carving for the roof of their house. “The scandal about Lawrence was widely spread and firmly believed. The charge was quite unfounded. Lawrence had in his make-up a very strong vein of sentiment, but he was in no sense a pervert; in fact, he had a remark­ably clean mind. He was tolerant, thanks to his classical reading, and Greek homosex­uality interested him, but in a detached way, and the interest was not morbid but perfectly serious. I never heard him make a smutty remark and am sure that he would have objected to one if it had been made for his bene­fit; but he would describe Arab abnor­malities baldly and with a certain sardonic humour. He knew quite well what the Arabs said about himself and Dahoum and so far from resen­ting it was amused, and I think he courted misunder­stan­ding rather than tried to avoid it; it appealed to his sense of humour, which was broad and schoo­lbo­yish. He liked to shock.” (*29) A remarkable denial, especially since it gives informa­tion which would make some people even more suspicious of TE’s homosexuality. It is no surprise therefore, that friends, admirers and even biographers of TE were rather unhappy with Woolley’s statements about TE being “devoted” to an Arab boy who was “beauti­fully built and remarkably handsome”, about living together and letting the boy pose naked, and about being interested in Greek homosexuality and having knowl­edge of “Arab abnormalities”. (*30)

But it seems that the publication of these defensive reactions by Thomas and Woolley were well intended by the editor of the book, TE’s brother Arnold. And it is even possible that he asked them to include it in their respective articles for Friends, particularly since he himself decided to write an article for the book, in which he denied the rumours that TE was homosexual. In the article, Arnold states that TE’s hatred of women was just a legend and had no foundation in reality, remembering his long standing friendships with women. TE regarded  the marriage of his friends with an envious tenderness, revealing a longing for similar companionship. Another legend he contradicts was the accusation that TE’s relationships with young men led to sodomy or inclinations thereto. According to him, these relationships were only fostered by TE’s missionary spirit, in which he always tried to develop the capabilities of those with whom he came into contact. The men involved always denied and even fiercely resented any suggestion of homosexuality being ascribed to their relationships with TE. The emotional friendship TE describes in the dedicatory poem of the Seven Pillars, was in Arnold’s eyes, only a longing for companionship caused by the confined loneliness of a European’s life in the Near East, and nothing more. The poem was mainly a literary exercise (influenced by English verse of the nineties) intended to recall not only the dead friend, but also the cast-off self of his own youth. Finally, Arnold said, his brother had stated in his letters with the utmost clarity that he had very rarely felt physical inclination towards any person, and had lived in complete celibacy toward both sexes.

In the end Arnold decided against publication of his defence in Friends, probably because he came to feel (or was advised), that the arguments employed were weak. A loyal fraternal reaction might have done little to convince most readers, while the arguments could have added fuel to the fire, and only have led to more suspicions. Still he chose to include the defences by Thomas and Woolley, since a response by two publicly well-known people, with a reputation in their respective fields, might be taken more seriously. Both the denials of TE’s homosexuality as published in Friends and the unpublished one by his brother are very interesting, since they give us the first impression of the arguments which TE’s friends and biographers would later use to counter accusations of homosexuality. The question that still puzzles me however, is why Arnold felt the need to go public with it? What happened in the period after TE’s death in 1935 that caused his brother to come to his defence in public? Were the gossip and rumours so outrageous that he felt he just had to protect the reputation of his family, of intimate friends and of the people who had worked and lived with TE in the military, from being harmed? And since getting it out in the open could have just as easily ended up being counter-productive, was it worth the risk? (*31)

RICHARD ALDINGTON AND HIS HATRED FOR TE
The first biographer to publicly draw attention to TE’s illegitimacy and “sympathy for homosex­uality” was Richard Aldin­gton (1892-1962) (*32)­­­­­ in his book Lawrence of Arabia: a Biographical Enquiry (1955). Aldington and TE had much in common. While Aldington’s father was gentle and easy, his mother (a writer) was strong-willed and turbu­lent, and a typical “will-to-power mother”  whom he actively dis­liked and even hated. (*33) Both trans­lated the Greek poet Meleager of Gadara (1^st century BC), and while TE aban­doned a trans­la­tion of Sturly (1924) by the French writer Pierre Custot, Aldington finished it, leaving TE the task of writing the blurb on the dust jacket. The two also shared horrifying and disturbing war experi­ences and wrote books to deal with them. According to Aldington, he was the one who really suffered during the war, while TE had a very easy time. TE’s book Revolt In The Desert was a success (as was Seven Pillars after his death), but Alding­ton’s Death Of A Hero (1929) was not. Aldin­gton was of the opinion that he had made genuine achieve­ments and had done first-rate work in literature (translating from Itali­an, Proven­cal, Greek and French, editing an anthology of English-language poetry, etc.), while he considered TE’s literary reputation to be largely inflated. All in all TE came to represent everything Aldington hated. For him TE’s popularity was undeserved, since he was just “a phoney, a liar and a praiser of pederasts”. (*34) TE’s enormous public success confronted Aldington with his own failure to fulfil his ambitions of being successful, or at least of making a good living at the things he was good at. It made him desperate to prove to the world that TE was an habitual poseur and liar, and even a criminal who belonged in jail. He might have hoped that everyone would see that they had been wrong about their “Arabian knight”, and that he would finally and deservedly become a successful writer. Aldington could have produced a masterpiece, since it was the first book which looked with a critical eye at the myth of Lawrence of Arabia. But unfortunately he was so full of hatred, jealousy and preju­dice about TE, mis­trusting everything “the world’s phoney” said or did, that he overreacted and produced a biography which was mostly contemptuous and debunking. And para­doxi­cally he was not taken serious­ly himself again. (*35)

Originally Aldington intended to write only a brief chapter on TE’s sex life, in which he would point out the lack of love affairs and the lack of evidence regarding his sex habits. His plan was to bring together a number of his most strik­ing pro­nouncements on sex, from which the reader could form his own judge­ment. But during his research and writing, his hatred and prejudices took over, and more and more he wanted to prove that TE was a homosexual, and therefore an untrustworthy, criminal and evil person. Aldington started collecting TE’s “anti-hetero and pro-homo state­ments”, from which he con­cluded that “The praise of homosexuality in 7P is so flagrant (*36), the doing dirt on women so whole-hearted throughout his life (*37), that there can be no doubt where his interests lay.” (*38) In his private corre­spon­dence he called TE a “dreary little bugger”, who “belonged to the great international trade union of sods”, and showed “that pecu­liar mixture of inso­lence and lying so typical of pederasts.”(*39) Like many of his contemporaries, Aldington was rather prejudiced about homo­sexuality. (*40) He called it a sexual habit, which was “un-English” (*41), but had suddenly become fashionable, with the result that “it is practically impossible to succeed in the upper class unless one is a bug­ger.” (*42) He resented “this sickly homosexuality”, since “eager-eyed Sodomites” like TE and the writer Norman Douglas (1868-1952), both “heroes of the homosexuals & themselves particularly impudent practitioners & preachers” (*43), had made affec­tion between normal men suspect, and with it Aldington’s own bond with men and his feelings toward them during the war. “Friendships between soldiers during the war were a real and beautiful and unique relationship which has now entirely vanished, at least from Western Europe. …. there was nothing sodomitical in these friendships … It was just a human relation, a com­rade­ship, an unde­monstrative exchange of sympathies between ordinary men racked to extrem­ity under a great common strain in a great common danger. There was not­hing dramatic about it.” (*44) Still it seems that in his private life Aldington maintained rather amiable friendships with homosexuals, and seemed to resent homosexuality only when it appeared as a trait of an enemy. (*45)

Although Aldington privately claimed he had “over­whelm­ing proofs” of TE’s homo­sex­uality (*46), the evidence which he brought forward in his biography was only circumstantial. The only claim he made was that TE’s sexual preferences were “anti-female and pro-male”. According to Aldington, TE had openly declared his hatred for women and his disgust for sex with them in his writings and showed disdain for hetero­sexual relations. On the other hand, his sym­pathy for homo­sexual relations was very clear, Seven Pillars being an out­spoken “declar­ation of prefer­ence for homo­sexua­li­ty”. TE also had many friends who were homosex­ual, while his inti­mate friend­ships with men were “com­para­ble in inten­­sity to sexual love”. Aldington blamed the lack of evidence of actual homosexual behaviour on the fact that “relatives and friends are the last persons to hear of or to suspect homosexual practices”. (*47) The main reason for Aldington’s reserve in the book, was the fact that his publishers and lawyers had warned him of a possible libel prosecu­tion by TE’s friends. He did not include, for example, infor­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ma­tion which related TE’s death to his homosex­uality.

The head of Scotland Yard had told the writer Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) that TE’s death was no acci­dent, but suicide. “He had been using Clouds Hill as a rendezvous with private sol­diers, and almost openly, relying on his quasi-immun­ity as the “prince of Mecca”. Noth­ing was done while he was in the RAF, but within a few weeks after his discharge, the usual warrant was issued, and the usual inspec­tor in plain clothes called to give the 24 hours’ warning to get out of England, or … TEL preferred suicide.” (*48) In this case the information was rather questionable, and Aldington was probably right not to use it. First of all, the source of the story, Somer­set Maugham, was known as being an incor­ri­gible gossip, who savoured homo­sex­ual scan­dal. Secon­dly, no offi­­cial proof of any of this could be found, and knowing Aldington and his intentions, he must have done his best to find out if this rumour could be substantiated. (*49) Finally, it is very unli­k­ely that people in high places (both enemies and friends of TE) would have allowed having a scandal on their hands, which would have shattered a national hero and with it Brita­in’s pres­tige. (*50)

This article will be continued in the next post: “The Label “Homosexual” – 2nd Part: Defences”.

The notes for this article can be found in: “The Label “Homosexual” – 3d Part: Notes”.

Arnold Lawrence, Homosexuality, Richard Aldington

THE LAWRENCE BUREAU
Aldington’s book was the first critical enquiry into TE’s life to appear, and it was not well-received by TE’s friends and admirers. Even before it was pub­lished, people like Basil Liddell Hart (biographer of TE), Eric Kenning­­­­­­­­­­­­­ton (illustrator of Seven Pillars) and his wife Celandine, and Robert Graves (biographer of TE), started a cam­paign to suppress the book. This involved a petition to the Queen, letters to the Prime Minis­ter, pressure on the publisher, legal man­oeuvres, smear tactics, and even talk of inflicting violence on Aldington. Publi­ca­tion, they said, might cause the death of TE’s mother, would demolish a British national hero, undermine British prestige, and would play into the hands of the Commu­nists. Aldington  called these people with a vested interest in TE’s reputation “The Lawrence Bureau” (a pun on the Arab Bureau), and their activities harmed him and his reputation greatly. According to Aldington’s daughter Catherine they were responsible for destroying her father’s life and hers at the same time. He was “harassed by the friends and admirers of T.E.L. to a point where not only did he lose his health, but was also deprived of his way of earning his living: writing. He was driven to despair by ruin and only saved by his friends.” (*51)

Some people advised the group to do as TE would have done, and not to take Aldington and his accusations so seriously. Colonel Stewart Newcombe (1878-1956), for example, said “He would have grinned and been greatly amused at “debunking”. (*52) And even Robert Graves agreed with this: “TE would get a great kick out of it were he alive and even offer to go into the witness box on A’s behalf.” (*53) In 1934 TE had criticized Hart for coming to his defence: “He’s always itching to write defences or rejoinders. He knows what I think and doesn’t tell me beforehand. When you send the articles back, tell him they aren’t any good, and he’d better suppress them. After all, everybody has a right to say what he thinks about me, if it’s adverse. I’m in credit.” (*54) The main reason why they never listened to TE’s advice, was that they all had something personal to hide or to lose, because of Aldington’s book. Their own reputation was at stake, since they were known to be close to TE, and now their friend was suddenly accused of being a liar and a criminal. A typical reaction in that regard is that of Pat Knowles (1906-1981) the owner of Clouds Hill (TE’s house), whose father Arthur had served with TE at Bovington Camp. Knowles was worried that Aldington’s allegations might reflect on him. “The sodomy business affects me – my brothers and my father, and would imply that Clouds Hill was a place of evil retreat.” (*55) The problem was that they all had skeletons in their closets, just like their friend TE. They were a little bit different, nothing wrong with that, but different can be dangerous when you are publicly known to be a friend of someone who is accused of being evil.

LIDDELL HART AND HIS FASCINATION WITH LADIES’ UNDERWEAR
Basil Liddell Hart (1895-1970) was a dandy, a military historian, and later became one of the principal costume authorities in England. As one the early biographers of TE (1934), he was suddenly under personal attack, since he was indirectly accused by Aldington of not having told the whole story. For Hart, friendship with TE had become immensely important, which led him occasionally to disregard the facts. TE had contributed greatly to his book, and Hart was well aware of the fact that some of the information he had given him could not have been true, which Aldington now suggested. Since his reputation as a biographer and as an expert on military history depended on it, it was inevitable that he should take up the fight, and so Hart became the informal leader of a loosely organized group of friends of TE. For Hart, the three worst aspects of Aldington’s “extremely nasty book”, were broadcasting TEL’s illegitimacy while his mother was still alive, “portraying him as a sexual pervert”, and making “the general insinuation that his reputation was merely a fiction created by British Government-inspired propaganda to promote our Imperial interests and gain American sympathy.” (*56) Particularly the accusation that TE was a homosexual came as a shock to him, just as it had been when he discovered the passionate affair of his own son Adrian (1922-1991) with John Lehmann (1907-1987), the well-known poet and editor. According to Hart’s biographer, “He was squeamish about nakedness, print or skin, and vaguely disquieted by any suggestion of the homoerotic, let alone the frankly homosexual.” (*57) The arguments he used to counter Aldington’s accusations of homosexuality were already known from the Friends era, and are not very convincing. Hart claimed that none of TE’s male friends had “homosexual traits” and none of them recognized it in him. Homosexuality was foreign to TE because of his “upbringing and composition”, and therefore his sympathy for homosexuality and the “homosexual colouring” in Seven Pillars were purely literary. And finally, he suggested that TE did not hate women, but was friendly with them, while “several were of the really feminine type whom homosexuals do not usually like.”(*58)

The problem with Hart was that he had something hidden in his own sexual closet, which was the fact that he was a fetishist and exhibitionist with a mania for corsetry. He described it himself as “an aesthetic desire for the beauty and grace of womanhood”, which led him to spend a long lifetime gazing at women. He didn’t like them naked, but well-designed, and his attention was focussed on one zone in particular, the waist, its measurement and its displacement. For him the effect it produced was morally improving, aesthetically pleasing and sexually arousing. His corset-mania involved transvestism, the designing and wearing of wasp-waisted corsets, as well as designing them for his wife to wear. His first wife, Jessie Stone, suffered from “sex starvation” as a consequence of Hart’s impotence. While second-in-command of a company on the Somme during the First World War, he was shelled and gassed. He returned to England with phosgene poisoning, anxieties about his own courage in action (he had understandably given way to his fear and panicked), manic delusions of military greatness, hypochondria, and impotence. His wife was a voluptuous woman and a biddable mannequin, and the sensational impression she made was partly created by him, since he was the one who shaped and draped her. Because he knew he couldn’t satisfy her himself, he allowed her to have relationships with men. After their divorce in 1938, his corset-mania was transferred to his second wife and her daughters. Hart threatened to go on hunger strike unless they did as he insisted, namely, abandon their country clothes and wear the high heels, stockings and corsets he had measured for them. Even in his ideas about TE, his fetishism shines through. “That excessive degree of public attention, which arises from a legendary extension of a man’s due fame, was in a sense self-created by the cloak of mystery in which he wrapped himself – like the mystery of a woman who dons a gauzy veil, who exposes her legs while wearing a high-necked dress, who wears a crinoline while exposing her bosom.” (*59)

ERIC AND CELANDINE KENNINGTON
Eric Kennington(1888-1960), the artist who worked with TE on Seven Pillars, and his wife Celandine (1886-1975), were shocked by the accusations made by Aldington. Both were extremely loyal to TE and very grateful for his friendship. For Eric, TE was all important because he had provided him with paid work and a great reputation as an artist, while Celandine felt TE had saved her life. He had been good to her when she suffered from depression, particularly in the period after she had a dreadful miscarriage. He talked to her, clarifying all her fears and she felt understood completely. Aldington’s book was a personal slap in the face for both of them. First of all, they were bothered about the “hounding of Mum”, the harm the book would do to TE’s mother (then 92). It seems they both felt a personal obligation to honour TE’s request that they shield his mother from revelations of her adultery. (*60) According to Mrs Kennington, it was “a most dastardly and dishonourable thing to hound a gallant old woman like this and present her as food for millions of low appe­tites? (…) I am quite con­vinced that this sort of expo­sure will kill her, her sons and the past are so terribly precious and real to her.” (*61) But even more important was the fact that the book “makes out TE to be a liar and a homo-sexual”. Aldington exploited TE’s supposed homosexuality and used it as a means to “blackmail and generally degrade Englishmen” and “skilfully undermi­ne the moral of ideal­istic youth by trying to make out their hero to be a homo-sexual.” (*62) In her eyes, his “filthy” book was subversive and clearly communist-inspired, holding a national hero up to derision, and the international consequences would be severe, damaging Anglo-Amer­ican rela­tions, British prestige in the Middle East, and inflaming anti-British feelings in France. “To counteract Aldington’s drab dirt” and particularly his accusation that TE hated women, she tried to give the world a picture of TE from a woman’s point of view. When the journal Housewife published her article about TE in 1955, she was ecstatic by the thought that it would reach millions of women. “I have been especially aiming at killing Aldington’s assertion that the two rooms in the garden of the Oxford house and Clouds Hill were sinister and that TE hated his mother. (…) The meat is the way Lawrence saved my life.” (*63) 

Her husband, Eric, was as infuriated by Aldington’s biography as she was. “If he is instrumental in murdering a magnificent old woman & in labelling a great Englishman (or Scot-Irish) as a bugger, who was anything of the sort, he’ll be foulled as a citizen for life.” (*64) He did all he could to fight it, penning numerous letters to anyone who had known TE, who admired him, or who might possibly have some influence, asking them to prevent the book from being published or, at the very least, to sue the author for libel. In one typical letter, Kennington prophesied that if Aldington’s book was allowed to enter the public domain there would be an “increase of adultery, sodomy, sadism, self-seeking and lesser vices, a rift between USA and GB, a gleeful Russian triumph, a lessening of our prestige, authority, influence among friends, enemies, especially among the dark-skinned people, and a loss of faith in our youth towards Christianity and Religion and Patriotism.” And he concluded that, “No man in GB was farther from sodomy than TE.”  (*65) However there is some doubt if he also held that opinion privately, since he told the writer Henry Williamson (1895-1977), after he had seen TE one day with “the RAF boys in his cottage”,  that he thought TE was homo­sexual. (*66) Besides the loyalty and friendship of Kennington and his wife for TE, there was also the worry about the possible damage Aldington’s book would do to Eric’s reputation as an artist, which was, for the most part, based on his work for TE. The success of his art had brought financial stability to a household which was otherwise not stable at all, due to a long-standing family secret: Celandine’s manic depression. At that time there was no medication for it, which meant that episodes of psychosis and depression would alternate periodically and unexpectedly, giving them and their children very hard times to get through.

ROBERT GRAVES AND HIS LOVE FOR PETER
The writer and poet Robert Graves (1895-1985), author of the first biography of TE (1927), was, like Liddell Hart, in a vulnerable position because of the publication of Aldington’s book. Because of time pressure, TE had greatly contributed to Graves’ book about him, but Aldington showed that much of that information was not true at all. Graves had been aware of this all along, but since he was largely in TE’s debt had not been troubled about it. At the time, he was having financial problems, and TE wanted to help his friend, but at the same time keep control over what was being written about himself. What particularly bothered Graves about the new biography by Aldington, was not his own reputation or to that of TE, but mainly the harm it would do to TE’s mother. The illegitimacy had now become public and she would be devastated, being reminded of her sins. “The only objection I have is to the bad taste of smearing Mrs. L, whom I admire and love, before her death. Yet this bad taste will be more damaging to A than anything else.” Graves said he was so angry, that he even wanted to “thump” Aldington. A negative book about TE did not surprise him, since, “A debunking book was obviously due one day, better it should come and in its most unpleasant form while it can be dealt with faithfully by survivors who know the facts.” The book itself he considered to be “perverse and sneering and (it) contains all the muck that an industrious rogue could rake together in 3 years.” (*67) 

To counter Aldington, Graves publicly denied the accusations of homosexuality. He suggested that TE was impotent after his rape at Deraa in 1917. “The suggestion that he was a homosexual is absurd and inde­cent; the truth seems to be that he was flogged into impotence at Deraa.” (*68) Impo­tence being “nervus” in Latin, and therefore TE saying “I lost my nerve at Deraa” should be read, according to Graves, as “permanent impoten­ce when resis­ting a sexual assault.” With this argument Graves tried to show that TE’s  impotence would have made it impossible for him to be involved in homosexual acts. A fact which was of great importance, since only acts were criminalized. According to Graves, TE’s impotence led him to being “unable to consum­mate his heterosex­ual love for SA.” And SA was “without doubt the only woman in his life, and he had kept him­self sexually chaste for her sake. … Lawrence seems to have now felt in honour bound to cut “SA” out of his life, since he could never give her children. The emotio­nal frustration and spiri­tual torture to which this condition subjected him would have turned any lesser man to madness or suicide and explain his subsequent vagaries and abnor­mali­ties.” (*69) Which was rather a far-fetched idea, since almost everybody (even TE’s brother Arnold) was convinced that SA was an Arab boy and certainly not a woman.

The problem with Robert Graves was that he became more and more preju­diced about homosexuality when he got older. He complained for example, of TE’s homosexual friends and their influence. “The spavined team of TE’s literary friends (his cultiva­tion not only of the literature of disease but of physical and moral defor­mity) makes a pretty poor show­ing.” (*70) According to Graves, these homosexual friends of TE, like E.M. Forster (1879-1970), Frederic Manning (1882-1935) and David Garnett (1892-1981), “entirely twisted in spirit”. (*71) But it was precisely their twistedness that attracted TE to them. As an adolescent Graves had been much more positive about this sort of thing, and had even written to the well known activist for sexual freedom, Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), confessing his books had taken the scales from his eyes and crystalli­zed his vague feel­ings. (*72) In 1913 he had fallen in love with a fellow schoolboy, three years younger than he was. (*73) Graves considered him to be, “exceptionally intelligent and fine-spirited”, a “radiant and unusual creature” and “still wholesome-minded and clean-living”. (*74) He became the emotio­nal focus of Graves’ life, and the relationship was a great comfort to him while he was serving in France during 1915 and 1916. The two corre­sponded regularly until in 1916, when the boy’s mother found the letters. She was shocked by their content, and made him promise not to contact Graves anymo­re, leaving Graves “widowed, laid waste and deso­late”. Worse was to come, because in July 1917, the boy was arrested for soliciting with a corporal in a Canadian regiment. Graves was appalled because he thought him “honourably chaste and sentimen­tal”.(*75) He decided to consider him dead, and to forget all about him. It is clear that for Graves, and for many men of his time (like Aldington, and probably TE too), there was a big difference between (chaste) manly love and homosexuality. ”In English preparatory and public schools romance is necessarily homosexual. The opposite sex is despised and treated as something obscene. Many boys never recover from this perversion. For every one born homosexual, at least ten permanent pseudo-homosexuals are made by the public school system: nine of these ten as honourably chaste and sentimental as I was.” (*76)

DIFFICULT POSITIONS
Aldington’s biography put many friends and acquaintances of TE in difficult positions, not only because they had a lot to lose by it, but also because they had something to hide: Liddell Hart his fetishism and a son who was homosexual, Eric and Celandine Kennington her mental state, and Graves his sympathy for manly love in his adolescence. Similarly, other friends of TE, like E.M. Forster and Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), tried to keep their distance from publicity about the book because they were homosexual.

Someone who was most certainly troubled by all the publicity was Sir Ronald Storrs (1881-1955). Storrs had been involved in British support of the Arab Revolt and accompanied TE on his first trip to Arabia. He was member of the Egyptian government staff, Oriental Secretary of the British Agency in Cairo, and later became British Governor of Jerusalem (1917-1926). Storrs wrote about his contacts with TE in his memoirs Orientations (1937), and these chapters were later separately published (1940). With Aldington’s book he was suddenly caught between two fires. On the one hand, his statements about TE were used by Aldington to show that TE was a liar, while on the other, Hart was getting irritated because Storrs showed himself to be rather reticent in helping the Lawrence Bureau. Hart even began to apply pressure on Storrs, saying he had made plans to undermine Storrs’ reputation as TE’s close friend, and had collected evidence that TE had actually distrusted him. At that time, not many people knew the real reason why taking a stand against Aldington was difficult (if not impossible) for Storrs: although married, he was, in fact, secretly a homosexual himself. It is very likely that Storrs was afraid that Aldington was in contact with sources who knew about this, particularly since in certain circles he was known as having been rather sexually active. (*77) Nonetheless, Storrs still chose to speak out publicly against accusations of TE’s homosexuality (which might be considered rather brave, under the circumstances) as follows: “As for the second main charge, hinted on the title page, of abnor­mal tendencies, I never had from first to last the faintest breath of suspicion myself nor heard of any such until this book cast its dark shadow before it.” He added that Ernest Altounyan (1889-1962), a doctor who had known TE intimately for five years, pronoun­ced him “perfectly normal”. Miss Farida Aql (1882-1976), who helped TE with his Arabic in 1911 and had always been in touch with him, had been heart­broken by the vile rumours that had reached her, since she “had always found in him a spotless and shrinking purity of body, mind and soul.” (*78)

A personal link with homosexuality might also explain the mixed attitude of Nancy Astor, a good friend of TE, towards the activities of the Lawrence Bureau. Astor (1879-1964), the first woman to become a member of Parliament in England in 1919, had two sons who were involved in homosexuality. Robert Gould Shaw III (1898-1970) (more commonly referred to as Bobbie) her son from her first marriage, was a rather difficult character who had all kinds of problems. He had an unstable personality, suffering from depression and alcoholism (*79), and struggled with his homosexuality. In 1931 he was arrested for a being involved in a homosexual act. The police told his parents about the offence, before they issued the warrant. This would give Bobbie a chance to leave the country, during which time the warrant would be “forgotten”. But he refused to leave and had his day in court, being sentenced to four months in prison. The Astor family used their considerable influence to keep the incident out of the press. (*80) Astor’s son from her second marriage, David Astor (1912-2001), a well-known newspaper owner (The Observer), had strong views about human rights. He wrote against the death penalty, opposed all censorship and became the main financial backer of the Homosexual Law Reform Society (1958), an organisation which campaigned for changes in the laws that criminalized homosexual relations between men. Most of the founders of the organisation were not homosexuals, so that they would never be accused of feathering their own nest.

Even Arnold Lawrence kept his distance from the Lawrence Bureau and was unwilling to pro­voke a lawsuit against Aldington, because he feared that he had more damaging information up his sleeve, such as evidence of the masochistic activities of TE.  In 1937, while working on TE Lawrence By His Friends , he had tried to counter accusations of homosexuality, and he had learned that such efforts would do no good at all. Arnold did not fear Aldington’s book doing any permanent harm to his brother’s reputation, his main worry was the distress it caused his mother.

ARGUMENTS TO PROVE THAT TE WAS NOT A HOMOSEXUAL 
The negative connotations attached to the label “homosexual” led to strong reactions from both friends and biographers against accusations of homosexuality in TE.The first point that stands out, when we look at their counter-arguments, is that most authors do not seem to have a clue of what it means to be a homosexual and of what homosexuality is all about. The only one to admit to this was the biographer and journalist Philip Knightley. “We had devoted one chapter to examining the charge that Lawrence was a homo­sexual, in retrospect an ill-advised effort, but since the book was being written under pressure and out of chronolo­gical order it seemed a good idea at the time. An editor at Nelson wisely rejected it in its entirety with reasons we found impossible to dispute. He had once been a homo­sex­ual himself, he said, and it was clear that we had not the fain­test idea of what it was all about.” (*81) Some of the arguments just make no sense at all or seem to be totally ridiculous, and therefore disputing them, as I wanted to do at first, is meaningless. Sometimes they even seem like desperate attempts to confuse the issue as much as possible in the false hope that the problem will go away. But the main reason is that the arguments are not about the reality of homosexuality at all, but are meant to counter the stereotype of evil and criminal behaviour, by suggesting that TE was not a bad person at all.

Both the people who accuse TE of being a homosexual (like Aldington) and his defenders (like the Lawrence Bureau), share the same prejudices about homosexuality as held by the general public of their time. If they had known that TE had been an active homosexual, many friends and colleagues would never have befriended or admired him. Therefore a public reaction and defence was necessary for them to clear their own reputation, since no one wanted to be publicly known as a friend of a homosexual, and consequently as an accomplice to a criminal. If TE had been caught and brought to justice, their reputation would have been ruined just like his.

Let’s have a look at some of the arguments that were used to counter accusations of TE’s homosexuality, in more detail:

– HOMOSEXUALITY IS SOMETHING PRIVATE AND OF NO IMPORTANCE TO ANYONE BUT TE HIMSELF.
We do not bother about the sexual activities of our neighbours, so why should we bother about those of TE and take them seriously? This argument sounds absolutely reasonable, but only in a perfect world for homosexuals, and that was not the world in which he lived. The homosexuality of TE is a very important question for two reasons. If TE had in fact been a practising homosexual, he had to keep it secret since homosexual acts were illegal. Such acts would not only lead to dismissal from the armed forces, but also to time in prison. For most homosexuals who were caught, the choice was to live abroad or to kill themselves. It would have been an enormous public scandal, if the “Uncrowned King of Arabia” had been caught for being a “per­vert”, and it would have caused a great deal of embarrassment to the estab­lishment. Secondly, the ques­tion of homosexuality was of great importance for TE himself, and a question which he must have asked himself many times after he was raped in Deraa in 1917. Male rape victims are often considered to be homo­sexual by others, because they were not capable of resisting the rape, as “a real man” would have done.  And the victims them­selves often believe this myth too. They suffer from an over-estimation of the sexual aspects of the rape, which threatens their sexual identity and often leads to an exacerba­tion of feelings of shame and guilt. Internali­sing the incident, the victim of male rape will blame himself for its occurrence, asking him­self the same question over and over, “Did I ask for it because I am a homosex­ual?”

– SOMEONE WHO ACCUSES TE OF BEING HOMOSEXUAL, IS A HOMOSEXUAL HIMSELF. HE HAS SOME KIND OF POLITICAL AGENDA AND IS CERTAINLY OVERSEXED.
Blaming the bearer of bad news has of old been a great tactic. And throwing the label “homosexual” at such an enemy was an even greater way to discredit him in the eyes of the public and turn him into an evil person. Consequently, both the person accused and the accuser suffer the same treatment: they are both suspect. Thus the label “homosexual” works both ways. If not a homosexual himself, the person who accused TE of being homosexual, had to have another political agenda up his sleeve. For example, as I showed earlier, opponents and enemies of TE, mainly privately but some publicly, suggested that TE was a homosexual in order to discredit him. TE was their enemy, and in their eyes evil, and therefore it was only obvious that he had to be homosexual too.

I experienced this tactic myself several times, when I was studying and corresponding on TE’s (homo)sexuality. Jack Easton, who served with TE in the RAF in India from 1927-1929, wrote me, ” who­ever said he was a homosexual, to me (it) is quite clear that they are homo­sexu­al themselves, and is trying to make excuses to say they are not.” (*82) And someone else told me, even before she had read one word I had written, that it seemed rather unnecessary to “bring up issues of a contro­versi­al nature in sensationa­list language so as to distort the signi­ficance of them, to the detriment of TE’s whole life’s work, his example and his achie­vements”. Any author guilty of this only acted out of “self-serving noti­ons” and must be “self-focus­sed” and un­scientific, to say the least. Because I discussed the subject, I had to be homosexual myself; why else would I be inte­rested in TE’s homosexu­a­lity? Even if I claimed to be hetero­sexual I was still sus­pect, because in that case what did I know about the subject to be able to discuss and write about it? Not that this woman had anything against homo­sexu­als, no certain­ly not! She was tole­rant and even some of her best friends were gay!

According to the label, homosexuals show an obsessive interest in sex – if not in acts, then in talking about it constantly, even speculating about the sexual activities of people around them alive or dead. (*83) Therefore my interest in TE’s sexuality showed either that I was homosexual, or that I was sexually obsessed. In both cases I was unreliable as an objective historian, since I certainly had a political agenda, if only to justify my own behaviour. It was only obvious that I was using TE’s popularity to give myself some form of legitimacy. And indeed, TE’s name has been widely used by gay activists, even as early as 1939, to show the world that even a homosexual was capable of achieving remarkable things. Idealizing the past (Greek, Roman or Arab) or the life of dif­ferent peoples (Melanesia) has played an important part in the develop­ment of a self-conscious homosexual personality. For many homosexuals TE served as an example, being both a manly and heroic adventurer and a homosexual, as opposed to the stereotype of the effeminate homosexual of that time. People like Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986), and TE’s friends E.M. Forster and Siegfried Sassoon, were inspired by the things TE so courageously described in Seven Pillars, such as the story of the love of Farraj and Daud, and TE’s own love for Ali and (in his real life) for Dahum as expressed in the poem to S.A. (*84)

– TE WAS NOT BAD OR EVIL, BUT A GOOD PERSON AND NEVER SHOWED ANY SIGNS OF BEING “A PERVERT”. THE PEOPLE AROUND HIM WOULD CERTAINLY HAVE RECOGNIZED BEHAVIOUR TYPICAL OF HOMOSEXUALS. 
These arguments try to show that the people closest to TE never saw any indication of deviant behaviour, and if he had been homosexual they certainly would not have missed it. TE was “clean” and had “a mind as pure as gold”, and he never showed any signs of being “a pervert”. (*85) Friends, acquaintances and comrades in the military would certainly have known, if this had been the case. (*86) They would have recognized hints (*87) of “improper behaviour” or “abnormal tendencies” typical of homosexuals. (*88) These counter-arguments were a reaction to Aldington saying that it was no surprise that he was not able to find evidence of actual homo­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­sex­ual behaviour of TE, since “relatives and friends are the last persons to hear of or to suspect homosexual practices”. Unfortunately for the defenders, Aldington has a point. Research in the late 1950s showed that of the homo­sexuals inter­viewed, 31% thought their homosexuality was very secret, 32% said it was only known to other homosexuals, while only 21% reported that close friends knew about it. (*89) For many people it was a frightening idea that evil was in their midst, therefore they kept holding on to the belief that they would be able to recognize these criminals immediately. The problem was, as I said before, that homosexuals who were forced to live a double life proved to be quite successful at it. Why else would newspapers devote articles to “How to Spot a Homo”?

– TE WAS ONLY SYMPATHETIC AND TOLERANT TOWARDS HOMOSEXUALITY. (*90)
This is a reaction to Aldington’s argument that TE showed sym­pathy for homo­sexual relations, Seven Pillars being an out­spoken “declar­ation of prefer­ence for homo­sexua­li­ty”. The problem with this argument from both accusers and defenders is that tolerance of, sympathy for, and writing about homosexuality might suggest something, but do not constitute actual proof that TE had homosexual feelings or did or did not act upon them. My own case illustrates this, since nothing can be concluded about my private life from either my years of research on the subject or my writing about it.

– TE WAS NOT AVERSE TO WOMEN AT ALL, HAVING MANY FEMALE FRIENDS. HE HAD HETEROSEXUAL POTENTIAL, A DESIRE FOR MARRIAGE, AND EVEN PROPOSED TO A WOMAN.
According to this argument, TE was attractive to women, would have married if he only had found the right woman, and even respected women “as people”. (*91) This was a reaction to Aldington’s suggestion that TE openly declared his hatred for women and of sex with them in his writings, and showed disdain for hetero­sexual relations. What seemed like the most promising counter-argument was the story that TE had proposed to a child­hood friend, Janet Laurie (1886-?), in 1910. She had rejected him, because she was secretly in love with his brother Will (1889-1915), and he with her. It is suggested that she was “the (female) love of his life”, her rejection leaving TE “devastated”, after which he went to Carchemish “on the rebound”. (*92) But the evidence for the story is rather weak, and Laurie herself was an unreliable witness. (*93) Besides, many homo­sexuals in TE’s time proposed to women and were married, often unhappily. “Since contemporary medical opinion main­tained that homosexua­lity was an illness bordering on insanity, most “suffe­rers” inevi­tably fought their desires through sublimation or marria­ge.” (*94) Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), for example, proposed to Virginia Stephen (later Woolf) (1882-1941), and TE’s friend Siegfried Sasso­on was married, as were other homosexuals – John Addington Sy­monds (1840-1893), Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), and Harold Nicholson (1886-1968), among others. The idea that being rejected by a woman would turn a man into a celiba­te or a homosexual, is a well-known tradition. Examples include the Arab poet Abu Nuwas (757-814), who wrote many poems about the love of boys, Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), who turned to young girls, and Swin­burne (1837-1909), who turned to the whip.

– TE HAD MANY HETEROSEXUAL FRIENDS, MOST OF WHOM WERE MARRIED, SO THERE WAS NOTHING SUSPECT ABOUT HIS FRIENDSHIPS WITH THEM. AND THEIR WIVES HAD NO DIFFICULTY WITH HIM.(*95)
This is a reaction to Aldington’s argument that TE had many friends who were homosex­ual, while his inti­mate friend­ships with men, were “com­para­ble in inten­­sity to sexual love”, as his brother Arnold had said. Unfortunately both Aldington’s argument and the counter-arguments do not make any sense whatsoever. There are just too many myths and simplifications about homosexuality in them. As if married men could not be homosexual or engage in homosexual acts. As if heterosexual men only have sex with women. As if wives of heterosexuals only have difficulties, or feel threatened, by homosexuals who befriended their husbands. And most important, as if homosexuals only have homosexuals as friends and only have sex with other homosexuals. (*96) The reality, however, was much more complex, particularly since the homosexual subculture of TE’s time consisted mainly of picking up young men in pubs and urinals who were happy to have sex in exchange for a meal or comradeship. Most of these were heterosexuals, having wives or girlfriends. Men from all walks of life (aristocrats, writers, artists, working-class ruffians, soldiers, policemen and thieves) shared talk, friendship and sex. (*97) In this subculture, there was a strict distinction between “effeminates” and “roughs”. Effeminates were never attracted to each other, but desired real men. Roughs had nothing effeminate about them, and according to Quentin Crisp (1908-1999), “must never admit to themselves or to God or to one another that they even liked the company of homosexuals – let alone that “trade” with them was a pleasurable pas­time.” (*98) The poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973) said that a mutual, reciprocal relationship with another man even had “something indecent” about it. (*99)­ And thus many homosex­uals were attracted to boys or to working class men (*100), with the sexual rela­tion being most important. As Crisp says, “If you ask a homosexual what his newest true love is like, you will never get the answer, “He is wise or kind or brave”. He will only say, “It’s enor­mous.” (*101)­ The con­se­quence was that, “The homosexual world is a world of spinsters. Most homosex­u­als … search perpetually for a real man who desires passionate­ly (as opposed to making do with) another man. This being, if he exists, is so rare that one might as well enter a monastery on reaching puberty. The less drastic alternative is to live a real sex life in a dream world. This can best be done in the dark with stran­gers.” (*102)­ However effeminacy, camp mannerisms, molly clubs, and “cotta­ging” (anonymous sex in public toilets) were abhorred by many men who felt emotional attrac­tion or sexual desire (or both) for other men. They pre­ferred the still uncor­rupted manly love of olden times.

– TE WAS A MASOCHIST.
The first TE biography to be published after Aldington’s was The Desert and the Stars (1956) by Flora Armitage. (*103) Written by a woman, this book explained that TE did not hate women at all, but only hated sex. Armitage focussed in particular on the rape in Deraa and its con­se­quence, “the discovery that physical punishment could arouse in him that ecstasy of nerve and blood which his mind so violent­ly rejected.” Thus masochism, “an almost irresistible desire for sub­mission”, took the place of homosex­ual­ity, as introduced by Aldington. (*104) This replacement by a new label was probably the cleverest move in countering the discussion of TE’s homosexuality. A masochist only harms and hurts himself, and therefore is a lot more acceptable than “a corruptor of youth”, a criminal and evil person. While the Greek and “unmention­able” vice was rejected fiercely and criminalized until 1967, masochism was much more acceptable for the English, who were known for their long acceptance and tolerance of beatings. It’s not for nothing that masochism was called the “Eng­lish vice”.

– TE WAS A-SEXUAL OR IMPOTENT AND THEREFORE HAD NO SEXUAL RELATIONS IN PRACTICE.
Since only homosexual acts were a crime, it became important for the defenders of TE to argue that he did not engage in sexual acts. Thus they came up with the argument of TE being sexless. (*105) The problem was, however, that TE was in fact a very sexual person, who struggled with “beastly intrusions”, and for years blamed and punished himself for having had an erection and an orgasm during the rape at Deraa in 1917. We now know from male rape research, that such a reaction was only natural, and just a physical and even defensive reaction of the body when tortured and raped. But at that time TE was not aware of that. According to Robert Graves, he suffered from nightmares, in some of which he experienced “fantastic sexual orgies in his mind”. (*106) These fantasies disturbed TE immense­ly, and confirmed to him that it was not his rea­son but the “traitors from with­in” (*107) which ruled him. And these he desperately tried to conquer by organizing rituals of punishments for himself. Graves also suggested that TE could not be (an active) homosexual, since he was flogged into a permanent impotence after resisting the sexual assault. (*108) Now impotence is a sexual dysfunction in which erection or penetration fails because of physical or psychological reasons. But the fact is that TE did engage in sexual acts, since he organized men to beat him until he had an orgasm. According to the letter of the law, these were acts of “gross inde­cency”, and whether they were in public or in private, they were to be pun­ished by up to two years imprisonment with hard labour. And TE was well aware of this, and kept it very, very secret.

– TE CHOSE NOT TO GET INVOLVED IN SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS BECAUSE OF BOTH MORAL AND TRAUMATIC REASONS, AND THE FEW SEXUAL ACTS IN WHICH HE WAS INVOLVED WERE PRIMARILY MEANT TO DEAL WITH HIS TRAUMA. 
This would be my argument, to explain TE’s sexual behaviour or the lack of it after the war. He knew very well that homosexual acts were illegal and would bring shame on his family, his friends and his fellow soldiers. His moral and ethical standards were central to him (*109), and he always tried to act towards others with integrity. Sex he considered to be “beastly”, a view which was stamped into him by his mother during his childhood, and was unfortunately confirmed by the awful rape he experienced. The only solution for TE was to deal with his damaged sexuality and with the traumas around it by releasing it in strictly controlled and ritualistic circumstances.

In TE’s time, many men who felt homosexually inclined bowed to the forces of society around them, and repressed their sexual desires. “The same moral law which forbids a heterosexual epilep­tic or con­sump­tive or invalid suffering from any trans­missible disea­se, to perpetu­ate his scourge while refash­ioning it, this same law forbids the invert from indulg­ing his incli­nations.” (*110) Following the road of continence and sublima­tion through self-discipline and self-control, was a long-standing Victorian tradition, in which TE was raised by his mother. (*111) But it was a hard battle with the “beastly” part of the self, and according to the historian Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1862-1932), who chose this path for himself, it was “unhealthy, unbalanced, perhaps ultimately insane. (…) The strain is often very great; and one requires, per­haps, an unusual measu­re of self-control, and an intense preoccu­pation with intel­lectual or practical pur­suits.” (*112) TE called it “the enforced celibacy of (the) blanket’s harsh embrace” (*113), and regarded the repression of passions not only as “crippling” to a man, but also as dangerous. “Celibacy is unnatural, in the real sense, and it over­turns a man’s balance; for it throws him either on him­self (which is unwholesome, like sucking your own tail, in snakes) or on friendship to satisfy the urge of affec­tion within … and such friend­ships may easily turn into sex-per­ver­sion.” (*114) Thus it seems that TE rejected masturbation as being “unwholesome”, while others (like Dickinson) used it, “as the proper and healthy course to adopt by anyone having the homog­enic tempera­ment who cannot otherwi­se satisfy his sex, and who has sufficient self-control and preoccupation with higher interests to prevent him from taking too seri­ous­ly, or indulging to excess, a mere animal need.” (*115) To “satisfy the urge of affection within”, TE opted for (male) friend­ships instead, or in the words of his brother Arnold, “His friendships were comparable in intensity to sexual love, for which he made them a substitute.” (*116)

The French writer Marcel Proust (1871-1922) once said, “A homo­sexual is not a man who loves homosexuals, but merely a man who, seeing a soldier, immedi­ately wants to have him for a friend.” (*117) In that sense TE was clearly a homosexual, since he loved meeting, working and being with soldiers, and particularly taking care of them. But then how did he deal with the danger of “beastly intrusions” in such friendships? To quell the attraction and desire he felt in the armed forces caused by his intimacy with men, TE took desperate measures. Fearing his own passions, but also in an attempt to deal with people who had suspicions about him, he put up all kinds of “Verboten notice-boards” (*118), self-denying ordinances, one of which pre­vented him from “ever sitting down on another bed than my own.” (*119) And ultimate­ly there were the rit­ual beatings to resist any desire whatsoever that friend­ship might lead to any form of “sex-perversion”. Friendships were, however, not only a substitute for sexual love, as his brother implies; they became an anchor which kept TE sane, just like his regular and ordered life in the armed forces did. With these friend­ships he created a new and loving family for himself, in which he found some kind of home, a safe place which he so desperately needed in his life.

A NEW LABEL: NO HOMOSEXUAL OR MASOCHIST, BUT SUFFERING FROM TRAUMA 
In my opinion, TE was neither a homosexual nor a masochist, as I will explain in other articles on this blog. Both labels only lead to more questions, misunderstandings and even to narrow-mindedness, as my own case clearly illustrates. I once spent two hours with Wilfred Thesiger (1910-2003), the famous traveller and admirer of TE and Seven Pillars, of which he owns the rare subscri­bers’ edition. During my research on sexual behaviour in the Middle East, I read his book Arabian Sands (1959), and I wrote to him to ask about his love for Bedouin boys, which he described in glowing terms. (*120) Thesiger answered me in a very friendly fashion, ignoring my question. I had told him I was coming to England for a holiday soon, and he kindly invited me to visit him. Promising myself not to let him get away with it this time, I arrived at his apartment in London on August 6, 1988, ten days before the centenary of TE’s birth. Thesiger lived in an apartment in Tite Street, where Oscar Wilde had lived, and I was given tea and cookies. Impressed by his charisma, suddenly the questions I had prepared felt totally futile and irrelevant. So we just talked about his life and experiences, and about me and TE, and he proudly showed me his TE books. It felt great to be in his presence, with TE hovering somewhere in the background. Afterwards I felt such a fool that I ever considered asking him about his (homo)sexuality. What was it to me?

Learning from this experience, my proposal would be to replace the labels “homosexual” and “masochist” with the label “trauma victim” (a combination of childhood trauma, war trauma and rape trauma), which explains a lot more about TE’s feelings, thoughts and behaviour in practice, than the other two. But, since every label has its limitations, I hope that even this one will be used only temporarily. The intention of my work on TE is ultimately to get rid of labels altogether, and come to a more holistic and integrated view of TE, the man and his qualities.

The notes for this article can be found in the next post: “The Label “Homosexual” – 3d Part: Notes”.

Arnold Lawrence, Basil Liddell Hart, Celandine Kennington, Eric Kennington, Homosexuality, Lawrence Bureau, Nancy Astor, Richard Aldington, Robert Graves, Ronald Storrs

NOTES
*1 This is not a direct quotation, but a collage of state­ments on TE’s homosex­uality from biographies and studies about him. The various authors were convinced that TE could not have been a homosexu­al, because his behav­i­our was virtuous and manly. When we turn their reaso­ning around, this picture emerges of what a homosexual is in their eyes. The following authors are indirectly quoted here: Richard Aldington (Lawrence of Arabia: a Biographical Enquiry, 1955): hatred of women. Malcolm Brown (A Touch of Genius: the Life of T.E. Lawrence, 1988): living intimate­ly with soldiers as room-mates – improper behaviour – Dahum being a very nice chap – having hetero­sexual potenti­al for women – having no difficulties with his friend’s wives. Robert Graves (Lawrence and the Arabian Adventure, 1928): physi­cally and morally deformed. J.N. Lockman (Scattered Tracks on the Lawrence Trail: Twelve Essays on T.E. Lawrence, 1996): mannerisms – wide hips. Richard Meinertzhagen (Middle East Diary 1917-1956, 1959): indelica­te, indecent, coarse, vulgar, unclean and perverted. H. St John Philby (T.E. Lawrence and his Critics, in: Forty Years in the Wilderness, 1957,p.82-93): indulgence in secret vice. Christopher Sykes (Introduction, in: Richard Aldington – Lawrence of Arabia, 1969,p.13-23): sex with hetero­sexuals would not be fun. Lowell Thomas (in: A.W. Lawrence (ed.) – T.E. Lawrence by his Friends, 1937,p.205-218 and Review of Aldington, in: Middle East Journal 9 (1955),p.197-8): easy to recognize – unhappy twist. Leonard Woolley (in: Friends,p.86-94): smutty remarks – not having a clean mind.

*2 Much of what I write here about the label “homosexual” was inspired by a paper by Julia Collar – Responding to Sexual Stereotypes of Fundamentalist and Charismatic Leaders in Religious Studies (2002) 

*3 What occurred in Iran between 1979 and 1984 is certainly not symptomatic of the attitude toward homosexual behaviour in Islamic countries in general. Even in Iran it may be regarded as exceptional. The executions of homosexuals took place in a revolutionary chaos, with strong reactionary and anti-Western tendencies, which led to excesses and general terror. See for the executions in Iran and for homosexuality in Islam, Maarten Schild – Islam, in: Wayne R. Dynes (ed.) – The Encylopedia of Homosexuality (1990), p.615-20.

*4 John Le Carre – We have already lost, The Globe and Mail 13-10-2001

*5 Henry Porter – Why we are right to fight, The Observer, 14-10-2001. In a biography of Hitler by Lothar Machtan (The Hidden Hitler, 2001) his destructive ambition is attributed to his inability to come to terms with his latent homosexuality.

*6 Julia Collar – Responding to Sexual Stereotypes

*7 Ilana Mercer – Lawrence of Arabia: Lionized Liar, 7-5-2004

*8 The Offen­ces Against the Person Act of 1861 reduced the penal­ty for “buggery” or “sodomy” from death to penal servitude for life or a minimum of 10 years. The notori­ous Labouche­re Amendment of 1885 came up with the atrocious idea of even punishing private acts, without direct proof being necessary, opening the gate for blackmail. In 1967 the law was partially reformed, and only in July 1991 were homo­sexuals offici­ally allowed in influen­tial posi­tions. But homosexuals are still prohibited from the armed forces, since their presence would “undermine the efficiency and morale of the British forces”. 

*9 Bevis Hillier – Young Betjeman (1988),p.117

*10 Richard Davenport-Hines – Sex, Death & Punishment: Attitudes to Sex in Britain since the Renaissance (1990),p.142. This was during the First World War, when Beverley Nichols (who later became a successful writer) was just a teenager. In his book “Father Figure: an Uncensored Autobiography” (1972), he describes that as a child he attempted to kill his alcoholic and  abusive father three times, without success.

*11 Homosexuality in the fifties: Wendy Moffat – E.M. Forster: a New Life (2010),p.306

*12 Letter by Jack Easton to the author 11-6-1989

*13 Cable from Cyril Wilson to Sir Gilbert Clayton, 22-11-1916, Jeremy Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia: the Authorised Biography of T.E. Lawrence (1989),p.331-332. Clayton (1875-1929) was Director of Civil and Military Intelligence in Cairo, head of the Arab Bureau, and High Commissioner in Iraq (1928-1929).

*14 Wilson was a former army boxing champion, who after Mesopotamia became Acting Civil Commis­sioner in the Persian Gulf (1918-1920), gene­ral manager of the Anglo Irani­an Oil Company, and extre­me right wing MP and Hitler-sympa­thiser in the thirties. In 1939 he admitted to have been wrong in Parlia­ment, and resig­ned from the House of Commons. He joined the RAF as a tail gunner and was killed in acti­on during the war.

*15 Letter Wilson to Sir Percy Cox 3-5-1926, quoted by Jack Duckworth on TEL Whittier List 4-11-2000. Cox (1864-1937) was Chief Political Officer with the Anglo-Indian forces in Iraq (1914-1918) and High Commissioner in Iraq (1920-1923).

*16 A.T. Wilson – Review of Revolt in the Desert & With Lawrence in Arabia, in: Journal of the Central Asian Society 3 (1927),p.285

*17 Wilson – Review,p.282. Epipsychidion refers to a rather auto-biographi­cal poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), written in 1821, which advo­cates free love outside of (often loveless) marria­ge. “I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is that each one should select, Out of the world a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend, To cold oblivion – though it is the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world – and so With one sad friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go ….” Landor is Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), friend of Shelley, Browning and Swinburne, and one of the main figures in the Helle­nistic Revival in England.

*18 Letter to Charlotte Shaw, 29-9-1927, Jeremy & Nicole Wilson (eds.) – T.E. Lawrence Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw 1927 (2003), p.164

*19 Letter to Robert Graves, T.E. Lawrence to his Biographer Robert Graves (1963),p.118

*20 In a note 12-12-1928, Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia,p.841

*21 Letter from Hirtzel to Sir Percy Cox 28-2-1921, Jack Duckworth on TEL Whittier List 18-11-2000

*22 Brémond quoted in: Phillip Knightley & Colin Simpson – The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia (1969),p.203, probably from Edouard Brémond – Le Hedjaz dans la Guerre Mondiale (1931). TE spoke of a meeting with Brémond as “a curious interview … between an old soldier and a young man in fancy dress.” (Letter to unknown, Malcolm Brown – A Touch of Genius: the Life of T.E. Lawrence (1988),p.68)

*23 Vickery had served at Gallipoli, in the South Afri­can War, and five years in the Egyptian Army.

*24 T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars of Wisdom: a Triumph (1997),p.142 & 173. Talk with Basil Liddell Hart 25-10-1929, T.E. Lawrence to his Biographer Liddell Hart (1963),p.36

*25 Anthony Nutting – Lawrence of Arabia: the Man and the Motive (1961),p.50-51 and Suleiman Mousa – T.E. Lawrence: an Arab View (1966),p.47n44. Wilson thinks this improbable (Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia,p.1059n44).

*26 Renée & André Guillaume – An Introduction and Notes T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1998),p.150 and Charles Vickery – Arabia and the Hedjaz, in: The Journal of the Central Asian Socie­ty 10 (1923),­p.54

*27 Notes from Lady Scott’s private diary, 25-2-1921 (Lawrence James – The Golden Warrior: the Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia (1995),p.255). Lady Kathleen Scott (1878-1947) was a sculptor and the widow of the explorer Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912). She was doing a bust of TE at the time, and when she asked him about these charges , he “admi­tted his procliviti­es, but didn’t affect his life. Said Vickery was a medal hunter and only out for himself.” (Diary Lady Scott 11-5-1921, James – Golden Warrior,p.256) Since Lady Scott devel­oped a crush on TE and thought he was in love with her, “admitting his proclivities” might have been an attempt by TE to keep her away from him.

*28 Lowell Thomas in Friends,p.214

*29 Woolley in Friends,p.89

*30 The author­ized biographer Jeremy Wilson, for example, says, “Lawrence’s letters from this period bear out this opinion enti­rely, and it is legit­imate to ask why Woolley should have included the allega­tions in his essay. Gossip of this kind is common enough but would not normally appear in a serious memoir, especially when it was known to be unjus­tified. Wool­ley must have realised that this disingenuous combination of allegation and ‘loyal disclaimer’ would cause many readers to believe the worst.” (Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia,p.128) Wilson’s reaction is rather foolish, raising doubts about Woolley’s motives, particularly since TE’s own brother Arnold was the editor of the book in which Woolley’s essay was published, and he could always have chosen to suppress it if he had wanted to, but he did not.

*31 At the same time that T.E. Lawrence By His Friends (1937) was published another acquaintance of TE, Colonel Richard Mei­nertzhagen (1878-1967), reacted to the ru­mours of homosexuality in his diaries (8-12-1937). “To imply any sort of sex-perversion or uncleanness to Lawrence is gros­sly inaccura­te and libellous”. (Meinertzhagen – Middle East Diary,­p.38) It is possible that his comments were also meant for publi­cation in Friends, but that Arnold Lawrence had no need for them. Thus far I haven’t found anything that explains what hap­pened after TE’s death that led to all these defensive reactions. If anyone could enlighten me, I would be delighted!

*32 Before this biogra­phy, Aldington was mainly known as a poet, novelist, and biographer of Oscar Wilde and D.H. Lawren­ce.

*33 Letter from Henry Williamson to Eric Kenn­ing­ton 5-6-1954, Fred D. Crawford – The “Weather-Vane Soul” of Henry William­son, in: The Henry Williamson Society Journal 30 (1994),p.15

*34 Let­ter Aldington to Williamson 7-2-1955, Anne Williamson – The Genius of Friendship, Part 2: Richard Aldington, in: The Henry Williamson Society Journal 28 (1993),p.18

*35 In my opinion Aldington’s book was very important, and I agree totally with Fred Crawford, who says that the book “provided a long-needed corrective to hagiography and pointed to questions that others might have raised years earlier had they bothered to investigate more diligently. (…) … he defined the areas of controversy about TEL and made people face contradictions implicit in a myth that they had accepted without adequate investigation or reflection.” (Fred D. Crawford – Richard Aldington and Lawrence of Arabia: a Cautionary Tale (1998),p.174) 

*36 The “lip-licking gloats” over Daud and Farraj, “praising them like a senti­mental curate for being “so clean”! Clean, of course because they had noth­ing to do with women.” (Letter to Alan Bird 7-4-1951, Miriam J. Benkovitz (ed.) – A Passionate Prodigality: Letters to Alan Bird from Richard Aldington (1949-1962)(1975),p.26)

*37 TE had women friends “as homos often do, knowing better than a man the little attenti­ons which please women, but sex relations with women caused him unfeig­ned horror and disgust.” (Letter to Alan Bird 23-2-1951, Benkovitz – Passionate Prodigality,p.15)

*38 Letter to Alan Bird 7-4-1951, Benkovitz – Passionate Prodigality, p.26. “(TE) always jeered at hetero­sexual practices, and nearly always wrote admi­ringly, even sentimentally, of male ho­mosexuality.” (Letter to Alan Bird 15-3-1951, Benkovitz – Passionate Prodigality, p.21)

*39 Letters to Alan Bird 30-6-1951 and 15-12-1954, Benkovitz – Passionate Prodigality,p.29-30 & 146.

*40 Aldington could not resist making slighting remarks about homosexuality. “One is tempted to ask how it was that so many quive­ring male lovers were recruited in the Arab army.”(Aldington – Lawrence of Arabia,p.336) He also speaks of “countries where too many of the males subscribe to the devia­tionist penchants of Saladin, Hafiz and Abu-Nawas.” (p.263) In one of his more tolerant statements, he said, “It is a great pity that there can’t be a more wholesome outlook on this perversion – neither persecu­ting as with the unfortunate Oscar Wilde, nor cultivat­ing, as the sect and its numerous supporters now do.” (Letter Aldington to Alan Bird 8-11-1956, Benkovitz – Passionate Prodigality,p.248)

*41 Letter to Alan Bird 7-2-1955, Benkovitz – Passionate Prodigality,p.154

*42 Letter Aldington to Williamson 22-2-1956, Crawford – Weather-Vane Soul,p.20

*43 Letter to Alan Bird 8-11-1956, Benkovitz – Passionate Prodigality,p­.248

*44 Alding­ton in Death of a Hero (1929), quoted in Peter Parker – The Old Lie: the Great War and the Public School Ethos (1987),­p.175

*45 Fred Crawford in letter to the author 21-7-1991. From 1913 to 1919 Aldington was married to Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), better known as H.D. the writer. The war disrupted their lives, as did a miscarriage in 1915. It elimina­ted all sexual relations. Aldington tended to sympath­ize with her various crushes and infatuati­ons, and did not criticize her for her lesbian loves. His relation with H.D. was “one of two individuals, tragi­cally separated by an uncon­trolla­ble fleshly incompatibility yet helplessly bound together in an affinity of spirit. Living separate lives and bound to new and, in some ways, more satis­factory lovers, yet continu­ally groping among the shadows for remnants of that elusive élan from which both had drawn sus­tenance, H.D and Aldington were never to be entirely separated for the rest of their lives.” (Selwyn Kittredge 1964, Fred D. Crawf­ord – Misleading Accounts of Aldington and H.D., in: English Literature in Transition 1 (1987),p.53) See for the relationship between Aldington and H.D., the excellent article by Crawf­ord – Misleading Accounts (1987),p.49-67.

*46 Letter to Alister Kershaw 30-8-1951, Crawford – Weather-Vane Soul,p.11

*47 See Aldington – Lawrence of Arabia ,p.331-339

*48 Letter Aldington to Stanley Weintraub 14-9-1958, Crawford – Richard Aldington,p.137

*49 If true, the procedure would have been as follows: a complaint about TE’s behaviour would be made to the local (Dor­set) police. Because of the celebrity of the subject, they would  refer it to the Home Secre­tary. Then the matter would be passed to Scotland Yard, where it would  pass the desk of the Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, Lord Trenchard (1873-1956). Trenchard knew TE very well, since he had been Chief of Air Staff of the RAF (1917-1930), where TE had served and caused him lots of troubles. The Commissioner would then issue a war­rant, which would be delive­red to the Dorset police for execution. I am very grateful to Lawrence James for sharing this informati­on.

*50 An example of what would have happened in such a case, is the story of Sir Paul Latham (1905-1955), a Con­servative Member of Parliament. In 1941 he served as an officer in the Royal Artillery and was accused of commit­ting improper acts with three gunners and a civilian. “Fearing scan­dal, he at­tempted suicide by crashing his motor bike. He survi­ved the crash, but had to have a leg amputa­ted. He was senten­ced to two years imprison­ment for misbeha­ving with the sol­diers and for the suicide attempt. The scandal persi­sted.” (Paul Bailey – An Immacu­late Mistake: Scenes from Childhood and Beyond (1990),p.10)

*51 Catherine Aldington – The Lawrence Bureau.  Even nowadays defending Aldington in the land of TE studies is like defending Voldemort to Harry Potter fans.

*52 Letter Newcombe to the Mayor of Bridlington, Duckworth Notes. (Jack Duckworth shared with me some notes from his considerable research of the Lawrence Bureau, for which I am very grateful.) Stewart Newcombe was TE’s boss in the survey of the Sinai desert (1914), his intelligence work in Cairo (1914-1916), and during the Arab Revolt (1917).

*53 Letter Graves to Hart 25-9-1954, Duckworth Notes.

*54 Letter to Charlotte Shaw 11-12-1934, Jeremy & Nicole Wilson (eds.) – T.E. Lawrence Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw 1929-1935 (2009),p.236. According to the Arabist and explorer H. St John Philby (1885-1960), “One measure of Lawrence’s essential greatness is surely the fact that his reputation has survived the hysterical homage of his friends.” (Philby – T.E. Lawrence and his Critics,p.83)

*55 Letter Knowles to Kennington 9-4-1954, Crawford – Richard Aldington,p.71

*56 Letter Hart to Winston Churchill 18-2-1954, Crawford – Richard Aldington,p.78

*57 Alex Danchev – Alchemist of War: the Life of Basil Liddell Hart (1999),p.200

*58 Letters Hart to Robert Bolt 21 & 27-11-1962,  L. Robert Morris & Lawrence Raskin – Lawrence of Arabia: the 30th Anniversary Pictorial History (1992),p.149 & 151 

*59 From the Memoirs of Hart, Danchev – Alchemist,p.85. All the information on Basil Liddell Hart is based on Nigel Hamilton – The Full Monty: Montgomery of Alamein, 1887-1942 (2001),p.141 & 180-181, and Danchev – Alchemist, p.83-95.

*60 Letter Eric Kennington to Storrs 18-4-1954, Crawford – Richard Aldington,p.71

*61 Letter Mrs Kennington to Hart 28-7-1954, Duckworth Notes. Letter Mrs Kennin­gton to Lady Hardinge 30-7-1954.

*62 Letter Mrs Kennington to Hart 5-5-1954, Duckworth Notes. Letter Mrs Kennin­gton to Lady Hardinge 30-7-1954. Letter Mrs Kennington to the managing director of the Army & Navy Stores 6-2-1955, Duckworth Notes.

*63 Letters Mrs Kennington to Hart 10 & 17-4-1955, Jack Duckworth on TEL Studies List 17-1-2005.

*64 Letter Eric Kennington to Arthur Bryant 15-3-1954, Jack Duckworth – Saving “Mum”: the Lawrence Bureau in Action 1954-1955, in TE Notes 2 (2001),p.24

*65 Letter Eric Kennington to Lord Lloyd (no date), Jonathan Black on Yahoo Orlans 11-8-2003

*66 Letter Williamson to Aldington 1-11-1955, Crawford – Weather-Vane Soul,p.19

*67 Letter Graves to Hart, March 1954, Duckworth Notes

*68 Letter Graves to Hart 19-2-1954, Paul O’Prey (ed.) – Between Moon and Moon: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1946-1972 (1984),p.123

*69 Robert Graves – Lawrence Vindicated, in: New Republic 21-3-1955,p.16-20. See also Robert Graves – T.E. Lawrence and the Riddle of “S.A.”, in: Saturday Review 15-6-1963

*70 L­etter Graves to Hart 21-12-1935, Paul O’Prey (ed.) – In Broken Images: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1914-1946 (1982),p.262

*71 Letter Graves to Hart, O’Prey – In Broken Images,p.260

*72 Letter Graves to Edward Carpenter 30-5-1914, Jeffrey Weeks – Coming Out; Homosexual Politics in Britain from the 19th Century to the Present (1977),p.80

*73 The boy’s name was G.H. Johnstone, and Graves calls him “Dick” in his autobiographical book Good-Bye to Áll That (1929) and “Peter” in his letters. Rather Freudian in this context, since both “dick” and “peter” are synonyms for “penis”.

*74 Adrian Caesar – Taking it like a Man: Suffering, Sexuality and the War Poets (1993),p.177

*75 Parker – The Old Lie,p.190

*76 Robert Graves – Good-Bye to All That, 1929. Graves makes a distinction between amorousness (a sentimental falling in love with younger boys) and eroticism (adolescent lust). “The intimacy that frequently took place was very seldom between an elder boy and the object of his affection – that would have spoiled the romantic illusion – but almost always between boys of the same age who were not in love, and used each other as convenient sex-instruments.” See for Graves attitude towards homosexuality, Caesar – Taking it like a Man,p.172-224.

*77 A.L. Rowse – Homosexuals in History: a Study of Ambivalence in Society, Literature & Art (1977),p.248-249 and Richard Meinertzhagen – Diaries 1937. Storrs died in 1955 and I wonder if his death was in any way related to the pressure around Aldington’s book.

*78 Sir Ronald Storrs – Lawrence of Arabia, in: The Listener 3-2-1955. The title page of Aldington directly hints at TE’s homosexuality by quoting Oscar Wilde “Un­truthful! My nephew Algernon? Impossible! He is an Oxonian.” 

*79 His father Robert Gould Shaw II (1872-1930) and his half-brother Louis Agassiz Shaw II (1906-1987) also suffered from depression and alcoholism. His brother, an eccentric snob, even committed a murder in 1964, strangling his maid, for which he never stood trial. Instead he was remanded to a psychiatric hospital for the rest of his life. 

*80 Nancy Astor’s husband, Lord Waldorf Astor (1879-1952) was the owner of The Observer, while his brother John Jacob Astor (1886-1971) was the owner of The Times.

*81 Philip Knightley in Jeffrey Meyers (ed.) – The Craft of Literary Biography (1985),p.164-5

*82 Letter by Jack Easton to the author 11-6-1989

*83 “I can’t help noticing that all of this seems to be of interest mainly to people who display a particular interest in sex. Most of the people who go on and on about Lawrence’s sexuality and the Bruce beatings seem incapable of keeping off the subject for very long. I think their preoccupation tells us something – something I’d rather not know – about themselves. I assume that those who are obsessed with Lawrence’s sexuality also speculate about the sexual activity of everyone they meet. It takes all sorts to make a world!” (Jeremy Wilson on TEL Studies List 5-8-2005.)

*84 A few biographers who wrote about TE are known to be homosexual, like Desmond Stewart, Jeffrey Meyers, Daniel Wolfe and Steven Caton.

*85 “Indelica­cy, indecen­cy, any form of coarse­ness or vulgarity repelled him physical­ly.” (Meinertz­ha­gen – Middle East Diary,p.38) “He was in no sense a pervert; in fact, he had a remarkably clean mind … I never heard him make a smutty remark and am sure that he would have objected to one if it had been made for his benefit” (Woolley in Friends,p.89)­ “He seemed as free from any thought, as he was from talk, of vice.” (Herbert Baker in Friends,p.249) “I have never met anyone more entirely devoid of vice.” (Lionel Curtis in Friends,p.260) “He had complete purity of mind.” (Clare Sydney Smith – The Golden Reign: The Story of my Friendship with “Lawrence of Arabia” (1978),p.36). TE’s (homosexual) friend E.M. Forster had a totally different opinion on this subject, “At moments TE could be bawdy, bringing it in so mischievously and quickly that one could hardly believe one’s ears, and was left accusing one’s own dirty mind.” (Forster in Friends,p.283-284)

*86 “No one who knew him or worked with him ever believed him to be a homosexu­al.”(Letter by Arnold Lawrence to Miss Early 17-12-1963, Malcolm Brown (ed.) – The Letters of T.E. Lawrence (1988),p. XVIII) “TE’s hut companions have borne witness to its absence.” (Victoria Ocampo – 338171 T.E. Lawrence of Arabia (1963),p.­86n) “I have known a great many of TEL’s perso­nal friends and never once did I hear the faintest charge in that direc­ti­on.” (Thomas – Review of Aldington,p.198) The idea had never crossed the minds of his closest friends from the RAF and Tank Corps. “And these were men living in the same hut and aware of his friendship with such men as Forster and Sassoon who were indeed, …friends of theirs too.” (Brown – Letters,p.XXVII)

*87 See the arguments as used by Lowell Thomas (Friends,­p.214) as quoted earlier. The same kind of reasoning we find in J.N. Lockman, who claims that TE’s “homosexual nature’ can now be “finally settled”, since TE displays “mannerisms consistent with the known physiological traits of male homo­sexuals”, like a tendency, in speech, to linger on the sibilants, and having wide hips. (Lockman – Scattered Tracks,p.136-7)

*88 “Improper behaviour”, Brown – Letters,p.XXVII. “Abnormal tendencies”, Storrs – Lawrence of Arabia (1955)

*89 Davenport-Hines – Sex, Death and Punishment,p.287

*90 “Tolerance … does not imply perso­nal approval or involve­ment.” (Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia,p.705)

*91 “He had more respect for women as people than many men.” (Letter Arnold Lawrence to Miss Early 17-12-1963, Brown – Letters,p.­XXV­III) “But he was not sexless. By contrast, it was also quite possi­ble for women to feel that he had heterosexual potential. (…) TE had no such opportuni­ties to meet women of his own age and with similar mental interests. After the war it was too late.” (Brown – Letters,p.XX­VII-XXVIII) “Tow­ards the end of his life he wrote with tender envy of the happy mar­riage of a contemporary and there was plainly no fate he would have more gladly accepted for himself.” (Arnold Lawrence in Friends,p.592) “He was never married because he never happened to meet the right person; and nothing short of that would do.” (Ernest Altounyan in Friends,p.114)

*92 Jeremy Wilson quoted by Edith Steblecki in: Notes on the TEL Society Symposium September 2002, TE Notes 2 (2002),p.19 and Wilson on TEL Studies List 3-8-2003.

*93 The biographers John Mack and Jeremy Wilson eagerly welcomed the story about TE’s love for and proposal to Janet Laurie. It came from Laurie herself, and was (so it seems) independently confirmed by E.F. Hall (1888-1987), a school friend of TE. But Hall only said to Mack, that TE “adored her”, “worshipped (her) from afar” and spent time in her company, nothing more. (John E. Mack – A Prince of our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence (1977),p.66) Wilson states that, “Recollections of Lawren­ce during this period (childhood) must be treated with cauti­on. All were written at least thirty years later when he had become famous.” (Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia,p.25) But then what about statements made 56 years afterwards, since Mack interviewed both Laurie (then 79) and Hall (then 77) in 1965? And finally, Laurie herself was not a reliable witness, even in the eyes of Wilson, who says that, “a number of people who knew her well have suggested to me that her story of a proposal may be exaggerated.” (Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia,p.990n40) Which makes it even stranger that Wilson is still convinced of the evidence, finding it “conclusive”.

*94 Tim Jeal – Baden-Powell (1989),p.346

*95 “So far as we know, Lawrence’s close friends in the ranks were heterosexual.“ (Jeremy Wilson (ed.) – T.E. Lawrence Correspondence with E.M. Forster and F.L. Lucas (2010),p.XVI) “Close friendship between people of the same sex are common in all walks of life and inevitable in all-male communities such as the armed services. It is patently absurd to suggest that all such friendships must be homosexual yet this is the essence of many allegations about Lawrence.” (Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia,p.705) “Nearly all his friends were married, certainly his most cherished friends, and their wives found no difficulty with him.”( Brown – Letters,p.XXVIII)

*96 According to Christopher Sykes in his introduction to the Penguin edition of Alding­ton’s biogra­phy, the people who whipped TE “were not themselves homosexual, a fact which (if Lawrence was homo­sex­ual) would deprive the expe­rience of any elements of ‘fun­’.” (Sykes – Introduction,p.20)  

*97 And sometimes this led to long term relationships. For example of RAF general Lionel Charlton (1879-1958) and the partner he lived with, a shy working-class RAF man. And of E.M. Forster with a taxi-driver (Reg Palmer) and a policeman (Harry Daley).

*98 “Any atten­tion they paid to us had to be put in the form of an inflic­tion. Such gestures as running their fingers through our hair were accompanied by insults about what a bloody awful mop it was. If they wished to make any more definitely sexual advances, these must be ruthlessly stripped of any quality of indulgen­ce.”(Quentin Crisp – The Naked Civil Servant (1968),p.64) 

*99 W.H. Auden in 1927, Humphrey Carpenter – W.H. Auden: a Biography (1981),p.49. According to Auden, “The attraction of buggery is partly its diffi­culty and tor­ments. Heterosexual love seems so tame and easy after it. (…) There is something in reciprocity that is despair. How one likes to suf­fer.” (Carpenter – W.H. Auden,p.­104) Even in friendships men often chose unequal partners. TE, for example, had a senior role with younger men (soldiers, Dahum) or a junior role with older friends (Forster, Shaw, Hardy), but hardly anything in between. And TE’s friend Sassoon never described himself in a relationship as an equal partner. In all his friendships he is either an apprentice (For­ster, Rivers, Hardy, Gosse, TE) or a fatherly figure giving advice and assistance (Owen, Tennant, and his other lovers).

*100 Parker – The Old Lie,p.92. Such an attraction is called the “Cophe­tua complex”, which is not an exclusively homosexual preserve, since we find it also with upper-class Victorian heterosexu­als who pursued working-class women. According to the legend, Cophetua was an African king known for his lack of sexual attraction for women, who suddenly fell in love with Penelophon, a beggar girl he had met on the street. He married her and they lived happily ever after. Lots of books and plays were inspired by this myth, like for example Pygmalion by TE’s friend George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).

*101 Crisp – The Naked Civil Servant,p.62

*102 Crisp – The Naked Civil Servant,p.155. E.M. Forster warned his friend Joe Ackerley (1896-1967) against his attraction to venal guardsman, thieves and opportunists whom he routinely tried to rescue, “you must give up looking for gold in coal-mines, it merely prevents you from getting amusement out of a nice piece of coal.”(Moffat – E.M. Forster,p.250)

*103 Armitage was Middle East Information Officer for the British Information Agency in New York. “Unlike Mr A’s efforts mine is not a sensational book, it is somewhat poetic- perhaps romantic would be a better word.” (Letter Armitage to Hart 25-1-1954, Duckworth Notes)

*104 Flora Armitage – The Desert and the Stars: a Portrait of TE Lawrence (1956),p.113 & 130. Armitage’s example was followed by Anthony Nutting in 1961. According to Nutting, TE was a “rabid masochist, whose happy endurance of pain disclosed a perversion of the flesh rather than a triumph of the spirit”. (Nutting – Lawrence of Arabia,p.244)

*105 “The truth, I believe (in line with almost everyone who knew him per­sonally), is that he was neither heterosexual nor homosexual in practice.” (Brown – Letters,p.XXVI) “Why not accept Lawrence’s own statement that he was sex­less? (…) His pleasures in life were essentially intellectual and aesthetic, while his physical activities … seemed to involve a deliberate effort to refine his ego by abstinence, exertion and suffering. It would indeed be strange to find a man of such ascetic tenden­cies allowing himself the indulgence of a secret vice.” (Philby – T.E. Lawrence,p­.84) “The sexual appetite, was wanting in him.” (Percy Wynd­ham Lewis – Lawrence of Arabia, in: Blastering and Bombardiering: an Autobiography (1914-1926) (1982),p.243) “One must remem­ber he was a pre-Freudian character, and that before Freud all men were, so to speak, in a state of primal innocence. What can appear in SP as an admis­sion of homosexuality is possibly the poetic gaffe of a man who had little knowled­ge of sex and even less exper­ience.” (Sykes – Introduction,p.20)  

*106 Letter Graves to Hart March/April 1954, O’Prey – Between Moon,p.133.

*107 T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars of Wisdom: a Triumph (1935),p.468

*108 Letter Graves to Hart 19-2-1954, O’Prey – Between Moon,p.123. A better quote on TE’s impotence comes from Henry Williamson: “He was impotent, in the sense of a wild true animal being impotent with the wrong conditi­ons.” (Letter from Williamson to David Lean 12-5-1960, TE Notes 10 (1994),p.1­4/5)

*109 “Throughout his life Lawrence  was deeply influ­enced by the ethical standards he had learned in childhood and he set a great value on integrity in his dealings with other people, especially those who would naturally have looked up to him. He would probably have been shocked and bitterly ashamed if he had suspected that there was any sexual motive behind his friendships in the ranks. In later years, when he came to believe that carnality played an important role in all human motivation, he seems to have avoided close friendships with anyone.” (Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia,p.705)

*110 Mark Andre Raffalovich Uranisme et Unisexua­lité 1896, as quoted in P.W.J. Healy – Uranisme et Unisexualité: A Late Victorian View of Homosexua­lity, in: New Blackfriars 59 (1978),p.60. At that time the German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) was the authority on sexual pathology, a subject he dealt with in Psychopathia Sexualis (original 1886, English edition 1892). He considered the contrary sexual instinct to be congenital in origin, and therefore a form of degeneration which  resulted from a hereditary defect. Men who suffered from it should not marry for fear of passing on their degenerative traits.

*111 This tradition will be dealt with in another article on this blog, in which TE’s ideas about sexuality will be placed in the context of his time.

*112 Dickinson, Dennis Proctor (ed.) – The Autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson: and Other Unpublished Writings (1973),p.11. TE’s friend Siegfried Sassoon was harassed by “sex-fevers”. “It is my own fault that I am under this cursed obsession of sex-cravings. (…) craving for love, craving for imaginative eloquence. Spiritual sickness overshadows me. My mind is somehow diseased and distorted. I live in myself – seek free­dom in myself – self-poiso­ned, self-imprisoned.” (Diaries September 1921, Rupert Hart Davis (ed.) – Siegfried Sassoon Diaries, 1920-1922 (1981),p.86)

*113 T.E. Lawrence – The Mint (1973),p.1­09. Which reminds me of the poet Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), who spoke of “the rough male kiss of blankets”, in his poem The Great Lover (1914).

*114 “If I have missed all these things, as I hope and you seem to sug­gest – well then, I’m barrenly lucky. It has not been easy; and it leads, in old age, to misery.” (Letter to Eric Kennington 15-9-1927, Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia,p.705)

*115 Dickinson quoted in Proctor – The Autobiography,p.10.

*116 Arnold Lawrence in Friends,p.591

*117 Quoted in Richard Perceval Graves – A.E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet (1979),p.108-109

*118 “If only there was some way out of the Verboten notice-boards which stand in thickets about all my roads.” (Letter to Edward Garnett 18-5-1924, Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia,p.743)

*119 Letter to Colonel Archibald Wavell 9-2-1928, David Garnett (ed.) – The Letters of T.E. Lawrence (1938),p.575. TE’s friend Jim E­de (1895-1990),  noted in his copy of the Letters (edited by David Garnett, 1938), “Was this because someone had suggested he was in the ranks for immoral reasons? Looks as if it might be so.” (Kettle’s Yard)

*120 “He had a face of classic beauty, pensive and rather sad in repose, but which lit up when he smiled, like a pool touched by the sun. Anti­nous must have looked like this, when Hadrian first saw him in the Phrygian woods. The boy moved with effort­less grace, walking as women walk who have carried vessels on their heads since childhood. … I knew how decep­tively endu­ring were these Bedu boys who looked like girls.” (Wilfred ­Thesiger – Arabian Sands (1991),p.145) Hadri­an (76-138) was the Roman emperor (117-38) who had a love relationship with the youth Antinous (111-130). After his lover drowned Hadrian deified him, an unprecedented honour for someone who did not belong to the ruling family.

Arnold Lawrence, Basil Liddell Hart, Celandine Kennington, Eric Kennington, Homosexuality, Lawrence Bureau, Nancy Astor, Richard Aldington, Robert Graves, Ronald Storrs

In TE’s family there is disagreement about the quality of his childhood. On the one hand we have his mother and oldest brother who claim a harmonious and happy childhood for him. And on the other, there is TE himself who speaks of a “miserable” childhood, and his youngest brother who speaks of a childhood which created an unbalance in TE’s character “even worse than the war”.

THE GENTLEMAN AND THE GOVERNESS
Sir Thomas Chapman (1846-1919) was an English landow­ner in Delvin, Ireland, who belonged to a family of considerable wealth. He writes the following on his deathbed. “When I first met your Mother, I was already married. An unhappy marriage without love on either side – tho’ I had four young daugh­ters. Yr mother & I unfortunately fell in love with each other & when the exposé came, thought only of getting away & hiding our­selves.”(*1) The woman for whom he had fallen head over heels, was the governess of his daughters, Sarah Junner (1861-1959). She became his mistress, and when pregnant left the household to live in Dublin, giving birth to Robert (Bob) in 1885.

What followed was rather unexpected and untypical both for a master-servant relationship and for that time. When Thomas and Sarah were discovered, they bravely chose to follow the difficult route by eloping. As a result, Thomas abandoned his estate, his money, his aristocratic life, and his prospects as a baronet. The couple were unable to marry, since Lady Chapman refused a divorce on religious grounds. Consequently, they lived “in sin”, a condition which was con­demned strongly in Victorian Brit­ain. What made their position even worse, was the fact that they had broken down class barriers too. “You can imagine or try to imagine how yr Mother & I have suffered all these years, not knowing what day we might be recognized by someone and our sad history published far and wide.”

Thomas and Sarah tried to hide their situation by taking the surname “Law­rence”, and by behaving to the world as if they were married. For the first eleven years, the family became wanderers, moving about restles­sly, afraid of being found out. From Dublin they went to Tremadoc (Wales), where Thomas Edward (TE) was born (1888). Then followed Kirkcudbright (Scotland) and a third son William (1889), Dinar­d in Brittany (France), a short period at St Helier (Jersey) for the birth of Frank (1893), and the New Forest (near Beaulieu) in Hampshire. Finally they sett­led in Oxford in 1896 for the education of their children, where Arnold became the last son to be born (1900). “I can say nothing more, except that there never was a truer saying than “the ways of transgressors are hard”. Take warning from the terrible anxieties & sad thoughts endured by both yr Mother and me for now over thirty years!”

GOD HATES THE SIN, BUT LOVES THE SINNER
Taking Thomas from his wife, eloping, bearing eight illegitimate children and raising five (*2), and living with a man who was not legally her hus­band and far above her in class, must have been extremely difficult for a woman who was a “child of sin” herself. Sarah felt tremendous guilt, and the weight of sin was heavy upon her. However, her religious beliefs, and in particular the influence of Canon Christopher (1820 – 1913), gave her spiritual comfort. He was one of the leaders of the Evangelical Church, a fundamentalist movement which advocated a clear assertion of Christian principles and a literal interpretation of the Bible. It was concerned less with high ritual and more with personal redemption. Essential in Evangelical preaching were the five R’s: Ruin – Redemption – Regeneration – Righteousness – Responsibility. Canon Christopher inspired people with his “message of love” and convinced Thomas and Sarah, who met him in 1895 when he preached at Ryde (on the Isle of Wight), that they were not beyond the hope of divine forgiveness. They were told that “God Hates the Sin, but Loves the Sinner”, especi­al­ly when that sinner showed repent­ance and bettered himself. As a young man in his twenties, Canon Christopher had himself been converted while instructing native boys in India. And as Vice President of the Church Missionary Society he was now on the lookout for young men, saved for Christ, who would become teachers, clergymen and missionaries and disseminate the gospel. This appealed to Sarah, who needed her family to con­tribute to her peni­tence vicari­ous­ly, devoting their lives to God and Christian­ity. (*3) The first step was moving to Oxford, where Canon Christopher was Rector of St Aldate’s Church.

DISCIPLINE
Raising her children to be children of God demanded an iron will from Sarah, and meant enforcing strict discipline (*4) from both family and servants in the form of obedience, reliability, punctuality, neatness and cleanliness. She used her authority in particular to protect her children from the dangers of the wicked world outside. Evan­gelical Christians believed in the innate sin­fulness of the individ­ual. Children were not born inno­cent, but inheri­ted the sins of their parents. First and foremost she had to conquer the threat of alcoholism in the family, since both sides had their share of it. She sharply warned her chil­dren against its evils and helped Thomas to conquer his addiction and to become a teetotaller. But even more threatening were lustfulness and unchastity. Medical theory at that time supported the Evangelical idea of innate sinfulness, stating that children “of sin”, born of unchaste pa­rents, would develop premature sensuality. Children and adoles­cents with such a background had to be preven­ted at all costs from giving them­selves over to libidin­ous indul­gence. Masturbation in particular, was considered by both medical and religious authorities, to be an absolute horror, an uncleanliness, a filthiness for­bidden by God, an unmanliness despised by men. Boys and their parents were warned with gruesome descriptions of the dread­ful conse­quences which attended anyone who practised self-abuse. Fearful of her children developing in the wrong direction, Sarah became vigilant in regard to the chastity of her sons. She felt, for example, that women were natural troublemakers, who would eventually steal her boys from her, and therefore she did not tolerate other women in the house, except for servants.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
TE was treated more critical­ly and strictly by his mother, because she expected him to do somet­hing special with his life. For him there was an ideal standard. Being a good boy was not enough: he had to be immaculate. This meant he was required to be diligent, enthusiastic, religious and church-going; clean of mind and body, pure in thought and deed; to be strong and courageous, as well as active and full of life; to be good and kind as well as careful and helpful to others; to be orderly, punc­tual, honest and open; and finally, to be respectful and obedient to his elders, and to tell his parents everyt­hing that he was doing or intended to do. According to Sarah, her education of TE was a great success. “He took the greatest pains over every­thing he did, and was always full of enthusiasm about all he was doing in work or play, and was always so good and kind to everyone.” (*5)

A PICTURE-PERFECT FAMILY
The reputation of her family was everything to Sarah. She needed to prove to the world (and probably to herself) that against all odds she had raised her children successfully. Unfortunately, this attitude led to a distinct colouring of information that is available on TE’s childhood, by both Sarah and her eldest son Bob.(*6) According to Bob, the period before the war “was really the happiest of Ned’s whole life.”(*7) It consisted of complete harmony, “We had a very happy childhood which was never marred by a single quarrel between any of us.”(*8) Sarah could not agree more, and considered people who still dared to have a different opinion to be totally in the wrong. “(TE) never did any of the stupid things attributed to him – they are pure inventions.”(*9) Any dirty linen that existed should certainly not be shared with the public. It made her complain to TE about the things he wrote about the war.(*10) And after his death she heavily influenced her surviving sons, Bob and Arnold, when they acted as editors of books about her Ned. For example, when Arnold was working on TE Lawrence by his Friends (1937), his mother “expressed the utmost horror & incredulity about the notion of (TE) bribing the Turks.(…) She finally said she would never forgive me if I printed the passage. (….) It seemed to me in the end that I had better do as she wished: she is 75 & I did not feel that it was any use going on with the argument for more than 2 spells of 3 hours!”(*11) And during Bob’s work on Home Letters (1954), Sarah had him change the letters as she wanted, omitting passages which deviated from her education of TE. Arnold was vitriolic over this, and privately complained about his older brother’s shoddy and “Mum”-serving editing, which he said made him “squirm at every page”.(*12)

EVEN WORSE THAN THE WAR
TE’s youngest brother clearly had a different opinion about this picture-perfect childhood. Arnold told TE’s friend and first biographer Robert Graves, that “the strongest impression I have is that his life has been injured by his mother.”(*13) And to another friend of TE, Jim Ede, he was even more outspoken. “A child­hood like his would create an unbalance in anyone’s mind. It brought about a very severe knack, even worse than the war.”(*14) It was during the war that TE experienced horrific warfare, from both the Arabs and Turks, and was tortured and raped. So what exactly happened to him during his childhood that could have been worse? And what part did his mother play in this, that “injured” him?

THE SCHOOL-FEAR
Moving to Oxford when he was eight years old, brought about a big change for TE. From a life which was rather free and protected in the woods of the New Forest, he was suddenly confronted with strict discipline, both in school and at home. In hindsight he “hated & contemned” his schooldays, which he considered “an irrelevant and time-wasting nuisance”(*15). “They drag those “boy” years out too much. In my case they were miserable sweated years of unwilling work; and when after them I suddenly went to (the University of) Oxford, the new freedom felt like Heaven. I don’t think men ever work as hard as boys are made to work (…) nor do I think the miseries of grown-up feelings are as bad as those of boys.”(*16) In The Mint (his book about his experiences in the RAF and the Tank Corps) he compares his school period with the military training he received, saying “there is the school-fear over me, that working against hazardously-suspended penalty which made my life from eight to eighteen miserable, and (the University of) Oxford after it so noble a freedom.”(*17)  

The term “school-fear” suggests that TE’s fear was related to school itself, and that the penalty he mentions might have come from his masters.(*18) However, there is no evidence of disciplinary action or punishments in school. From the stories we know of TE’s school days, nothing special stands out that could have created this fear. Although considered to be somewhat “eccentric”, he was not unpopular and had friends. Bullying may have occurred, as in every school, but it seems unlikely that he would have experienced it as a “penalty”, or that it would have lasted from eight to eighteen. There is, however, evidence of disciplinary action elsewhere.

THE BATTLE OF WILLS
It was at home that a battle of wills developed between TE and his mother. A battle which would continue all his life. The first part took place from eight to eighteen, the years TE was a schoolboy, and in my opinion it is this battle which made his life during this period “miserable”. 

The battle of wills started when TE was just a boy of eight. This is usually the age that a child starts to take his own place, when he collides with the people around him, becoming more unmanageable, rebellious and obstinate. Eight is the year of tension, almost as if puberty sets in, but as it turns out, it is only a finger-exercise for later. TE resisted the ideal standard his mother wanted to enforce, more than his brothers did, because he was hard-headed and strong-willed just like her.(*19) Because discipline in itself proved not enough to reach her goals, Sarah felt justified to break her son’s obstinate will, and make him into “an empty harp”, through which her will would blow.(*20) For this, she used every weapon available to her: circumcision, beatings, sedation, and psychological pressure.

CIRCUMCISION
Circumcision was commonplace in England in the latter half of the 19^th century and the early years of the 20^th, notably among the upper and middle classes. There were mainly hygienic reasons for the practice, but what also played an important role was the belief that circumcision would discourage masturbation.(*21) The custom was to have the procedure done as early as possible in a boy’s life, usually at birth, but in TE’s case it took place in 1897, when he was nine. It is difficult to assess what psychological consequences this had for a boy, who was at that time trying to take his own place in life, forming his own identity. He may have considered circumcision a punishment for something he did wrong, as many children do when they try to make sense of something bad that is happening to them. Physically it must have been a painful experience, particularly for a boy who was (or became) terrified of pain. “Pain of the slightest had been my obsession and secret ter­ror, from a boy.”(*22)

BEATINGS
More pain was involved when TE was beaten frequently by his mother for misbe­haviour and obstinacy. According to Arnold, it consisted of “severe whippings on the but­tocks”, which “seemed to be given for the purpose of breaking TE’s will.”(*23) Beatings­­­­ as a form of disci­pline were quite com­mon in the upper and middle clas­ses of Victorian Society. Teaching youthful sinners to become dutiful and virtu­ous was for their own good, and God’s will was quoted to justify it. “He that spares the rod hates his child; but he who loves him chas­tens him betimes.” (Proverbs 13:12) With this in mind, children were beaten for lack of obedience, disho­nes­ty, forwardness, bad langu­age, and too much self-will.

The pain involved was one thing, but what particularly frightened TE about the beatings, was the unexpectedness, the “hazardously-suspended penalty”. A child beaten for discipli­nary reasons, may feel that he has some control over the beating by adapt­ing himself to the wishes of the beater, and proactively catching signals and tuning into them with his behav­iour (“I will be, what you want me to be!”).(*24) But when beatings take place with the purpose of breaking a child’s will, then he is beaten because of who he is instead of how he behaves; this makes the beatings unpredictable, and the child will never know for sure when he is safe or when he is not.  

SEDATION
TE was not only beaten to break his will, he was also sedated with opiates, to make him quiet and obedient. “They dosed me someti­mes, when I was a child, too weak to kick against them …”(*25) Again, this was not uncommon at that time. Sedating of infants took place throug­hout society, by working mothers, babyminders or harassed adults. They resorted to opi­ates, “God­frey’s Cordial” being the most popu­lar, to still the babble of children, on a vast, harmful and unprec­edented scale.(*26) The horror of sedation is that it can break a person’s will completely, because he is unable to defend himself. This seems to be the one thing that TE feared most of all: powerlessness. The pain of the beatings, in combination with the unexpectedness of them, giving him no time to prepare, created for TE a situation similar to that of being sedated; unable to resist, he surrendered his will completely.

A FREEZING RESPONSE
There is evidence which points in the direction of TE suffering from a freezing response, an instinctive surrender in a frightening situation. Freezing, and the dissociation which is part of it, is an adequate response in abnormal and overpowering circum­stances, but has a tendency to repeat itself when a person is under severe stress, feeling powerless or paralysed from fear, and then dissociative complaints are its consequence. TE experienced freezing during the Arab Revolt, being “disbod­ied, uncon­scious of flesh or feeling”(*27), and particularly during the beating and rape in Deraa (1917), when “no longer actor, but spectator, (I) thought not to care how my body jerked and squealed (in its suffer­ings).”(*28) Finally he experienced it during the self-organised and ritualized beatings in the 1920’s and 1930’s.(*29) As a consequence of freezing, “he could not monitor his own reactions”(*30), which frightened him. Trying to regain control, he arranged for a person to witness the proceedings, and afterwards to describe to him what he had witnessed in regard to his behaviour and responses during the beatings and after, since he himself had not been aware of them.

It is likely that TE’s freezing response started in his childhood, as a reaction to the beatings by his mother, and developed into a pattern in which it became his natural reaction towards physical threat. Now this may sound exaggerated and speculative to you, and you may wonder why beatings in childhood would lead to such disproportionate reactions. But it is a fact that every person reacts differently to things that happen to them. What for one is something harmless, can be intensely frightening for another. Beatings which are unpredictable (“hazardously-suspended”), can create an overwhelming sense of helplessness and powerlessness in a child. When defence (“fight” or “flight”) is not an option, there is only one way left to avert the painful reality, which is by freezing. A child who is afraid of pain, and therefore more vulnerable, is more likely to react in this way. Since freezing is a natural, instinctive reaction, it just happens, and the child may feel he loses control because he automatically surrenders. This bothered TE most of all as a child. He froze when confronted with a beating mother, and although freezing lessened the pain, it didn’t lessen his powerlessness.

The heavenly freedom which TE finally found when he was eighteen and started his studies at the University of Oxford, was only achieved after a fierce struggle within himself. By “constant training in carelessness”(*31) he learned to deal with his fear of pain and to control his freezing response. He experimented with tests of physical and mental endurance, making cycle rides and long walks in very severe circumstances, spending extended periods without food or sleep. By severe discipline, self-denial, exhaustion and suffering, he stretched the limits of his physical capabilities, even becoming “a pocket Hercules”.(*32) In the end, however, he lost his newly acquired self-control and self-confidence again, under the immense pressure of the war and its aftermath, and particularly because of the torture and rape in Deraa in 1917.(*33)

THE CITADEL OF INTEGRITY
“You instance my night in Deraa. Well; I’m always afraid of being hurt; and to me, while I live, the force of that night will lie in the agony which broke me and made me sur­ren­der. (…) For fear of being hurt, or rather to earn five minutes respite from a pain which drove me mad, I gave away the only possession we are born into the world with – our bodily integrity. It’s an unforgivable matter, an irrevocable position …”(*34) It was during the war that TE’s “citadel of … integri­ty had been irrevo­cably lost.”(*35) But it seems his integrity of self, both physical and mental, had been violated before, during the battle of wills with his mother in his childhood. It was she who, in the words of Arnold, “injured” her son, creating “an unbalance” in TE’s mind, and causing “a very severe knack, even worse than the war”.

TE had a strong will, and wanted to be free to live his own life. He hated it when others tried to rule him. It was noticed by his schoolmaster: “He was self-reliant and one could feel in him an instinctive recoil when he was pressed into a way that he did not feel inclined to go.”(*36) But because of the psychological and physical pressure his mother exerted on him, it was a constant struggle to have a life of his own, and to develop his own identity. He still complains about it, later in his life, in terms reminiscent of the rape. “I think I’m afraid of letting her get, ever so little, inside the circle of my integrity; and she is always hamme­ring and sapping to come in.”(*37). TE was constantly expected to behave according to an ideal standard and it was mother’s will that determined how he should behave, what he should think and feel and what he should believe, and there was no hiding from her.(*38) That this had clearly injured him can be seen, for example, from his reaction when he was suddenly confronted with his old travelling bath, in which his mother used to bathe him as a child. He showed a “violent revulsion to recall such physical dependency”.(*39) Sarah would never change her ways with him and their battle of wills would continue all his life, as we can conclude from a remark of TE when he was 39: “I have a terror of her knowing anything about my feel­ings, or convic­tions, or way of life. If she knew they would be dama­ged, violated, no longer mine. You see, she would not hesitate to under­stand them; and I do not under­stand them, and do not want to.”(*40)

ILLEGITIMACY
At the same time that the child TE was forced to be open about himself, he found out about the illegitimate situation of his parents and their children. “They thought always that they were living in sin, and that we would some day find it out. Whereas I knew it before I was ten, and they never told me; till after my father’s death something I said showed Mother that I knew, and didn’t care a straw.”(*41) As an adult TE may have been indifferent about his illegitimacy, but to a child of ten, who is still very much dependent upon his parents, such a discovery must come as a great shock, particularly if that child is already in an unpredictable situation and is forced to bring his will into complete conformity with that of his mother. Such a child has great difficulty in feeling safe. And then, on top of it, he finds out that his mother, who advocates high ideals and standards, and forces him to be open about his life, is herself living “in sin”, and thus a hypocrite. And his father, the person he admires, is not telling the truth either.(*42) Now how is he able to trust his parents, when he has been lied to all this time? Accor­ding to TE’s brother Arnold, “There was a strong sense of puritanism in the family, a spirit of sin, unnatu­ralness. Hush hush was great, many subjects were taboo which to the child’s mind are not. It per­plexed the children, leading to doubts, and ultimately to a lack of confidence.”(*43)

STRUGGLING TO BECOME AN IMMACULATE CHILD
Confusion and insecurity are the consequence of secrecy and hypoc­risy around a child. It is in a child’s nature to try to make sense of the things that are happening around him, particularly for a curious and investigative child like TE. Living up to his mother’s ideal of perfection, he became very sensitive to her wishes. Only by acting in a manner that was up to her expectations, could he keep at bay that horrifying spectre of a mother’s heart “grown cold with disap­point­ment”.(*44) Trying to be an immaculate child, how­ever, meant walking on his tip-toes con­stant­ly. It made him insecure of himself, being “just not good enough”, because he was never able to reach that ideal standard she demanded of him, and that he, as a consequence, demanded of himself. Mother’s perfectionism was eventually replaced by a strong inner perfectionist (the part that sets the targets), an inner critic (the part that criticizes him if he does not behave as expected) and particularly a destructive inner judge (the part that makes strong judgments about the things he does), the latter especially leading TE to be depreciative of his own achievements, and eventually driving him into depression. “One of the sorest things in life is to come to realise that one is just not good enough. Bet­ter perhaps than some, than many, almost – but I do not care for rela­tives, for mat­ching my­self against my kind. There is an ideal stand­ard some­where and only that matters; and I cannot find it. Hence this aim­lessness.”(*45) In fact, later in his life, his mother did not need “hammering and sapping to come in”, since she had created her way in already when he was a child. Her ideals were stamped upon him and led him to reject everything he did as being unworthy and ultimately to reject his own self-created identity as being false. “The eagerness to overhear and oversee myself was my assault upon my own inviolate citadel.”(*46)

What played a strong role in the development of TE’s depression is the fact that a child who is being raised in such a repressive environment usually blames himself for what is happening to him. This is a well-known survival technique of children with difficult parents and painful childhoods. The child will not doubt his parents, but rather doubt or even blame himself and his own behaviour. Feelings of anger or even aggression against the people upon whom he is dependent, are thus kept away, as are feelings of fear and pain. The child focuses himself on activity, on things he could do instead of the things he could not, and on the good things that happen to him. He just wants to lead a normal life, just like the children around him, without chaos or confusion. Therefore he subconsciously constructs an explanation for his fate that absolves his parents of all blame and responsibil­ity. He keeps away all painful things, like circumcision, beatings and sedation, from his conscious mind, as if they did not really happen, or when they do, they are minimized, rationalized, and excused. Thoughts that lead to doubts are reasoned away. It gives the child some sense of control in a situation in which he is, in fact, totally powerless. By blaming himself, he holds onto the illusion of being loved for who he is, instead of how he behaves.

CHILD ABUSE
Usually battles of wills are won by parents and lost by children, as it was in this case. From eight to eighteen TE was not able to break through his powerlessness, to build up his own citadel, defend his integrity, and be safe. But fortunately for him, after “miserable sweated years of unwilling work”, he eventually found “the new freedom (which) felt like heaven”, at the University of Oxford.(*47)

It is clear that TE was harmed by his childhood. As his brother Arnold said, “his life, has been injured by his mother.” It created “an unbalance in (his) mind (…) a very severe knack, even worse than the war.” Nowadays physical and psychological mistreatment of a child in the form of physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect is called “child abuse”. It is defined as being an avoidable and harmful way of treating a child, injuring his welfare and threatening his development. What happened to TE in his childhood – being beaten, sedated, circumcised and being under severe psychological pressure to become an immaculate child – would definitely fit this definition. However, in 19th century terms, the behaviour of his mother and her treatment of her son were nothing special. Her raising a wilful child in this way would definitely have been supported by both religious and school authorities. Therefore it would be an anachronism to label it with the contemporary term, “child abuse”.(*48)

RETROSPECT
You may regard my description of TE’s childhood thus far, even without the label “child abuse”, as being strongly speculative, exaggerated and judgemental, since there is only proof of a few beatings, nothing more or less. You may regard the way his mother treated him, as something normal, or harmless, and maybe even necessary because TE was such a strong-willed boy.(*49) And you may think that TE’s using the word “miserable” to describe his childhood, is both unreasonable and unfair to his well-meaning parents (*50), particularly since he only considered it as such in retrospect. You are as entitled to your opinion, as I am to have mine.

Hindsight is not unusual, because a child has nothing to compare his life and experiences with. He has no objective concept of what is normal and what is not. The only thing he knows about is his own experience. People around him may tell him that he has been very lucky to have such wonderful parents and that his behaviour strikes them as that of a happy child. How could he know that it might not be as it is supposed to be? Children who are living in an abusive situation, are masters at hiding their distress symptoms, and try to behave as normal as possible. It is only later in life, through contacts with others and through experiences, that a person is able to find out the reality of his childhood. Often this takes place when things in life go wrong, or when something shocking happens, and a person tries to make sense of the situation and the patterns that brought him there. In the case of TE this realization came to pass when he suffered from a trauma, caused by the circumstances of the war and by being tortured and raped. It is a fact that a traumatic experience often triggers the emotional reactions of an earlier trauma, particularly if that earlier experience has not been assimilated. This can lead to an extra-violent emotional reaction to the later trauma.(*51) TE was already under great stress from the Arab Revolt, his mental resistance severely weakened. This made him an easy victim in Deraa, and the effects of the trauma even worse, because it recalled all the earlier traumatic experiences of the war. The severity of his rape-trauma and the trouble he had assimilating it make the possibility of an earlier trauma in his childhood very likely. A glimpse of it can be seen, for example, in TE’s attitude towards his old home just after he returned from the war. A place like home would normally be a good place to recover, but for him, this proved not to be the case. “I can’t live at home: I don’t know why: the place makes me utterly intolerable.”(*52)

THE DIFFICULTY OF JUDGING FROM THE OUTSIDE
TE’s childhood was not all black or all white, and so there were both miserable and happy moments in it, as in that of everyone. But who are we to judge it and on what basis? Many people recognize themselves in TE, because they had a mother like his. His friend Charlotte Shaw, and his biographers John Mack (*53) and Richard Aldington (*54), to name a few. But only a tiny minority of these people will regard themselves as “survivors” of child abuse, or even as having had a painful childhood. Most of them will just call it “a difficult mother”. Charlotte Shaw called her childhood “perfectly hellish” (*55), TE his “miserable”. Every person reacts differently to things that happen to them. Some are more sensitive or vulnerable than others. In my opinion, the quality of a childhood is not something which can be objectively measured by outsiders, but something subjectively judged by those who have lived and experienced it. So ultimately, it is not for me to decide if TE had either a miserable or a happy childhood. That is up to the child who lived that life, and the adult he became. TE called it “miserable”. His brother Arnold, who was closest to him, said that a childhood like his brother’s created an unbalance in TE’s character which was “even worse than the war”. It would be presumptuous of any outsider to contradict them.

NOTES
*1 Letter by Thomas Chapman/Lawrence, no date, in: Harold Orlans The Ways Of Transgres­sors, Journal Of The T.E. Lawrence Society 1 (1996),p.20-21

*2 Two sons were born dead, and one lived for only a few hours.

*3 Eventually William became a teacher of history at St Step-hen’s College in Delhi (1913/14). Frank organised summer camps and was a leader in the Church Lad’s Brigade, like his older brother TE, who also taught at Sunday School. Thomas, the father, became a member of the Church Committee at St Aldates. And Robert, her oldest, went to China as a medical missionary in 1921 where Sarah joined him in 1923. After unrest prompted them to get back to England in 1927, they returned to China in 1932, eventually fleeing from the Communists in 1935. Both Will and Frank died in action during the First World War, and TE and Arnold resisted her religious ambitions and made careers for themselves.

*4 According to Sarah, the children led “a very free, happy life for over two years” while living at Langley Lodge in the New Forest (1894-96), just before they came to Oxford. (A.W. Lawrence – T.E. Lawrence By His Friends – Jonathan Cape, London 1937,p.25) It seems very likely that after the family moved to Oxford in 1896, Sarah became stricter and enforced discipline more strongly than before, under the influence of Canon Christopher and Evangelical Christianity. During the family’s life in Oxford there were no more nannies around, nor governesses, only servants, which means that control over the education of the children at home was in her hands completely, and there was no one – save Thomas – to protest against too severe disciplinary measures.

*5 Sarah Lawrence in: T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,p.27

*6 “Sarah Lawrence and Bob both told direct lies when it suited them, and excused themselves because the end in their view justified the means.” (Jeremy Wilson, T.E. Lawrence Studies List, April 2004) “The kind of decep-tion you expected from Bob and Sarah Lawrence. In that family there was a tendency to tell people what you thought they should know.“ (Jeremy Wilson, T.E. Lawrence Studies List 10-12-2004)

*7 “We all had a very happy home life until the War and that period was really the happiest of Ned’s whole life.”  (Letter Bob Lawrence to Flora Armitage 19-8-1963, in: Jack Duckworth – An Odd Family, TE Notes 2 – 2001,p.18) According to John Mack, “(Bob) expunged from his own mind, not to mention the printed record, any material suggesting that family life was anything but idyllic or that TE’s childhood was other than completely virtuous.” (John E. Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder: The Life Of T.E. Lawrence – Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London 1977,p.18) It seems he sincerely believed it to be true. For example, he was still convinced his parents were married when Richard Aldington’s biography (1955) proved this to be false. He roared with laughter the first time he was told by Mrs Kennington, rejecting the story since both his parents had been very decided Evangelical Christians. He held on very persistently to this belief, trusting his mother and what she had told him. Liddell Hart and Mrs Kennington spent hours trying to convince him that the revelation about his parents was true, and since this didn’t seem to help, it took a private note from his younger brother Arnold to make the difference. After accepting the truth, he tried to shield his mother from the news that Aldington had exposed the family se­cret. (Fred D. Crawford – Richard Aldington And Lawrence Of Arabia: A Cautionary Tale – Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale 1998),p.130-131. Jack Duckworth Saving “Mum”: The Lawrence Bureau In Action 1954-1955, in: TE Notes 2 – 2001,p.26-27) According to TE, Bob was “queer company.  You will not persuade him of anything if you do see him. He is illuminated from inside, not from out. His face, very often, shines like a lamp. Such an odd family.” (Letter to Charlotte Shaw, June/July 1928, in: John Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.14) When someone asked him what to read about his brother, he recommended Gurney Slade’s children’s adventure stories. (Letter Bob Lawrence to Helen Fitzrandolph 2-1-1937, in: Jack Duckworth – An Odd Family,p.18)

*8 Bob Lawrence in: T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,p.31

*9 Sarah Lawrence in: T.E. Lawrence By His Friends p.28

*10 “Mother remonstrated with him about something he had written and he replied that too much had been said about the glory of war and it was time men should know what it entailed in human misery and deeds to be ashamed of.” (Letter from Bob Lawrence to Stanhope Landick 21-4-1967, in: Letters From M.R. Law­rence To Stanhope Landick)

*11 Letter Arnold Lawrence to Sir Percy Cox 30-7-1936, quoted by Jack Duckworth, T.E Lawrence Whittier List 17-5-1999.

*12 Letter Eric Kennington to Liddell Hart 28-2-1954, and Letter Arnold Lawrence to Liddell Hart 21-6-1954, in: Fred D. Crawford – Richard Aldington And Lawrence Of Arabia,p.107

*13 Letter from Arnold Lawrence to Robert Graves, 15-6-1927, in: John Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.33

*14 Notes on a conversation between Jim Ede and Arnold Lawrence 1937, Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge). Arnold was usually rather reticent on the subject of TE’s childhood, mainly for reasons of privacy and to prevent further gossip. However, in interviews with Jim Ede (between 1935 and 1940) and John E. Mack (between 1965 and 1972) he was more open.

*15 Queries by Liddell Hart answered in writing by TE, April 1933, in: T.E. Lawrence To His Biographer Liddell Hart (Doubleday, New York 1963),p.51. As could be expected, his mother remembers differently. “It has often been said that he did not like being at school; he always took a keen interest in his work and was very happy. “ (T.E. Lawrence by his Friends,p.26)

*16 Letter to Richard Knowles 14-7-1927, in: J.M. Wilson – Lawrence Of Arabia: The Authorised Biography Of T.E. Lawrence (Heinemann, London 1989),p.41. “To friends who wondered aloud how he could endure the company of the barrack-room and its bareness TE might retort, almost fiercely, that he had gone back to his boyhood class and was at home.” (Comments and Corrections of TE on Liddell Hart’s typescript for his biography on TE, June/July 1933, in: T.E. Lawrence To His Biographer Liddell Hart,p.79)

*17 T.E. Lawrence – The Mint (Jonathan Cape, London 1973),p.154

*18 “He suffered during his school years from a constant fear of being punished by his teachers.” (John Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.23)

*19 A friend who knew him from when he was six described him as being “frightfully bossy: he used to order us about, but in a very nice way.” (Janet Laurie, in: John Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.21) And a schoolmaster who experienced TE when he was thirteen, said “He was evidently forming resolutions as to the conduct of life, for he had already begun to criticise his elders, an awkward and hindering habit in any youth.” (H.R. Hall, in: J.M. Wilson – Lawrence Of Arabia,p.25)

*20 “In the army an effort, more or less conscious, was made to persuade the recruit to surrender one half of his will. (…) It tried to make obedience an instinct, a mental reflex … It demanded a surrender, for the term of service, of reason and initiative; the mak­ing of each soldier, or rather of each subordinate, an empty harp through which the will of the commander in chief could blow.” (T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars Of Wisdom – Castle Hill Press, Fordingbridge 1997,p.600-601).

*21 TE’s circumcision is documented in the medical files of the RAF, dating from TE’s transfer back to the RAF in 1925. Thanks to Jeremy Wilson for bringing it to my attention. During the medical examination TE lied about his date of birth, mentioning 1894 and not the actual 1888. Lying to be considered younger in this situation, was understandable, because he desperately wanted to return to the RAF. It doesn’t mean automatically that he also lied about the age when he was circumcised. There is no information about whether TE’s brothers were ever circumcised.

*22 T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars Of Wisdom (Jonathan Cape, London 1935),p.446. Elsewhere he says,  “I’m always afraid of being hurt.” (Letter to Charlotte Shaw, 26-3-1924, in: Malcolm Brown (ed.) – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence – J.M. Dent & Sons, London 1988,p.261) And according to his brother Arnold, “TE had a more than ordinary fear of pain.” (Letter Arnold Lawrence to Miss Early 17-12-1963, quoted by Harold Orlans in the manuscript of T.E. Lawrence: Biography Of A Broken Hero – McFarland, Jefferson 2002.)

*23 “Discipline, according to Arnold, was administered in the form of severe whippings on the buttocks and was delivered by his mother because his father was “too gentle, too imaginative – couldn’t bring himself to.” Arnold remembered receiving only one such beating himself. His mother once told him, “I never had to do it to Bob, once to Frank and frequently to TE.” (John Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.33)

*24 Eventually such a child becomes very good at being an “as-if-personal­ity”, a chameleon, which seems to be the case with TE. For example, he described himself as being, “a sensitised film, turned black or white by the objects projected on me”. (Letter to Vyvyan Richa­rds 15-7-1918, in: David Garnett (ed.) – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence – Jonathan Cape, London 1938,p.245). If we consider his behaviour with the Arabs and in the armed forces, he was quite successful being “a “chameleon” who took on quite honestly the colour of his surroundings.” (Hugh Trenchard in conversation with Liddell Hart 27-6-1935, in: Harold Orlans – T.E. Lawrence,p.192) According to his brother Arnold, TE had a “facility for seeing through the eyes of others” (T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,p.591), which resulted in many people feeling perfectly at ease with him.

*25 Letter to Charlotte Shaw 8-12-1927, in: John Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.477n35

*26 James Walvin – A Child’s World: A Social History Of English Childhood, 1800-1914 (Penguin 1982),p.26. Thanks to Professor Jeffrey Richards (Cultural History, Lancaster University) for bringing this to my attention.

*27 T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars Of Wisdom (1935), p.468 “We had learned that there were pangs too sharp, grief’s too deep, ecstasies too high for our finite selves to register. When emotion reached this pitch the mind cho­ked; and memory went white till the circumstances were humdrum once more.” (T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars Of Wisdom – 1935,p.29-30)

*28 T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars Of Wisdom (1935),p.445

*29 In the letters TE wrote as “The Old Man”, he often speaks of beatings as “schoolboy measures”. Therefore I definitely see a relation between his mother’s beatings and the later ones, particularly because there is no evidence of beatings in school.

*30 John Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.436

*31 T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars Of Wisdom (1997), p.539

*32 “In 1914 I was a pocket Hercules, as muscularly strong as people twice my size, & more enduring than most.” (Letter to Edward Marsh 10-6-1927, in: David Garnett – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence,p.521)

*33 More about TE’s struggle for freedom and for control of his freezing response, in another article which will be published on this blog.

*34 Letter to Charlotte Shaw 26-3-1924, Malcolm Brown – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence,p.261-2

*35 T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars Of Wisdom (1935),p.447

*36 Ernest Cox (assistant master at TE’s school in Oxford 1899-1903), in: T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,p.36. His hatred of rules may have been the reason why he took no interest in organised games, “because they were organised, because they had rules, because they had results. He will never compete –      in anything.” (Amendments of TE to typescript of the Biography by Robert Graves, June 1927, in: T.E. Lawrence To His Biographer Robert Graves – Doubleday, New York 1963,p.61)

*37 Letter to Charlotte Shaw 8-5-1928, in: John Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.32

*38 “He … told us everything he was doing, or intending to do.” (T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,p.28)

*39 TE was suddenly confronted with the bath when he visited Robert Graves. His mother had given it to his friend. (John Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.15)

*40 Letter to Charlotte Shaw 14-4-1927, in: Malcolm Brown – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence,p.­324. “You talk of “sharing my life” in letters; but that I won’t allow. It is only my own busi­ness.” (Letter to Mother 28-12-1925, in: Malcolm Brown – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence,p.­298)

*41 Letter to Charlotte Shaw 14-4-1927, in: Malcolm Brown – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence,p.325. “About 1922 or 1923 Lawrence told his brother Arnold of his parents’ legal inability to marry. Arnold laughed, and TE told him that his parents did not regard it at all as a laughing matter and thought he was “practically a pervert” for taking it lightly.” (Arnold Lawrence to John Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.477n1)

*42 According to a friend of TE, C.F. Bell, TE had worked out the story that the elder children (himself included) where fathered by a man of some position, in whose house his mother had been governess, and that his current “father” (“Mr Lawrence”) was in fact only the father of his younger brothers. (J.M. Wilson – Lawrence Of Arabia,p.29/30)

*43 Notes on a conversation between Jim Ede and Arnold Lawrence 1937, Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge).

*44 “There is only one pain greater than that of losing your mother, and that is for your mother to lose you – I do not mean by death but by your own misdeeds. Has it ever struck you what it means to your mother if you turn out a wrong ‘un or a waster? She who bore you as a baby, and brought you up … and was glad when you showed that you could do things. As she saw you get­ting bigger and stronger and growing clever she had hoped in her heart of hearts that you were going to make a successful career and to make a good name for your­self – somet­hing to be proud of. But if you begin to loaf about and do not show grit and keenness, if you become a slacker, her heart grows cold with disap­point­ment and sorrow – all her loving work and expec­ta­tion have been thrown away, and the pain she suffers through seeing you slide off into the wrong road is worse than if she had lost you in death… Make your career a success, whatever line you take up, and you will rejoice her heart. Try not to disap­point her but to make her happy in any way that you can; you owe it to her…” (Sir Robert Baden Powell – 1914, in: Tim Jeal – Baden-Powell – Hutchinson, London 1989,p.2)

*45 Letter to Eric Kennington 6-8-1934, in: David Garnett – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence,p.813-4. As Janet Laurie observed, “there was always something he was not satisfied with, even as a small child”, something sad, “a secret something of unhappiness”, which inspired the feeling that she ought to take care of him or protect him.”  (John Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.21)

*46 T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars Of Wisdom (1935),p.563

*47 Letter to Richard Knowles 14-7-1927, in: J.M. Wilson – Lawrence Of Arabia,p.41. The reasons for this sudden and unexpected change, will be dealt with in another article on this blog.

*48 How much our views on the up-bringing of children have changed over the years, is shown by the remarks of John B. Watson, the most authoritative expert on child-rearing in the late 1920’s, and considered to be progressive at that time. “The happy child? A child who never cries unless actually struck with a pin, illustratively speaking; who loses himself in work and play; who quickly learns to overcome the small difficulties in his environment without running to mother, father, nurse, or some other adult: who builds up a wealth of habits that tides him over dark and rainy days; who puts on such habits of politeness and neatness and cleanness that adults are willing to be around him, at least part of the day; a child who is willing to be around adults without fighting incessantly for notice; who eats what is set before him and “asks no questions for conscience’s sake”, who puts away two-year-old habits when the third year has to be faced; who passes into adolescence so well-equipped that adolescence is just a stretch of fertile years, and who finally enters manhood so bulwarked with stable work and emotional habits that no adversity can quite overwhelm him.” (From John B. Watson – Psychological Care Of The Infant And Child – 1928, quoted in: Thomas Maeder – Children Of Psychiatrists And Other Psychotherapists – Harper & Row, New York 1990,p.99.)

*49 English people in particular tend to think differently about beatings and their effects than other Europeans and Americans. Those who have themselves experienced beatings in school or at home, sometimes react in the line of “it never did me any harm”. In Britain, a law from 1851 gave parents the right to beat their children, provided that it was a reasonable chastisement. Until 1891, a husband was allowed to beat his wife with a stick, as long it was not thicker than his thumb. Judicial flogging was only abolished in 1948, while flogging for mutiny in prisons was retained until 1967. Corporal punishment was legally allowed in public schools until 1987. Sexual masochism with flagellation is still better known as “The English Vice”. Thus for English people, beatings seem to have been the norm rather than something barbaric or violent, as people from other countries usually consider it.

*50 Michael Korda, the latest biographer, uses the word “unfairly”. (Michael Korda – Hero: The Life And Legend Of Lawrence Of Arabia – Harper Collins, New York 2010,p.152)

*51 “Developmental conflicts of childhood and adolescence, long since resolved, are suddenly reopened. Trauma forces the survivor to relive all his earlier struggles over autonomy, competence, identity and intimacy.” (Judith Herman – Trauma And Recovery – Harper Collins, New York 1997,p.52)

*52 Letter to Robert Graves 21-5-1921, in: T.E. Lawrence To His Biographer Robert Graves,p.15

*53 “During his research, the more Mack learned about Lawrence’s mother, the more he came to realize that his own mother resembled her.” (TE Notes 2 – 2004,p.13)

*54 Jesse May, Aldington’s mother,  who was a writer like him, was “strong willed and turbu­lent”. She was a typical “will-to-power mother”, whom he actively dis­liked and even hated. (Letter from Henry Williamson to Kenn­ing­ton 5-6-1954, in: Fred D. Crawford The ‘Weather-Vane Soul’ of Henry William­son, The Henry Williamson Society Journal 30 – 1994,p.15)

*55 Letter Charlotte Shaw to TE 17-5-1927, in: Janet Dunbar – Mrs GBS: A Biographical Portrait Of Charlotte Shaw (George Harrap, London 1963),p.281

Beatings, Child abuse, Childhood, Circumcision, Freezing, Ideal standard, Illegitimacy, Sarah Lawrence, Sedation, Trauma

SERIES OF ARTICLES ABOUT DIFFERENT SIDES OF TE
This will be the first part of a series of articles about different sides of TE. (*1) In my opinion, TE has become a fictitious personage, someone upon whom every friend, acquaintance or writer may all too easily project himself, his fantasies and interpretations. TE was partly to blame for this, as his brother Arnold remarked to Jim Ede,   “I think you are not alone in finding it difficult to isolate the essential TE from the mind he merged in your own. I mean he tended to call things out of people rather than give them himself when he talked, and the result is that many think of him as rather like themsel­ves, but more so.”(*2) He was an extraordinary adapter of behaviour, tending to take on the characteristics of the person he met, being able to see through the other’s eyes. He did not seem to have a clearcut, one-dimensional identity (this is who I am), but only a fragmented one, almost like a multiple personality (I am many). He did not seem to choose between these different sides, and by saying different things all the time and contradicting himself, he ultimately made himself into an enigma, and a fascinating source of endless speculation.

BOYISHNESS
“When men remain boyish well into middle age, continuing to love pranks and practical jokes, to enjoy making animal noises with children and to seek attention by singing falsetto songs in public, it seems reasonable to interpret this immaturity as symp­tomatic – in part at least – of a reluctance to grow up.” (*3) This is a remark made by the biographer of a contemporary of TE, Lord Baden Powell (1857-1941). It seems to fit TE, who appears reluctant to grow up, become an adult, and take on an adult’s responsibility. It is best described by Ralph Isham (1890-1955) an American businessman who befriended TE after the war. “He resented his body’s permanent immaturity. He did not, I think, realize that his personality also would not quite grow up. His hatred for his body was a boy’s hatred; his fear of women was a boy’s fear; his terror of being noticed was a boy’s terror. He liked pranks and stories as a boy does. His perception and reactions (….) were essentially those of a sensiti­ve child, immediate, intuitive, emotional; that is why he was comforta­ble only with people of simplicity, and that is why it was such a bitter shock to him to discover the world’s wicked­ness and selfishness when the tides drew him forth.” (*4)

This attitude of TE fits in the Victorian tradi­tion of what the writer Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) calls “Pe­rennial Boyish­ness”. It is the theory that childhood experi­ences were so intense for many men that it came to domi­nate their lives and to arrest their devel­opment. Its symbol was Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up (“puer aeternu­s”), and it implies a longing for a perpetual childhood. Children were regarded as sexless, cherubic, inno­cent, and pure, and becom­ing an adult felt like, “A fall from grace which is not compensated for by any doc­trine of future redemption; we enter the world, trail­ing clouds of glory, childhood and boyhood follow and we are damned. Certainly growing up seems a hurdle which most of us are unable to take.” (*5) Manifestations of “Perennial Boyish­ness” were an identificati­on with and a sentimental love of boys (*6), as well as a prolonged adolescen­ce, in which passionate emotional attach­ments to other men were the most significant of men’s lives. (*7) 

BOYISH LOOKS AND BEHAVIOUR
TE is often described as looking like a boy, even when he was over thirty. It ranges from “a strange boy” at 24, to a “very beau­­­ti­ful (eternal) youth” when he was 45. (*8) This impression seems not only to be caused by his smallness of stature, being only 1,65m long, but also by his behaviour. His impish­ness and sense of mischief is often mentioned. Even in Paris during the Peace Conference of 1919, he had his share of “schoolboy fun”, for example, when he showered toilet paper on Prime Minister Lloyd George (1863-1945) and Foreign Secretary James Balfour (1848-1930).(*9) “You are such a magician at leg-pulling, that one is unaware that one’s leg is off till you return that member with a non-committal air, as though you had just picked it up off the floor.” (*10)                     

PREFERRING PEOPLE OF SIMPLICITY
TE was very good with children, and wrote and spoke to them as if they were his own age. He wished kids didn’t have to grow up, since they     “are so beauti­ful, unfinished.” (*11) He felt more comfortable with “people of simplicity”, usually less educated and younger than himself, like the Arabs at the archaeological diggings in Carchemish (1911-1914), his Arab bodyguard during the Arab Revolt (1916-1918), and his fellows in the RAF and the Tank Corps (1922-1935). At Carchemish he said, “Our people are very curious and very simple, and yet there is a fund of directness and child-humour about them that is very fine.” (*12) It was during this period that he met Dahum (1896-1918), an Arab boy with whom he developed an intimate friendship. His bodyguard during the Arab Revolt consisted mainly of outsiders and boys, two of whom, Daud & Farraj, he idealized in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. “Their sins were elvish gaiety, the thoughtles­sness of unba­lanced youth, the being happy when we were not (…) two sunlit beings, on whom the shadow of the world had not yet fallen – the most gallant, the most enviable, I knew.” (*13) His life in the Military Services was in a sense a boy’s life, since “he had gone back to his boyhood class and was at home.” (*14) Often he referred to his fellows as “the children” (or “the family”), while his house, Clouds Hill, became “an infant palace”. (*15) He enjoyed his role as a loving, older and wiser friend, being particularly sensitive to young men who were outsiders or in need, and he went to great lengths in his help and assistance to them. (*16)

JUDGEMENTAL INTERPRETATION
At first glance, this interpretation of TE’s boyishness seems to be very simple and straightforward. The problem with it, however, is the mistaken impression which it gives: that of a carefree child living a child’s life, who shirks adult responsibilities. And this is, in my opinion, certainly not the case with TE. He took responsibility for who he was and tried to manage his different sides as best as he could. He showed responsibility and commitment in his work (historian, archaeologist, map maker, leader of the Arab Revolt, politician, soldier, mechanic, writer) and in all the things he did (being a friend, music-lover, motor-rider, reader). Many consider it strange and childish that TE behaved in the fashion he did, putting “high value on the child-quality in grown-ups” and sometimes even enjoying “arrested develop­ment in his adult friends.” (*17) But in my opinion it may be a good thing for a person’s mental health when he is able to give different sides of himself, including a boyish one, a place in his life, and to create a good balance between them.

PLAYFULNESS
What happens if we look at TE’s behaviour from a different perspective, this time with an open mind, without judgement, and accept his behaviour for what it may have been for him? His boyishness may then be regarded as playfulness. Playfulness is looking at the world, in wonderment and amazement, as if everything were new. It means being imaginative, spontaneous, honest and free, and being able to investigate, explore and discover by trial and error, without fear of failure. In play there is no failure, it can’t be wrong, since there are no rules. It can be what you want it to be, and therefore there are no judgements in it, and there is no strange or weird, childish or irresponsible. Playfulness is the opposite of the things you should be doing, of doing the right thing in the right way, and therefore it is the opposite of the critical mind. The famous artist Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) spoke of the importance of keeping this playful and creative part of ourselves alive, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, and a lifetime to paint like a child. (…) Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”  

IDEAL STANDARD
Playfulness was something TE had missed as a child, because he was never really allowed to be one. (*18) According to his younger brother Arnold, “A child­hood like his would create an unbalance in anyone’s mind. It brought about a very severe knack, even worse than the war.” (*19) This is a poignant statement, particularly the last part, because during the war TE experienced horrific warfare, and was tortured and raped by the Turks. He was forced to be an adult too early in his life by the perfectionism of his mother, who wanted him to be an immaculate child, and expected him to do something special with his life. She enforced this ideal standard with strict discipline and punishment. Mother’s perfectionism was eventually replaced by a strong inner perfectionist (*20) and inner critic (*21), which led TE to be very depreciative of his own achievements, and eventually to depression. TE suffered from too much responsibility during his childhood and during the Arab Revolt and its political aftermath, and therefore creating a special place for a playful part of himself in his life may be considered a rejection of the responsibility to be perfect.

A SAFE PLACE
It was TE’s cottage, Clouds Hill, which became a refuge from the stan­dards of his mother and her English world of respectability and responsibility. It was a place where there were no obligations, no expectations, no rules. You were invited to live accor­ding to your own nature, to be your­self and to do the things you had always wanted to do, without bother­ing about what others would think. Over the door hung the sign Ou Phrontis, which sym­bo­li­zed that “We weren’t to care, as soon as we were inside; we were to feel easy, and not worry about the world and its standards.” The phrase came from a story by the Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 BC): “A young man was going to marry a king’s daughter, but unfortunate­ly during the dinner party he got drunk, stood on his head on the table and began dancing with his legs in the air. The king was shocked at such conduct in a prospective son-in-law, and said to him severely: “You have danced away your bride.” But the young man didn’t care. He replied, “Ou Phrontis, “I don’t care”! And con­tinued to wave his legs in the air.”(*22)

TE’s cottage became the place where his male friends (*23) were welcome to spend time with him, not by appointment, but when the route and spirit would move them. His possessions, like his books and records, were theirs, and he liked it when vi­si­tors left little evi­dences of their presence. The men who came, listened to music, talked, read books, drank water or tea, and ate out of tins, when and wher­ever they felt like it. TE was able to integrate differ­ent parts of his life, mixing social classes and bringing together artists, writers, tank corpsmen, and airmen to enjoy each other’s common humanity. (*24) Clouds Hill became a safe place for TE, where he finally found some rest from his tumultuous life.

“It’s streaming with rain against the western window, and the trees are tossing: – not as if they were playing, but wearily, as though this fourth day of the wintry weather was too much against their longing to turn green: and inside it is calm as ever. We went out in the drift and looked under the rhododendron for dry stakes: and have got enough to make a red fire, in whose heat the damp fir-logs burn away freely: and Palmer is sitting in front of it with his hands folded waiting for the Rosenkavalier waltz to end. After it he wants a little bit of Mozart as played by the Lener. Palmer gets drunk on music: – likes the sort which makes him most drunk. Russell is reading the Dream: and shocking Palmer out of his peace by elbow digs now and then, when he comes on an extra-juicy paragraph. Meanwhile I’m out over by the very wet window (but on its dry side) writing to you. There’ll be tea when I’ve finished the letter and more and more animal contentment after that: till we wind up, when the dark comes, with a movement out of a Bach thing for two violins. We always finish with that, if the time is dark enough.” (*25)

NOTES
*1 Other sides which will be dealt with are: the inner critic, the perfectionist, the pusher, the adapter, the puritan and the beast.

*2 Letter Arnold Lawrence to Jim Ede 9-9-35, Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge).

*3 Tim Jeal – Baden-Powell (Hutchinson, London 1989),p.87

*4 A.W. Lawrence – T.E. Lawrence By His Friends (Jonathan Cape, London 1937),p.296/7. Leonard Woolley (1880-1960), who was with TE in Carchemish, speaks of “his essential immaturity” (T.E.Lawrence By His Friends,p.91) and George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), the famous writer says “… at forty he still had the grinning laugh and artless speech of a schoolboy; and powerful and capable as his mind was, I am not sure that it ever reached full maturity.” (T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,p.247) According to TE’s second cousin Lord Vansit­tart (1881-1957), he was “an ageless schoolboy, who did not grow up but grew ol­der.” (The Mist Procession: The Autobiography Of Lord Vansittart – Hutchinson, London 1958,p.261)

*5 Cyril Connolly – Enemies Of Promise (Deutsch, London 1973),p.254

*6 This sentimental (Uranian) love of boys was usually chaste, since sexuality would desecrate the innocence and purity of the beloved.

*7 Examples of these attachments are: Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) & Arthur Hallam (1811-1833), Robert Louis Ste­venson (1850-1894) & William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), Rudyard Kipling (1863-1936) & Wolcott Balestier (1861-1891). And more fictitious: Sherlock Holmes & Dr Watson and Robinson Crusoe & Friday.

*8 James Elroy Flecker calls him “a strange boy” after their first meeting. (Letter to Frank Savery 10-1-1912, in: James E. Flecker “The Letters Of J.E. Flecker To Frank Savery” – Beaumont Press, London 1926 – quoted by Phil O’Brien, TEL Whittier List 24-3-1999). Colonel Richard Meinertz­hagen speaks of “a pleasure boy” when he first laid eyes on him in 1917. (Colonel R. Meinertzhagen – Middle East Diary 1917-1956 – Cresset Press, London 1959,p.28) Colonel Eduard Bremond calls him “a Catholic choir boy”, when he saw TE in 1918 wearing white Arab robes in Boulogne (John E. Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder: The Life Of T.E. Lawrence – Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London 1977,p.259) Eric Kenning­ton says he was “a small, grinning hatless kid”. (T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,p.262) E.M. Forster, when he first meets TE in 1921, remembers him as “a small fair-haired boy”.(T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,282). And Flight-Lieutenant Sims describes TE in his thirties as “a very small boy, angeli­cally fair, from whom another boy has just pinched an apple” (T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,p.550), and when TE was about 45 as a “very beau­­­ti­ful (eternal) youth”. (T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,p.552). John Buchan is the only one who describes TE as looking “like a pretty girl”, and mentions “his girlish face”. (Buchan, speech 1939 – quoted in: Andrew Lownie – The Friendship Of Lawrence And Buchan, in: Journal Of The T.E.Lawrence Society 1 (1995),p.57 & 64).

*9 Lawrence James – The Golden Warrior: The Life And Legend Of Lawrence Of Arabia (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London 1990),p.311 

*10 Letter from H.M. Tomlinson 5-12-1928, in: A.W. Lawrence (ed.) – Letters To T.E. Lawrence (Jonathan Cape, London 1962),p.189

*11 Letter to Lord Lloyd 22-1-1929, in: Malcolm Brown (ed.) – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence (J.M. Dent & Sons, London 1988),p.399

*12 Letter to his parents and brothers 18-6-1911, in: John E. Mack – A Prince Of Our Disorder,p.91

*13 T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars Of Wisdom (Jonathan Cape, London 1935),p.311. In reali­ty their names were Ali and Othman (J.M. Wilson – Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorised Biography Of T.E. Lawrence – Heinemann, London 1989,p.492/3)

*14 “To friends who wondered aloud how he could endure the company of the barrack-room and its bareness TE might retort, almost fiercely, that he had gone back to his boyhood class and was at home.” (Comments and corrections by TE on Liddell Hart’s typescript for his biography on TE, June/July 1933, in: T.E. Lawrence To His Biographer Liddell Hart – Doubleday, New York 1963,p.79)

*15 “What can I do for you, child?” (Paul Tunbridge – With Lawrence In The Royal Air Force – Buckland Publications, Kemsing 2000,p.39). “One of the children might come, too.” “The family is sitting still and reading, in expectation of a large tea shortly.” (Letter to Charlotte Shaw 6-4-1924, in: Jeremy & Nicole Wilson (eds.) – T.E. Lawrence Correspondence With Bernard And Charlotte Shaw 1922-1926 – Castle Hill Press 2000,p.72-73). “It will be an infant palace …” (Letter to Charlotte Shaw 3-10-1933, in: Jeremy & Nicole Wilson (eds.) – T.E. Lawrence Correspondence With Bernard And Charlotte Shaw 1929-1935 – Castle Hill Press 2009,p.203).

*16 “The Air Force fellows are like Oxford undergraduates in their second term … buds just opening after the restraint of school and home. Their first questioning, their first doubt of an established convention or law or practice, opens a flood-gate in their minds for if one thing is doubtful all things are doubtful: the world to them has been a con­crete, founded, polished thing: and the first crack is porten­tous. So the Farnborough fellows used to come to me there, after “lights out” and sit on the box by my bed, and ask questions about every rule of conduct and experience, and about mind and soul and body: and I, since I was lying on my back, could answer succinctly and with illumination.” (Letter to Charlotte Shaw 31-8-1924, in: Malcolm Brown  – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence, p.273). When Baden Powell served as an officer in the army he always made friends with young men, which was rather an exception because of the snobbery invol­ved. He would talk to them about their homes, their morals, their feelings, and their pros­pects, and sometimes he would give them money, but mostly advice.         (Tim Jeal – Baden-Powell – Hutchinson, London 1989,p.99-100)

*17 Eric Kennington, in: T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,p.276-277

*18 More about TE’s childhood in the next article on this blog.

*19 Notes on a conversation between Jim Ede and Arnold Lawrence 1937, Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge).

*20 “The demon of the absolute” as André Malraux (1901-1976) called it. “One of the sorest things in life is to come to realise that one is just not good enough. Bet­ter perhaps than some, than many, almost – but I do not care for rela­tives, for mat­ching my­self against my kind. There is an ideal stand­ard some­where and only that matters; and I cannot find it. Hence this aimlessness.” (Letter to Eric Kennington 6-8-1934, in: David Garnett (ed.) – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence – Jonathan Cape, London 1938,p.813-4)

*21 “My detached self always eyeing the performance through the wings in criti­cism.” (T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars of Wisdom – 1935,p.562) “I have a censorious devil within me …” (Letter to Robin Buxton 11-5-1923,  in: Harold Orlans – T.E. Lawrence: Biography Of A Broken Hero – McFarland, Jefferson 2002,p.192)

*22 E.M. Forster – Clouds Hill, in: Two Cheers For Democracy (Edward Arnold, London 1951),p.352. The story is from Herodotus’ The Persian Wars (book 6, chapter 129). The dancer is Hippo­cleides. The Prin­cess, who lost a husband, Agarista. And the king Cleisthenes.

*23 “I don’t like women in my place, anyhow; but am too perfect the little gent to refuse them.” (Letter to Jock Chambers 26-1-1935, in: David Garnett  – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence,p.841)

*24 “Two or three other men – some­times more – of widely different types were among the regular visitors to Clouds Hill in those days. TE was an expert at “mixed grills” where men were con­cer­ned. He presided over the com­pany, settling argu­ments, patiently answering all manner of questions, feeding the gramophone, making tea, stoking the fire, and by some magic of his own, managing to keep everyone in good humour.” (Alec Dixon, in: T.E. Lawrence By His Friends,p.375)

*25 Letter to Charlotte Shaw 30-4-1924, in: Jeremy & Nicole Wilson (eds.) – T.E. Lawrence Correspondence With Bernard And Charlotte Shaw 1922-1926,p.73-74. TE had met both “Posh” Palmer (1902-1983) and Arthur Russell (1904-1991) in the Tank Corps. They were “joyous to look at together: but they break all the furniture where they go”, as TE says in the same letter.

Boyishness, Childhood, Clouds Hill, Different sides, Ideal standard, Playfulness, Sarah Lawrence

A FAMILY STORY
A British/Dutch family recently contacted me to make sense of an important chapter of their family history. It raises an interesting question: was the motorcycle accident which led to TE’s death the consequence of a blackout?

Imagine yourself in Lincolnshire (England) in 1929. Fifteen-year-old Joyce is walking home from work. While coming down Cross O’ Cliff Hill, she sees a large motorcycle on its kickstand at the side of the road with the engine still running. After looking around, she spots a man lying in a ditch. He is in quite a bad way, shaking, sweating and delirious, speaking a load of nonsense. She turns the motorcycle off and struggles to take the man to her home, which is a few miles away in the city of Lincoln. Her mother immediately tends to him, while her older brother goes off to fetch his bike. The man, who is well looked after for a few days, bears the name Shaw and serves in the RAF. (*1)

You can follow this story on the map.
Point A: Place where Shaw was lying at the side of the road.
Point B: Joyce’s home, where Shaw was looked after.
Point 2: RAF Cranwell, where Shaw was based in 1925 and 1926.

For me the most interesting part of this story is the fact that TE (who called himself Shaw at that time) became unwell, and had to park his motorcycle at the side of the road to come to his senses. This is especially interesting because the combination of riding a motorcycle and having fits might have played an instrumental role in the accident which caused his death.

MOTORCYCLING
TE had a serious passion for motorcycling, and rode the best model going: the famous Brough Superior. Riding it helped him through difficult times. Because of his war and rape trauma, he suffered from depression, and sometimes he was on the verge of madness. To chase off “the broody feeling” (*2) and the restlessness, “movement fast in the night” helped him to temporarily cure his mind. (*3) “When my mood gets too hot and I find myself wande­ring beyond control I pull out my motor-bike and hurl it top-speed through these unfit roads for hour after hour. My nerves are jaded and gone near dead, so that nothing less than hours of voluntary danger will prick them into life; and the ‘life’ they reach then is a melancholy joy at risking something worth exactly 2/9 a day.” (*4)

Sometimes he drove like a madman, with speeds up to 108 miles an hour (173,5 km). (*5) Consequently he also had accidents. For example in May 1926 he got caught with his wheel in a tramline, which left him bleeding from the head and unconscious for a short while. (*6) Later that year he cracked his knee in another accident, ruining his bike. (*7)

BLACKOUTS
In this story, we find TE lying in a ditch, suffering from what appears to be a traumatic black-out. The first time I heard of TE’s blackouts was in an exchange of letters between his two friends, Celandine Kennington (*8) and Jim Ede (*9), where they speak about witnessing TE having “epileptic fits”. (*10) It did not make sense to me at that time, because I had never heard any mention of it before. But during my research on trauma, I found that there were more soldiers and officers from the First World War who suffered from fits.

These fits were anxiety reactions, caused by dissociated traumatic memories, which would suddenly and unexpectedly take over. They made the victim act as if he were again experi­encing the traumatic situ­ation, leading to violent fright and panic, just as in the orig­inal events or even worse. Psychosomatic symptoms, like shaking and shivering all over and losing consciousness, are the nervous system’s attempt to contain the intense survival energies that remain in body and mind as the result of unresolved trauma. Reliving these traumatic memories would occur in nightmares or even night terrors during sleep, and in flash­backs and dissociative episodes during the day.

TE had them all. Horrible dreams made him afraid of going to sleep, leading to insomnia and to an intensification of his symptoms because of exhaustion. The flashbacks and episodes during the day led people to wonder if TE was practising meditation or yoga, because he could suddenly “go dead”, sitting in the same position for hours, without moving and with the same expression on his face. Others considered him to be moody and introspective, because he could suddenly shut himself off in the middle of a conversation and seem to be miles away.

Blackouts are usually triggered by cues that remind the victim in some way of the traumatic situation, or by new situations which cause feelings of powerlessness and fear. TE’s writing about his experiences, though helpful for integration in the long run, possibly made his situation worse. Particularly because of his ambitions surrounding it, to fulfil his wish to become a cre­ative artist, and write one of the great books of his time, like Tol­stoy’s War and Peace or Melville’s Moby Dick. His consciousness became dominated by remembering, and by again being awash with the emotions and sensations involved, which may have been traumatizing in itself.

After a blackout, the victim does not remember a thing: he has blacked out. If anything, he only knows that time has been inexplic­a­bly lost. Losing control over his own body and mind must have horrified TE, since self-control was essential to him. Therefore it must have come as a great shock to learn that it was not his rea­son, but the “traitors from with­in” (*11), which ruled him. His will proved to be unable to neutralize the traumatic images which caused emotional out­bursts. If his will was not able to con­trol his inner self, who or what would? To make it even worse, reli­ving traumatic experiences and emotions sometimes bring about an extreme consci­ous­ness of repres­sed and negated fee­lings. Thus old fears and possibly old traumas, which had been successfully suppres­sed, also came to the surface again. As TE says, “there is the school-fear over me”. (*12)

It should be clear by this point, that it is very easy to underestimate the importance and influence of these blackouts on TE’s life after the war. Having sudden and continuous re-experiences of his rape and war trauma, in the form of blackouts and nightmares, and bringing with it a return of old fears from his childhood, meant an enor­mous attack on his mental and physical stamina, and brought TE to the verge of mad­ness. Fear and anxiety dominated his life: “Fear again; fear everywhere.” (*13) Fear of peop­le, fear of a repeat of the events, fear of a loss of con­trol. He felt himself to be excessive­ly vulner­a­ble, power­less and hel­pless. To deal with his fears and to protect himself from his own frightening reactions, he chose an ordered life for himself in the armed forces, as an ordinary private, while he also started to study the psychol­ogy of fear. (*14)

DEATH
The family story told here indicates that it is very likely that TE had more incidents caused by black-outs, both with and without his motorcycle. Therefore I would like to suggest a connection with his fatal accident on May 13, 1935. While riding his motorcycle that day, he suddenly came upon two boys on bicycles in a dip of the road. He swerved to avoid them, which caused him to be thrown from his machine. It was a strange accident, because TE knew the road extremely well, having lived nearby since 1923. Therefore he would have experienced traffic regularly on that particular stretch of road. Besides, he was only doing 40 miles an hour, which for an experienced rider like TE was nothing special, and would have given him enough time to react in the event of an unusual occurence. A sudden blackout would explain this otherwise inexplicable accident, which left TE unconscious. After six days in a coma, he died in hospital on May 19, 1935 from severe brain damage. (*15)

NOTES
*1 Shaw, as TE called himself officially in those days, was at that time based at RAF Cattewater, in Plymouth (Devon), after his sudden return from India in February 1929. From August 1925 until November 1926, he had served near Lincoln, at RAF Cranwell, which is merely 13½ miles from the place where this story starts. Therefore he might have been visiting old friends at Cranwell. Another reason for being in Lincoln at that time could have been a visit to the motorcycle factory of George Brough in Nottingham (32 miles from Lincoln), for a check-up to his brand new motorcycle.

*2 Letter from TE to Charlotte Shaw 26-12-1925, in: Jeremy & Nicole Wilson (eds.) – T.E. Lawrence Correspondence With Bernard And Charlotte Shaw 1922-1926 (Castle Hill Press 2000),p.158

*3 T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars Of Wisdom (Jonathan Cape, London 1935),p.518

*4 Letter from TE to Lionel Curtis 14-5-1923, in: Malcolm Brown (ed.) – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence (J.M. Dent & Sons, London 1988),p.237

*5 Letter from TE to John Buchan 5-7-1925, in: David Garnett (ed.) – The Letters Of T.E. Lawrence (Jonathan Cape, London 1938),p.478

*6 Heanor & District Local History Society Newsletter 234 (1999), quoted on T.E. Lawrence Studies List 23-11-1999.

*7 Letter to Pat Knowles 30-11-1926, T.E. Lawrence Studies List 19-6-1998.

*8 Celandine Kennington (1886-1975), usually known as Mrs Kennington, was the wife of Eric Kennington (1880-1960) the artist who worked with TE on Seven Pillars of Wisdom. TE became friends with both Eric and his wife. She was suffering from manic depression, and felt a special connection with both TE, who comforted her on a few occasions, and his mother.

*9 Harold Stanley Ede (1895-1990), better known as Jim Ede, was assistant curator at the Tate Gallery from 1921 to 1936. It became his vision that art should be shared in a relaxed environment and not in a museum, and he put this open house principle into practice by opening up the wonderful art collection in his house Kettle’s Yard (in Cambridge) to the public. He left it to the University, and I would definitely advise you to visit it, if you have the chance. Ede was a very sensitive man, and suffered an emotional disturbance in the latter part of 1929. While he tended to blame the war for his difficulties, TE tried to help him obtain a more balanced perspective. He wrote that TE “by his kindly sanity on his various visits helped me considerably at this period.” After his death in 1935, Ede started working on a biography about TE, but became depressed studying his life, and never finished it.

*10 Correspondence in Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge.

*11 T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars Of Wisdom (1935),p.468

*12 T.E. Lawrence – The Mint (Jonathan Cape, London 1973),p.154

*13 Letter to Charlotte Shaw 28-9-1925, in: Malcolm Brown – The Letters of T.E. Lawrence,p.290. Chapter 4 of his memories of his life in the Tank Corps and the RAF, The Mint, is titled “The Fear”. “The root-trouble is fear: fear of failing, fear of brea­king down.” (The Mint,p.154). “For a moment my bedfellow was perfect fe­ar.” (The Mint, p.24)

*14 Arnold Lawrence in: A.W. Lawrence – T.E. Lawrence By His Friends (Jonathan Cape, London 1937),p.590

*15 The film fragment of David Lean’s Lawrence Of Arabia (1962) showing TE’s accident, was not filmed at the original location in Dorset, but on a minor road outside Chobham in Surrey. It must be noted too, that in reality the boys on the bicycles were not cycling towards TE, but were riding in the same direction, probably on the wrong side of the road.

Blackout, Death, Fear, Motorcycling, Trauma