Robert Graves - Lawrence and the Arabs

From a bust by ERIC KENNINGTON

Robert Graves

Copyright

Lawrence and the Arabs
Copyright by The Trustees of the Robert Graves Copyright Trust
Copyright 1927 by Doubleday Doran Co Inc; renewed 1955 by Robert Graves
Cover art, special contents, and Electronic Edition 2014 by RosettaBooks LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Cover jacket design by Carly Schnur
ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795336874

LAWRENCE
From a bust by ERIC KENNINGTON

THE EMIR ABDULLA
From a drawing by ERIC KENNINGTON

AUDA
From a drawing by ERIC KENNINGTON

AUDA AND HIS KINSMEN
Copyright American Colony Stores, Jerusalem

ALI IBN EL HUSSEIN
From a drawing by ERIC KENNINGTON

FAHAD OF THE BENI SAKHR
From a drawing by ERIC KENNINGTON

ABDULLA EL ZAAGI
From a drawing by ERIC KENNINGTON

MAHMAS
From a drawing by ERIC KENNINGTON

MULE TRANSPORT NEAR ABA EL LISSAN
Copyright French Army Photo. Deft.

AT GUWEIRA
Copyright French Army Photo. Dept.

AN ARMOURED FORD IN THE DESERT
Copyright Imperial War Museum

FEISAL JUST AFTER HIS MEETING WITH ALLENBY
Copyright Imperial War Museum

Early this June I was invited by the publishers to write a book about Lawrence. I replied that I would do so with Lawrences consent. Shaw, as I must call him, for he has now taken that name and definitely discarded Lawrence, cabled his permission from India, and followed it up with a letter giving me a list of sources for my writing and saying that since a book was intended about him anyway he would prefer it done by me. He thought that I could write a book accurate enough in its facts to discourage further unauthorized accounts and that he could trust me not to spare his own feelings wherever I wished to draw any critical conclusion. And he hoped that the book would have exhausted all public interest by the time that he had finished with the Royal Air Force and returned to civil life.

I have his most generous permission, with that of his trustees, to use copyright material at my discretionbut certain limits were givenboth from Revolt in the Desert and from Seven Pillars of Wisdom (of which that is an abridgment), a book that will not be issued for public sale in Shaws lifetime. Unfortunately owing to pressure of time my completed typescript could not be submitted to Shaw before publication and I apologize to him for any passages where my discretion has been at fault. I did, however, write and ask him specific questions and sent him rough drafts of nearly all my material. I must, however, draw a clear line between Shaws approval of my writing the book if it had to be written, and my own responsibility for the facts and opinions given here.

These chapters contain much that is of interest, I hope, even to readers of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom; and readers of Revolt in the Desert may be glad of a narrative that is continuous. Critics must remember that Shaw, when preparing the Seven Pillars for private circulation, had in mind an audience of not more than a couple of hundred people and that he consequently had greater freedom in his vocabulary than I have had; and could also assume a specialized knowledge of Eastern history, geography and politics in his audience that I am not permitted to assume.

I have tried to give a picture of an exasperatingly complex personality in the easiest possible terms. I have tried also to make a difficult story as clear as may be by a cutting-down of the characters that occur in it; mentioning by name only the outstanding ones and explaining the rest in such terms as a member of the body-guard, a British Staff-officer with Feisal, a major-general, a French colonel, the chief of the Beni Sakhr, etc. (Geography has been similarly simplified; the maps have been designed so that few places occur on them that are not mentioned in that part of the story to which they refer, and few or no places are mentioned in the story that are not to be found on the maps.)

This is not the method of history, but history, which is the less readable the more historical it is, will not eventually be hindered by anything I have written. I have attempted a critical study of Lawrencethe popular verdict that he is the most remarkable living Englishman, though I dislike such verdicts, I am inclined to acceptrather than a general review of the Arab freedom movement and the part played by England and France in regard to it. And there has been a space-limit.

For information about Lawrence I am greatly indebted to Mrs. Fontana, Mrs. Thomas Hardy, Mrs. Lawrence (his mother), Mrs. Kennington, Mrs. Bernard Shaw, Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby, Colonel John Buchan, Colonel R. V. Buxton, Colonel Alan Dawnay, Mr. E. M. Forster, Mr. Philip Graves, Sir Robert Graves, Dr. D. G. Hogarth, Mr. Cecil Jane, Mr. Eric Kennington, Mr. Arnold Lawrence (a younger brother), Sir Henry McMahon, Private Palmer of the Royal Tank Corps, Serjeant Pugh of the Royal Air Force, Mr. Vyvyan Richards, Lord Riddell, Mr. Siegfried Sassoon, Lord Stamfordham, the Dean of Winchester, Mr. C. Leonard Woolley, and others.

For permission to use copyright photographs, to The Times, the Imperial War Museum, the French Army Photographic Department, Major Goslett, Colonel R. V. Buxton, Dr. D. G. Hogarth, Serjeant Pugh, Mr. Eric Kennington, and Aircraftman Shaw himself.

R. G.

August, 1927.

I write of him as Lawrence since I first knew him by that name, though, with the rest of his friends, I now usually address him as T. E.: his initials at least seem fixed and certain. In 1923 when he enlisted as a private soldier in the Royal Tank Corps he took the name of T. E. Shaw: and has continued in that name in the Royal Air Force, confirming the alteration by Deed Poll. His enlistment in 1922 was in the name of Ross and these two are not, he admits, his only efforts to label himself suitably. He chose Shaw and Ross more or less at random from an Army List, though their shortness recommended them and probably also their late positions in the alphabet; troops sometimes get lined up in alphabetical order of names and Lawrence avoids the right of the line by instinct. He was tired of the name Lawrence,and found it too longparticularly of the name Lawrence of Arabia which had become a romantic catchword and a great nuisance to him. Hero worship seems not only to annoy Lawrence but, because of a genuine belief in his own fraudulence as its object, to make him feel physically unclean; and few who have heard or read of Lawrence of Arabia now mention the name without a superstitious wonder or fail to lose their heads if they happen to meet the man. A good enough excuse for discarding the name Lawrence was that it never had any proud family traditions for him. Mr. Lowell Thomas, who has written an inaccurate and sentimental account of Lawrence, links him up with the Northern Irish family of that name and with the famous Indian Mutiny hero who tried to do his duty: this is an invention and not a good one. Lawrence began as a name of convenience like Ross or Shaw, and Lawrence was never of the tribe which does things because public duty is public duty. He acts in all things for his own best reasons, which though perhapsI might say certainlyhonourable are never either public or obvious. The Arabs addressed him as Aurans or Lurens, but his nickname among them was