The riddle of the sands
Simon Courtauld
LAWRENCE: THE UNCROWNED KING OF ARABIA by Michael Asher Viking £20, pp. 419 T. E. Lawrence was a (probably passive) homosexual, a masochist, a fanta- sist and a liar. In any attempt to under- stand this extraordinary man it is necessary T. E. Lawrence by Augustus John, 1919 (Yale University Art Gallery) to keep these points clearly in mind. Michael Asher, for whom Lawrence was a childhood hero, explains almost all aspects of his life, and incidents in his career, by reference to these traits, and in doing so probably gets nearer to the truth about him than any of his previous biographers.
Jeremy Wilson, who wrote the 'autho- rised' biography in 1989, 30 years after the Lawrence myth had been debunked by Richard Aldington's 'biographical enquiry' and other critical studies, was really too credulous by half. Writing of the notorious Dera'a incident, when Lawrence was sup- posedly raped and brutally beaten by Turk- ish soldiers, Wilson commented: 'Those who doubt that the event took place are accusing Lawrence of an elaborate and pointless lie.'
Yes, they are, though Asher is able con- vincingly to explain the point of the lie. It was a masochistic fantasy, in expiation of his failure, a few days earlier, to demolish a railway bridge at General Allenby's request.
Lawrence had been terrified of failure all his life and was mortified to have let down Allenby, whom he saw as a father-figure.
So he felt the need to invent a story of extreme physical humiliation because, as he was to tell Charlotte Shaw (GBS's wife) years later, referring to his enlistment in the ranks of the RAF, 11 faut suffrir pour etre content.' Immediately after he had allegedly been whipped, raped and slashed with a bayonet, Lawrence rode 250 miles in three days. In such a condition, says Asher, himself a veteran of the desert who has rid- den 16,000 miles by camel, it would not have been possible. Wilson insisted that the truth of Lawrence's account of Dera'a was corroborated by the fact that as soon as he returned from Dera'a to Aqaba in Novem- ber 1917 he recruited a personal body- guard. In fact, as Asher impressively demonstrates from Lawrence's diaries, he had had a bodyguard for six months before Dera'a and did not increase its strength at all during the last year of the war. (His per- sonal force always numbered about 14, though in Seven Pillars of Wisdom he claimed 90.) During 1918, Lawrence spent almost as much time in a Rolls-Royce (his driver was called S. C. Rolls) as on a camel. Asher also discredits the story, again told by Lawrence in Seven Pillars, that he was responsible for the order that no prisoners be taken at the battle of Tafas. The reason for his wish to portray himself as a blood- thirsty sadist — David Lean made much of his cruelty in the film, Lawrence of Arabia — may have lain deep in his psyche. But the evidence of other officers and of wit- nesses after the battle confirms his horror of bloodshed and his attempts to stop the killing of wounded Turks when his Arab followers went berserk.
Undoubtedly Lawrence had a way with the Arabs: crucially, he was able to win Feisal's confidence, and to raise the fac- tious tribes of the Hejaz at least in nominal support of the Hashemite cause. But he is remembered today among some of the Bedu not as leader of the Arab Revolt but merely as a British spy who was good at blowing up trains and railway bridges (the Turks offered a £20,000 reward for the cap- ture of 'al Urans, destroyer of engines'). True, there was an Arab campaign strategY before Lawrence came along, but his talents as co-ordinator and strategist of the revolt against the occupying Turks are not to be denied. He was highly effective, too, as liaison officer: as someone accustomed to being economical with the truth, he would tell both Allenby and Feisal only What in his judgment they needed to know.
Asher could have made more of Lawrence's relationship with Allenby — they apparently used to enjoy discussing Classical history and birds — and his abili- ties as a writer. Lawrence's wartime dis- patches to the Arab Bulletin reveal him as an excellent reporter of events and descrip- tive observer of landscape and people. They were more spontaneous and often triore readable than the opaque, over- written passages in Seven Pillars. (The first Chapter is distinctly off-putting.) Impressed by the detail of Lawrence's accounts of his operations in the Hejaz and Syria, Asher checked some of them 'on the ground'. He devoted part of a Channel 4 programme last year to establishing that Lawrence could not have crossed the Sinai desert from Aqaba to Suez, as he claimed, in 49 hours. As an experienced camel man, Asher might have been expected to reach this conclusion without having to ride all night across the mine-infested Sinai accom- panied by a television crew.
By the end of this conscientiously researched book, the more impressive for Asher's knowledge of the Bedu tribes, one is left wondering whether he regrets the journey he has made to prove his childhood hero to be somewhat flawed. He quotes a remark of Lawrence as his most fitting epi- taph: 'I am human. There ain't no such supercreatures as you would fain see.' But he was, in some respects, something of a supercreature; and at times he didn't seem very human.
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