Hero_ The Life And Legend Of Lawrence Of Arabia Part 4

Oxford University was and remains a nebulous inst.i.tution, more of a gas than a solid, as T. E. Lawrence would later describe the Arab Revolt, and guerrilla warfare in general. In order to join it young men (and now of course young women) apply to the colleges of their choice, take an examination, and undergo a firm and probing interview. If accepted, they will spend three academic years at their college, during which the university into which they have been matriculated will seldom touch their lives, except in the form of the "proctor" and his bowler-hatted "bulldogs," enforcers of the university regulations while undergraduates are outside their own college in the streets of Oxford. The university's buildings are spread through the town-among them are such architectural landmarks as the Bodleian Library, the Sheldonian Theatre, and the Ashmolean Museum-but the life of the university and much of its teaching take place within the thirty-odd walled-in colleges. When asked where they "went to university" Oxonians are more likely to give the name of their old college than that of Oxford: Magdalen, Christ Church, Jesus, Balliol, etc., each college being, effectively, a world in itself. For both the undergraduates and the fellows (known as "dons"-a hangover from the days when the older colleges were still Catholic ecclesiastical inst.i.tutions), their college is their home, the center of their world, as the regiment is for officers and senior NCOs in the British army. They eat there; they study there (for the most part); the undergraduates live there for the first two of their three years, as do bachelor dons; and the undergraduates' academic career is centered on their once-a-week meeting with their tutor, often a fellow of their college, who usually sets them an essay to write, and listens to it at the next tutorial, giving his opinions afterward and setting a direction for further reading, sometimes over a gla.s.s of sherry. Much of the benefit of an Oxford education is derived from the undergraduate's relations.h.i.+p with the tutor-if the personalities dovetail, if there is a bond of mutual sympathy and interest, muchcan be attained. In the absence of these things, disenchantment can quickly set in.*

Lawrence, as so often in his life, was a special case. Unlike his cla.s.smates, he did not live at his college. They had a.s.signed "rooms," usually a sitting room-study and a bedroom; there were several rooms to a staircase, with "a scout"-a combination of valet, butler, and housemaid-to look after the residents. Rooms ranged from medieval discomfort to palatial grandeur, according to the students' ability to pay, and according to an indecipherable social code in the office of the bursar, who made the a.s.signments. In Lawrence's day, it was quite common for undergraduates to be served breakfast, lunch, or tea in their rooms, and for those who could afford it, full dinner parties, with a special menu and wines chosen from the college's cellar. The entrance to each set of rooms (usually two to a landing) was through a pair of doors, and when the outer one was closed (this was called "sporting one's oak") it was a sign that one did not wish to be disturbed. Thus the undergraduates had a degree of privacy that few of them could have enjoyed at boarding school or, for the most part, at home.

Lawrence's princ.i.p.al tutor, Reginald Lane Poole, was actually at his older brother's college, St. John's, rather than at Jesus. Poole was not perhaps the ideal tutor for such a rara avis as Lawrence-he was keeper of the archives and lecturer of diplomacy at Oxford, the author of 151 scholarly works, a forbiddingly conventional historian who preferred solidly based research to brilliant insight, and who was described by one of Lawrence's friends at Oxford as looking "as if he descended from a long line of maiden aunts." In fact, Lawrence seems to have found two much more interesting and (perhaps interested) unofficial tutors: his crammer, L. C. Jane, whom he continued to visit, often at odd hours of the night; and David Hogarth, the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, who, untilhis death in 1927, remained one of the most powerful influences in Lawrence's life.

Except for one term in 1908, Lawrence continued to live at home throughout his years at Jesus, and since he seldom ate dinner "at Hall"-indeed, he seldom partic.i.p.ated in any conventional meal, except that he had a fondness for tea (among his few self-indulgences was a sweet tooth)-his contact with his fellow undergraduates was minimal. He did not take part in team sports or frequent the Junior Common Room or join any of the undergraduate clubs and societies that are deemed to be an essential part of the Oxford experience. In short, he managed to attend Oxford on his own terms. The only exception was his service in the Oxford University Officers' Training Corps. Lawrence was one of the first to volunteer, no doubt in part because as a schoolboy he had been in a similar organization, the St. Aldate's Church Lads' Brigade, and perhaps because he thought he might as well put to some use his brief service in the army. In addition, he was made a signaler, a position that in those days involved cycling, his pa.s.sion. Besides, his enthusiasm for military matters was genuine, and not necessarily confined to reading books on strategy and tactics.

Lawrence was never friendless, despite his Ches.h.i.+re cat-like invisibility at Jesus. "Scroggs" Beeson was up, though not at the same college, and Lawrence made friends with several undergraduates at Jesus, including an American Rhodes Scholar from Kansas, W. O. Ault; and Vyvyan W. Richards, a "Welsh-American," with whom Lawrence had a more intimate friends.h.i.+p than with any other contemporary. Ault's tutor was also Reginald Lane Poole, and as Ault was also studying medieval history he saw quite a lot of Lawrence, who introduced him to the art of taking bra.s.s rubbings. Lawrence seems to have been the only person at Jesus who did not treat Ault as an outsider because he was American.

Vyvyan Richards was rather more of a soul mate than Scroggs or Ault, a sensitive young man who shared Lawrence's medieval interests and, like Lawrence, was a pa.s.sionate devotee of William Morris, the Victorian aesthete and founder of a school of arts and crafts. Much of Morris's work was in the Gothic revival mode-indeed, the curious roof design of Lawrence's cottage in the garden at 2 Polstead Road looks very much as if it had been inspired by the cupolas of the famous "Red House" Morris had designed and built for himself and his wife Jane.* Lawrence and Richards shared Morris's pa.s.sionate commitment to designing and printing beautiful books, when possible by hand, with hand-set type, eschewing altogether the modern linotype and the machine press, in favor of medieval printing methods and hand-painted illumination. Lawrence and Richards shared Morris's pa.s.sionate commitment to designing and printing beautiful books, when possible by hand, with hand-set type, eschewing altogether the modern linotype and the machine press, in favor of medieval printing methods and hand-painted illumination.

They even discussed setting up a hand press of their own somewhere in the English countryside, and devoting themselves to printing limited or single-copy editions of the great books-a plan that elicited a rare degree of disapproval from Lawrence's usually silent father. It is not altogether clear whether Thomas Lawrence disapproved of the fantasy that a hand press could be made into a paying proposition, or whether he realized immediately, unlike his son, that Richards was a h.o.m.os.e.xual and deeply attracted to Ned. On the first point Thomas was a sound judge of business schemes-he had, after all, once managed a very large estate, and was still involved in it-and on the second he was worldly enough to recognize the nature of Richards's affection for Ned immediately, even if Ned did not. It had been only thirteen years since Oscar Wilde's conviction for "gross indecencies," in what had been one of the most publicized scandals of the age, and h.o.m.os.e.xuality not only was on every parent's mind but was punishable by social disgrace and even imprisonment.

Vyvyan Richards may have summed up the nature of their friends.h.i.+p best when he said, much later in life, "Quite frankly, for me it was love at first sight," and went on to regret that Lawrence "had neither flesh nor carnality of any kind. He received my affection, my sacrifice, in fact, eventually my total subservience, as though it was his due. He never gave even the slightest sign that he understood my motives, or fathomed my desire.... I realize now that he was s.e.xless-at least that he was unaware of s.e.x." This may or may not be true-perhaps Lawrence was more aware of the nature of Richards's interest than he let on, but at the same timewas unwilling to respond to it, and since he nevertheless liked Richards, solved the problem by simply ignoring it. It may have consoled Richards to suppose that Lawrence was "s.e.xless," but it seems more likely that Lawrence was, from an early age, determined to suppress any s.e.xual feelings, whether toward Richards or anyone else. It is possible, of course, that he might have been h.o.m.os.e.xual had he allowed his s.e.xual instincts to emerge, but since he was a master of self-control, this never happened until much later in his life, and even then in a very strange form.

At the time he met Richards, Lawrence was in the process, common to most undergraduates, of testing his limits. Richards reported that his friend went swimming at night in the winter, plunging through a gap in the ice into a river (probably the Cherwell). Lawrence also went without food or sleep for protracted periods of time, and spent many hours at the Oxford University Officers' Training Course pistol range, practicing with both the strong and the weak hand to the point of exhaustion. It is possible that Lawrence was already preparing himself for some great feat-military glory and heroism were never far from his mind-but he may also have been submitting himself to a punis.h.i.+ng and demanding regime intended to subdue and control just those urges which Vyvyan Richards hoped to arouse in him. In those days it was believed that e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of any kind weakened the body, and athletes were sternly warned against s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps and masturbation. Lawrence, as one who always carried things too far, invented for himself the most punis.h.i.+ng physical routine he could stand.

Whether or not he recognized the nature of Richards's affection, Lawrence was held back from any s.e.xual activity by a naturally abstemious nature, a lack of any sensible s.e.xual education, and his extreme religious upbringing at home. In addition, Lawrence never experienced the s.e.xual curiosity that develops between boys in boarding school, and he had had what may have been a frightening experience as a boy in a barracks full of grown men. The result, perhaps intensified by self-consciousness over his short stature, was to produce a personality that was not so much "s.e.xless" as armored against s.e.xual temptation, and thelonger he avoided any kind of s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p, the more difficult it became for him to have one. His youngest brother, Arnold, was of the opinion that Lawrence died a virgin, and he was surely right.

It is very significant that at the same time Lawrence was gently deflecting Vyvyan Richards's advances, while retaining Richards as a friend-and actually making plans for the two of them to share a William Morris-inspired country cottage where they would hand-print aesthetically satisfying volumes, a cottage complete with separate "shut beds" marked "Meum" and "Tuam"-Lawrence made the mistake of proposing marriage to a young woman.

Lawrence's first sight of Janet Laurie has a certain innocent s.e.xual ambivalence to it. In the spring of 1894, when the Lawrences moved to New Forest, the Lauries were neighbors. Apparently, Janet's parents had wanted a son, and therefore had the little girl's hair cut short, and dressed her in a boy's clothes-one of those strange decisions that, at the time, often made otherwise quite ordinary English families seem bizarre to foreigners. One Sunday morning, when the Lawrences were attending church, Ned saw Janet sitting in a pew in front of him, and said to his nanny, "What a naughty little boy to keep his hat on in church." Janet turned around, stuck her tongue out at him, and said, "I'm not a boy, I'm a girl." "And a very rude little girl," Nanny said predictably, but a friends.h.i.+p had been struck, and Janet soon became a frequent visitor at Langley Lodge. Although Sarah was generally dismissive of girls-"We could never be bothered with girls in our house," she would tell the poet Robert Graves, when he came to write a biography of T. E. Lawrence after the war-she seems to have made an exception for Janet, whom Ned particularly liked, since Janet was something of a tomboy.

Over the years, Janet became a friend of all the Lawrence boys; for a time, she was at a boarding school in Oxford, and although she went home after the death of her father, she continued to pay frequent visits to 2 Polstead Road, and "sometimes stayed there." She seems to have played the role of a sister to all the boys, and to have been accepted by their parents almost as one of the family.

A photograph of Janet taken when she might have been about seventeen shows an attractive young woman, with a striking profile, very lively eyes, and a full mouth, dressed in a white blouse rather like a man's s.h.i.+rt, with a tie, possibly the summer uniform of her school. She manages to look severe and sensual at the same time. Everybody who met her agreed that she was "a lovely girl," as well as being good-natured and fun. Sarah went so far as to hope that her eldest son, Bob, might marry Janet one day, and no doubt did what she could to encourage that, but Bob was too serious and easily shocked to attract Janet. Ned would later say of his older brother, who would become a missionary doctor, "He is illuminated from inside, not from out. His face very often s.h.i.+nes like a lamp." Janet set her cap at the taller and better-looking Will instead, incurring Sarah's displeasure, since Sarah disliked having her plans thwarted.

Ned was "more than two years younger" than Janet, and considerably shorter. She saw him as a beloved and mischievous younger brother, always up to such tricks as sneaking her into his room at Jesus for tea, or egging her on to toss a sugar cube through the open window of a don. She was therefore surprised when Ned abruptly proposed to her one evening after dinner, though she might have guessed that something was up when Ned waited until everybody else had left the dining room, then carefully bolted the door. Given Ned's taste for practical jokes, she very likely a.s.sumed that she was about to become the victim of one, and was therefore understandably astonished when he asked her to marry him, without even a preliminary kiss, indeed without even looking her in the eye. Although she would later say she realized at once that he was serious, her immediate reaction, perhaps out of shock, was to laugh. A moment of dreadful embarra.s.sment followed-there they were, locked in the dining room, with the rest of the Lawrence family no doubt wondering what had become of them. Ned was deeply hurt, but he confined himself to saying, "Oh, I see," and seems afterward never to have held it against her.

It is a scene straight out of an English farce, but it must have been an awful moment for Lawrence. Some of those who have written about himhave raised the possibility that Janet's refusal to marry him was what drove him to spend years in the Middle East in the company of men, but that may be attaching too much importance to the incident. It seems more likely that Lawrence was attempting to sort out his problems with Vyvyan Richards's increasing emotional dependency by abruptly proposing to Janet-he was always one for the big, dramatic, life-changing gesture. Whatever the case, Lawrence was never as ill at ease with women as has been claimed. Many of them, like Janet, were close friends, but in the end, Lawrence no more wanted a s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p with a woman than he did with Richards.

It may be true that Lawrence "wors.h.i.+pped Janet from afar," in later years, or that he referred to her to a friend as "the girl I adore," but one should not read too much into this. His feelings for Clare Sydney Smith, the wife of his commanding officer toward the end of his life, were amiable enough, but there is no hint of any s.e.xual interest on Lawrence's part;* he was comfortable enough with women who had the capacity and patience to break through his rather brittle defenses, and yet respected his privacy and the orderly way he isolated himself when he felt a need for isolation. Except for the impulsive marriage proposal, he preferred to keep his distance, and cannot ever have imagined that he could live within the confines of marriage. One suspects that apart from the momentary damage to his amour propre, Lawrence was probably more relieved than upset when Janet turned him down. he was comfortable enough with women who had the capacity and patience to break through his rather brittle defenses, and yet respected his privacy and the orderly way he isolated himself when he felt a need for isolation. Except for the impulsive marriage proposal, he preferred to keep his distance, and cannot ever have imagined that he could live within the confines of marriage. One suspects that apart from the momentary damage to his amour propre, Lawrence was probably more relieved than upset when Janet turned him down.

Despite his peculiarities Lawrence, like other undergraduates, sought fun in breaking rules and regulations, and in the kind of pranks that seem daring and hilarious at the time, but may not necessarily seem so many years later when they are retold. Lawrence, like many undergraduates over the centuries, became an expert at climbing the walls and towers of the Oxford colleges, by day to take photographs and by night for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. One of his biographers, Robert Graves, claimed that Lawrence invented "the now cla.s.sic climb from Balliol College to Keble College," and it may be so.* His mother vigorously denied that Ned ever left his cottage in the garden to crawl around the roofs of Oxford at night; she said that he was always home by midnight. But since he often visited his friend the crammer, L. C. Jane, between midnight and four in the morning, this may be just another example of parental self-delusion. One friend told of Lawrence's turning up in his rooms one evening, exhausted after having studied for forty-five hours nonstop without food or sleep, and firing a revolver loaded with blank cartridges out the window. This friend also told of Lawrence's nearly drowning when he insisted on canoeing on the Cherwell during a winter flood. A famous feat of Lawrence's was to lead a canoe trip at night down the Trill Mill stream, the sewer that runs under the streets of Oxford, firing blank cartridges up through the gratings in the streets above. Whether this was a first or not is hard to say-it has certainly been done again since. His mother vigorously denied that Ned ever left his cottage in the garden to crawl around the roofs of Oxford at night; she said that he was always home by midnight. But since he often visited his friend the crammer, L. C. Jane, between midnight and four in the morning, this may be just another example of parental self-delusion. One friend told of Lawrence's turning up in his rooms one evening, exhausted after having studied for forty-five hours nonstop without food or sleep, and firing a revolver loaded with blank cartridges out the window. This friend also told of Lawrence's nearly drowning when he insisted on canoeing on the Cherwell during a winter flood. A famous feat of Lawrence's was to lead a canoe trip at night down the Trill Mill stream, the sewer that runs under the streets of Oxford, firing blank cartridges up through the gratings in the streets above. Whether this was a first or not is hard to say-it has certainly been done again since.

Despite his eccentricities regarding nourishment and sleep, Lawrence's years at Jesus do not seem all that different from the usual undergraduate experience. In those days, there was a deep social divide between "exhibitioners"-bright young men who had won a partial scholars.h.i.+p and were expected to work hard and earn a "First"-and young men from well-to-do families and public schools, for whom Oxford was more likely to be a social experience. Lawrence and his friends were clearly in the former group: basically serious, hardworking, and determined to do well, but not averse to the occasional prank-indeed Lawrence's taste for practical jokes and for pulling the legs of people naive enough to believe him was apparently already fully developed, and would not invariably seem among his most endearing qualities.

In one way, however, Lawrence was very different from most undergraduates. He already had a very firm sense of what he wanted to do, andremarkable skill in meeting, and winning over, those who might one day be of use to him. It was also clear to Lawrence what he did not want to do, which was to become a don himself. This was just as well, since even the admiring Jane did not consider him "a scholar by temperament." He still had Byronic fantasies of becoming a hero and of liberating a people-it was not yet clear which people he had in mind-and something more than a layman's interest in military history, strategy, and tactics; but his interest in archaeology and medieval buildings was the strongest focus of his work at Oxford. Revealingly, Lawrence chose to write a thesis on medieval fortifications, about which he already knew a good deal, indeed perhaps more than his examiners. This subject would have the further advantage of allowing him to make use of his growing skill as a photographer and a cartographer, as well as providing a good reason for spending the vacations away from home. Warfare was never far from his mind, despite his other interests.

In preparation for his thesis, Lawrence did another of his marathon bicycle tours of France, sending home long letters, which often read as if he intended to incorporate them into the thesis later on. In the summer of 1907 he had taken a bicycle tour through northern France, traveling part of the route in the company of his father, who was on the way to join the rest of the Lawrence family on Jersey, in the Channel Isles, where they were spending their summer holiday. In the summer of 1908 he went alone on a much more ambitious 2,400-mile tour of France to examine the castles and fortresses he had not already seen. Once again, his letters (mostly to his mother) are formidably detailed, evincing Lawrence's lifelong struggle to create a literary style of his own. His interest in the Middle East is clearly strong and growing. In his first letter he asks his mother to send him all the information she can get from the newspapers about political events in Turkey, where the sultan was under pressure from the "Young Turks" to grant a const.i.tution. Lawrence refers to "the rubbish here that they call newspapers," exhibiting exactly the same tone of impatience with the French that he would show toward them during the war, and afterward at the peace conference.

Ten days later, when he writes from Aigues-Mortes, in Provence, the fact that his attention is moving toward the Middle East is repeated, in a kind of poetic vision that prefigures his travels there: "I rode to Les Baux, a queer little ruined & dying town upon a lonely 'olive sandalled' mountain. Here I had a most delightful surprise. I was looking from the edge of a precipice down the valley far over the plain, watching the green changing into brown, & the brown into a grey line far away on the horizon, when suddenly the sun leaped from behind a cloud, & a sort of silver s.h.i.+ver pa.s.sed over the grey: then I understood, & instinctively burst out with a cry of 'T??a.s.sa, T??a.s.sa' [Thala.s.sa, Thala.s.sa], that echoed down the valley & startled an eagle from the opposite hill." The shout of the Greeks in Xenophon's Anabasis when they at last glimpsed the Black Sea s.h.i.+ning in front of them after their 1,000-mile retreat from what is now Iraq came naturally to a young man steeped in the cla.s.sics, as Lawrence was; but, more important, it was his first distant glimpse of the Mediterranean.

Today, we can have no idea of what it then meant to a well-educated young Englishman-the Mediterranean is now just a few hours away by plane, and its sh.o.r.es are an endless array of tourist destinations-but in the first decade of the twentieth century, it was still the focal point of European imagination, culture, and respect for the past, a world at once cla.s.sical and deeply romantic.

A day later, Lawrence reached the sea and bathed in it, writing afterward to his mother, "I felt at last that I had reached the way to the South, and all the glorious East: Greece, Carthage, Egypt, Tyre, Syria ... they were all there, and all within reach.... I would accept a pa.s.sage for Greece tomorrow."

Perhaps fortunately, no such pa.s.sage was offered, and Lawrence bicycled off to Nimes, and from there by stages to Narbonne and Carca.s.sonne. He was bronzed, thin, and fit, and he amazed the French by his feats of endurance and his diet-he ate 126 green plums in one day, or so he claimed. He was plagued only by dense clouds of mosquitoes (which, as any tourist to the region can attest, are still a problem today) and by Americans who overtipped tourist guides at the major sites. Perhaps in deference to his mother, Lawrence spent more time writing home about churches than castles. On this trip, as on all future ones, Lawrence carried a camera-whether his own or his father's is not clear-and although he depreciates his own pictures, and says he expects to have to burn them, they are, like his drawings, far beyond the usual work of amateur photographers.

He arrived back at Oxford in the first week of September, having a.s.sembled a good part of what he needed in terms of his thesis, though he had not as yet decided what the exact theme would be-it would not be enough to have examined a large number of English and French fortresses and describe them in detail; he would need to develop a theory about them and demonstrate it convincingly. This was provided for him by C. F. Bell of the Ashmolean, when Lawrence was showing him the drawings and photographs from the summer trip. Bell suggested that Lawrence might study the question whether the earliest crusaders had brought back to Europe from the Middle East the pointed arch and vault that are the trademarks of medieval Gothic architecture, or whether instead they had brought these ideas with them to the Middle East, thus introducing those architectural elements into the Arab world. To Lawrence, one of the major attractions of his friend Bell's idea lay in the fact that the distinguished Oxford scholar Charles Oman, author of The Art of War in the Middle Ages, took the latter point of view, which was therefore the orthodox answer. Nothing would be more likely to pique the examiners' interest than an undergraduate's attacking accepted or conventional wisdom, particularly when it was held by such a formidable figure as Oman, who was virtually a one-man historical industry. In fact, Lawrence could hardly have chosen a more tempting person to contradict than Professor Oman, whose influence was enormous in just those areas where Lawrence intended to make his career: history and archaeology. The "imp" in Lawrence must have been instantly aroused. And as if that were not temptation enough, it was immediately apparent to Lawrence that in order to write his thesis, he would need to journey to the Middle East and survey the crusaders' castles for himself. Since this was exactly where he dreamed of going, the attraction was irresistible.

Bell's boss D. G. Hogarth was an experienced traveler who had worked on archaeological digs in Syria, Egypt, Cyprus, and Crete, and Lawrence sensibly consulted him. Hogarth was discouraging-the summer was the wrong time of year to go; Lawrence would need money to hire a guide and servants to look after his tent and animals. Lawrence replied firmly that he was going, and intended to walk, not to ride, and do without a tent or servants altogether. "Europeans don't walk in Syria," Hogarth said; "it isn't safe or pleasant." Lawrence replied, "Well, I do," and thus a lifelong friends.h.i.+p began.

Feeling that he had failed to convey the dangers facing travelers to the Middle East, Hogarth suggested that Lawrence write for advice to C. M. Doughty, the famous explorer of Arabia and author of the book Arabia Deserta, which would play an influential role in Lawrence's life. Hogarth may not at this point have realized the degree to which danger and physical hards.h.i.+p const.i.tuted a challenge for Lawrence, or that testing his powers of endurance was as irresistible as taking a potshot at Professor Oman's theories. Doughty's reply was even more discouraging than Hogarth's well-intentioned advice. In Doughty's opinion, the heat in July and August would be unbearable; he described Syria as "a land of squalor," considered travel on foot "out of the question," warned of "ill-will" toward Europeans on the part of the local population, and suggested that at a minimum a mule or a horse and its owner were necessary.

Coming from a man who had taken the pilgrim route to Mecca under appalling conditions, and gone on to reach some of the most remote cities in central Arabia, it was advice that any sensible person would have taken; but Lawrence cheerfully replied that his "little pleasure trip" promised to be more interesting than he had bargained for, and proceeded to read Doughty's book, which was nearly 600,000 words long and one of those great cla.s.sics more talked about than read. Lawrence was strongly influenced by Doughty's idiosyncratic, convoluted, somewhat antiquarian style, and by Doughty's courage in following the Bedouin through the desert from Damascus to Jidda without any of the privileges and comforts of a European traveler. Doughty, like Hogarth, would become a friend and admirer of Lawrence, always eager to hear of his young acolyte's adventures.

Lawrence prepared himself methodically for the journey-first, he found an instructor in Arabic, a half-Irish, half-Arab Protestant clergyman. He also found, in the person of E. H. New, somebody who could improve his architectural drawings. In both cases he benefited from the fact that in Oxford there is always somebody, somewhere who is an expert on any subject, however abstruse-it is just a question of digging him or her out. Lawrence also dug out C. H. C. Pirie-Gordon, who had actually visited some of the castles Lawrence was interested in, and who lent Lawrence his own maps, on which he had made many useful notations.

Lawrence planned to wear "a lightweight suit with many pockets," into which he put two thin s.h.i.+rts, a spare pair of socks, the all-important camera, and film packs. He also carried what his biographers describe as "a revolver," but which may in fact have been a Mauser C96 7.63-millimeter automatic pistol,* with adjustable sights, which he mentions in one of his letters. His father gave him either 100 or 200 for the journey-it is hard to know which, but either way it represented a considerable sum of money at the time, $10,000 at least in contemporary terms. From this, Lawrence paid his pa.s.sage, and bought what was then an expensive pistol and a camera that cost 40. with adjustable sights, which he mentions in one of his letters. His father gave him either 100 or 200 for the journey-it is hard to know which, but either way it represented a considerable sum of money at the time, $10,000 at least in contemporary terms. From this, Lawrence paid his pa.s.sage, and bought what was then an expensive pistol and a camera that cost 40.

His father's generosity was matched by that of the Earl Curzon, who was a former viceroy of India and then chancellor of the University of Oxford (and with whom Lawrence would clash bitterly after the war, when Curzon was foreign secretary). At the urging of the head of Lawrence'scollege, Curzon persuaded the Ottoman government to issue the necessary irades-essentially letters of safe conduct to be shown to the local authorities-without which travel in the more remote parts of the Ottoman Empire was very difficult. who was a former viceroy of India and then chancellor of the University of Oxford (and with whom Lawrence would clash bitterly after the war, when Curzon was foreign secretary). At the urging of the head of Lawrence'scollege, Curzon persuaded the Ottoman government to issue the necessary irades-essentially letters of safe conduct to be shown to the local authorities-without which travel in the more remote parts of the Ottoman Empire was very difficult.

In our own age, when a journey to even the most faraway places is measured in hours and when young people backpack all over the world and keep in touch by cell phone, it is hard to imagine just how isolated and primitive the Ottoman Empire once was. The Turkish railway system, most of it financed and built by the Germans, was still makes.h.i.+ft and primitive, and whole sections had yet to be built. To travel from Haidar Pasha, on the Asian sh.o.r.e opposite Constantinople, the starting point of the Baghdad Railway, to Baghdad, nearly 900 miles away, it was necessary to leave the train and take to donkey, horse, or mule twice, since two important tunnels remained uncompleted; and the lines to the south were of different gauges, so that pa.s.sengers and goods had to be unloaded and reloaded at several points. In addition, there were still only single-line tracks, which enormously complicated the task of moving rail traffic in two directions. This alone made travel in the Ottoman Empire a daunting proposition.

Hospitals were few, far between, and primitive; diseases such as cholera and malaria were rife; sanitation was lacking outside hotels de grand luxe in the major cities; roads were mostly dirt tracks; and south and east of Damascus the Arabs made a practice of robbing strangers. Except for Constantinople, a big and cosmopolitan city, life in most of the Ottoman Empire was still ruled by family, clan, or tribe; and much of the empire was inhabited by rival or warring nationalities and ethnic groups. The "Young Turks" who had taken power in 1908 were determined to modernize the country, but progress was slow, and deeply resisted. Over the decades, the Ottoman Empire had been driven out of Europe, and subjected to any number of humiliating concessions. Under one such concession, foreigners were tried according to the laws of their own country, rather than those of Turkey; as a result, both the Turks who ruled the empireand the Arabs who resented the presence of all foreigners were deeply hostile to the western powers.

Still, all this must be set against the spontaneous generosity of all the ethnic groups in the empire, especially the Arabs, to whom hospitality to a stranger was (and remains) both a religious obligation and a matter of honor. They managed, however, to combine this with a voracious appet.i.te for theft-so long as you were not a guest under their roof, or in their tent, you were fair game. Thus it was that Lawrence received food and a night's lodging, however poor his host, but was also shot at, robbed, and badly beaten. Missionaries of numerous denominations and nationalities, including Americans, Scots, and Jews, also offered him hospitality. In all his lengthy letters home Lawrence benefited from the fact that the British and most of the major European powers ran their own post offices and postal services in the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish post office being notoriously unreliable. His letters give no hint of homesickness, fear, complaint, or self-doubt. He walked more than 1,000 miles, mostly on rough, rocky paths, for up to thirteen hours a day in temperatures ranging from ninety to 107 degrees, and visited the sites of thirty-six crusader castles-an extraordinary achievement.

He left England on June 18, 1909, on board the P&O liner SS Mongolia. It made only two short stops, at Gibraltar and Ma.r.s.eille, then went on to Port Said, where he was stuck for five nights in one of the most raucous and sordid ports on earth waiting for a berth on a s.h.i.+p to Beirut. He spent most of his time on board studying Arabic, and although he dismissed the voyage as "a monstrous waste of time," he seems to have enjoyed the variegated company at his table on the Mongolia: "a French girl & a German male, a Swede, two Spaniards, an Indian of some sort, an Italian, an Arab, and a Greek. Swede, & Hindu talk English." He reached Port Said on June 30, and reported home by letter that he enjoyed good bathing on the beach; had seen the Suez Ca.n.a.l; and was eating melons, peaches, apricots, and grapes-and that nevertheless Port Said was "a horrible place" (few travelers will disagree). He did not arrive in Beirut until July 6-eighteen days for a journey that would now take six hours.

From the beginning, he set himself a demanding pace, averaging about twenty miles on foot a day. Although he is usually portrayed as an instinctive loner, he had actually made plans in Beirut to go with a party of five American tutors at the American College there, but one of them fell ill, so they dropped out and he went on alone. He had no trouble finding places to stay, either in native homes or at missions, though he remarks on the number of flea bites he picked up-inevitably, since most Palestinian houses were built on two levels, the higher end for the family, and the lower one for the animals, both under one roof. He praised the food even in the most modest homes: leben, a kind of thin yogurt, eaten by dipping a piece of rolled-up bread into the bowl; two kinds of bread, one small and dusted with sesame seeds and c.u.min, which he liked, and the other a very thin, flat, round bread, sometimes three feet in diameter and very dry and brittle, which he didn't. He always offered to pay; sometimes money was accepted, but mostly it was not. His letters home could serve as models for anybody writing about travel and adventure off the beaten path, and there is in them, though he seldom gets credit for it, a certain sweetness toward people, a desire to believe the best of them until they proved otherwise. He always radiated a powerful, even incandescent enthusiasm and curiosity that seemed to light up everything he saw, however weary, footsore, or sick he was.

And sick he was, quite often-he had already contracted malaria on his bike trip through the south of France, and now he contracted a different and more serious strain; his feet gave him endless trouble; his face and hands were burned and chapped by the heat and the wind; he was covered with insect bites from head to foot; and he clearly didn't care.

Those who have not read Lawrence's letters home, to his parents and to his brothers, can have no idea of just how likable he was, and how far removed from the neurotic figure, obsessed by his own illegitimacy, whom some of his biographers and critics have described. What is more, his letters reveal an enviable family picture-there is not a hint of jealousy between the brothers, and his parents are interested in every single thing that Ned does. However fierce the psychological tug-of-war wasbetween Sarah and her second son-a contest that Ned could never win, but that he learned to avoid by putting as much distance as he could between himself and his mother-their concern for each other and his efforts to please her are clear. Simply by being in the Holy Land, of course, he was pleasing her as he could never have done by traveling in France, no matter how many miles he rode a day, or how few s.h.i.+llings a day he spent on himself.

It is, one a.s.sumes, largely for her benefit that his letters are not just about local customs and crusaders' fortresses, but are shot through with biblical references: "From Dan we pa.s.sed to the site of Abel-Beth-Maachah, where Sheba was finally run to earth by Joab." Lawrence never neglects to point out each of the biblical sites he visits, though these sites are not his primary interest, of course; and he displays throughout his letters an amazing amount of biblical knowledge-perhaps not so extraordinary for somebody brought up in a family with daily Bible readings. He notes that he has stood on the place where the Arabs believe Jonah was cast ash.o.r.e, and describes a beautiful spring dedicated by the Greeks to Pan in the village of Banias (on the Golan Heights), which "Mother will remember from Matthew xvi or Mark viii and other places."

Given Lawrence's enthusiasm for the Arab cause, it is interesting that he remarks about Palestine: "The sooner the Jews farm it all the better: their colonies are bright spots in a desert." After describing the primitive farming methods of the Arabs, he notes by contrast that he has just heard the news of Louis Bleriot's first crossing of the Channel by airplane. Lawrence has great sympathy for the Arabs, but a brisk impatience with the Turks, whom he sees, correctly, as r.e.t.a.r.ding political development and education, and imposing on all subject races of the empire a bureaucracy that is slow moving, corrupt, and punitive. Although he has yet to meet the Bedouin, or even to see the desert-for he is trudging up and down the stony hills of what is now Israel, Syria, and Lebanon, climbing, as he remarks wearily (and with pardonable exaggeration), the height of Mont Blanc every day-he notes with approval the farmers "ploughing intheir fields" with a revolver on their belt or a rifle over their shoulder, and the occasional appearance of a desert Arab in a kufiyya. As if it were a premonition of many a page in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, he writes of the heat in northern Palestine: "Inland, up the mountains, it is cooler, though when one gets among the large rocks one is stifled: they seem almost to give off a vapour, or heat-breath, that is horrible; add to that a sirocco, a wind that shrivels every green thing it meets, that blisters one's face & hands, & makes one feel that one is walking towards some gigantic oven; and you get an idea of the vast possibilities." Since he adds that the shaded hallway of the hotel in Tiberias, even though cooled by a large block of ice, was over 106 degrees, and that it felt "quite cool" compared with the temperature outside in the sun, gives some idea of what Lawrence had in mind by unbearable heat.

It was not only heat that didn't bother Lawrence-he was also exposed to the sudden violence of the Middle East, and took a certain delight in the experience. His att.i.tude was similar to that of the young Winston Churchill: "Nothing in life is more exhilarating than to be shot at without result." Lawrence, who was destined to form with Churchill both an effective team at the Colonial Office and a lifelong mutual admiration society, took much the same delight in the crack of bullets whipping past his head, and had his first experience of it near Aleppo, in what is now Syria. More remarkably, while he tried to pa.s.s the incident off with lighthearted good humor in a letter to his mother, he made no attempt to hide what had happened from her, when it would presumably have been very easy to do so by simply not mentioning it.

In Latakia, he had spent the night in the house of a young Arab n.o.bleman, Abdul Kerim, who had just acquired a Mauser pistol similar to Lawrence's, and amused himself by blazing away from his fortresslike house on a hill at the surrounding villages. A few days later, while Lawrence was on his way to Aleppo, over "the worst road on the face of the globe," "an a.s.s with an old gun" on a horse took a shot at him from about 200 yards. Since Lawrence was wearing a suit and shoes, and on foot, it would have been obvious that he was a European-the man with the gunmay have felt it was his religious duty to take a potshot at an infidel, or perhaps intended more practically to rob Lawrence, or perhaps both. Lawrence fired back and grazed the horse, which bolted and carried its rider about 800 yards away (not a bad snap shot with a pistol at 200 yards). Lawrence then carefully put up his rear sight as high it would go and fired a shot right over the man's head,* prompting him to gallop away as fast as he could ride, astonished that "a person with nothing but a pistol could shoot so far." prompting him to gallop away as fast as he could ride, astonished that "a person with nothing but a pistol could shoot so far."

Lawrence complained to the governor of the district, who sent all his police out to search for the man, with (of course) no results; one thinks of the police chief's weary order in Casablanca: "Round up the usual suspects." The consensus was that Lawrence's a.s.sailant had hoped to bluff him into paying for a safe pa.s.sage; if so, that was certainly a misreading of Lawrence's character.

Lawrence was intending to walk to Damascus, but a succession of events persuaded him to end his journey in Aleppo. He wrote home to explain that one of the newspapers in Aleppo had reported his murder, in a village where he had never been, so that he was treated "like a ghost" by the hotel staff and the local missionaries; then his boots had given up the ghost at last, exposing his feet to "cuts & chafes & blisters" which seemed unlikely to heal in this climate; finally, his camera was stolen (more trouble for the unfortunate police, who now had on their hands a British subject who had been shot at by a native, was reported to have been murdered, and had lodged a complaint about a stolen camera). In the circ.u.mstances, it seemed to Lawrence best to go home. He was in any case down to the last of his money, he had just recovered from his fourth bout of malaria, and the rainy season was about to begin, so he left with few regrets. He prudently sent a letter to Sir John Rhys, the princ.i.p.al of Jesus College, to explain that he would be returning late, while also very wisely asking his father to go to Jesus and explain matters to the authorities in person. ("Sir John does not like to be bothered with college matters," Lawrence warned his father.) In his letter to Sir John Rhys, however, Lawrence mentioned that he had been "robbed and rather smashed up," something which he had neglected to tell his parents, and which may have been the deciding factor in persuading him to return home, rather than the state of his shoes. Apparently, the shooting incident had not been the only attack on Lawrence: while trying to purchase Hitt.i.te seals on Hogarth's behalf in a village near the Euphrates, he was followed and set upon by an importunate beggar, who had been attracted by Lawrence's cheap copper watch. Thinking that it was gold, the man stalked Lawrence and hit him on the head with a rock on the deserted road, knocking him down. He then robbed Lawrence and tried to shoot him with the Mauser. Fortunately for Lawrence, the operation of the c.o.c.king bolt and the safety catch of a Mauser C96 are confusing even to experienced owners of the pistol, so the thief was unable to shoot. Instead, Lawrence's a.s.sailant bashed him about the head again and made off with all his possessions, biting his hand severely in the fight, and leaving him for dead. Lawrence recovered enough to walk five miles to the next town, where the local authorities and (perhaps more important) the "village elders" quickly found the guilty man-no doubt they already knew who he was-and returned to Lawrence his watch, his seals, his pistol, and his money. Lawrence thanked Rhys for having helped procure the irades (safe-conduct letters) from the Ottoman government, without which the shooting incident and the attack on him might have been far more difficult to resolve, and also asked Rhys not to mention his injuries to his father.

The robbery has caused considerable difficulty for biographers, since Lawrence wrote or told several variants of it to different people. Thus, in Robert Graves's biography of Lawrence the Mauser becomes a Colt, the safety catch of which the robber didn't know how to move; in Liddell Hart's biography it becomes an old Webley revolver,* which the robber inadvertently rendered unfireable by pulling out the trigger guard; and in both these versions the robber is interrupted by a pa.s.sing shepherd before he can finish Lawrence off. However it happened, it must have been a frightening experience, even for somebody as stoic and fatalistic as Lawrence, and would explain both why he decided to go home and why he went all the way back by s.h.i.+p, instead of much more quickly by s.h.i.+p to Ma.r.s.eille and then by train: he would have wanted his wounds to heal as much as possible before his family saw him. This attack may have been the one reported, in garbled form, in the Aleppo newspaper, causing people to believe he was dead. That it did happen is certain. Apart from the fading scars, when Lawrence returned C. H. C. Pirie-Gordon's annotated map to him, he apologized for the bloodstain on it, and in any case there is nothing intrinsically unlikely about the attack. which the robber inadvertently rendered unfireable by pulling out the trigger guard; and in both these versions the robber is interrupted by a pa.s.sing shepherd before he can finish Lawrence off. However it happened, it must have been a frightening experience, even for somebody as stoic and fatalistic as Lawrence, and would explain both why he decided to go home and why he went all the way back by s.h.i.+p, instead of much more quickly by s.h.i.+p to Ma.r.s.eille and then by train: he would have wanted his wounds to heal as much as possible before his family saw him. This attack may have been the one reported, in garbled form, in the Aleppo newspaper, causing people to believe he was dead. That it did happen is certain. Apart from the fading scars, when Lawrence returned C. H. C. Pirie-Gordon's annotated map to him, he apologized for the bloodstain on it, and in any case there is nothing intrinsically unlikely about the attack.

Lawrence may or may not have worked as a coal checker in Port Said to help pay for his way home, and may or may not have sold his Mauser in Beirut for the same reason (though if he did sell it, as has been claimed, for only 5, he made a very poor deal for such an expensive weapon); but somehow he managed to reach home in one piece and, most important of all, with his enthusiasm for the Middle East undiminished.

What might have seemed to most travelers two lucky escapes, and a good reason not to repeat the experience, merely whetted Lawrence's appet.i.te. Already it was clear to him that he did not want to become a don, or spend his life cataloging potsherds and gla.s.s fragments at the Ashmolean; he wanted both the freedom that only an alien world could offer him, and the adventurous life of a man of action. Just as hards.h.i.+p, physical challenge, and self-discipline had developed from habits into addictions, danger too became addictive. Of course to the would-be hero every a.s.sault and life-threatening encounter is merely a challenge to be overcome, a step forward in his apprentices.h.i.+p-the more frighteningand the more physically punis.h.i.+ng, the better, provided he survives. Perhaps without realizing it, Lawrence had taken his first steps on that path, as if he had already heard, in the words of Joseph Campbell, "a cry (if not from the housetops, then-more miserably-within every heart): a cry for the redeeming hero, the carrier of the s.h.i.+ning blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence, will liberate the land."

That land was not to be found among the gray spires of Oxford.

The college raised no difficulties about Lawrence's return a week late-an unusual and physically demanding journey through the Holy Land by an undergraduate would have seemed more important than his arriving home on time; and even the dons could hardly fail to notice that he was emaciated and toughened by his experiences. One of them described Lawrence's face as "thinned to the bone by privation." He settled back into the routine of college life, but he was infected by more than malaria-henceforth, Lawrence's mind was firmly fixed on the Middle East, and on finding a way to get back there for a longer time. He may not have wanted to break the news yet to Richards, but hand-printing beautiful books in a William Morris cottage in the woods (or a windmill by the sea, an alternative version of this plan) was no longer Lawrence's goal.

After his journey, life in the tiny cottage in the garden of 2 Polstead Road too must have seemed more cramped and confining than before, and Oxford a place of narrow vistas, gray sky, and penetrating cold. Many undergraduates stumble through their third and last year at Oxford dazed by the ordeal of the final examination that lies ahead of them, and still more by the question of what they are going to do with themselves when they leave Oxford, but Lawrence was already determined to find a way back to the Middle East, and merely saw his finals as a necessary step on the way. He needed not only a "First," but more: an interesting and provocative First; and he reenlisted his patient crammer L. C. Jane to ensure that he was well prepared. He had until the Easter vacation of 1910 to hand in his thesis, and though he boasted later of preparing it at the very last minute, the evidence seems to be that he prepared very carefullyindeed. He had it typed (typing was rare at the time), and it included a large number of maps, plans, drawings, photographs, and even postcards, which backed up his view that the crusaders had brought their architecture to the Middle East, rather than being influenced by what they found there.

He had persuaded Hogarth to write a letter of introduction to C. M. Doughty, who was to become another of Lawrence's father figures, and now it bore fruit. The meeting between Lawrence and the old man was a success, and, in Hogarth's words, "in no way diminished the disciple's fervor." In fact it served to increase Lawrence's determination to follow in Doughty's footsteps.

Lawrence did not seem to have had any doubts about his thesis, except for the fear that it might be too ambitious and too long for the examiners. Indeed, the material in it was so new and challenging that there was at first some doubt that anybody at Oxford was competent to judge it. In the event, Lawrence "took a most brilliant First Cla.s.s," according to his crammer L. C. Jane, so brilliant that Lawrence's tutor gave a dinner party to the examiners to celebrate the achievement. This rare, and possibly unique, event in Oxford demonstrates the respect in which Lawrence was held, despite doubt that he was "a natural scholar."

Afterward, Lawrence set off on a cycling tour in France with his brother Frank, who appears not to have shared Ned's interest in castles and fortifications. Ned wrote to his mother that he was busy reading Pet.i.t Jehan de Saintre, "a xv Cent. Novel of knightly manners," of which he had been trying to find a well-printed copy, as well as the work of "Moliere & Racine & Corneille & Voltaire," an ambitious reading program for somebody bicycling almost fifty miles a day. He pauses to explain to his mother his pa.s.sion for reading, and for beautiful books. "Father won't know all this-but if you can get the right book at the right time you taste joys-not only bodily, physical, but spiritual also, which pa.s.s one out above and beyond one's miserable self, as it were through a huge air, following the light of another man's thought. And you can never be quite the old self again."

What Sarah made of all this is hard to know-as so often with Lawrence's letters home, it reads as if he were trying out ideas and phrases that he intended to develop, refine, and use later, perhaps in this case for a letter to his friend Vyvyan Richards, who still expected Lawrence to join him in the hand-printing venture; or perhaps Lawrence was merely trying to persuade his mother that the plan for printing books with Richards was a better one than his father thought.

On his return to Oxford Lawrence was persuaded by C. F. Bell to go for a bachelor of literature (BLitt) degree as the next rung up on the academic ladder, his subject to be "Mediaeval Lead-Glazed Pottery from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries." Although he twice failed to win "a research fellows.h.i.+p" at All Souls College, he managed to get a grant of 50 from Jesus College, but one senses that his heart was not really in the problems of lead-glazed pottery, however much they fascinated Bell.

Even though he left immediately for Rouen, to look "at mediaeval pots," Lawrence also dropped what must have been a bombsh.e.l.l for his friend E. T. Leeds and for Bell, who had envisioned him safely seated at a desk in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, examining potsherds on his return from France. "Mr. Hogarth is going digging, and I am going out to Syria in a fortnight to make plain the valleys and level the mountains for his feet:-also to learn Arabic," he informed them. "The two occupations fit into one another splendidly."

"The dangerous crises of self-development are permitted to come to pa.s.s under the protecting eye of an experienced initiate ... who then enacts the role and character of the ancient mystagogue, or guide of souls," wrote Joseph Campbell in a.n.a.lyzing the development of the hero, and the need, at the crucial stages of the hero's life, for a wise, firm, and knowing mentor-one who sets the apprentice hero on the correct path and furnishes him with the knowledge and the weapons he will need, and who, above all, points to the great task that lies at the end of the many trials and terrors.

n.o.body would have been more familiar with the role Merlin played in the life of King Arthur than Lawrence, whose appet.i.te for medieval romance, myth, and poetry was voracious, and who would carry Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur into battle with him. Henceforth, Hogarth would play that role in Lawrence's life.

In the meantime, it is clear, Lawrence was delighted to be freed from the pottery fragments in the Ashmolean, and sent to Syria. He sailed on December 10, 1909, for Beirut, and what would be the happiest years of his life.

* A typical case of the latter kind was the dislike between the future poet laureate and television celebrity John Betjeman and his tutor at Magdalen College, C. S. Lewis, author of, among other things, The Narnia Chronicles. Lewis called Betjeman an "idle prig" and was instrumental in sending him down, and Betjeman later described Lewis as arid, unsympathetic, and uninspiring, and blamed his failure at oxford on Lewis. A typical case of the latter kind was the dislike between the future poet laureate and television celebrity John Betjeman and his tutor at Magdalen College, C. S. Lewis, author of, among other things, The Narnia Chronicles. Lewis called Betjeman an "idle prig" and was instrumental in sending him down, and Betjeman later described Lewis as arid, unsympathetic, and uninspiring, and blamed his failure at oxford on Lewis.

* At Bexleyheath, south of London. At Bexleyheath, south of London.

* This may not have been true, however, on Clare's part, to Lawrence's great embarra.s.sment. This may not have been true, however, on Clare's part, to Lawrence's great embarra.s.sment.

* Although Graves too was an oxonian, there is some doubt that he got this right. Mark Blandford-Baker, the home bursar of Magdalen College, oxford, points out, "Balliol is surrounded by trinity plus a bit of St. John's." Lawrence may have been pulling Graves's leg. Although Graves too was an oxonian, there is some doubt that he got this right. Mark Blandford-Baker, the home bursar of Magdalen College, oxford, points out, "Balliol is surrounded by trinity plus a bit of St. John's." Lawrence may have been pulling Graves's leg.

* Lawrence is fairly specific about this, though he seems to have carried several different kinds of pistols over the years. if his reference to the Mauser is true, then it is exactly the same kind of pistol which the young Winston Churchill carried when he charged with the twenty-First Lancers at the Battle of omdurman in the Sudan, Kitchener's great victory, in 1898, and with which he shot several Mahdist tribesmen. Lawrence is fairly specific about this, though he seems to have carried several different kinds of pistols over the years. if his reference to the Mauser is true, then it is exactly the same kind of pistol which the young Winston Churchill carried when he charged with the twenty-First Lancers at the Battle of omdurman in the Sudan, Kitchener's great victory, in 1898, and with which he shot several Mahdist tribesmen.

he was created marquess of Curzon in 1921. he was created marquess of Curzon in 1921.

* This pretty much confirms that the pistol he carried was a Mauser C96no other pistol had adjustable sights calibrated for up to 1,000 meters, which made sense because the pistol could be carried in a wooden holster that clipped to the b.u.t.t serving as a stock, thus allowing it to be fired like a carbine. it was, however, a bulky and heavy weapon, not easily concealable, and would seem to prove that Lawrence must have carried more than what he could stuff into his pockets. This pretty much confirms that the pistol he carried was a Mauser C96no other pistol had adjustable sights calibrated for up to 1,000 meters, which made sense because the pistol could be carried in a wooden holster that clipped to the b.u.t.t serving as a stock, thus allowing it to be fired like a carbine. it was, however, a bulky and heavy weapon, not easily concealable, and would seem to prove that Lawrence must have carried more than what he could stuff into his pockets.

* In the Lowell Thomas version the pistol becomes a Colt.45 Peacemaker, which the robber doesn't realize has to be c.o.c.ked with the thumb before firing; but this may be a sop to American readersLawrence clearly identifies it as a Mauser. In the Lowell Thomas version the pistol becomes a Colt.45 Peacemaker, which the robber doesn't realize has to be c.o.c.ked with the thumb before firing; but this may be a sop to American readersLawrence clearly identifies it as a Mauser.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Carchemish: 19111914.

We travel not for trafficking alone: By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned.-James Elroy Flecker, "The Golden Journey to Samarkand"

David Hogarth, though he seems to have had a gift for remaining in the background, was one of those figures beloved in English popular fiction: the superbly well-connected don; a scholar who was also an intrepid traveler and "a man of action"; an Englishman who could speak French, German, Italian, Greek, Turkish, and Arabic fluently, and who was just as at ease negotiating with foreign governments and inst.i.tutions as he was with those of his own country. Though married, and the father of a son, Hogarth was apparently not an enthusiast for domestic life; he was an inveterate and intrepid traveler, as well as a learned, witty, acerbic man, as much at home in high society as he was in the desert, a brilliant conversationalist in all his languages, and "respected throughout Europe" as well as in much of the Middle East. It comes as no surprise to learn that Hogarth and Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary from 1905 to 1916, were at Winchester together and had remained in constant touch since their schooldays there.

When Lawrence went up to Jesus College in 1907 as an undergraduate, he was nineteen and Hogarth was forty-five and already a man of considerable accomplishments: a fellow of Magdalen College, he was the author of several well-received books; he had taken part in archaeological expeditions in Egypt, Crete, and Asia Minor; he had been director of the British School of Archaeology in Athens (an extremely prestigious post); he had served as a war correspondent for the Times during the 1897 revolution in Crete and the Greco-Turkish War-a hint that there was more to Hogarth's life than archaeology-and he would become keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1909. Hogarth was one of those people who knew everybody worth knowing, and was welcome everywhere. A big, burly, sociable, broad-shouldered man, with a neatly trimmed beard, unusually long, powerful arms, and a dark, penetrating gaze, he was described by a woman who met him at a party as resembling "a cynical and highly-educated baboon." In rare photographs of himself and Lawrence together, he towers over Lawrence by a head. A member of what has come to be called in Britain the Establishment,* he was also an academic talent spotter, and the first to recognize in the young Lawrence the same quickness of mind, biting