Lawrence and the Arabs

by Robert Graves

He has, it seems, no use for the human race as such or interest in its continuance. He has no sentimentality about universal brotherhood, like Swift; he has no use for the works of men. And has come to this view, I think, by the same road as Swift, by an overwhelming sense of personal liberty, a largeness of heart, and an intense desire for perfection so obviously unattainable as hardly to be worth starting for.

We may conclude that when, in 1922, his dislike of the crowd became too strong and he saw that it was becoming a definite limitation for him, when he found in fact after the apparent triumph of the Arabian adventure that in avoiding the mask of a popular hero he was withdrawing more and more and becoming unwholesomely interested in just being himself, he took a violent course-he enlisted and bound himself to a life in which he was forced perpetually to be a member of the crowd. The Army and Air Force are the modern equivalent of the monastery, and after five years he does not regret his choice of a life as nearly physical as an animal’s, in which food is provided, and drink, and a round of work in harness and a stable afterwards until the new day brings a repetition of the work of yesterday.

‘AIRCRAFTMAN SHAW’ in ‘Scruff order’

Copyright

What is called Lawrence’s ‘love of publicity’ can best be explained as a burning desire to know himself, for no one can be himself except by first knowing himself. To publicity in the sense of what is published about him he is indifferent; he is never more than amused at what he has read about himself. But it ceases to be amusing to him when he meets people who believe all they read about him and act as if legend was truth. He denies the legend, and they say ‘how modest these heroes are’: and he is nearly sick. He does not believe that heroes exist or ever have existed; he suspects them all of being frauds. If he is interested at times in what people may think of him this is only because their opinion may show him what sort of a man he is more clearly than any amount of self-examination can. He has been often accused of vanity because he has sat for his portrait to so many artists and sculptors—he has only four times refused to sit—but it is the opposite of vanity. A vain man has a very clear view of himself which he tries to force on his neighbours. Lawrence sits for his portrait because he wants to discover what he is, by the effect which he produces on the artist: so far from being vain he clearly has no picture of himself at all except a contemptuous one. He accepts the view that he is a complete humbug and play actor; chiefly, perhaps, because people who are themselves humbugs and actors see him so in their own likeness.

He has another reason for ‘sitting’ and that is because artists (in the wider sense) are the only class of human beings to which he would like to belong. He can salve the regret that, rightly or wrongly, he feels at not being a true artist, by watching artists work and providing them with a model. He has done a good deal of experimental sculpture; he told me once that somewhere, I think in Syria, there are twelve life-size statues left by him on the roof of a house. Certainly some of the decorations outside a nonconformist chapel in the Iffley Road at Oxford are his work, but unsigned and indistinguishable from the rest. I have seen silversmith work by him. He has written poems, but they fall short of his intentions more seriously even than his handicrafts, because poetry has more freedom possible to it than these. Lawrence’s chief curse is that he cannot stop thinking, and by thinking I mean a working of the mind that is not mere calculation from any given set of facts, but a much more intense and difficult process which makes its own facts and tests them as it goes and destroys them when it is over. In all my acquaintance I know no more than three people who really think, and these three include Lawrence. He seems to be perpetually stretching his mind in every direction and finding little or nothing; ‘lunging about,’ as an Arab poet said, ‘like a blind camel in the dark.’ At least the effort seems to make the mind harder and fitter.

But this account is getting too philosophical, and the simplest conclusion about Lawrence is the best. It is not that ‘He is a great man.’ The greatness of his achievement is in any case historical. He, a foreigner and an unbeliever, inspired and led the broadest national movement of the Arabs that had taken place since the great times of Mohammed and his early successors, and brought it to a triumphant conclusion. It is not that he is a genius. This has come to be a vulgar almost meaningless word, attached to any competent scientist or fiddler or verse-maker or military leader. It is not even that he is an ‘erratic genius,’ unless ‘erratic’ means that Lawrence does not do the usual things that men of successful talents do; the ordinary vulgar things that are expected by the crowd. If Napoleon, for instance, who was a vulgar rather than an ‘erratic’ genius, had been in Lawrence’s position at the close of the 1918 campaign he would have proclaimed himself a Mohammedan and consolidated the new Arabian Empire. Lawrence did nothing of the sort, though he had popularity and power enough perhaps to make himself Emperor even without an official change of faith. But it would have been foolish to expect a man who has qualities that shine in difficult weather to subdue them in calm weather. He came away and left the Arabs to employ the freedom that he had given them, a freedom unencumbered by his rule which, however just and wise, would always have been an alien rule. He would have contradicted himself had he suffered all those pains to free the Arabs and then enslaved them under himself. The trouble with him often is that he is too sane. He is impish at times but never erratic; he does nothing without good reason, though his decisions may disappoint the crowd. There was nothing erratic about Lawrence when he enlisted as an airman in 1922. When I heard of it first it did not surprise me: one learns not to be surprised at anything Lawrence does. My only comment was ‘He knows his own needs,’ and now I can see clearly that it was the most honourable thing to himself that he could have done. It was, moreover, a course that he had decided on in 1919 and had suggested to Air-Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond before the Armistice. But not till Mr. Winston Churchill had given the Arabs what Lawrence considered a fair deal was he free to please himself. Politics accounted for the three years’ delay.

The least and most that can be said about Lawrence is that he is a good man. This ‘good’ is something that can be understood by a child or a savage or any simple-minded person. It is just a feeling that you get from him, the feeling ‘here is a man with great powers, a man who could make most men do for him exactly whatever he desired, but yet one who would never use his powers, from respect for the other man’s personal freedom.’

Popular suggestions made lately for employing Lawrence’s talents or genius have been as numerous and varied as they have been ridiculous. The public has taken an interest in him that almost amounts to a claim for ownership: but nobody owns Lawrence or will ever own him. He is not a public Niagara that can be harnessed for any political or commercial purpose. A Colonial Governor-Generalship? What sort of appointment is that for a man who might have been an Emperor? And imagine Lawrence, who has long come to the point of disbelieving in his existence and every one else’s, laying foundation stones and attending ceremonial parades and banquets! Lawrence, shortly after the War ended, was invited to attend the reception after a society wedding. He went (a man he liked was being married) in company with a young diplomatic attaché who was much impressed by the occasion. ‘What name, gentlemen?’ asked the flunkey at the door. Lawrence saw his companion pulling himself-together for an impressive entrance and the spirit of mischief overcame him. ‘Messrs. Lenin and Trotsky,’ he said quickly. And ‘Mr. Lenin, Mr. Trotsky!’ the flunkey bawled out mechanically to the scandalized assembly: which, indeed, included Royalty.