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The Revisions of Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Jeffrey Meyers
Jeffrey Meyers*
Affiliation:
Casa Maria, Benalmádena (Málaga), Spain
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Extract

TE. LAWRENCE'S BELIEF in the supreme importance of art made it inevitable that he write the history of the Arab revolt and his leadership of it. His conscientious and ambitious character made the composition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom a lengthy and agonizing process, and his letters to friends show that his desire to achieve greatness as a writer was even stronger than his wish to excel as a commander. “Artists excite and attract me,” he tells Robert Graves.1 “I've wished all my life to have the power of creating something imaginative.”2 He feels that “a man never amounts to anything in this world unless he be an artist.3 I shall be appraised rather as a man of letters than as a man of action.”4

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 88 , Issue 5 , October 1973 , pp. 1066 - 1082
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1973

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Footnotes

*

Published as a chapter in The Wounded Spirit: A Study of “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” (London: Martin Brian & O'Keeffe, 1973); with the permission of the publisher (37 Museum St., London WC1, England).

References

1 Letter of 4 Feb. 1935, in The Letters of T. E. Lawrence, ed. David Garnett (London: Spring Books, 1964), p. 853. Hereafter cited as Letters.

2 T. E. Lawrence to His Biographers Robert Graves and Liddell-Hart, i (New York: Doubleday, 1963), 138. Here after cited in text as Biographers.

3 Quoted by S. Scanes (an aircraftman) in T. E. Lawrence by His Friends, ed. A. W. Lawrence (London: Cape, 1937), p. 418.

4 Letter to Edward Garnett, 23 Dec. 1927, in Univ. of Texas: Humanities Research Center, T. E. Lawrence: Fifty Letters, 1920–1935: An Exhibition (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1962), p. 25.

5 i (London : Golden Cockerell Press, 1936), 56. Privately printed.

6 Letter to Robin Buxton, 22 Sept. 1923, in Letters, p. 431.

There is some confusion about the seven cities, for at various times Lawrence mentioned Aleppo, Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, Constantinople, Damascus, Jerusalem, Medina (which he never visited), Smyrna, and Urfa.

7 T. E. Lawrence to His Biographers, ii, 130, and n.:

The Midrash gives two explanations of She hath hewn out her seven pillars: first, that she (Wisdom) was hewn out of seven firmaments and given to mankind; second, that the Seven Pillars are the seven lands. “If man (or Adam) is righteous and keeps the Law he will inherit seven lands; and if not, he will be dispersed into seven lands.” This second explanation may have been known to Lawrence. Other explanations of the Seven Pillars are: the seven books of the Law; the seven days of Creation (Rashi); the seven years of Gog (Ezekiel xxxix.9).

The Midrash explains Wisdom hath builded her house as follows: “First, this is the Law which hath built all the worlds. Second, what is this except that the Holy One hath said, ‘If a man is righteous and learns Lore and Wisdom, it is reckoned before the Holy One as if he had created the heavens and as if he had established the whole world.‘ ”

8 Letter to Edward Garnett, 1 Dec. 1927, in Letters, p. 548. T. E. Lawrence, The Evolution of a Revolt, eds., Stanley and Rodelle Weintraub (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1968), p. 14.

9 John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (New York: Noonday, 1961), p. 34.

10 In an unpub. MS notebook on Seven Pillars in the Houghton Library, the original plan of the book is written entirely in an architectural metaphor : “Book i—Materials

Book ii—Survey

Book iii—Foundations

Book iv—Scaffolding

Book v—Pillars

Book vi—Failures [at the bridges]

Book vii—Reconstruction

Book viii—The House is Perfected.“

The final titles and summaries of the books are somewhat different in the table of contents (where Bk. 10 is called “The Liberation of Damascus”) and in the text itself. Lawrence's archness about consistency is illustrated in his answers to the publishers' questions quoted in the Preface.

11 T. E. Lawrence, Oriental Assembly, ed. A. W. Law rence (London: Williams and Norgate, 1939), p. 139. For an important paragraph suppressed from the suppressed chapter see Letters, p. 263.

12 T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (New York : Dell, 1967), p. 194. All quotations are from this edition.

13 Unpub. letter of 2 Sept. 1917, in the Kilgour Collection at the Houghton Library, Harvard Univ.

14 T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Oxford, 1922), p. 239, omitted from Ch. 103. Houghton Library. Hereafter cited as the Oxford edition. I am grateful to A. W. Lawrence, the Harvard College Library, the Bodleian Library and the British Museum for permission to quote this and other unpublished material.

15 T. E. Lawrence to His Biographers, i, 55. An excellent example of how Lawrence's War Diary later prompted his imagination is the brief entry—Camel dead calf, suffering over skin— that he transforms into a strangely moving passage. The foal of Lawrence's great camel, Ghazala, had lately died and an Arab had skinned the carcass and taken the skin with him. Lawrence rides well at first, but after an hour Ghazala lifted her head high, and began to pace uneasily, picking up her feet like a sword-dancer. I tried to urge her : but Abdulla dashed alongside me, swept his cloak about him, and sprang from his saddle, calf's skin in hand. He lighted with a splash of gravel in front of Ghazala, who had come to a standstill, gently moaning. On the ground before her he spread the little hide, and drew her head down to it. She stopped crying, shuffled its dryness thrice with her lips; then again lifted her head and, with a whimper, strode forward. Several times in the day this happened; but afterwards she seemed to forget. (p. 543) The Diary reference is British Museum Additional MSS. 45914, p. 2.

16 “(London: Golden Cockerell Press, 1939), pp. 12–20, 46–51. Privately printed.

17 A. W. Lawrence, “Foreword” to Secret Despatches, p. 7.

18 For a fine portrait of Lawrence at All Souls see Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That, Ch. 28. For the best description of Lawrence at Versailles see Richard Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary, 1917–1956 (New York: Yoseloff, 1960), pp. 27–43.

19 Letters to E. M. Forster, 20 Feb. 1924, and to Edward Garnett, 26 Aug. 1922, in Letters, pp. 456, 360. Lawrence's The Mint (New York: Norton, 1963), p. 20, describes his starvation in 1922.

20 T. E. Lawrence: In Arabia and After (London: Cape, 1965), p. 399.

21 Letter to Frederic Manning, 15 May 1930, in Letters, p. 693. Letter of Robert Graves to Jeffrey Meyers, 5 Oct. 1970. Robert Graves, “Lawrence Vindicated,” New Republic, 21 March 1955, p. 18, states that Lawrence probably “alighted at Reading on his way back to Oxford from London, dropped the bag in the Thames, and caught the next train.”

22 See Weintraubs, eds., Evolution, pp. 24–27, for a comparison of these chapters with the final edition.

23 Letters, pp. 345–46. See also Seven Pillars, p. 279, n. For a good account of Lawrence's work in Transjordan see Claude Jarvis, Arab Command: The Biography of Lieutenant-Colonel F. W. Peake Pasha (London: Hutchinson, 1942), pp. 78–86. Peake served in the Middle East with Lawrence and later founded the Arab Legion. See also Lawrence “Report of Trans-Jordan,” Letters, pp. 334–35.

24 Quoted in Brian Gardner, Allenby of Arabia: Lawrence's General (New York: Coward, 1965), p. 239.

25 The five copies originally belonged to Charlotte Shaw, Eric Kennington, Guy Dawnay, David Hogarth, and C. E. Wilson. Hogarth's and Wilson's copies were then given to E. M. Forster and to Lawrence's cottage at Clouds Hill for circulation to other readers.

26 Colin Simpson and Phillip Knightley, “The Sheik Who Made Lawrence Love Arabia,” Sunday Times [London], 16 June 1968, p. 50.

27 Oxford ed., p. 203, omitted from Ch. 92. For a discussion of Lawrence and homosexuality, of the influence of Nietzsche, and of Lawrence's character and image, see my essays: “E. M. Forster and T. E. Lawrence: A Friendship,” SAQ, 69 (Spring 1970), 205–16; “Nietzsche and T. E. Lawrence,” Midway, 11 (Summer 1970), 77–85; and “The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia,” Commonweal, 23 Oct. 1970, pp. 100–04. My “Bibliography of T. E. Lawrence” was published in the Bulletin of Bibliography, xxix (Jan.-March 1972), 25–36. See also my book, The Wounded Spirit: A Study of “Seven Pillars of Wisdom.”

28 Oxford ed., p. 13, omitted from Ch. 7.

29 For a similar idea see Wilfred Owen's “The Parable of the Old Men and the Young” : But the old man would not so, but slew his son,—And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

30 Oxford ed., p. 100. A variant passage appears in Seven Pillars, p. 280. The MS of Seven Pillars in the Bodleian reads logically unjustifiable.

31 “Lawrence of Arabia: Story of His Book,” Times [London], 13 Dec. 1926, p. 16. For the fullest account of this secret ride see Lawrence's letter to General Gilbert Clayton, 10 July 1917, in Letters, pp. 225–30.

32 Oxford ed., p. 264, omitted from Ch. 113.

33 Oxford ed., p. 248, omitted from Ch. 107.

34 See Weintraubs, eds., Evolution, pp. 81–91.

35 Oxford ed., p. 240, omitted from Ch. 103.

36 See Ruskin, Seven Lamps, pp. 68–69, on the late Gothic arch: From that one surrender of its integrity, from that one endeavor to assure the semblance of what it was not, arose the multitudinous forms of disease and decrepitude, which rotted away the pillars of its supremacy. . . . the war, the wrath, the terror, might have worked their worst, and the strong walls would have risen, and the slight pillars would have started again, from under the hand of the destroyer. But they could not rise out of the ruins of their own violated truth.

37 “Lawrence of Arabia: Story of His Book,” p. 15.

38 Letter of 15 Dec. 1923, in Univ. of Texas, Fifty Letters, p. 13.

39 Edward Garnett, holograph “Bibliographical Note” to the Oxford ed., dated 18 Feb. 1927.

40 T. E. Lawrence: In Arabia and After, p. 403.

41 T. E. Lawrence to his Biographers, i, 16. For a moving account of how Altounyan saved Colonel Stirling's life when he was shot by Arab fanatics in 1949, see W. F. Stirling, Safety Last: An Autobiography (London: Hollis and Carter, 1953), pp. 245–48.

42 Phillip Knightley and Colin Simpson, The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970), p.180. They also quote the first prose version of the poem (May 1919), p. 184: “I wrought for him freedom to lighten his sad eyes: but he had died waiting for me. So I threw my gift away and now not anywhere will I find rest and peace.”

43 Letter of 22 Sept. 1923, in Letters, p. 431.

44 Unpub. letter in the Houghton Library, dated 25 Dec.1923. The spaced periods are in the letter. There are in this collection thirteen strangely intimate letters to the oddly named “Poppet,” who is R. A. Guy, an R.A.F. friend of Lawrence.

45 See Letters, p. 524: “Do you really like naked women? They express so little” (to Eric Kennington, 16 June 1927).

46 T. E. Lawrence by His Friends, p. 89.

47 The Home Letters of T. E. Lawrence and His Brothers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), p. 229 (12 Sept. 1912).

48 The Home Utters, pp. 246–47 (8 Feb. 1913).

49 For an intriguing but farfetched theory see Robert Graves, “T. E. Lawrence and the Riddle of S. A.,” Saturday Review, 15 June 1963, pp. 16–17.

50 Lawrence's noble and idealistic attitude toward S. A. is remarkably close to Ruskin's definition of the Lamp, or Spirit, of Sacrifice: Of this feeling, then, there are two distinct forms: the first, the wish to exercise self-denial for the sake of self-discipline . . . and the second, the desire to honor or please someone else by the costliness of the sacrifice, (pp. 17–18)

51 See Letters, p. 372, on other meanings of the sword: “there is the excluded notion, Garden of Eden touch: and the division meaning, like the sword in the bed of mixed sleeping, from the Morte d'Arthur” (to Eric Kennington, 27 Oct. 1922).

52 Oxford ed., p. 151, omitted from Ch. 71.

53 Letter to Lionel Curtis, 17 Nov. 1925. British Museum Additional MSS. 45903.

64 T. E. Lawrence by His Friends, p. 199.