Lawrence of Arabia: A biographical enquiry

by Richard Aldington

Book by Aldington, Richard

Genres: Biography

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Edward Godfree Aldington was an English writer, poet, translator, critic, and biographer. He joined the British Army in 1916 and was wounded in 1918.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_...

Reviews

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richard Aldington's Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry was the first thorough attempt to debunk T.E. Lawrence's legend, and remains a landmark that no Lawrence historian (or amateur enthusiast) can ignore. Written in 1955, Aldington's book demonstrates, with devastating clarity, how much of Lawrence's "legend" was misleading if not outright dishonest, and how much Lawrence created or at least abetted the impression. The book scandalized the public by disclosing Lawrence's illegitimate birth, accusing him of homosexuality in an age when anti-sodomy laws remained on the books in England and arguing that the Arab Revolt Lawrence fostered was glorified banditry of no importance. The first of these is undisputed truth, carefully hidden by Lawrence's family and friends; the second, speculative but widely supported today; the third debatable, even if no one (even Lawrence himself) would claim his hit-and-run guerrilla campaign would measure to the Somme or Ypres. Regardless of their merits, these claims led to an angry, almost hysterical backlash by Lawrence's brother, friends and supporters in the UK (dubbed "the Lawrence Bureau" by Aldington) who attempted to suppress the book and discredit Aldington. Which, as such controversies often do, only whetted the public's interest, and helped the book's claims and accusations gain a wide audience (not least because David Lean's film absorbed many of them).

Truth be told, Aldington's book today is mainly of historiographic interest. The book is incredibly marred by Aldington's sour tone, bitter sarcasm, his willingness always to believe the worst about his subject and to paint him as a pathological liar. Where Aldington does good work, for instance, showing discrepancies in Lawrence's accounts of his military actions, and how much Lawrence was involved in Lowell Thomas's flagrantly dishonest travelogue and book, he undermines his case by obsessing over trifles. Did Lawrence really read 50,000 books in six years at Oxford, as Robert Graves claims? Of course not; it's self-evidently absurd, likely a joke from Lawrence that Graves obliviously repeated, and doesn't merit even the two pages Aldington devotes to "debunking" it. Nor does he seem to grasp how memoirists, even the most scrupulous among them, shape or fit the narratives their disparate experiences into a cohesive narrative. His inability to distinguish between genuine dishonesty and minor fibs, slips of memory or embellishments often makes the book tedious, its author a humorless prig.

And one can't avoid thinking Aldington's own prejudices and experiences color the story. His bitterness, as a veteran of the Western Front, towards a mere Middle Eastern veteran getting more attention than he (renowned as a poet, his novels had not sold well and he had turned into a popular biographer to make money); his resentment towards English society, which rejected his literature and forced him to live abroad in Paris; his Francophilia, which imputes the noblest of motives to French imperialism while deriding Britain's deceit in "biffing the French out of Syria"; his unvarnished racism towards Arabs as unworthy of freedom (Lawrence could be accused of the former, but certainly not the latter). He ends the book sarcastically lauding Lawrence as "the appropriate hero for his class and epoch," which is incredibly revealing about Aldington's own motives. He hated British society, and set out to tear down one of their idols.

Yet it must be said, despite these shortcomings, that Aldington provided a worthy service. Anyone familiar with the Lawrence hagiography which proceeded it - the works of Thomas, Graves and Basil Liddel Hart in particular - appreciates Aldington's frustration with the often-absurd feats and achievements attributed to him; anyone touted as a combination of Clausewitz, Doughty and Sir Lancelot can only disappoint the objective reader. The book's worth is harder to appreciate now, when more thorough and objective writers have combed over Lawrence's life and made a decent try of restoring his humanity, than it was in 1955, when merely suggesting Lawrence was anything other than his reputation was patently absurd. Aldington offered a necessary, if overheated corrective to this attitude, and to that we owe him a wary debt, garnished with appropriate skepticism.

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

(okay NO I didn't entirely finish it, I think I read 2/3rds)

Initially I was very weary of this book because it's always sold as 'the most vocal anti-Lawrence book out there' and I just went ... no ... leave my babie(TM) alone ... and also I was aware that after the embargo on documents pertaining to Lawrence everyone swooped in and said 'Aldington was wrong!'

However. I think everyone who wants to study Lawrence should read it, because although Aldington is - indeed - committed to showing that Lawrence wasn't truthful 100% of the time in Seven Pillars, and he was wrong on some accounts, the careful process through which he approaches this... dismantling of the Lawrence legend is very interesting. One thing that I learnt from Aldington and that was extremely helpful to keep in mind while writing my thesis was to never, ever, uncritically take T.E. at face value in his writing.

[LuisJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd read that the so-called 'Lawrence Bureau' had tried to block publication of this book and generally discredit the author and so I was interested to read what he had to say.
On the one hand there are some very interesting bits of information and, potentially, patterns of behaviour described about Lawrence which substantially dim or open up to question his reputation.
However, the greater weight is the fact that this work is not an unbiased work of historical or biographical analysis- in fact, it doesn't even come close. I could not escape an overwhelming sense of irony in the last phase of this book insofar that Aldington wants to show us that the reputation of Lawrence isn't deserved and the result of propaganda and yet his own book is a poor showing of objectivity.

The first quarter to two-quarters of the book are in many ways the weakest because they don't have much to do with the war years. There's a great focus on the period before that and in making insinuations of the arm-chair psychologist variety. One of the big issues with this book is that Aldington takes great liberties with the available evidence. He doesn't do so greatly to begin with but becomes ever bolder until by the last third of the book one can almost imagine his foaming at the mouth with indignation. Many times he will make inferences about what was thought by a person (typically Lawrence) without the evidence to back it up. His contention is that Lawrence made up a lot of his stories and that they have the shared virtue of being irrefutable by anyone because he was the only one there. Aldington starts with suggesting doubt but winds up outright accusing Lawrence of lying about many things that he can't possibly prove; indeed, by the end he is more than happy to twist facts to mean their opposite.
For example, when discussing a post-war period in which Lawrence had claimed to be content, Aldington has this to say:
'There is something to be said for this view if it is limited to Cranwell and the Cattewater period in the 1930's, when he has grown resigned to his fate, was occupied as an individual in testing speed boats, and was favoured, not to say adored, by his C.O. and wife'.
It's quite a feat to turn the favour of a Commanding Officer and his wife into something less because it wasn't "adoration".

Another example is when Aldington feels the need to talk about Lawrence's retirement cottage Cloud Hills and most importantly, his music collection and his library of books (page 380-381). Both are described in snobbish terms and the latter he describes as being "[...]in no sense a scholar's library nor a carefully selected choice of the world's books, but the haphazard collection of a dilettante who knew a considerable number of contemporary authors".
This is just after he gives us a break down of a total of 171 books across 12 authors; yet this was out of a total of 1,250 books. It's remarkable how snobbish Aldington was being in avowedly thinking that one could judge a man based on his books and how deceitful he was in then selecting less than 14% of the library an implying that it thereby represented its extend and thereby the interests and erudition of Lawrence.

Another great example involves something that Aldington has been brewing on the back burner the whole time regarding a supposed offer of the position of High Commissioner of Egypt. This is somewhat of a theme for Aldington as he mentions it numerous times throughout the book with progressively stronger claims against it (without presenting counter-evidence) and then finally we arrive at it. Suffice it to say that whatever he has to say, he includes a footnote which reads:

"Sir Winston Churchill has since affirmed that although he never offered the post of High Commissioner to Lawrence officially he may" have talked over the possibility of his being offered it unofficially with Lawrence." Yet that page and the ones preceding it outright claim that Lawrence was a fantasist and made the whole thing up to satisfy his vanity.

What, I think this book comes down to is said in the in the words of Aldington:
"I have tried, but perhaps not always successfully, to give evidence in the whole of this book fairly and in such a way that it can be instantly verified, though not without some indignation that such a man should have been given the fame and glory of the real heroes of 1914-1918".
Perhaps if Aldington had been less concerned with the "fame and glory" of men then he would have taken care to ensure honourable conduct for himself.

It's quite telling that if you compare the book's Introduction or even a sentence on page 241 which echoes with humility, "If the truth has been recorded, I have been too ignorant and clumsy to discover it" (granted he was being somewhat facetious) with the rabid tone by the end of the book one will be reminded that the road to hell is a slippery slope of good intentions.

There are other glaring failings too such as his willingness to take pretty much any officer or person from a "lordly" background at their word, and his habit of stating as fact what people would or would not have thought or done without any actual evidence- rather it seems just an assumption of prejudice about how people from certain backgrounds behaved in his mind. For example, he clearly can't get his head around the idea that Churchill and many other intelligent people might admire Lawrence and has to invent by hook or crook any theory, inference of plain innuendo to explain away their manipulation at the hands of this masterful upstart. When you add to this the numerous references to Lawrence as attempting to pose as a "lordly" figure you are left feeling like Aldington had very strong ideas about people's 'station' in society and took umbrage at the fact that Lawrence's took what wasn’t his by birth-right and simultaneously had to gall to reject many of the trappings of fame and post-war adulation. Not to mention what seems like a ridiculous theory about Lawrence's personality and motivation originating from a "secret" which consisted in the alleged fact that he was an illegitimate son. Social standing certainly mattered a great deal more in the late 1800's but the argument is tenuous and relies too much on psychologising which is clearly and painfully outside the author's area of expertise.

In the end, this book is historically useful because much of what he says seems to ring true about Lawrence's vanity and his tendency to be creative with the truth. Yet Aldington seems to burn with an unedifying righteous indignation and it taints the work while he seems to ignore that whether you think that Lawrence's behaviour is respectable or not it comes across as rather naive to single out Lawrence for this and treat all other's involved as saints (as this was published in 1955 it seems less forgivable than had it been, say, 50 years earlier).

One way or another Lawrence comes away from this book rather badly but it would be more convincing if Aldington had chosen not to descend into mud-slinging.

[Cristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting book. A different point of view of Lawrence.

[Nymph arnina]

“Instead of a carefully considered portrait of Lawrence, I find the self-portrait of a bitter, bedridden, leering, asthmatic, elderly hangman-of-letters — the live dog who thinks himself better than the dead lion because he can at least scratch himself and snarl.”

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid biography of a fascinating character.