T. E. Lawrence and S. A. – The Puzzle Solved Betty McKenzie 2002

Betty’s Journey, the Sword, and Multiple Meanings

How I came to the idea that S.A. had multiple meanings, and began watching the text of the book for meanings, possibly in cypher. The fundamental key to the cypher is revealed, followed by a summary of the meanings of S.A.

My first reading of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, at age 16 in 1931, was of a hand-typed copy of the Subscribers edition, given to me by my first lover Richard, a British hero of World War 1, almost twice my age. I was held spellbound by its first two pages. On its first page was the dedication, with its secret “To S.A.” and its unidentified “death” that so powerfully dominates one of the dedication’s segments.

On its second page were the opening lines that begin:

Some of the evil of our tale may have been inherent in our circumstances ... We were a self-centered army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man’s creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare.

But who, or what was S.A? Who could learn the secret? Was there somewhere a key to this enigma-force in the tides of history, for whose love Lawrence of Arabia fought all his wars, military, political, and psychic-internal -- this identity he left us shrouded in mystery and silence?

Many had tried before me: personal friends of Lawrence; scholars; specialists in military, literary, philosophic, psychiatric fields. None had found an answer I could live with. None had resolved out all the half-revealed insights Lawrence left us in the maddeningly contradictory things he said and wrote through the years about S.A.

Most of the speculation and alleged answers had pointed to S.A. as a man, with at times a corollary but never fully identified "place." I would prove that, while quite possibly a place too, S.A. was initially and essentially a woman.

When I began the research that culminated in this book, I sought only to unravel the secret of "S.A." whom Lawrence loved and whose real identity no one else knew. But there was no way, once the project was launched, to limit the objective to the single question "Who was S.A.?" It soon became clear that any real understanding of S.A. had to be based on an in-depth understanding of Lawrence himself -- depths beyond the reach of any biography yet written about him at that time, that is, the l930's. What I learned was not only the bright incontrovertible truth of S.A., but vastly more. And this knowledge gave me, who had come to reject the prototype "heroes" of our culture, a new kind of image to reach for, in Lawrence as he came to be.

This was a monumental task for a mere student of humanity without professional training -- without indeed much training of any kind, since I was only l6 at the time I began my studies -- for T.E. Lawrence is surely among the most complex personalities of history. In his unique, cryptic, often sardonically-teasing fashion, Lawrence has left for us, scattered and half-buried throughout his works, all the jigsaw puzzle pieces needed to discover the multi-faceted meanings, level upon level, that make up S.A. So intricate is the final answer that the controversy the initials have engendered over the years is of little wonder. In the end, by putting together the pieces from Lawrence's own words, in his books, his letters, his notes to and recorded conversations with his contemporary biographers, there came into being an illuminating vision of his love for one woman, and beyond that of a love for humanity, and justice, and peace, and freedom -- the totality of the ideal standard for which his S.A. stood.

The pages on this site detail my solution of the riddle and the steps by which I arrived at the solution. Identifying the most important "who's" and "what's," I mean to provide the rationale for each such identification, detailing the significance of each of these persons and/or concepts in Lawrence's life and why they fit the part of S.A., based both on their specific applicability to the initials, and on their conformance to the configuration of the character or concept addressed in the poem -- S.A. whom he loved -- S.A. for whom he wrote his will across the sky in stars, "to earn you freedom..."

Here is the complete text of the dedicatory poem:

To S.A.

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands

and wrote my will across the sky in stars

To earn you Freedom, the seven pillared worthy house,

that your eyes might be shining for me

When we came.

Death seemed my servant on the road, till we were near

and saw you waiting:

When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me

and took you apart:

Into his quietness.

Love, the way-weary, groped to your body, our brief wage

ours for the moment

Before earth's soft hand explored your shape, and the blind

worms grew fat upon

Your substance.

Men prayed me that I set our work, the inviolate house,

as a memory of you.

But for fit monument I shattered it, unfinished: and now

The little things creep out to patch themselves hovels

in the marred shadow

Of your gift.

The current theory, increasingly confirmed by researchers over more than half a century of study and now virtually universally accepted, is that S.A. stands for Salim Ahmed, generally known as "Dahoum," the donkey boy at the digs in Carchemish on the Euphrates, where Lawrence spent some years as a young archeologist prior to the First World War.

At the opposite end of the spectrum of belief is that of Keith N. Hull, associate professor of English at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. Using (Frederic) Manning's idea that Seven Pillars is a 'riddle,'" Dr. Hull writes in The T. E. Lawrence Puzzle,

]

we can posit answers to some persistent problems in understanding Lawrence's masterpiece. One of the book's most discussed aspects is the identity of S.A. Recent investigations by Colin Simpson, Phillip Knightley, and John Mack have established with reasonable certainty that S.A. was Lawrence's Carchemish companion Dahoum. This identification tells us something about Lawrence's motives, but it actually leads us away from the meaning of the poem. 'To S.A.' should be read in light of its contribution to the meaning of Seven Pillars. The poem is deliberately mysterious in order to establish the symbolic nature of the book the reader is about to encounter. S.A. is not a person; he -- or it -- is a symbol, a suggestion of one or some of the mysterious forces operating beneath the documentary surface. Reading Dahoum into the poem puts Seven Pillars too squarely in the realm of mundane experience -- Lawrence sought to liberate the Arabs as a worthy gift to a loved one. Instead, S.A. is a symbol, an evocation of bundled entities within Lawrence and without, whose precise nature we can never know as certainly as we can know deep friendship or love.

My own position lies in between -- or better, overlaps both of the above. Dahoum, as one of the closest friends Lawrence ever had, indeed fits the configuration of the dedication in its simpler aspects. So does one other person -- the woman T.E. loved, whom no other searcher for the truth ever uncovered but whose identity I will establish. But truly S.A. is, beyond Dahoum and this lady, a symbol -- a suggestion of mysterious forces operating beneath the surface of the book -- "an evocation of bundled entities within Lawrence and without." (That term incidentally is Lawrence's own -- in the Seven Pillars he spoke of "the bundled entities within me.") Moreover, this lady in fact bridges the gap (because she fulfills the requisites in both categories) between the stated simpler aspects of meaning that give us Dahoum, and the deeper, mysterious, symbolic meanings envisioned by Dr. Hull.

TE's reference, in his chapter on Myself, to the "bundled entities within me" coordinates with what I discovered -- that is, the bundled entities within S.A. S.A., among other things, is "TES," that is, "T. E. Shaw," i.e., Lawrence himself under the name he chose for living out the later years of his life -- yes -- Shaw of Arabia (a more detailed validation of this is set forth in a separate chapter). So this has a kind of duality of coordination, tying himself as S.A. into all the initials' other meanings. I agree totally with Dr. Hull's reference to the "symbolic nature" of the book and the "mysterious forces operating beneath the documentary surface." However I have to take exception to his statement that we can never know the "precise nature" of the bundled entities within its author -- because in the course of my own research the resolution of all the seemingly contradictory things Lawrence said and wrote about those entities did at last come clear. My later chapters, in addition to detailing the multi-level meanings of S.A., also take up the correlative multi-level meanings ("bundled entities") within the book, including those within the concept of "The House" of the dedicatory poem -- the "seven pillared worthy house" in its first stanza, and in its final one, "Men prayed me that I set our work, the inviolate house, as a memory of you" -- and beyond that, Lawrence's own tying his book's title in to the Bible's "Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars." (Proverbs 9:l --letter 4/20/27 to H.H.Banbury.)

Here then is my contribution to the study of T. E. Lawrence, this legend whom I too have loved. First, a list of the meanings I have identified. Then a series of chapters dealing in detail with one or more of these entities -- why each person or idea came to fulfill the character I had established as my concept of Lawrence's S.A., and what each of those mysterious forces meant to him.

At the head of the list is his lady. She was "Mrs. Fontana." He always referred to her by that formal name. She was Winifred Fontana, the wife of the British Consul at Aleppo during the years Lawrence worked at Carchemish. Because I came to believe that she was the brightest star in the S.A. constellation, my Chapter II -- her chapter -- constitutes the major portion of this study. In addition, inexorably tied to her, S.A. stands for a journey on the Euphrates. Because they are inseparable, the story of the journey will be told in her chapter too. How Mrs. Fontana, ostensibly "W.F.", becomes "S.A." is detailed therein, as is the relationship of "S.A." to the "journey on the Euphrates," in metaphor as well as in fact.

There follow five strictly symbolic concepts embodied in S.A. (Again, how each of these fits the initials is set forth in its specific chapter.) These include:

· Cyphers and the way of the Sufi;

· Himself, to whom he cried out in the last lines of the dedicatory poem;

Men prayed me that I set our work, the inviolate house,

as a memory of you.

But for fit monument I shattered it, unfinished: and now

The little things creep out to patch themselves hovels

in the marred shadow

Of your gift.

· "The effort," incorporating not just the Arabian campaign, but even more significantly his book itself, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, A Triumph;

· Peace.

To these meanings should be added the already widely acknowledged Dahoum.

The structure of my research revolves around certain new ideas concerning the "cypher" that Lawrence recurrently asserted was the hidden key to his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. My discovery of the key came about during the earliest years of my research, when I first set out to prove that S.A. was a woman. Once I unearthed the initial key it quickly became evident that I was dealing with complexities far greater than I had imagined. Spread out before me was a jigsaw puzzle of literally massive proportions. It was clear my search would need to expand into several additional new directions.

Rather than go into detail here in Chapter I on the beginnings and the progress of the research, I plan to deal with it in bits and pieces, as it happened. Since I came upon the initial key during my search for S.A. the woman, that discovery is recounted in the chapter about her, Chapter II. In succeeding chapters, little by little the jigsaw puzzle pieces fit into place, until in the end the tapestry of T.E. Lawrence and S.A. comes into being in its glorious wholeness.

I do however want to cover here in some detail one particular jigsaw piece (one of the components of the Seven Pillars that puzzled me from the very beginning), because it played a significant part as my studies proceeded in establishing the parameters within which any identification of S.A. had to fall. This was the phrase of affirmation that leaps out to catch the attention of the student of Lawrence from the front cover of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom: "the sword also means clean-ness and death." I say leaps out, because it is the only text on the front cover -- no title or author's name as was the usual practice in Lawrence's day. The phrase is framed by two Arabian swords, their handles separated at the top of the design, their fierce tips crossed at its bottom. It is written on six lines, thus:

the

sword

also means

clean-ness

&

death

with a slight break, as shown, between the words "also" and "means."

As I read the Seven Pillars, I had always in the back of my mind the thought to watch for this phrase -- but never did it appear. I began to check as to whether it might be a quote from some book that had had an influence on Lawrence -- perhaps the Morte d'Arthur, or the Koran. These efforts were however at a superficial level only, and produced only frustration. As will be detailed in Chapter II, the word "death" did fairly early become a key concept in the research, especially as it related to a multi-level character of the entire book, also detailed in that chapter. Then, to my joy, some five years later, tying in to the multi-level concept, there came a great breakthrough regarding the front-cover phrase when in l939 I received from a friend in England a copy of The Letters of T.E. Lawrence. There is a specific reference to the phrase in a fall l922 letter to Eric Kennington, the artist who contributed the bulk of the illustrations for the Subscribers Edition of the Seven Pillars. In the letter Lawrence is discussing one of Kennington's drawings, "The Last Dream." He mentions an initial feeling that something about the work "is either too restless, or not right," and suggests changes that might erase this feeling. However he notes that "There's a hypnotic suggestiveness about your work, which makes me give in to it. So I like the dream very much in retrospect." -- then concludes his commentary on the drawing with these words:

There was a little bit of land behind the palm tree, leading to the sword, which felt peaceful. The sword was odd. The Arab Movement was one: Feisal another (his name means a flashing sword): then 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. I don't know which was in your mind, but they all came to me -- and the sword also means clean-ness and death.

Again, these words leaped out at me, as strikingly as their final sentence had done earlier from the front-cover -- a shocker in several directions. For one thing, they were a further confirmation of my assessment of the multi-level meanings of the book. Indeed I saw them as a clue purposely offered by Lawrence, writing as he did of the multiple meanings of the sword, to be picked up if not by Kennington himself then by any possible future reader of this letter -- one important "key" to the "cypher" to which Lawrence recurrently referred in the Seven Pillars. They were also a guide to the fact that I needed to deal specifically with the concept of the sword in the whole context of the Seven Pillars. But even beyond that, I suddenly saw how the front-cover phrase connected with S.A., which by now I had already concluded was in itself also a multi-level bundle of entities. Especially in view of the wider space, on the front cover, between the word "also" and the word "means," I now re-read its text:

"The sword also means clean-ness and death"

that is,

"S.A. means cleanness and death"

If I was right -- and knowing Lawrence and his love for puzzles, for cyphers, and for initials, I couldn't doubt that I was -- here was this immediate clue, eclatant in its clarity, right there before our eyes, on the cover -- this "cypher" clue given us by Lawrence before we should even open the book, pointing us to S.A. of the dedication on its very first page, and telling us the underlying meaning that ties all of the elements of S.A. together -- "S.A. means clean-ness and death." Based on the several entities I had already determined made up part of S.A., I saw that each of these, at the outset of the campaign in Arabia, had constituted for Lawrence a revered person or objective -- a thing of clean-ness (in the dedicatory poem, "I loved you"). By the end of the campaign, each had ended in actual or symbolic death (in the poem, "But for fit monument I shattered it unfinished . . . the marred shadow of your gift.") Yes, the sword, of which Lawrence wrote to Kennington "The Arab Movement was one," was an element of S.A. in itself -- the Sword of Arabia -- and was the element that by its raison d'etre did itself and all the others in -- all the things he fought for, "to earn you freedom" because "I loved you," in the Arab campaign. Yes, S.A. means clean-ness and death.

The above bit of riddle solution is a prototype of how a lot of my "research" evolved toward solution of the puzzle. The more I read, the more I found clues all over the place: some in words used in significant contexts, whose first letters stood for initials which then might or might not stand in addition for something else, as in "the sword also means" in the front-cover phrase; some by specific paragraph division, as in his "Epilogue"; some by the placement of a certain word in a spot guaranteed to assault the reader for special attention; some by references in letters to such things as books he had admired; some by use of a word or phrase characteristic of a given group of metaphysical or philosophic thinkers.

The whole years-long effort was great fun, from the moment I hit upon the right track, until in the end the jigsaw puzzle pieces one by one fell into place. This phase of the work was done at last -- all the knowledge gathered and all the answers completed -- by the late l970's. Certain further facts that have come to light since that date have added color, or reinforced further here and there. Two great books in particular -- John E. Mack's A Prince of Our Disorder, and The T.E. Lawrence Puzzle, editor Stephen E. Tabachnick -- were among the reinforcements. But nothing has occurred that changes or negates my essential conclusions.

I have noted that all the loose ends were finally tied up -- and this I believe to be positively true with respect to resolution of the T.E.L. and S.A. puzzle.

However there remains a considerable amount of fascinating additional investigative reporting to be done, for example the source of the phrase, "the sword also means clean-ness and death. I hope some of my readers will come forward with the answers.

Above and beyond the solution of the S.A. riddle, I believe the conclusions offered in my work also provide significant new means for understanding what constituted the basic forces, both positive and destructive, which during and after the war brought on Lawrence's self-condemnation -- his determination to complete a great book -- his subsequent ordeal by fire "in the ranks" of the R.A.F. -- and before the end, his remarkable recovery and achievement of that ideal standard he sought in life.

There are those who say he never found it -- that he died unfulfilled and unhappy -- an "empty soul." Much evidence to the contrary he has left for us in his own writings, and much more comes to us from those who knew him well. My last chapters cite such evidence, but wanting to refute here immediately those who say he died an "empty soul," I list the following brief testimony -- a quote from one of his best friends (and one among his many biographers), Basil Liddell Hart. Writing after Lawrence's death in the book edited by T.E.'s brother Arnold W. Lawrence and titled T. E. Lawrence by His Friends, Liddell Hart quotes from two of Lawrence's letters, written in anticipation of his retirement from the RAF and his forthcoming years of enjoying his beloved small cottage -- "Clouds Hill, Moreton, Dorset":

“For myself I am going to taste the flavour of true leisure. For 46 years have I worked and been worked. Remaineth 23 years (of expectancy). May they be like Flecker's "a great Sunday that goes on and on." And: "I hope I have enough mind for it to be quietly happy by itself." (Lawrence died, on his way home to Clouds Hill after a jaunt into town to send a telegram, less than five months later.)

Liddell Hart then concludes his essay with this tribute to his friend:

Nothing that he might have done is equal to what he may do -- as a legendary figure. Legends are more potent than emperors or dictators. . . . .And for once legend had a really substantial basis. There will be nothing but good in it, if this real message is remembered, and not merely the romance.

For he was a message to mankind in freedom from possessiveness. In freedom from competitiveness. In freeing oneself from ambition, especially from the lust of power. His power sprang from knowledge and understanding, not from position. His influence was free from domination. That influence is likely to grow -- because it is a spiritual message transmitting a spiritual force. The man was great; the message is greater.