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

Peace

Peace after the war, in the Middle East, and in himself.

General content, the peace he had intended for the Middle East after the war, but primarily the peace he found for himself in the final years of his life, and the legacy he left for us. "Peace" is of course S.A. by virtue of salaam aleykum. (E)ssalaamu Aleykum. This is contraction of al salaamu aleykum. Also transliterated (i)ssalaamu aleykum. But the (E) or (i) essentially come out silent so for practical purposes the sound is a mute vowel, the double "S", sounding from the English ear: Ssssalaam Aleykum, so SA is a reasonable initial for this too. (Note: this is something John Mack didn't come up with -- this info doesn't come from him, but rather from the few Arabic lessons I took from Yasin al Khalesi -- just happened to come at the same time). I'll also then obviously delete that identity from chapter V, and call that one just "The Future."

Did he achieve what he set out to achieve in RAF?

He "despises" the army -- Letters, p. 4ll. He "liked the planning and hated the action (planning did not include killing) -- not sure where this quote came from. Also Allenby's statement that Lawrence hated war. "I was unlike a soldier: hated soldiering. . . I had never thought myself into the mind of a real commander compelled to fight a campaign of his own." SPW p. ll4. He talks of how he wanted to stay in Cairo working behind the scenes on maps, intelligence, etc. They wanted him to go back to Arabia. "I urged my complete unfitness for the job: said I hated responsibility -- obviously the position of a conscientious adviser would be responsible . . . the duty of succeeding with men, of disposing them to any purpose, would be doubly hard on me. . . . As our revolt succeeded, onlookers have praised its leadership: but behind the scenes lay all the vices of amateur control, experimental councils, divisions, whimsicality."

Re "can't change anything" -- reason is pessimism -- "but there's a deeper sense which remembers other landscapes -- amd to that sense nothing can be changeless. Letters p. 4l2. He has "achieved peace of mind in the ranks" p. 43l And use quotes marked "use" on p. 4l9 and p. 368, as well as 4ll.

Winston Churchill said of Lawrence, not long after Lawrence's death: "I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time. I do not see his like elsewhere. I fear whatever our need we shall never see his like again." From Churchill's "Allocution" when he unveiled the Lawrence Memorial at his old school in Oxford in l936: "the generous majesty of his nature," "indifferent to power and fame," "a dweller upon the mountain tops" (approximate quotes). Also include brief quotes from new Churchill note of l954, OK'ing the Allocution as an intro to the Home Letters book. (same printout). Churchill, on the “dweller upon the mountain tops:”

The world naturally looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is some one outside its jurisdiction; some one strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independently of the ordinary currents of human action; . . . He was indeed a dweller upon the mountain tops where the air is cold, crisp, rarefied, and where the view on clear days commands all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.

This chapter tells of the kind of man Lawrence became at the end of his life -- the last years in the RAF, and the intervals, and final days at Clouds Hill. I plan to quote a number of people who knew him well in his later years as well as material from his letters to friends during this final period of his life. I shall also go back and pick up the great paragraphs on war and peace, on youth and age, on his dreams of the kind of "new heaven and new earth" he had hoped to bring into being, which he wrote for the planned (but omitted) opening chapter of the Seven Pillars; then shall cite a strange prediction he made regarding events, related to these dreams, that were to occur later in the century. Finally, I shall tell of how "his like" lives in the inspiration of the legacy he left us, and the degree to which -- in my view -- his legacy and his dreams are built into the dreams of the new breed of people of our present time.

Greek inscription over door at Cloud's Hill. Transliterated, they are "Ou frontis" which means roughly "so what?" or "who cares?" TE would probably have translated Ou frontis as "Hoots!" (see his use of that in Letters). Hippocleides was one of the Suitors of Agarista, who lost his chance at gaining her, by foolish acts. After the king told Hippocleides that he was no longer in the running, he said “who cares?”

In his later years, TE signed off many of his letters "PEACE" -- T.E.S.

Re end of life: All the happy notes re Cloud's Hill. and the quotes on his own "happiness" (of which there are many, see Letters). Tongue in cheek, importance of last letter -- "There is something broken in the works, my will I think" -- so he had at last achieved what he had sought, to use the will to break the will. Free now to die. He had completed the tasks he had set himself. Not just the RAF, but the l2 years of "minting" -- the end of the flagellation-purification beatings -- the tackling of the whole deal again (Failure is God's freedom to mankind). Fulfillment permits dying and makes it not matter. Ov Frontis (Hoots). All carefully planned. He did not commit suicide, but he was now free to die. Note his fear of fatal beating until he had completed the l2 years. Fear of possible fatal beating at Bruce's hands -- and statement in the "Uncle's" letter that now further "punishment" could be foregone. The program was completed. He was leaving the RAF. If "failure," it was another of those "freedom to mankind" kinds.Free now to die, as it might happen. Note, none of his several cycle accidents were fatal till program completed. All the war danger was of course prior to the program.

The Mint. The cure -- and the writing of this book, and the recovery as seen in it. Also in his letters. Also in TEL to his Biogs. Also in TEL by Friends.

Re Suicide: See his comments on this in SPW in small aeroplane. Turns down the idea. "Mind suicide" instead. I am sure he was not about to give up his program for himself. The "suicide threat" was a final effort at getting back into the RAF. And it worked! He couldn't, or certainly wouldn't directly threaten Trenchard -- not his way. He did it very cagily as usual. Note, he absolutely did not want to die till he completed the "minting."

It's strange how all his biographers downplay the "happiness" at the end of his life. More re Cloud's Hill -- his books there -- "a great air (note this relates to lifting above and beyond one's self -- the essence of what is immortal in those who have gone before you -- continuity of mankind etc. (see Letters). Important, also, is Chapter XXXIII, re war, planning for war, conditioning of men's minds ("brainwashing!") -- guerrilla war. This chapter certainly relates to his dominance (and fear of dominance) over men.

Friendship: see quote somewhere about how it is being able to be together without saying anything -- and I have not had that since SA died. R.Graves? Or Liddell-Hart? Or in Letters?

In his later, self-accepting years, he came to acknowledge and approve the truth about such points as his being a "fraud," and the "falsity" of his position, etc. -- which in fact (had he been able to divorce his self-analysis from the massive and destructive effects of the Deraa beating) he knew all the time.

Wells Cathedral --the extent to which recovery already on the way, in his Letters re Wells. His earlier feelings about the cathedral -- obsessive, possessive -- "crying-precious." Letters p. 420 & 42l. Also, reference to Sash-Windows (replacing old leaded ones?), Letters, p. 420; change my leaded panes to sash-windows". XVth century Ancient Gate House -- check Wells folder (& re Glastonbury too). Ladies & poppies?

S.A. ref. Peace is (l) peace after the war, and (2) Lawrence's own peace with himself. Very important tie-in here to the Einstein prediction. There is great material re this in the correspondence between Einstein and Sigmund Freud in the early l930's (l93l or l932) -- Einstein crediting Freud with the essential need to end war both within man himself and between nations. Marvelous letters. Lawrence being who he was would certainly have been up on everything that was going on in Europe re rumblings of another war to come, fear of which had set Einstein -- widely known as a consummate pacifist -- on the road to setting up the group of intelligentsia about which he initiated the correspondence with Freud, which was to work toward ideas on how to deliver man from the insanity of resolving international conflict by means of war. Lawrence (as I've said many times) hated war. Also, re war within, he spoke of the warring elements within himself -- the bundles of entities within me -- these his l2-year RAF stint was planned to resolve. Re international conflict, his letters right at the very end state that he would possibly be going back into public service, but note he stated specifically "Home Defence," which would be a very different thing than war in faraway lands to protect the oil interests in the Levant, etc., and not to risk the lives of British boys in "Mespot."

Re TEL and Wells Cathedral

On one of my many journeys of search into the places that meant much to Lawrence, I came into Wells very late one night, on the bus from Glastonbury, in the driving rain. We walked, looking for a place to stay, visibility down to a few yards in the rain and the dark, and came to the hundreds-of-years-old "Ancient Gate House" inn. They gave us a room at the back, upstairs -- "You'll be able to see Cathedral from your window in the morning." The rising accent on morning brought to memory the lilting language of not-far-away Wales.

And in the morning it was all there, strikingly real as if happening now -- Lawrence and the child. Through the lacy trees, framed in the casement window (remembering Lawrence on how the old leaded windows were giving way to these "modern ones!"), lay that incredible greensward, green as only England-after-the-rain can be green, star-spangled velvet in the morning sun, carrying the mind forward and upward into the infinite majesty of this Wells facade.

Though I had long had the intellectual knowledge of Lawrence's mending health during the years in the RAF, only now -- standing here where he had stood, seeing in the mind's landscape Lawrence watching the child, a tiny "tumbling daisy at the tower-foot" (approximate quote) -- only now, remembering his almost possessive ". . . made Wells crying-precious to me," then hearing again his voice in the words of the letter to Curtis -- only now could I imagine the already remarkable degree of recovery of the spirit that little more than a year before had written of children as worms, products of lust.

TEL: "For example is eternal, and the rings of its extending influence infinite."