Books: The Vanished Galahads

THE HOME LETTERS OF T. E. LAWRENCE AND HIS BROTHERS (731 pp.)—Macm/7/an ($10).

No argument can change the elderly Englishman’s probably accurate belief that his country and his world suffered an irremediable loss in “The War”—meaning, of course, World War I. The nature of that loss is defined in The Home Letters of

T. E. Lawrence and His Brothers, a massive volume of letters, written mostly by Lawrence of Arabia to his parents. They are not “great” letters—in fact, many are unspeakably dull. They are of interest today because they bring momentarily to life the principal ghosts of the lamented era.

The Lawrence family, of 2 Polstead Road, Oxford, consisted of father, mother and five sons. In this “nest of young eagles” (as an Oxford don termed it) was an atmosphere of faith, eagerness and self-confidence that seems closer in time to the court of King Arthur than to the 20th century. Each member of the Lawrence family took for granted that his duty in life was that of a Galahad: honor, rather than fair ladies, was the desired prize. The great “T. E.,” second-born of the five, and Britain’s legendary World War I hero in the turbulent Middle East, merely brought to public notice an ideal which belonged to the whole family.

The Digger. Not represented in this collection are letters from the oldest and the youngest of the brothers, both of whom, along with their aged mother, are alive today. The pages that are not taken up by T. E. are snared between:

¶ Third brother Will, an Oxford miler who once dreamed that he was “careering about … on a great horse . . . engaged in a cavalry duel with sabres with Mr. Winston Churchill.” (In those days, Churchill was a Liberal; the Lawrences were Tories to a man.) Will became a teacher in India, joined the Royal Flying Corps at the outbreak of World War I, was killed (at 26) within a week of his arrival in France.

¶ Fourth brother Frank, a mathematician, all-round athlete, footballer and rifle shot. “Lovable, affectionate, happy and gentle.” Frank had no time to ripen for anything but slaughter. In a letter marked “Not to be delivered till after my death,” Frank bade his parents a cheerful farewell —”the parting will not be for long. Merely for an infinitesimal space of time out of eternity.” He was killed at 22, three months after joining the Gloucester Regiment at the front in France.

It fell to Brother Ned (T. E.) to perform the deeds that brought fame to the family name. Ned was fond of literature, music and machinery, but his chief passion was archaeology—a bent that led him slowly but steadily through the ruined castles and abbeys of Britain and France to the “diggings” of Mesopotamia and the Arabian desert.

The Anglo-Stoic. Like his brothers, Ned was a dedicated ascetic. He never smoked, never touched liquor (“People are asses to drink such stuff”). Even of eating, he said: “To escape the humiliation of loading in food would bring one very near the angels.” When Brother Frank was killed, Ned rebuked his parents for feeling the “need … to go into mourning. I cannot see any cause at all— in any case to die for one’s country is a sort of privilege.” He even reproached his mother for expecting her sons to tell her how much they loved her. “If you only knew that if one thinks deeply about anything, one would rather die than say anything about it..”

It is just this Anglo-Stoic reticence which makes Ned’s letters read more like those of an ardent, puttering professor than an inspired leader of men. Hundreds of his early letters contain nothing more exciting than the measurements, in feet and inches, of innumerable loopholes, embrasures and arches, plus detailed information about the price of milk and bread and the state of his bicycle (“34 punctures to date … in 1,400 miles”). If Ned’s letters were the only clue to his identity, readers would think that all he did in World War I was collect stamps for his little brother, meet some amiable sheiks and try to find time to read Aristophanes. He nowhere suggests why he had to put up with the vexation of being decorated and promoted. (“They have now given me a Distinguished Service Order,” he wrote with crashing offhandedness. “It’s a pity all this good stuff is not sent to someone who would use it! Also apparently I’m a colonel . . . “)

After war’s end, Ned joined the R.A.F. as “Aircraftsman Shaw,” was posted to stations in India. Thousands of pounds poured in from his bestselling Revolt in the Desert, but Ned sent most of the profits straight to charity. Ned’s chief financial problem was how to answer his fan mail when he could only “afford two rupees [about 70¢] for stamps every week.” He noted, with a touch of malicious pleasure, that his modesty made him a thorn in the flesh of his superiors. “The officers steer clear of me, because I make them uncomfortable.”

The Mountain Dweller. Ned was 46—”too young to be happy doing nothing . . . too old for a fresh start”—when he decided to retire to a country cottage and live out his days on the equivalent of $10 a week. Said he: “There is nothing that I want to do, and nothing particularly that I am glad to have done.” He added bitterly: “Man is not an animal in which intelligence can take much pride.” A year later, flying into a skid on his motorcycle, he dashed his brains out against a tree.

It is to idealism such as that of T. E. and his brothers that old men refer when they look back on the vanished world of their youth. But even they would agree that the Lawrence brothers pushed it to a limit where it became almost inhuman—divorced from instinct and passion, too cold for natural comfort, almost too good to be true. It gave T. E., says Sir Winston Churchill in a superb preface to the Home Letters, “that touch of genius which everyone recognizes and no one can define.” but simultaneously it placed its possessor beyond the pale. For, says Churchill:

“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 someone outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; someone strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independently of the ordinary currents of human action; a being readily capable of violent revolt or supreme sacrifice, a man, solitary, austere, to whom existence is no more than a duty, yet a duty to be faithfully discharged. 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.”