Later Lawrence authors, revisionists and champions alike, were annoyed in particular by the young American’s itch to portray himself as having been present for events at which he was not present—most egregiously at engagements with the enemy. This authorial aggrandizement had been more pronounced in the articles Thomas had written about Lawrence for magazines in the United States and England, articles which had preceded his book. In those pieces, Thomas is not above placing himself on a camel near Lawrence’s as he heads off on “a little dynamiting party.” After the Turkish track and train have been exploded, “we all ran back,” Thomas writes in one of those articles, “climbed on our camels and swung off across the desert as fast as we could.” In fact, Thomas was not invited to witness dynamiting or combat of any sort during his visit to Arabia.
In his book, Thomas, having been called out for such fibs, merely tells the story of how Lawrence’s efforts result in a Turkish train “engine,” with “a clanking and clattering of iron,” rising “from the tracks” and breaking “in two.” Thomas never says whether or not he witnessed this spectacular scene, though the wealth of detail and a previous scene of him riding camels with Lawrence could lead a reader to think he had.
Thomas’s book also gets some biographical information wrong, beginning with his hero’s pedigree: Lawrence’s parents were not married (a big deal in those days). They had made up the surname Lawrence. T. E. Lawrence was not, therefore, a descendent of “Sir Robert Lawrence, who accompanied Richard the Lion-Hearted to the Holy Land.” This error can’t really be pinned on Thomas, however, since his protagonist’s illegitimacy was still hidden. More perplexing is the fact that Thomas has Lawrence as the second youngest of five boys. He was the second oldest. Was this a Lawrence fib?
Some battle details in the book are also erroneous. Thomas portrays Lawrence and Feisal’s forces as sweeping in from the desert to join in the attack on the Red Sea port Wejh. In fact, they arrived days late for this battle. Thomas’s journal makes clear that this account, a misleading account, was passed on to him by Lawrence. It is not clear why Thomas, also incorrectly, places Lawrence at a battle in Petra.
Thomas has an eye for Arab culture: “Where we take off our hats in entering a friend’s house, they take off their shoes.” And Thomas often seems to be playing a positive role in championing Arab virtues—bravery, independence. He makes sure to credit Arab advances in science and medicine. But sometimes Thomas’s characterizations of these people wander a bit too close to stereotypes: “From all parts of the desert came swarthy, lean, picturesque sons of Ishmael to avenge and free themselves at last.”
It gets worse. The events described here took place a century ago. Culturally—based on discussions of “the evil eye” and the occasional appearance of slaves—these events seem even more distant. Plenty of venerable prejudices also survived at that time—in Arabia, in both the United States and Europe. And Thomas did not always rise above them. Arabs are compared to children on more than one occasion in this book. A man from Sudan is “a wild-eyed fuzzy-wuzzy.” And a number of Thomas’s discussions of women here are offensive to twenty-first-century eyes.
The author of this seminal but imperfect book managed, much more effectively than its subject, to move on to other formidable accomplishments. His discovery of T. E. Lawrence would hardly be the only great adventure of Lowell Thomas’s life: he would make early and intrepid visits to Afghanistan, New Guinea, Antarctica and, by mule caravan, Tibet. When Thomas compares a wadi in his book to “the Bad Lands of Dakota and the high plateau of Central Baluchistan,” one can rest assured that he had seen both. He would circle the globe numerous times.
And Thomas’s discovery of “Lawrence of Arabia” would hardly be his only claim to fame. The various crisscrossing career paths Thomas followed led him to become, in the 1930s and 1940s, arguably as well-known as any journalist has ever been in the United States—host of both the most successful radio newscast and the preeminent newsreels, when radio and newsreels were perhaps the dominant news media in the United States.
Thomas would also make his mark in television and film. And his book on Lawrence was the first of, by his count, fifty-four books upon which the name Lowell Thomas would appear. Most were written or assembled in large part by others. This one, his first, he wrote by himself. It demonstrates that Thomas did not have to hire ghostwriters because of any deficiency in his ability to craft sentences or to undertake research. He hired ghostwriters because of a shortage of patience and time. His long life was chocka-block with people (many of them accomplished), activities (many of them outdoors), and successes (in a wide variety of realms).
But it was Lawrence’s story that gave Thomas’s career its initial boost, and Lawrence’s story continued to loom large in his life. For much of the twentieth century it continued to loom large in popular imagination, too. Lowell Thomas deserves much of the credit for that. If he hadn’t sensed a good story in that blue-eyed man in Arab robes, if he hadn’t finagled his way to Aqaba, if he hadn’t brought out as much drama as there was in the story (and, occasionally, more), few would have learned of Lawrence or even, it is possible, the Arab Revolt. And most of those hundred or so other books on “Lawrence of Arabia” likely would not have been written.
Mitchell Stephens author of The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th-Century Journalism Professor of Journalism Carter Institute New York University 2017
WITH LAWRENCE IN ARABIA
WITH LAWRENCE IN ARABIA
CHAPTER I
A MODERN ARABIAN KNIGHT
ONE day not long after Allenby had captured Jerusalem, I happened to be in front of a bazaar stall on Christian Street, remonstrating with a fat old Turkish shopkeeper who was attempting to relieve me of twenty piasters for a handful of dates. My attention was suddenly drawn to a group of Arabs walking in the direction of the Damascus Gate. The fact that they were Arabs was not what caused me to drop my tirade against the high cost of dates, for Palestine, as all men know, is inhabited by a far greater number of Arabs than Jews. My curiosity was excited by a single Bedouin, who stood out in sharp relief from all his companions. He was wearing an agal, kuffieh, and aba such as are worn only by Near Eastern potentates. In his belt was fastened the short curved sword of a prince of Mecca, insignia worn by descendants of the Prophet.
Christian Street is one of the most picturesque and kaleidoscopic thoroughfares in the Near East. Russian Jews, with their corkscrew curls, Greek priests in tall black hats and flowing robes, fierce desert nomads in goatskin coats reminiscent of the days of Abraham, Turks in balloon-like trousers, Arab merchants lending a brilliant note with their gay turbans and gowns—all rub elbows in that narrow lane of bazaars, shops, and coffee-houses that leads to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Jerusalem is not a melting-pot. It is an uncompromising meeting-place of East and West. Here are accentuated, as if sharply outlined in black and white by the desert sun, the racial peculiarities of Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan peoples. A stranger must, indeed, have something extraordinary about him to attract attention in the streets of the Holy City. But as this young Bedouin passed by in his magnificent royal robes, the crowds in front of the bazaars turned to look at him.
It was not merely his costume, nor yet the dignity with which he carried his five feet three, marking him every inch a king or perhaps a caliph in disguise who had stepped out of the pages of “The Arabian Nights.” The striking fact was that this mysterious prince of Mecca looked no more like a son of Ishmael than an Abyssinian looks like one of Stefansson’s red-haired Eskimos. Bedouins, although of the Caucasian race, have had their skins scorched by the relentless desert sun until their complexions are the color of lava. But this young man was as blond as a Scandinavian, in whose veins flow viking blood and the cool traditions of fiords and sagas. The nomadic sons of Ishmael all wear flowing beards, as their ancestors did in the time of Esau. This youth, with the curved gold sword, was clean-shaven. He walked rapidly with his hands folde
d, his blue eyes oblivious to his surroundings, and he seemed wrapped in some inner contemplation. My first thought as I glanced at his face was that he might be one of the younger apostles returned to life. His expression was serene, almost saintly, in its selflessness and repose.
“Who is he?” I turned eagerly to the Turk profiteer, who could only manipulate a little tourist English. He merely shrugged his shoulders.
“Who could he be?” I was certain I could obtain come information about him from General Storrs, governor of the Holy City, and so I strolled over in the direction of his palace beyond the old wall, neat Solomon’s Quarries. General Ronald Storrs, British successor to Pontius Pilate, had been Oriental secretary to the high commissioner of Egypt before the fall of Jerusalem and for years had kept in intimate touch with the peoples of Palestine. He spoke Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Arabic with the same fluency with which he spoke English. I knew he could tell me something about the mysterious blond Bedouin.
“Who is this blue-eyed, fair-haired fellow wandering about the bazaars wearing the curved sword of a prince of——?”
The general did not even let me finish the question but quietly opened the door of an adjoining room* There, seated at the same table where von Falkenhayn had worked out his unsuccessful plan for defeating Allenby, was the Bedouin prince, deeply absorbed in a ponderous tome on archaeology.
In introducing us the governor said, “I want you to meet Colonel Lawrence, the Uncrowned King of Arabia.”
He shook hands shyly and with a certain air of aloofness, as if his mind were on buried treasure and not on the affairs of this immediate world of campaigns and warfare. And that was how I first made the acquaintance of one of the most picturesque personalities of modern times, a man who will be blazoned on the romantic pages of history with Raleigh, Drake, Clive, and Gordon.
During the period of the World War, years crammed with epic events, among others two remarkable figures appeared. The dashing adventures and anecdotes of their careers will furnish golden themes to the writers of the future, as the lives of Ulysses, King Arthur, and Richard the Lion-Hearted did to the poets, troubadours, and chroniclers of other days. One is a massive, towering, square-jawed six-footer, that smashing British cavalry leader, Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby, commander of the twentieth-century crusaders, who gained world fame because of his exploits in driving the Turks from the Holy Land and bringing to realization the dream of centuries. The other is the undersized, beardless youth whom I first saw absorbed in a technical treatise on the cuneiform inscriptions discovered on the bricks of ancient Babylon, and whose chief interests in life were poetry and archæology.
The spectacular achievements of Thomas Edward Lawrence, the young Oxford graduate, were unknown to the public at the end of the World War. Yet, quietly, without any theatrical head-lines or fanfare of trumpets, he brought the disunited nomadic tribes of Holy and Forbidden Arabia into a unified campaign against their Turkish oppressors, a difficult and splendid stroke of policy, which caliphs, statesmen, and sultans had been unable to accomplish in centuries of effort! Lawrence placed himself at the head of the Bedouin army of the shereef of Mecca, who was afterward proclaimed king of the Hedjaz. He united the wandering tribes of the desert, restored the sacred places of Islam to the descendants of the Prophet, and drove the Turks from Arabia forever. Allenby liberated Palestine, the Holy Land of the Jews and Christians. Lawrence freed Arabia, the Holy Land of millions of Mohammedans.
I had heard of this mystery man many times during the months I was in Palestine with Allenby. The first rumor about Lawrence reached me when I was on the way from Italy to Egypt. An Australian naval officer confided to me that an Englishman was supposed to be in command of an army of wild Bedouins somewhere in the trackless desert of the far-off land of Omar and Abu-Bekr. When I landed in Egypt I heard fantastic tales of his exploits. His name was always mentioned in hushed tones, because at that time the full facts regarding the war in the Land of the Arabian Nights were being kept secret.
Until the day I met him in the palace of the governor of Jerusalem I was unable to picture him as a real person. He was to me merely a new Oriental legend. Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, Bagdad—in fact, all the cities of the Near East—are so full of color and romance that the mere mention of them is sufficient to stimulate the imagination of matter-of-fact Westerners, who are suddenly spirited away on the magic carpet of memory to childhood scenes familiar through the tales of “The Thousand and One Nights.” So I had come to the conclusion that Lawrence was the product of Western imagination overheated by exuberant contact with the East. But the myth turned out to be very much of a reality.
The five-foot-three Englishman standing before me wore a kuffieh of white silk and gold embroidery held in place over his hair by an agal, two black woolen cords wrapped with silver and gold thread. His heavy black camel’s-hair robe or aba covered a snow-white undergarment fastened at the waist by a wide gold-brocaded belt in which he carried the curved sword of a prince of Mecca. This youth had virtually become the ruler of the Holy Land of the Mohammedans and commander-in-chief of many thousands of Bedouins mounted on racing camels and fleet Arabian horses. He was the terror of the Turks.
Through his discovery that archaeology held a fascination for me, we became better acquainted during the following days in Jerusalem before he returned to his Arabian army. We spent many hours together, although I did not suspect that it might possibly be my good fortune to join him later in the desert. When we were in the company of officers whom he had just met he usually sat in one corner, listening intently to everything that was being said but contributing little to the conversation. When we were alone he would get up from his chair and squat on the floor in Bedouin fashion. The first time he did this he blushed in his peculiar way and excused himself, saying that he had been in the desert so long that he found it uncomfortable sitting in a chair.
I made many unsuccessful attempts to induce him to tell me something of his life and adventures in the desert, where few Europeans except Sir Richard Burton and Charles Doughty ever dared venture before him. But he always adroitly changed the subject to archæology, comparative religion, Greek literature, or Near Eastern politics. Even concerning his connection with the Arabian army he would say nothing, except to give the credit for everything that happened in the desert campaign to the Arab leaders, or to Newcombe, Joyce, Cornwallis, Dawney, Marshall, Stirling, Hornby, and his other British associates.
Surely Destiny never played a stranger prank than when it selected, as the man to play the major rôle in the liberation of Arabia, this Oxford graduate whose life-ambition was to dig in the ruins of antiquity, and to uncover and study long-forgotten cities.
CHAPTER II
IN SEARCH OF A LOST CIVILIZATION
WHEN we first met in Jerusalem, and later on in the solitude of the desert, I was unable to draw Lawrence out about his early life. So, after the termination of the war, on my way back to America, I visited England in the hope of being able to learn something concerning his career prior to 1914, which might throw a light on the formative period when Destiny was preparing him for his important rôle. The war had so scattered his family and early associates that I found it difficult to obtain aught but the most meager information about his boyhood.
County Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, was the original home of the Lawrences. This may partly account for his unusual powers of physical endurance, for the inhabitants of Galway are among the hardiest of a hardy race. But in his veins there also flows Scotch, Welsh, English, and Spanish blood. Among his celebrated ancestors was Sir Robert Lawrence, who accompanied Richard the Lion-Hearted to the Holy Land, seven hundred and thirty years ago, and distinguished himself at the siege of Acre, just as the youthful T. E. Lawrence accompanied Allenby to the Holy Land and distinguished himself in its final deliverance. The brothers, Sir Henry and Sir John Lawrence of Mutiny fame, pioneers of Britain’s empire in India, were among his more recent predecessors.
H
is father, Thomas Lawrence, was at one time the owner of estates in Ireland and a great sportsman. Losing most of his worldly possessions during the Gladstone period, when the bottom fell out of land values in Ireland, he brought his family across the Irish Sea to Wales, and Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in Carnarvon County, not far from the early home of Mr. Lloyd George, who is to-day one of his warmest friends and admirers, and who once told me that he, too, regards Lawrence as one of the most picturesque figures of modern times.
Five years of his boyhood were spent on the Channel Isle of Jersey. When he was ten years of age his family migrated to the north of Scotland, remaining there for three years. They next moved to France, where young Lawrence attended a Jesuit College, although all the members of the family belong to the orthodox Church of England. From the Continent they went to Oxford; and that center of English culture, which has been their home ever since, has left its indelible mark on Lawrence. There Ned, as his boyhood companions called him, attended Oxford High School and studied under a tutor preparatory to entering the university. One of his school chums relates that although not a star athlete he had a daring spirit and was filled with the love of adventure.
“Underneath Oxford,” this companion tells us, “runs a subterranean stream bricked over, the Trill Mill Stream. Ned Lawrence and another boy, carrying lights and often lying flat to scrape through the narrow culverts, navigated the whole of that underground water passage.
“Oxford is a great boating center. Every stream that joins the Thames is explored as far up as any slender craft will float. But the River Cherwell above Islip is said by the guide-books to be ‘nowhere navigable.’ To say that is to challenge boys like Ned Lawrence to prove the statement untrue, and that is what he and a companion did. They trained their canoe to Banbury and came right down the part of the stream that was ‘nowhere navigable.’ ”
With Lawrence in Arabia Page 2
