Lawrence: An Unofficial Portrait

I

I FIRST saw him in Lowell Thomas’s film at the Albert Hall: glorious photography, glamour and oratory. I came out drunk. But nobody seemed to know anything about Lawrence of Arabia, and I began to forget, till a picture dealer said, ‘There was a Colonel Lawrence in here this morning. He has bought two of your soldiers and left his address.’ There it was. ‘All Souls, Oxford.’ (This was in 1920.) I wrote immediately and followed the letter.

He was on the platform, and had to introduce himself, for I could not connect him with Lowell Thomas’s screen seraph. I met a small, grinning, hatless kid, bothered by a lot of untidy hair falling over his eyes. He seemed apologetic, and made me a superior and most distinguished person. He let me plaster him with the Lowell Thomas romance, gently protesting that it was far from the truth. In his rooms he explained that he had done very little, had been extremely lucky in having good men to work with, and preferred buying pictures to fighting — that any creative artist was a much finer creature than any soldier; and managed to suggest that I was really the uncrowned king.

He giggled often. ‘I’ve written a book ... a poor thing without illustrations to help it through. Do you know any artist who could make portraits from photographs?’ I said they would be no good. The artist must see the person. ‘What a pity! For my sitters are in various parts of Arabia.’ I asked if he wished me to go out and draw them. He giggled: ‘You cannot have any conception of the difficulties. I should have to be your guide, and it would be expensive. I have no money.’ ‘How much?’ I asked; ‘I could make some.’ ‘Well, six hundred pounds would make life easy for us for . . . would six months be sufficient?’

So the plan was made in fifteen minutes, and during the next month I earned exactly £600, for there was, most conveniently waiting, a large official portrait. During that month, working in London, I lived in a fantastic Eastern romance: a jumble of Feisal’s tents, desert prophets, camel charges, muezzins. Lowell Thomas had done his work on me well and quickly.

I presented myself (and £600) to a slightly different person — very quiet, giggling less, with serious eyes; and I knew I was being commanded. I must forgive him — but how was he to know that a respectable artist could make £600? . . . Surely there was no precedent . . . He was exceedingly sorry if he had given me grounds for hope . . .

All my respect disappeared in rage, and I caught his coat to shake him, but was pulled up by his remoteness. He was not there to be shaken. . . . Next, he was planning the details of our trip.

What was happening? I asked myself in the train. This was n’t the Circassian dancing girl (see Lowell Thomas), nor the spotless white-robed descendant of the Prophet (see ditto). A person was coming through. There was something in the bright definite eyes as they glanced past, a dignity of form, an easy authority. ... I bought the tickets (which, by his orders, were not via France) and handed him one. He was gracious, but could not go with me. He must go in a battleship to a conference in Cairo. I could sell the tickets. . . . Perhaps next year — or in 1923 . . .

But my mind was too fixed; and, finding there was a possibility of catching him at the conference if I started a cross-Europe journey at once, I told him I was going alone. He then gave me all help possible in one hour’s talk about Arabia and the Arabs. He was most eloquent, and I think he used mesmeric power (later, he strongly denied doing so). He led me, stumbling after his mind, through Nejd, Yemen, Jerusalem, Damascus, Sunni, Shia, Ashkenazim, Saphardim.

I goggled, and I am sure he enjoyed painting his great mind pictures, to replace the wooden panels of the University room. But it was not the storytelling that left the clearest impression, but the teller, with his male dignity, beauty, and power. He moved little, using bodily presence just sufficiently to make brain contact. I had never seen so little employment or wastage of physical energy. The wide mouth smiled often, with humor and pleasure, sometimes extending to an unusual upward curve at the corners, a curious menacing curve, warning of danger. The face was almost lineless, and removed from me as a picture or sculpture. However gracious its attitude, it remained distant. (’He’s like a fine Buddhistic painting,’ I thought. ‘The lines have just the same harmony.’) The eyes roamed round, above, and might rest on mine or rather travel through mine, but never shared my thoughts, though noting them all.

It was at this meeting I realized both his bodily strength and his sensitiveness. Though not broad, he was weighty from shoulders to neck, which jutted, giving a forward placing to the head, and a thrust to the heavy chin. Graves has called his eyes maternal, and I think rightly so, but a near contrast was the power of the frontal bones, and their aggressiveness. It was in their form, for I never saw him frowm. Carlow says, ‘He always seemed to be looking out from under a tent.’ The fearless eyes were protected by a fighter’s bones above and below. It was the face of a heavyweight boxer, and in all circumstances dynamic. Above and round and behind this fighting machine was a full development of brain, deep from back to front, and more high than broad.

I was puzzled how the head could be at once so strong and so sensitive (not knowing that the strength I was admiring was the shadow of a burly youth five feet, six inches, and over eleven stone; he must have once been as strong as a gorilla). He stood up, and I thought, ‘ Boxer’s face, and tightrope athlete’s body. He stands as if he were floating — like a fish.’ My mental portrait drawing was sharply cut short, and conversation was made light and extremely humorous.

II

Cairo: the hotel, and signs of conference; crowds, but how to find Lawrence? There he was coming down some stairs, very small, the centre of a group. A new sight of him and his public mannerism: slight nods of the head, slight turn of the body, almost no movement of the hands, but the blue crystal eyes moving always, seeing everyone and everything, halting a second, passing on, quickly penetrating — never tiring, never idling. I thought he had not seen me, and began to fear for myself and my plan — fool that I was. He appeared, ghostlike, next day in my room. Work would keep him, he said, some weeks in Cairo. It would profit me to tour Arabia, Palestine, and Syria by car. There were two Americans in my hotel planning a trip. Sea to Beirut, car to Damascus via Baalbek, and return south along the coast to Jerusalem, where he could meet me and do something to make my portrait-painting raid inland a success. Meanwhile would I draw Allenby, and perhaps Churchill? And Ironside? ‘Ironside is great. Six feet four, and sixteen stone. Brains, too.’ ‘Why such a point of his having brains?’ I asked. ‘Have you ever met another big man with brains?’ was his answer.

During this conference time, he sat to me for the drawing which he called ‘The Cheshire Cat.’ Black-and-white chalk on dark paper. The Arabs disliked this; he afterwards told me why: they think the faces of the damned in hell are black. He would not use this for the Seven Pillars, though he liked it best. Reason: it was too obviously the spider in the web of its own spinning.

Of course he was right. The goodhearted Americans added me to their ample luggage, and at Beirut stuffed both me and it into a car and — there was Western Arabia. Camels, villages, baking desert, deep snow, rocky mountains, oleander, cactus, snakes, and Bedawi. A joyful trip and a fruitful one. At Damascus I drew Nawaf Shaalan, possibly the best Arab portrait. From Damascus we jogged down to Jerusalem, where I seemed in for a permanent halt. It produced a portrait of Storrs, however, and a friendship with him. But I wanted Feisal’s men, not Jerusalem.

Then T. E. came, as usual, opening the door without noise, and everything was possible again, probable, certain, and delightful. A mass of Emirs, Sheikhs, and Bedawi were congregating at Amman. (Did he tell them to, specially for my benefit?) Why not hire a car, and have the fun of passing by Jordan, Jericho, Es Salt? Syrians were comparatively safe though spirited chauffeurs. He would get the British representative to put up a tent for me, and give me a list of the men he wished drawn. Many of them would be there. Perhaps he would visit Amman. . . .

So off we went, Arab driver, Ford car, self and drawing materials, and extraordinary months passed in extraordinary surroundings. He did come for one day. The weekly plane dropped in a long sunny spiral, bump, bumpbump — stop. Again the loose-end multitude surrounded and swarmed on it, and their cries this time became a roar: ‘AURENS - AURENS - AURENS - AURENS!’ It seemed to me that each had need to touch him. It was half an hour before he was talking to less than a dozen at once. Re-creating the picture, I see him as detached as ever, but with great charm and very gracious. I thought he got warmth and pleasure from their love, but now know his pain also, for they longed for him to lead them again into Damascus, this time to drive out the French. Easily self-controlled, he returned a percentage of the pats, touches, and gripping of hands, giving nods, smiles, and sudden wit to chosen friends. He was apart, but they did not know it. They loved him, and gave him all their heart.

By now I did not question, ‘Where do I come in?’ I knew he saw everything. After hours of deification, and (as I know now) difficult statesmanship, he sat down in my tent, untouched and untired. Quite unmoved, he was the same as when in his Oxford rooms. He told me what chiefs were in the camp, and, writing a list, gave it to young Kirkbride, asking him to bring them and me together. (Kirkbride threw it away that night, deciding it was not important.) Then it was time to return to Cairo. Without adding coat, gloves, or goggles, he climbed into the plane — seeming to walk into unapproachable solitude — and was gone.

Some months later, in Knightsbridge, I phoned him, early one morning before he went to the Colonial Office. ‘Awful failure,’I said, ‘but they are here; can you come and see them?’ He said, with a giggle, ‘Wait till I put the receiver down,’and was round in an incredibly short time. He made a perfect entry to a room, which I got to know as characteristic. No suddenness. A silently opening door, a shape gliding in, and a simultaneous closing of the door; eyes sweeping circular-wise, like a searchlight, halting a moment on the most interesting things. Then a direct look, straight at one, eyes passing through, impersonal, but mouth in a social grin, slightly humorous.

He said nothing. There was no need: the floor was wall-papered with Arabs. I was honestly ashamed; they were too few, and not good enough. I said so. He began to say illuminating things about some, and with some he communed silently. ‘Sikeini — he has no self-interest. Shakir — few men are loved as he is and deserves to be/ At Abdulla he giggled repeatedly, but said nothing. He spent most time on Ali ibn Hussein, and seemed to me to be almost reverential. It was one of the hundred surprises he gave me. To me they were drawings. He exchanged with them as with living souls.

‘Mahmas. That means coffee spoon. Called so, probably, because the parents happened to notice one during his birth. I ’m glad you got Mahmas. He is a homicidal maniac. He can’t help it. He killed three of my best camelmen, and finally I had to disarm him myself.’ ‘Well, he nearly killed me,’I said, and told him the story, while he gazed kindly, but distant as the moon. Then he began to giggle and said, ‘I am glad Mahmas did not kill you, Kennington, because ... if he had ... I should not have seen these drawings.’ Then he giggled himself backwards out of the room, and left me guessing.

However, contact with T. E. meant shock on shock. His next visit — again the catlike entry. Would I accept £720 for eighteen Arabs? How diffident he was at what he considered a paltry offer. I made attempts to refuse, trying as others did to give all to him and take nothing. But he was exercising his will and I stopped any resistance.

III

The book I had not seen, and I began to get curious. I had seen only one letter and the list of Arabs, given to Kirkbride, and I had no hint of his written-word mastery. He had gone out again to the East, and I wrote for a foreword to the Catalogue of Arabs soon to be exhibited at the Leicester Gallery. What came back from Aden was another shock. Such understanding, observation, and memory one seldom experiences. But such generosity leaves one numb. . . . And the giggle is sent to the rescue.

What a lot of work was done by that giggle! It was used to create an appearance of emptiness, silliness, triviality, when people brought reverence; to bridge the gap of an awkward first meeting; mostly to remove tension; sometimes naughtily, a flourish following a knockout blow; or a bodkin to explode false dignity, or fraud; or, nervously, to prevent thanks. Nearly always it was an instrument, and the best giggle was the spontaneous one — T. E. genuinely amused. Sometimes, alas, it was his own safety valve, when robbed of success by the failing of others; and at rare intervals painful, when it became hysterical, mastering him.

When he returned from this 1922 trip, I saw him often, and at each contact found richer qualities. No one could meet him and straightaway know him truly. Our focus had to be adjusted slowly. Common measures were too small. But he made the process of growing easy by constant joking, using our humor, just as he used our thoughts and words. He also became our age, though certain that he was the world’s grandfather.

Short remarks and conversations can be recalled: —

‘She is more of a person: when one does a big thing, one grows to the size of it.’

’It gives one great power to be always on the edge of something.’

Poking fun at me and my slow brain: ‘I like to give Kennington an idea. He sets it up like a person and begins to draw its portrait.’

Looking at my war memorial of three soldiers: ‘That front man is the physical. We’ve got one in our hut. Spits round his bed.’

He could condemn: ‘Her fault. She should have known she had married genius.’

Looking at a pebble I had carved: ‘Smooth, polished, civilized, nightclubby, horrible — what’s the matter with you, Kennington?’

When he judged harshly—‘He’s a bad hat. He’s a four-letter man ’ — he had great dignity.

Old age to him was pathetic. He made a few exceptions. Doughty, Hogarth, G. B. S., and perhaps a few others. ‘Who’s that poor old chap?’ I said my friend (aged sixty) was in full mental and bodily vigor, and enjoyed life. T. E. hoped not to live to grow old. That meant anything over forty-five.

Once or twice he showed sudden compassion. When he saw our twoyear-old run barefoot across gravel, he felt the pain: ‘He’ll hurt his feet! He’ll hurt his feet!’ It was a really spontaneous cry. Very rarely did he allow his raw feeling freedom. He hooted gayly ‘ like a hen ’ when he saw me swing out sixty small geyser flares to light one cigarette. ‘No, I don’t smoke.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘may I? I know you have no vices.’ He giggled. ‘Oh yes I have [giggle]! Many vices.’

He showed me a blaze of feeling once. I was able to tell him that Ali ibn Hussein had been imprisoned for some months by old Hussein. He seemed to double his size. ‘I’ll have him out in a month.’

I never heard him raise his voice, and never saw him move suddenly or quickly, yet he had all the signs of speed, and must have been like lightning, in a fight.

Often he would use his power and knowledge to help suffering, and sometimes bodily suffering. He asked if he could have five minutes with my wife, critically ill and despondent. He talked with her for fifteen minutes and left, saying nothing. Upstairs I found a joyful person, who from that day had her face turned toward health. She had no setback. I afterwards said he could become a faith healer if he wished. Would he? I got no response, He could to some extent communicate his intelligence and sensitiveness. To listen to good music with him was to hear it afresh.

IV

But I must go back. He did bring the book — Oxford version, first half; and as he put it on the table more of Lawrence looked out of his eyes and long serious face. We seized the book and he slipped away.

We implored him to produce the second volume. It was being bound. Days became weeks. Then he appeared, book under arm. For some minutes I was too greedy to notice him, then saw the change in him when he began to speak. He actually looked not well, and his still seriousness was frightening. ‘It is an evil work . . . I could not refuse you after receiving the Arab portraits from you. It will not disturb you. Next morning you will start your day’s work as usual, but you have an odd brain. It is in compartments. I have not let Robert Graves read it. It can never be published. I could not live if it was loosed abroad.’ I began to fight. It had to be published. It was a grand, immense masterpiece. He looked more tired. ‘How could I go on if it was made public? At Stamford Brook I did not know whether I was trying to throw myself under a train or trying not to. I intended to throw these volumes off the centre of Hammersmith bridge. I have worked myself out and am finished. Every bone in my body has been broken. My lungs are pierced, my heart is weak . . .’

I used any means to save my tottering plans, and said that every organ in his body was sound. I could see them all. I knew he had a droll belief in the artist’s power of sight, and he paused. I went on: if only he would eat and sleep, he would be stronger than most men, and would be back at his real weight. At eighteen he was over eleven stone. He sighed sadly, ‘How do you know these things?’ I said I could see. (It was a lie. His mother had told me so.) He began again, gently, to prove to me how degraded t he book was; and, foreseeing defeat in a battle with that brain, I said the book had to be published. He said, more gently, ‘Give me one good reason — one only.' It seemed the crisis, and I found one reason, and said it was a book on motive, and necessary at this moment of life; the world had lied till it was blind, and had to be reeducated to see its motives. It sounded futile, but he stopped quiet, and after a pause said undramatically, ‘Not bad [giggle]. Quite good [many giggles]. You win.’ Then he laid the book on the table, giggled himself into normality, and backwards out of the room and house.

Food and a long sleep restored me; he had probably neither. Did he intend to destroy the book instead of publishing it? I do not know. Did he know? But if I had won a battle, it was at a price. He never spoke to me again of his suffering, save to jest.

From that time there was never a hint of turning back. He might sometimes change plans bcwilderingly, but he carried out the work with even more thoroughness than I was aware of. He phoned: How did I like it? I praised its humor. ‘Ye giddy gods! He thinks it’s funny.’ I said it was intended to be so in parts, and could prove my claim in a letter; sent him the drawing of the Juheina crowding on top of a hill. He phoned again: Yes, it was a funny book, and all comic drawings in my letters, past and future, would be included. He had several, and would send them back to me, to be zinc-blocked. The gross baby (Temptation of Necessary Food) and the newborn (Us All) — portraits of my offspring — came back with his careful instructions. I was told to do a dozen. It was only this past year, 1936, that I learned exactly why he wanted them in his book. This part of a letter to Cockerell, October 15, 1924, explains: —

Kennington was moved to incongruous mirth reading my book, and a dozen Bateman-quality drawings came of it. To my mind they are rare. Surprising and refreshing as plums in a cake (I’ve never had plums in a cake, but you know the sort of feeling it would be) and lighten up the whole. It’s good that someone is decent enough to find laughter in a stodgy mass of mock-heroic egotism. My prose style is just a bad one, and Kennington’s comment, unconscious comment, touches it to the mid-riff. (What is a mid-riff?) Of course they don’t fit the page, or the style of print: Why, they would n’t be screamingly funny if they did. It’s Kennington pricking the bladder of my conceit. Hip, Hip, Hip, you see, and ther a long last fizz of escaping air before the poor frog burst.

Till the incursion of these, the book was to have as illustrations my Arabs and two or three Englishmen, John’s Feisal, a pencil of T. E., and possibly some other portraits, but he got fun out of the new scheme, and began to juggle with artists and illustrations. Would I find a man to draw A and B? X and Y were drawing C and D. There must be masses of tailpieces. Roberts? Yes. Who else? All my artist neighbors. ‘Yes, poor things, set ’em going.’ More sitters were sent to me: Jaafar (who just fitted my armchair, and unintentionally walked off with it); the fierce Boyle, who could still roar with laughter at the memory of his battleship a transport for camels; Wilson — in each of them, the fire of T. E.’s spirit. What initials should he have? Large, square, new. Wadsworth’s satisfied him right away. X and Z were missing: we got Stanton to do them. There was no Arabian name beginning with X: T. E. invented one.

V

Several times he mentioned his intention of enlisting in the R.A.F., openly giving me his reasons, now well known; perhaps because he knew he would get no advice for or against, and no pity, for my active service had been in] the ranks. I said, ‘You can lie about your age, but it will bother you on the square.’ He did lie, successfully; his army age was given as something under thirty, instead of thirty-four. I asked if he felt older than his twentyyear mates. He said, ‘ My age is more than the combined age of everyone serving in the R.A.F.’ But it worked. He slowly regained his steady nerves and muscular poise. I was amused to see his hands grow from white to red and double their size. When I said so, he sighed in apparent despair: ‘Yes, I earn my living by them.’

But how neat, fit, and trim he looked! Every line always perfect, from set of hat to spacing of the puttees, never a dull button, or speck on the boot, and how the well-cut uniform showed the strength of his neck and drive of his jaw! He brought well-being of mind, and body, and soul, to us each workvisit, and the anecdotes of his service life as a recruit were well chosen. Side-splitting humor, without hint of pain. Garnett (like some others) knew the pain, and astounded me when I returned his copy of The Mint; we could not agree at all. I could never pity T. E. When Buxton so feelingly asked, ‘Do you get him to eat?’ I thought, ‘But he must n’t eat when he comes to us. Every minute is given to work.’

His reverence for creative activity gave him unusual insight. He read the work (drawing, painting, poem, sculpture) and the maker of the work. He took infinite trouble over every illustration, and was never impatient with the fractiousness of the artists, attending to the opinion of each on rough proof and final printing. Artists can be very insistent on the quality of reproduction. Also they are often hard up, and he was generous to appeals other than for work payment.

Being overfamiliar with art activity, I was puzzled by his reverence, and asked if he had ever done some creation with his hands, and how he knew he had no creative power. He said, ‘I carved eight life-sized figures in soft stone in Syria, using knives, and forks, and a hatchet. My servant was my model. They had no merit. No . . . they are not there now. When we retook the ground there was no trace of them, not even fragments. They are probably in the cellar of some German museum . . . labeled Very rare, supposed pre-Sumerian.’

He called Michelangelo ‘the last great child.’ Repeatedly he voiced his disgust for children, but put high value on the child-quality in grown-ups. Indeed, sometimes he seemed to enjoy arrested development in his adult friends. My first visit to Clouds Hill was to introduce T. E. and Pike, his printer to be. The door was open, and Pike and I walked into a group of young men. T. E. had always seemed a separate thing, not speaking of other contacts, so it was a surprise. All in Tank Corps uniform, they were much at their ease, reading, talking, writing.

A greater surprise was the condition of T. E. He was possessed of devils, visibly thinner, pale, scared and savage. He seemed to avoid looking at me, and when he did his look was hostile, but he so soon gained his usual quiet that this first impression went out of my mind for years. He got me a tank man to draw, and dealt with Pike’s hundred queries. While drawing, I noticed his speed without haste, and how he turned difficulty to ease and puzzles to simplicity. Keenness and energy came to Pike’s face, and a deep trust. The drawing absorbed me, and T. E. came, unnoticed, and giggled over my shoulder. ‘Strange . . . odd. . . . You’ve drawn a woman, Kennington.’ I protested. He insisted: ‘No, that’s a woman’s face.’ The sitter was confused.

One thing I am certain of. T. E.’s malaise, — it was a daylight nightmare, — so obvious to me, was not seen by any of the young men.

Though he had let me read his book, he had always hidden from me the nihilism which was his recurrent curse. Maybe he kept it from me because he knew that it would destroy a creative artist, maybe he knew that I should tire him by ridicule. I think the former, the generous reason.

He joked about his Tank Town troubles, so that I did not guess at his protracted torture there, but it was during his tank service that he paid us the most strange visit, as usual without warning, and with a soldier on pillion. This time — for the first time — he dropped all defenses. There was a wall of pain between him and us. We both felt helpless, for he looked his disappointment at us. He almost might have come specially to quarrel. It was as if T. E. were giving an impersonation for two or three hours. Everything was attacked. Life itself. Marriage, parenthood, work, morality, and especially Hope. Of course we suffered, and were unable to cope with the situation. All we could do was to dodge and futilely make light of it.

The young tank man was most positive. He banged his fist on the tea table, and threatened. ‘Now, none of that. How often have I told you? Look me straight in the face . . .’ An animal tamer, and T. E. a wild beast that partially obeyed him. I got some of our joint work going, and T. E. attended to it normally. Aside, to my wife, the young man revealed his grief at T. E.’s suffering. I don’t know who that was, but he had great courage and love for T. E. That was the only time I saw T. E. mad, or on the edge of madness.

How did he recover from these crises? I don’t believe that anyone could give him help, yet he did seem to recover.

VI

All its parts completed, the book (two hundred copies) was taken by T. E. to the binders, and soon he came round with No. 1 under his arm. He seemed to have rehearsed the presentation, so noncommittal, grave, quizzing, and humorous. He seemed to say, ‘A fine child ... a trifle overweight, perhaps.’ Three more copies followed quickly, and these, four in all, were my unexpected fee for art editorship. Choosing penury himself, he wanted us all to be wealthy, and emphasized their money value, giving the probable dates of their rise and fall. He was right in date, but underestimated the price. I did not make my possession of four public, or try to sell, but received in one day two telegrams offering £550 and £600 for two copies.

He was just now getting all his affairs in order, preparatory to sailing for India, and I feared he might be too busy to grant sittings — promised — for a bronze head. Of course he found time, giving me, at short notice, about five half-hour sittings. He looked much the same, but was remote, and did not giggle at all. Exceedingly still, he seemed to have done with every barrier, and to sit naked. I had long wished to get a statement from him which would throw light on the spiritual difference I knew there was between us. What was his God? He answered without hesitation, and once more I missed his words, so beautiful was his face. He had a glory, and a light shone in his eyes, but more of sunset than sunrise or midday. What I think I heard in the flow of eloquence was a record of process without aim or end, creation followed by disillusion, rebirth, and then decay, to wonder at and to love. But not a hint at a god, certainly none of the Christian God.

A visitor (not a chance one) was Naomi Mitchison, for whose historical novels he had great respect. Without disturbing his sculptor, he told us both how the Greek temples were created, from the unquarried stone to the placing of the roof top. He gave me only a shell to work from, head up, silent, letting me use every minute.

The last sitting was his last day of freedom in England. From that night he was to be confined to barracks, and perhaps to-morrow sailing. His eyes began to show turmoil. Their usual outward glide was repeatedly stopped and they would suddenly turn aside. I noticed a vibration of the head. Was he cold, I asked. I thought he shivered. ‘No, it is not cold.’ He shivered again, worse, head, hands on knees, trembling. Soon he shook all over from head to foot. ‘No, I’m not cold. I’m always like this before a crisis.’ I concentrated, with an eye on the time. Then from work to car, and I drove him, as fast as law permitted, to Uxbridge. He shook, off and on, all the way. I chaffed: Was he afraid of my driving? I had driven six years without a bump. He giggled (thank God): ‘I wish you’d had one yesterday.’

At the barracks I was allowed to drive straight in. T. E. L. had left me before we parted. I stopped right against the double line of men standing easy. He joined the rear rank, almost last man. No good-bye; he did not see me or the car. For a few minutes I watched him shifting, chin thrust forward, turning blindly left and right.

VII

On his return he took refuge from the press in our country cottage. To me he was just the same in appearance and behavior. He fed me with jokes, and recounted in great detail the story of his visit to the House of Commons to beard the Socialists. It is well known, but I have only heard the finale from his lips. ‘Well, good night, gentlemen. I hope you all lose your seats at the next election.’ ‘What should we do then?’ said one simpleton. ‘Join the R.A.F. But no! They would not take you. There’s not a fit man in the room.’ (Giggle, giggle, giggle.) It was told to amuse me, and it did. But it bored him utterly.

We began to drift apart now the work-tie was broken. I saw him less, but what matter? More than others he was always present. A week’s absence or six months’ was the same. Our contact now was his interest and help in my work. He did not want to say much what he was doing, and I was quite ignorant of his myriad interests. When I pressed him, ‘ What did you do in India?’ he replied, ‘I made a translation of the Odyssey.' This seemed rather shocking to me, after the creation of the Seven Pillars and The Mint. How could he get interested in the Odyssey? I asked. ‘Were n’t all the characters bloody fools?’ He looked past me, right through me, sighed, ‘Yes, they were all bloody fools.’

His visits, joyful as ever to us, became less frequent, and all that I can recall of these, about 1929, is the grand picture of him as he made each time the same departure: his confident ease as he sat astride the monstrous bicycle; a few vigorous kicks on the pedal; the beginning of slow movement; a chuckle; a downward glance, and sensual grip of the rubber handles — like a cat taking its pleasure in claw-stretching; a conscious summoning of power, still latent in the horizontal machine, but active in the upright human body with its creased neck and jaw; a tortoise-like waddle, the head raised, the eyes gazing at the horizon as if in ownership; the advance quickening snakelike, then the disappearance in a roar of dust. He was happy. He never looked back. Traveling twice as fast as his boats — nearly as fast as his brain.

But he could arrive less noticed, and often did. Nanny rushed out, and drove the soldier away from the baby he was teasing (the baby greatly approving of his disturber).

His happiness was not assured. He turned up again with fear in his eyes, and assaulted me right and left. I was much too weak to inquire into or consider his suffering and its causes, and flew to counter attack, and defense, picking instinctively a rather deadly weapon as I took down his new address. ‘The other night, Lawrence, I gave a lecture on sculpture to hundreds of people.’ (He stopped and attended.) ‘How do you spell Cattewater? . . . Thanks. . . . And there were two girls in the front row who fell in love with me.’ (He grew severe.) ‘ Is Mount Batten one or two words? . . . Thanks. . . . And after the lecture they came up and gaped adoringly at me.’ (He was jumping with rage by now.) ‘ “Oh, Mr. Kennington,” they said, “please forgive us, do tell us, do you really know Colonel Lawrence?’” He hooted like a hen, ‘So it still goes on,’ and left.

He never bore any grudge for cruel or malicious treatment, and so serene were his following visits that one had to forget the pain. In the last year or two I saw him rarely; he was continually present spiritually, with help, understanding, joy, and jokes. His physical presence — though it, like his letters, spelled happiness — seemed unnecessary. Certainly since that May morning a number of us have for a period been stunned and shocked, but that does not matter. His great labors remain, transformed to spirit. He is marvelously alive. Often the prophet has been born in this world, has lived with us in the flesh, as one of us, and, dying, has left us quickened by his spiritual message. How great, or wise, the message of T. E. L. each may decide for himself. But now a prophet has left a record, so definite that it cannot be falsified, of his almost every thought, feeling, word, and act, from first youth till death. Surely this is new, and happens for the first time.