Quote of the Day (George Bernard Shaw, on Lawrence of Arabia’s Defective Literary Style)

“You will see that your colons before buts and the like are contra-indicated in my scheme, and leave you without anything in reserve for the dramatic occasions mentioned above. You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced in camp life.”—George Bernard Shaw, October 7, 1924 letter to T.E. Lawrence, quoted in Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (2003)

George Bernard Shaw could insult with such geniality and creativity that, I suspect, most of the recipients of his letters regarded it as a kind of badge of honor. That appears to be the case here in this letter to T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia (pictured here).

What accounts for the Anglo-Irish playwright’s asperity, at least in this instance, is that, after two years of trying to arrange publication of Seven Pillars of Wisdom by the leader of the Arab Revolt in the First World War, he had only now gotten his hands on the manuscript. Of course he knew that the former British Army intelligence officer was a brilliant linguist, but—knowing Shaw—I wouldn't have put it past him to be cheeky enough to urge the younger man to master English first before going on to anything else.

Lawrence had been dead seven years before Robert Graves and Alan Hodges took Shaw to task for his own affronts to the English language in The Reader Over Your Shoulder (1942). Still, it’s doubtful that this most enigmatic of men would have felt unfairly abused by Shaw. The playwright had, in the end, provided one of the most glowing tributes to Seven Pillars of Wisdom (“The work is a masterpiece, one of the few very best of its kind in the world”).

(Shaw and his contemporaries might have concerned themselves less with Lawrence’s knotted prose and more with his knotted memories of events. In an article in the Autumn 2014 issue of MHQ Magazine on how Lawrence and a co-founder of modern irregular warfare, Orde Wingate, contributed doctrines that proved fatal to the French at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, Douglas Porch called Seven Pillars of Wisdom “an exaggerated, semiautobiographical account of the desert war that appealed to interwar tastes for desert escapism.")

When Lawrence cast about for a (relative) cloak of anonymity to hide his participation in the Royal Air Force, he took the name T.E. Shaw, in tribute to his growing friendship with the playwright and his wife Charlotte. The playwright acknowledged the compliment and repaid it with Too True To Be Good, his 1932 satire in which “Private Meek”—who drives the top brass up the wall with his unconventional dress, before it is revealed that he is actually a colonel (and military genius) who prefers the rank-and-file where he will have a “freer hand”—is, unmistakably, Lawrence. (See my prior post on how the real-life Lawrence compares to the character depicted in David Lean’s classic film, Lawrence of Arabia.)

Quote of the Day (T.E. Lawrence, on His ‘Whirling Campaigns’ in Arabia)

“We were fond together because of the sweep of open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The morning freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up with ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep, and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (1922)

T.E.Lawrence—a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia—was born on this date 125 years ago. One of the first great celebrities of the 20^th century because of his role in the Arab Revolt against the crumbling Ottoman Empire in WWI, this British intelligence officer also was one of the last century’s most paradoxical figures—someone whose Arab apparel made him stand out among the officer corps, but whose reticence eventually led him after the war to enlist in the Royal Air Force under an assumed name (T.E. Shaw, a tribute to good friend George Bernard Shaw).

In some quarters, Lawrence remains a somewhat controversial figure—or, in the words of Ephraim Karsh, in a Wall Street Journal article from last week, “an exceptionally gifted charlatan with a keen eye to networking and self-promotion, who successfully cast his spell on far more senior and accomplished contemporaries, such as Allenby and Winston Churchill.”

But, as the United States continues to cope with its place in the Middle East, the example of Lawrence from a century ago looms large. In this regard, the quote above from the hero’s memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom seems particularly relevant. It evokes the dispiriting conclusion of the David Lean masterpiece about his life, Lawrence of Arabia (which I posted about here), in which the hopes for Arab self-determination are quashed after the war at the negotiating table. The dawning of the “new world” he fought for remains elusive.