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Review commentary by Jeremy Wilson on Lawrence,
the Uncrowned King of Arabia by Michael Asher
(London, Viking, 1998)
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Chapter 1: Apparent Queen Unveiled Her Peerless Light
Early Childhood 1888-96 (13 pages, pp 7-20)
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| 14/1/9 |
"In
fact, there is little evidence of discord [between Thomas and
Sarah]". Asher evidently needs to make this claim in order to
bolster his thesis that Sarah was completely dominant. T. E. Lawrence
reported discord between his parents. A. W. Lawrence did not comment
specifically, but said that he found his mother impossible. The only
people who claimed that the family was harmonious were Sarah Lawrence
herself, and her son Bob, both of whom seemed to believe that public
virtue (in this and other matters) was more important than truthfulness.
Of course, respectable families did not air their dirty linen in public.
My inclination is to believe the private remarks made by TEL. |
| 14/1/13 |
"Lawrence's
picture of [his father's] 'hard-riding, hard-drinking' [not a TEL quote]
younger days, though, was highly idealised. Thomas was essentially a
submissive man, clearly dominated by Sarah, and, subconsciously,
Lawrence despised his lack of authority." Here, as elsewhere in
this book, Asher works on the principle that if you repeatedly represent
a piece of doubtful speculation as fact, the reader's critical faculties
will go to sleep ("What I say three times is true"). In
reality, this is a highly speculative set of statements in support of
which Asher has offered no evidence.
The passage is followed
(line 18) by a quote from Lawrence which probably tells us more about
himself - at the period in which it was written - than it does about his
father. The last quote in the paragraph (a report via Celandine
Kennington) also belies the facts. Thomas Lawrence had numerous
interests and was the motive force behind almost all the boys' countless
activities. It seems that Celandine Kennington observed, much later,
that Sarah Lawrence completely dominated her son Bob, and imposed the
characteristics of that mother-son relationship on the relationship she
had never witnessed between Sarah and her partner Thomas. There is no
logic to that and, in any case, having discussed Celandine Kennington
with A. W. Lawrence and others who knew her, I feel that on the subject
of Lawrence, despite her many admirable qualities, she cannot be
regarded as a good historical witness. |
| 15/2/1 |
The
source for the statement that Lawrence regarded his father as a friend
(A. W. Lawrence in a letter to me) did not add Asher's gloss
"rather than a figure of authority". |
| 15/2/11
et seq. |
It
is not clear whether the interpretation of Evangelical belief comes from
Maarten Schild (as do "several of the ideas on this page",
according to note 16), but it is to say the least debatable. The notion
that Sarah Lawrence "exercised a hawk-like vigilance for the
appearance of . . . sensual traits, ready to nip them in the bud with a
sound thrashing" is a distasteful fiction. There is no evidence
whatsoever to suggest that she either thought or did such a thing.
In introducing this topic, Asher would have done better to
follow his earlier example, and look at what English society was
teaching young middle-class men about sexuality. He does this in the
next chapter, but in different context. (continued next page) |
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