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Chapter 3: Nothing Which Qualified Him to be an Ordinary
Member of Society
Last year at school and first years at university, 1906-8
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| page/para/line |
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| 33/2-35/1 |
In
these two pages we have Asher's case that
Lawrence was a compulsive and self-glorifying liar. This is an extremely
important section, and Asher may have felt that he had proved his case
beyond doubt - at any rate in the minds of readers who knew little about
Lawrence. For the reasons that follow, I do not think that he proved his
case at all. In fact, Asher as a historian and analyst comes out of this
section very badly indeed.
Asher's technique in this section is to use a
selection of unrelated material taken out of context and present it as
evidence for a much larger conclusion. The legitimate response is to examine each
piece of the "evidence" in
turn, asking whether or not it really
supports Asher's case.
His ten pieces of "evidence" are as
follows:
|
| 33/2/6-7 |
1. that
in the post-war years Lawrence gave a fictional story to John Bruce. |
| 33/2/11-13 |
2. that Lawrence turned the incident of his boy-soldier
enlistment into a "darkly romantic tale" |
| 34/1/5 et seq |
3. that the quote: "reputation as a classical scholar is easily
gained'" is evidence of Lawrence "honing his skills as a
bluffer" |
| 34/1/9 et seq |
4. that the quote that: "War Office people are very easily to be
deceived" is similar evidence. |
| 34/2-4 |
5. that in the light of the variant mule/camel-bell stories "One
can only conclude that either Lawrence enjoyed misleading others, or he had
a very uncommon conception of the truth." |
| 34/4/9 et seq |
6. that he told Robert Graves "that the best way of hiding
the truth was by making mystifying, contradictory or misleading
statements". |
| 35/1/1-3 |
7. "Working with the Arabs during the war, he would admit that
he
did not tell the whole truth either to them or to his British masters, but
designed a version of reality which suited himself." |
| 35/1/4-5 |
8. "He would write that he himself often could not tell where
the 'leg-pulling began or ended" |
| 35/1/6 |
9. "[He would] confess to having lied even in his official
dispatches
and reports" |
| 35/1/6 |
10. "[He would add] 'I must have some
tendency, some aptitude,
for
deceit, or I would not have deceived men so well.' |
| 35/1/11 |
11. Asher quotes Ronald Storrs saying that TEL would state "as
facts things which he knew nobody could or would accept." Next
page |
