Book Description

Original Typescript for Henry Williamson’s Contribution to “T.E.Lawrence by his Friends.” Extensive corrections and annotations in Williamson’s hand. A revealing typescript which, until the publication in 2000 of “T.E. Lawrence: Correspondence with Henry Williamson”, was the principal published account of the friendship between Henry Williamson and T.E. Lawrence. One is immediately struck by the fact that the account of Williamson’s friendship with Lawrence in this typescript differs materially from the published version and is as much about Williamson as it is about Lawrence. In what is supposed to be a description of their friendship, Williamson prefers to detail his own preoccupations and in particular his own failings: “a neurotic person, one ill at ease with most human beings…. selfish, self-opinionated, gauche, etc.” The obvious inference is that the two men are similar spirits, equally troubled and equally misunderstood. Williamson describes his experiences in the trenches: “I had not been a good soldier” then confesses that he would fall asleep when on sentry duty: “while leaning against a wall, having formulated an excuse of listening to strange sounds, resembling morse-signalling, within the wall.” He even alludes to Lawrence being “a different sort of man to Foch or Haig…Lawrence was a poet. Haig and Foch were not poets” before rather bizarrely comparing Lawrence to Conrad: “Lawrence must have been impressed by Conrad, because he wrote with the Conradian rhythm.” Unsurprisingly none of these self- regarding reminiscences appear in the published version.
Dealer Notes
The meeting between the two men is described in the typescript more fully than in the final version and Williamson cannot resist revealing that Lawrence regarded him “as a better writer than himself”. He is, however, perceptive regarding Lawrence’s state of mind: “He was not happy. Much of his despondency (which he never permitted to affect others) came from a very simple cause of semi-starvation.” Williamson links Lawrence’s depressive and exhausted state to his time in Arabia: “Lawrence used himself up in Arabia,” this crossed out and replaced in manuscript with “the mental struggle exhausted Lawrence… He overstrained himself, while also starving himself. And he did not do this for personal gain or glory.” It becomes increasingly clear that Williamson sees Lawrence as a soulmate: “the idea of co-relation with Lawrence started and became a semi-conscious thought in a part of a second. I knew we saw many things alike.” Lawrence’s untimely death, the subject of speculation to this day, is changed in the typescript from: “he died from the shock of striking the earth with his head”, this crossed out and replaced with the manuscript correction: “the temples of his brain were broken.”
After his experiences in the First World War Williamson was desperate to prevent another war between England and Germany and to this end, he travelled to Germany in the year that Lawrence died in the hope of persuading Hitler against such an outcome. In the light of this, it is unsurprising that Williamson should write “Hitler and Lawrence must meet”, a statement which is shocking enough but in the typescript there is a manuscript addition which makes even more uncomfortable reading: “they would instantly esteem one another, being of the same integrity.” It is not difficult to understand why this was omitted from the printed work, especially as it appeared in 1937, two years before the outbreak of war.
A curious contribution to the Lawrence myth which reveals more about Williamson than it does about its supposed subject.
Author HENRY WILLIAMSON ON T.E. LAWRENCE
Date [1937]

Price: £1800.00

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