April 25, 2015

Finest Hour 119, Summer 2003

Page 26

Selected by Paul Alkon


In attempting to capture the flavor of the ChurchillLawrence correspondence, my inclination has been to include entire letters; I prefer fewer letters to cutting parts of them. An entire letter, even—or perhaps especially—when some of it seems off on a tangent, gives a better idea of the situation of Lawrence and Churchill at the time it was written, and of Lawrence’s personality and letter-writing style. Though not every one is a masterpiece, Lawrence’s letters are regarded as literary work, and are ranked high among 20th century correspondence. They form a noteworthy part of his own oeuvre. One critic, Jeffrey Meyers, has remarked, “After Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the letters are Lawrence’s most extensive and significant literary production.”

In 1923 Lawrence changed his last name to Shaw. Consequently some of the letters are from T. E. Lawrence (abbreviated here as TEL) and some are from T. E. Shaw (abbreviated here as TES).

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024
More

Acknowledgment to Sir Martin Gilbert for so faithfully compiling those rich treasures the companion volumes to the official biography (London: Heinemann), from which these are quoted. “CV4/3” is Companion Volume IV, Part 3, 1977. “CV5/1” is Companion Volume V, Part 1, The Exchequer Years 1922-1929, 1979. “CV5/2” is Companion Volume V, Part 2, The Wilderness Years 1929-1935, 1979. Some of the shorter letters may have been abbreviated from the originals but contain every word published in the companion volumes.

Lawrence’s Resignation

Winston S. Churchill to Colonel Lawrence
(Churchill papers: 17/26, CV4/3 p. 1930.)

8 July 1922
I very much regret your decision to quit our small group at the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office. Your help in all matters and guidance in many has been invaluable to me and to your colleagues. I should have been glad if you would have stayed with us longer. I hope you are not unduly sanguine in your belief that our difficulties are largely surmounted. Still, I know I can count upon you at any time that a need arises, and in the meanwhile I am glad to know that you will accept at least the honorary position of Adviser on Arabian Affairs.
With every good wish,
Winston S. Churchill

“Winston’s Bridge”

T. E. Lawrence to R. D. Blumenfeld*
(Lawrence papers, CV4/3 p. 2122.)

11 November 1922
If we get out of the Middle East Mandates with credit, it will be by Winston’s bridge. The man’s as brave as six, as good-humoured, shrewd, self-confident, & considerate as a statesman can be: & several times I’ve seen him chuck the statesmanlike course & do the honest thing instead.

*Ralph D. Blumenfeld (1864-1948), journalist and author, founder of the Anti-Socialist Union, chairman of the Daily Express during 1933-48.

Churchill’s Defeat

T. E. Lawrence to Winston S. Churchill
(Churchill papers: 1/157, CV4/3 pp. 2124-25.)

18 November 1922
Dear Mr. Churchill
This is a difficult letter to write—because it follows on many unwritten ones. First I wanted to say how sorry I was when you fell ill, and again when you had to have an operation. Then I should have written to say I was sorry when the Government resigned. I meant to write & congratulate you on getting better: but before I could do that you were in Dundee and making speeches. Lastly I should write to say that I’m sorry the poll went against you—but I want to wash out all these lost opportunities, & to give you instead my hope that you will rest a little: six months perhaps.

There is that book of memoirs to me made not merely worth £30,000, but of permanent value. Your life of Lord Randolph shows what you could do with memoirs. Then there is the painting to work at, but I feel you are sure to do that anyhow: but the first essential seems to me a holiday for you.

It sounds like preaching from a younger to an elder (and is worse still when the younger is an airman-recruit!) but you have the advantage of twenty years over nearly all your political rivals: and physically you are as strong as any three of them (do you remember your camel-trotting at Giza, when you wore out all your escort, except myself, & I’m not a fair competitor at that!) and in guts and power and speech you can roll over anyone bar Lloyd George: so that you can (or should) really not be in any hurry.

Of course I know that your fighting sense is urging you to get back into the scrimmage at the first moment: but it would be better for your forces to rest & rearrange them: & not bad tactics to disengage a little. The public won’t forget you soon, & you will be in a position to choose your new position and line of action more freely, for an interval. I needn’t say that I’m at your disposal when you need me—or rather if ever you do. I’ve had lots of chiefs in my time, but never one before who really was my chief The others have needed help at all times: you only when you want it: —and let me say that if your tools in the rest of your career to date had been of my temper you would have been now too big, probably, for the country to employ! That’s a modest estimate of myself, but you know it doubles the good of a subordinate to feel that his chief is better than himself*
Yours sincerely
T. E. Lawrence

By the way, I’ve got keen on the RAF and propose to stick to it for the present.

“Churchill was defeated in his reelection bid for Dundee, where he had sat since 1910. He was out of Parliament for two years before regaining a seat for Epping, later subdivided as Woodford, where he sat until his retirement in 1964.

The World Crisis

T. E. Lawrence to Edward Marsh*
(Lawrence papers, CV5/1, p. 1014.)

10 June 1927
Winston wrote me a gorgeous letter. Called his Crisis a pot-boiler! Some pot! And probably some boil, too. I suppose he recalls that he’s the only high person, since Thucydides & Clarendon, who has put his generation, imaginatively in his debt. Incidentally neither T or C was impartial! That doesn’t matter, as long as you write better than anybody of your rivals.

He alarms me a little bit, for I feel that he wants to go for Russia, and the ex-bear hasn’t yet come into the open. It’s hard to attack, for its neighbours, except Germany, aren’t very good allies for us. We can only get at her, here, through Turkey, or Persia, or Afghanistan, or China, and I fancy the Red Army is probably good enough to turn any one of those into a bit of herself, as the Germans did Rumania.

*Eddie Marsh (1872-1953) served as Churchill’s private secretary during 1905-15, 1917-22 and 1924-29. Compare Lawrence’s remarks with WSC’s more famous 1941 observation about England: “Some chicken! Some neck!”

The Aftermath

T. E. Shaw to Winston S. Churchill
(Churchill papers: 8/224, CV5/1, pp. 1446-48.)

18 March 1929

33871 A/c Shaw
RAF Cattewater
Plymouth

Dear Winston,
I’ve now read it all, with very great care. I like it best of them all [The World Crisis volumes]. It is riper, and your sense of decaying comes uppermost—though the first note I made at the end of it was vigour. The buoyancy of the writing, and the confidence with which you swim across these broken waters are both wise and encouraging. Yet it comes back to the moderation & the generosity of your presentations of everybody—nearly, (except De Robeck!)* I particularly like your fairness toward LI George. The future is going to flaw our generation for its unfairness to him. He’s ever so much bigger than the statesman of the Napoleonic times. He’s said magnificent things, & his own performances, with that team, were marvellous. You give him, not full marks, but more than’s the fashion: and so you do yourself great credit. It made me glad, all through 1920 and 1921, to find him and you so close together. Of course your later advantages over him are partly due to your being young enough to try again: and partly to your greater strength. But LI G has been a very grand figure. He was a big man in Paris.

Of course the Greek business was awful. Venizelos* stole the wits of Harold Niccolson, & so cajoled the Foreign Office: and LI George’s nasty little Nonconformist upbringing fell for him. It was the ruin of a Middle East situation that was a clear gift to us. I wonder if we will ever get much of it back? Not, I suppose, till Turkey fights Russia and badly wants a friend.

You do President Wilson full justice. A fish-like, clammy hand, he had: and conceit, and terror of giving himself away. Yet he had the fanatic scholar’s power of holding firmly to an idea or two: partly because he was so afraid of practicalities. House I liked, but couldn’t respect, as a brain. Old Clemenceau was wise, and broad-minded (off his hobby) and laughter-loving. He comes out of your story with honour. I am glad you say a decent word for Mustapha Kemal.*

It is a very fine effort, this book, and it does you more honour—in all except writing—than the others. I still feel that the first was the finest writing: but there are patches of delirious humour, here: and the ‘Armistice dream’ is the real stuff.

*De Robeck was the admiral who broke off and never resumed the naval attack on the Dardanelles. Venizelos was Prime Minister of Greece, 1910-15, 1917-30, 1928-32 and 1933. Col. House was an adviser to President Woodrow Wilson. Mustapha Kemal led the national movement that replaced the Ottoman Empire with republican Turkey, and was President of Turkey, 1922-38.

Your ‘Memo’ at the end does more than it deserves in favour of my particular garden-plot. Yet I will maintain that it was, in its tiny way, a very good little plot: pitiably small, it looks, doesn’t it, in its proper place beside the great events?

I marked a misprint on page 111: ‘Stated that’ misplaced: on page 150, line 13, the ‘has’ should be ‘had’, I fancy: on page 300, the fresh invitation, of the 19th, is sent before the Committee met on the 21st. I suspect the sentence has got twisted. I’m no good at seeing misprints in a book though. You have EM [Eddie Marsh] who’s a champion at that.

The book, as I say, has delighted me. It is not the end of the story either. There is room for more, when the slowness of post-war policy has at length produced something worth writing about. Three years of today make about a month of war-time.

If the gods give you a rest, some day, won’t you write a life of the great Duke of Marlborough? Abut our only international general…and so few people seem to see it. He hasn’t had a practical book written about him: and you are deep enough into affairs to see all round him.

Ever so many thanks for The Aftermath.

Yours,
T. E. Shaw

Excuse the rotten letter. There is a sort of dog-fight going on all over and round me in the hut, and I’m listening to two of its arguments with half an ear each. They affect me, you see!

“I want him to be PM somehow”

T. E. Lawrence to Edward Marsh
(Lawrence papers CV5/1, p. 1474.)

3 June 1929
The General election* means that Winston goes out, I suppose. For himself I’m glad. He’s a good fighter, and will do better out than in, and will come back in a stronger position than before. I want him to be PM somehow.

* In some ways the General Election of 1929 was a greater blow to Churchill than that of 1945. In the latter, he himself was handily reelected. In 1929 he was returned with a minority of the vote: his combined Liberal and Labour opposition polled about 1500 votes more than he did. But Labour’s Commons majority over the Conservatives was only 288 to 260, not as great as 1945. And this election turned out to be “a blessing quite effectively disguised” (as Churchill said of 1945): five months later came the stock market crash and the Great Depression. Still, given Churchill’s unsavory reputation within his party, Lawrence’s desire seemed very unlikely to be fulfilled.

“You are going to live again by your books”

T. E. Shaw to Winston S. Churchill
(Churchill papers: 8/269, CV5/2, pp. 182-83.)

7 September 1930

338181 A/c Shaw
RAF Mount Batten
Plymouth

Dear Winston,
Having finished your book [My Early Life proof; publication was 30 October] yesterday I took it to Plymouth and posted it to the House of Commons, where this note will have to go, as I do not know the Chartwell address. I hope the House sends letters on, out of sittings.

Your book is complete and rather wonderful. It is beautifully written, as to manner, and both style and contents form a picture of yourself more living than anything I thought possible. A hundred times as I read it I knocked my hands together, saying ‘That’s himself.’ I wonder if those who do not know you (the unfortunate majority today, and all the future) will see the whole Winston in the book or not? I rather fancy they will, and that you have cut away the roots of all biographies-to-be, in doing the same thing yourself, perfectly and for all time.

Another thing I felt as I read it, and that was how past is the epoch of your youth. Nothing of the world, or attitude or society you lived in remains. Not even yourself, for the Winston of today is altogether another man. Part of your excellence lies in that flawless evocation of a temporis acti. It has gone, yet you can bring it to life, just in time. Your book will become a most precious social document.

The rife & merry wisdom, and the courage and flair and judgement I take rather for granted, having seen you so much in action: but as your current reputation is not all made by your friends, the book will do you good amongst your readers. Not many people could have lived 25 years so without malice. On the other hand, you have succeeded overwhelmingly, so there are grounds for your finding life good. Think of your unfair advantages! You get as much out of today, and out of affairs, as any man alive among the activists: and when you die you are going to pass over, without a word said, into the ranks of writers, and live again by your books. You will remain an indispensable part of the early 20th century.

You’ll be rather sick of all this tommy-rot. I feel like going on for hours, though. It is seldom that a reading man, who cares for personality & events, gets quite as sharp a pleasure as I have had from your book. It is head & shoulders better than all but the high chapters of your war-book: also it is so perfect and balanced a whole. Really a work of art.

There is nothing to be done textually. Let no one but yourself change a line of it.

Yours ever,
T. E. Shaw

Marlborough

Winston S. Churchill to T. E. Shaw
(Churchill papers: 8/326, CV5/2, pp. 691-92.)

15 December 1933
Thank you so much for your delightful letter [not published]. I am much interested that you derived the impression that Marlborough’s ambition was not a hungry one. Apart from the impulse to use his military gift, he was quite content with family life, making a fortune and building a home. In this second volume nothing is more striking than his repeated desire to give up his command and retire. And considering that this was expressed in letters to Sarah which he never dreamed would see the light of day—many of which have not seen the light of day for two hundred years—it is hard to believe that it was all a pose.

I am immensely complimented by what you have written and will treasure your letter.

Now why not mount your bicycle and come and spend a day or two here in the near future. Drop me a line if you can come, but anyhow come.

Last Thoughts

T. E. Shaw to Winston S. Churchill
(Churchill papers: 1/270, CV5/2, pp. 1120-21.)

19 March 1935

c/o Sir Herbert Baker
2 Smith Square
Westminster

Dear Winston,
I wonder if you can help me? My RAF discharge happened about three weeks ago, and I’ve since had to run three times from my cottage in Dorset (where I want to live) through pressure from newspaper men. Each time I’ve taken refuge in London, but life here is expensive, and I cannot go on moving about indefinitely.

My plan is to try and persuade the press people, the big noises, to leave me alone. If they agree to that the free-lancers find no market for their activities.

What I am hoping from you is a means of approach to Esmond Harmsworth, who is the new Chairman of the Newspaper Proprietors Association. He used to know me in Paris, 16 years ago, but will have forgotten. If you could tell him I exist, and very much want to see him, I could put my case before him in ten minutes and get a Yes or No.

I am writing to you because I fancy, from something you once said, that you are (or were) on good terms with Esmond—who anyway used to be a decent person. If you can get into touch with him, without embarrassing yourself, I would be most grateful.

I’ll see Sir Herbert Baker tomorrow and get him to keep for me any message that may arrive during this week. I believe his Smith Square house is on the telephone, if that simplifies things: though it usually is more trouble than it is worth.

I’m sorry to appeal in this way; but they have got me properly on the run. I blacked the eye of one photographer last Sunday and had to escape over the back of the hedge!

Yours
T. E. Shaw

A tribute, join us

#thinkchurchill

Subscribe

WANT MORE?

Get the Churchill Bulletin delivered to your inbox once a month.