Completion

The summer months of 1926 passed in a blur of activity, with check after check to be made on the final proof pages. In August Lawrence made a 7½ hour motorbike journey from Cranwell to Edinburgh to check on progress with the map-makers, Bartholomews, who were adapting a War Office map for inclusion in the book. Then, at last, the printing was completed. All that remained to be done was the binding, and this work went to some of the best-known firms in the country - among them Sangorski & Sutcliffe, Roger de Coverley, C & C McLeish, Wood, Harrison, and Best & Co. The binders were given a free hand to work with the finest materials available - alum-cured white pigskin, rich red native-dyed Niger Moroccos - with instructions to finish each copy in a different style or colour. The gilding of the page edges also varies from copy to copy, with some having all edges gilt, while in others only one or two of the edges have received this treatment.

The combination of fine craftsmanship and the highest quality coverings produced some remarkable work - and a last minute addition of £1,000 to the binding budget. Lawrence's explanation (1) for the books all being bound differently was that any subscriber who cared for good bindings could have their copy re-bound to their own taste, without reducing the bibliophilic value of the book, for despite his later expressed deprecatory view of bibliophiles, he was anxious that his book should at least prove a good investment to his subscribers, some of whom he urged to sell their copies and take the profit! But it is unlikely that many would have wished to replace such superb bindings.

Bookbinder Tom Harrison, under the heading A Tragedy which Planning Would Have Avoided, ended his discourse on Bookbinding for Printers (2) with the cautionary tale of 'a man who would stand alone in the handling of something he never understood'. He relates how it 'fell to my lot to bind sixty copies of Col. Lawrence's original Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which was a goodly proportion of the whole issue and they were all supposed to be bound differently. When the sheets arrived, they were in such a horrible jumble that I had to read the book to get a semblance of order into them and then there were doubts and uncertainties. The text consisted of single leaves, four-page sections, eights, sixteens and thirty-twos and all sorts of insets and outsets. A good third of the book was plates on all manner of papers and by different processes with no margins for guarding. Plates had to be bled to text size and, in some instances, this could only be done by cutting away some of the lettering. There were folded maps on flimsy paper to throw out on all four sides when the book was in use. In short the book was almost an impossible task. When Col. Lawrence came to see me, before I could put my queries, he advised me never to attempt to issue a book without a publisher. All the copies were subscribed for at £30 each and they had already cost him £90 each. He asked me to reinforce the folds of the maps with linen. When I blankly refused (because they would more readily tear at the point of reinforcement), he looked bewildered and said, "What would you advise?" "Mount them all over, it's better and cheaper" was my reply. He looked relieved, for I believe it was the first time he had had a definite challenge. He was a man who could be trusted with his own way in the desert, but not at home. Someone put up a further query by post and got the reply: "Leave it to Mr Harrison; he knows what he is talking about." He had learned his lesson, but at what a cost. If we could all learn from our mistakes and realise how little any of us can achieve unless we act together as a harmonious team, bent on winning as a team, how greater would be our achievement!'

It is difficult to understand why it was necessary to read through the book to obtain the correct sequence, for the pages are, with very few exceptions, numbered in their due order - but the technical problems faced by the bookbinders were obviously considerable.

As the distribution date neared, an advance printed letter went off to subscribers, advising them that their copy of SP would be sent to the same address unless Manning Pike received notification to the contrary; enclosed was a book receipt form for their eventual signature and return to Pike. The final item in the note was a financial plea - 'The long delay in producing the book makes it rather difficult for me to ask for prompt payment: but I am hoping that you will not require urging in the matter.'

Lawrence described the final rush to get the book out in a letter to Francis Rodd [3rd December 1926] - 'I had an awful month, real hard labour upon my old man of the sea: final printings, plates, collection, collation, issue to binders, correction of subscribers' lists, allotment of copies. Yet though I sweated it at every possible hour of the day and night, seeing no one and doing nothing else, even now it is not finished.' By this first week in December about twenty copies of the book were in the hands of his patient subscribers. Most of the remainder were to be despatched over Christmas - 'my Christmas pudding' he called it to Geoffrey Dawson - while a few special copies remained in the hands of the binders until the New Year. Lawrence concluded his letter to Rodd with the comment 'I think my experience is almost a conclusive demonstration that publishing is not a suitable hobby for an airman.' (3)

And so to India, thereby escaping the publicity which attended the serialisation of Revolt in the Desert in The Daily Telegraph during December and January, the first wave of Cape's campaign in preparation for the publication of the book in the spring.

1	Biog G, p 55
2	Handbook for Teaching, No 2, Association of Teachers of Printing and Allied Subjects, 1949 (return to extract)
3	Letters to Francis Rodd and Geoffrey Dawson, Bodleian Reserve MSS, b55, quoted by John E Mack in A Prince of our Disorder, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976, p 360

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