Decorative initial letters

A major feature of the layout of the book is the use of decorative initial letters, or 'bloomers', for the first letter of the first word of a new chapter and other pages commencing with a new paragraph - and they appear on the majority of pages, always in the top left hand corner of the text. The letters A-W and Y were originally designed for John Rodker by Edward Wadsworth. Rodker had not put them to use, and Lawrence, who 'thought them uncommonly new and delightful', 'bought them off him for a copy of my book.' (1) Wadsworth was abroad at the time and unable to complete the set, so Lawrence had the X and Z executed by Blair Hughes-Stanton in the same abstract style, the ornamented letter being confined within a square framed by a narrow double rule. It was the monks' lettering of old reborn, but attired in the garb of a progressive new century. Lawrence then 'exhausted my ingenuity to bring in each letter at least once' (2), and in this he was most successful, to the extent even of overcoming the difficulty of there being no Arabic name beginning with X by inventing one for the single appearance of that letter! - Xury, the Druse Emir of Salkhad, on p 430 at the start of Chapter LXXXII.

There are two sizes of letter used - approximately 13 mm and 27.5 mm square, with minimal variations in size which can no doubt be accounted for by paper stretch during the printing process. An appendix [Frequency of use of decorative initial letters] lists the frequency of use of each letter, with A and I leading the field at 47 and 44 appearances respectively. A total of 451 decorative initial letters adorn the book's pages, 122 of these being large size and 329 small size, the latter including 11 printed in red.

The large size is used only at the start of a new chapter, while the small size ornaments the initial word of any new paragraph commencing a main text page. The small size is also used for the synopsis pages interleaving each Book, where it is exclusively printed in red; for the 'Damascus' page at the end of the book, p [653], which, although set in a similar style to these interleaving pages, has a black decorative initial letter; and for the paragraph which precedes the list of illustrations on p XIX.

Lawrence imposed a precise pattern on his use of the decorative initial letters, a conformity which could only be achieved by re-writing the text to match his requirements; these rules are changed throughout the book, but are applied in their variety to clearly definable sections.

Decorative initial letters appear less frequently in the Introduction and Books I to III than in any other part of the book, and they occur at random - 25 times on the left hand page only; 23 times on the right hand page only, [accounting for all but three such layouts throughout the book - one of them on pp 518-519 in Book VIII, where the left hand page does not start with a new paragraph, but the right hand page commences a new chapter, and the other two in Book IX, as detailed below]; and 33 times, including the four synopsis/new chapter double page openings, on both left and right, producing what Lawrence considered to be the perfectly balanced double page.

In Books IV and V virtually every page of text starts with a decorative initial letter, with just four exceptions - all but one of these being where Lawrence was unable to meet the basic requirement of starting the page with a new paragraph. The exceptions are: on pp [284]-[285], with the cartoon of Lawrence being thrown from his camel - A forced landing - weaving its way through the text, the decorative initial letter appears on the left hand page only, for although the right hand page begins with a new paragraph, which is indented, a second decorative initial letter would have destroyed the delightful effect of the page layout, [the page numbers and right hand page margin heading are also omitted, presumably for the same reason]; on pp 310-311, left hand side only, as p 311 commences mid-way through a paragraph; and on pp 312-313, both pages fail to quality for decoration as neither starts with a new paragraph.

Throughout the whole of Book VI the decorative initial letters appear on every left hand page only, apart from the intervention of those new chapters which commence on a right hand page, whereby both pages of the opening are thus decorated - for no other right hand page starts with a new paragraph.

Book VII returns to the pattern of IV and V, with the initial letter on both left and right hand pages of text, and there are no exceptions.

Book VIII is different again - apart from the synopsis page, the only decorative initial letters used are the large size for the start of each new chapter. No attempt has been made to force the text to fit the framework of page lengths, and without this effort no page begins coincidentally with a new paragraph.

For the final section, Books IX and X, Lawrence returned to the general format of decorative initial letters on all left hand pages only, and apart from the intervention of the start of both these Books opposite their synopsis pages, and other new chapters commencing on the right hand page, whereby the decorative initial letter appears on both left and right hand pages, there are just two exceptions to the rule: on pp 536-537 there is no decorative initial letter on the left hand page, since it does not start with a new paragraph, [and it has only 7 lines of text followed by an illustration, In his own image] - but there is a large size decorative initial letter on the right hand page for the start of Chapter CI; on pp 554-555, 554 has 9 lines of text and an illustration, Introspection, but does not start with a new paragraph and therefore has no decorative initial letter, whereas 555 is the start of Chapter CV, and so is decorated with the large size letter. There is just one right hand page in this section, being neither the first page of a Book nor chapter, which commences with a new, and indented, paragraph - p 607. But to maintain the pattern, Lawrence has chosen to ignore this, and it commences with an ordinary Caslon capital letter.

A further convention in the use of the decorative initial letters is that the remainder of a word commencing thus is completed in the standard Caslon caps used throughout the main text. There are a few exceptions. Sometimes where the decorative initial letter is the subjunctive pronoun, as in I EXPLAINED [p 519], the indefinite article, as in A MOUNTED [p 244], or when it commences some other very short word, as in AT LAST [p 160], the following word is also set in caps. Where a multi-part proper name begins with a decorative initial letter, then in some cases the whole of that name is set in caps, although the 'el' in MIFLEH el GOMAAN [p 402] and MOHAMED el GHASIB [p 464] is in lower case. Caps have also been used for the second word in a few cases which come into none of the above categories - such as p 82, BLOOD FEUDS, and p 85, LEAVING HAMRA; while on p 22 the word Mobilisation begins with a decorative initial letter, but the rest of the word is in lower case. A further oddity in this section appears on p 461. US is the opening word of Chapter LXXXVII, and both the decorative U and its following capital S are enclosed within double inverted commas - "US" - because it refers back to the last sentence of the previous chapter - 'They would soon outflank us at our end of the western ridge.'

The positioning of the letters/word[s] following a decorative initial letter is in general very exact. The remainder of the word is set close to the decorative initial letter, just proud of the next line of text, while, where the decorative initial letter is a word in itself, the second word is spaced to line up with the following text. There are just four exceptions: in I HAD, p 176, A BAND, p 183, and I PONDERED, p 368, the second word is set close to the decorative initial letter, as for a single word, while on p 338 the remaining letters of GADARENE are set level with the next line of type, as for a separate word.

The design of the letters varies in its effectiveness, but is always more successful in the large size, as some of the decorative detail is a little too cluttered for efficient reduction to a mere 13 mm.

1	L 349, Bruce Rogers, 16/4/28
2	L 349, Bruce Rogers, 16/4/28

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