First draft

The writing of SP was begun soon after that letter to Doughty, during the Paris Peace Conference in early 1919. There are so many inconsistencies in the dates given for the numerous drafts and other stages through which the book was to proceed, many of the variants from Lawrence's own pen, that it is impossible to present a straightforward timetable of progress. Lawrence's notorious disregard for dates and other such fine detail was further complicated through his years of working on the book by the state of his mind, at times unbalanced by the deep conflicts aroused as he relived the experience through his writing. This trauma is reflected in the distortions contained in his various accounts of the period.

In the Bod ms Lawrence wrote that he began the first draft on January 10th, 1919, while Notes states: 'I wrote Books 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 10 in Paris between February and June of 1919. The introduction was written between Paris and Egypt on my way out to Cairo by Handley-Page in July and August 1919.' Certainly at an early stage in the writing, but earlier in the year than indicated, Lawrence took advantage of a lull in the proceedings, after Feisal's case had been heard, to go to Cairo to collect diaries and other papers which had been left there with his kit. He was offered a ride with a squadron of Handley-Pages, whose trail-blazing flight had been partly hastened by the worsening relations between opposing neighbours King Hussein and Ibn Saud. The aeroplanes were in poor condition, the result of hard usage and inadequate servicing, and only 26 of the 51 which left Lille in April were to reach Egypt safely by the end of October.

The machine in which Lawrence travelled was among the unlucky ones. On 17th May, landing in the dark at Centocelle airport, near Rome, the aeroplane capsized. Lieutenant Prince and his second pilot, Lieutenant Sprott, were both killed. Lawrence, seated in the rear with two mechanics, escaped with a broken collar-bone, broken ribs and concussion. One of his ribs pierced a lung and the injury was to trouble him for the rest of his life.

Before this disaster, as the Handley-Page flew down the Rhone valley towards Marseilles, Lawrence had been working on the book's Introduction, which he was to complete during the remainder of the journey out to Egypt after the crash, a trip plagued by yet more hold-ups, breakdowns and delays. Of the chapter which appeared as the first in the subscribers' edition, written in the air between Paris and Lyon according to the note in the Bod ms, he commented 'Its rhythm is unlike the rest. I liken it to the munch, munch, munch of the synchronised Rolls-Royce engines!' (1)

But clearly the version of events given in Notes is somewhat astray. Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a member of the British delegation to the Paris conference, records Lawrence's presence back in Paris in July (2), when he settled down once more to his writing at the delegation headquarters, and apparently showed the manuscript to Meinertzhagen.

This first draft of SP was produced in great bursts of activity, lasting as long as twenty-four hours. Lawrence claimed to have averaged 1,000-1,500 words an hour - with a total of over 30,000 in the longest session - and such frenzied effort was to be the hallmark of subsequent re-writings. But between these bursts there were long periods of revision. His method of writing this first version, as he described to Liddell Hart (3), was to make a draft from memory, writing on one side of the paper only in a large loose-leaf ledger of unruled sheets. Then he would refer to his diaries and notes, and, with these to aid his memory on the factual details, would re-write the narrative on the opposite page. When this had been done, the next step was literary revision, 'planing off into one smooth run'. In all it was a lengthy process which more than redressed the balance against his initial speed in committing his thoughts to paper.

1	Biog G, p 55
2	Middle East Diary 1917-1956, Cresset Press, 1959, p 31
3	Biog LH, p 145

Next section - Loss of manuscript

The writing of Seven Pillars of Wisdom - full listing