Loss of manuscript

Back in England before the end of August 1919, Lawrence presumably completed most of this first draft of the book - Notes refers merely to having written Book 1 on his return, while in the Bod ms he states that this '1st Edition' was finished on July 25, 1919; but only three people were destined, at various stages, to read the manuscript in whole or in part - D G Hogarth, his mentor from the early Oxford days and Commander in the Arab Bureau, Meinertzhagen, and Alan Dawnay, a colleague during the Arabian campaign. For in November 1919 Lawrence wrote to Doughty 'I have lost the MSS of my own adventures in Arabia: it was stolen from me in the train. So now I have the opportunity of thinking of doing it again!' (1) The light-hearted tone is typical of all his correspondence with the aged Doughty, but whatever the truth behind this 'loss', one is compelled to believe it was not that simple and straightforward.

Lawrence's version of the incident in Notes is that he 'lost all but the Introduction and drafts of Books 9 and 10 at Reading Station, while changing trains. This was about Christmas, 1919', although the letter to Doughty indicates that the incident must have occurred some time in November at the latest, and this he confirms in the Bod ms. He embellished the story somewhat for Liddell Hart in a conversation on 1st August 1933 (2), recalling how he had gone into the refreshment room at Reading and put the bag containing the manuscript - a bank messenger-type bag - the 'thing they carry gold in' - under the table and left it there. He telephoned from Oxford an hour later, but there was no sign of it. If this was indeed the way it happened, what a disappointment for the 'finder', expecting perhaps that bank messenger's gold, and discovering instead a weighty handwritten book. The contents of the bag would surely have been thrown away in disgust, an action regretted, perhaps, if ever the thief connected his find with the ballyhoo which surrounded the eventual publication of the book; while only to have hidden it away in an attic corner would today have brought its inheritors a sizeable fortune at the drop of a hammer in the auction rooms of London or New York.

Liddell Hart, however, noted the Lawrence wondered 'Did fancy (involuntarily) play with it?' (3) Or did Lawrence himself assist Fate in its meddling? His penchant for manuscript destruction throughout his life boded less than well for the long-continued existence of any such work, and writing to Lawrence in 1930, after reading the completed book, Frederic Manning suggested 'I am inclined to think you destroyed the first draft of it, because you had been too frank and angry in it, and what we have is your first compromise with fate.' (4) Was it lost on purpose as an outward manifestation of his deep dissatisfaction with the writing and the need to start anew; or could the loss have been intended to provide an excuse for abandoning the project, in which case he was very easily persuaded to return to the task. Was it indeed lost at all? Graves reports having been told by Alan Dawnay, who saw both the first and second drafts, that 'one chapter at least that he read more carefully than others in the original seems to be the same, word for word and almost comma for comma, in the second version' (5), which, if it indicates deceit on Lawrence's part, rather than a phenomenal memory, also says something for Dawnay's apparent total recall of a one-off reading.

Lawrence advertised, offering a reward for the return of the manuscript, but there were no replies. However, there was to be an extraordinary sequel to the incident, recounted to Lawrence's biographer Desmond Stewart, who interviewed the Hon Edward Gathorn Hardy in Athens in 1974. (6) About 1930 a man, vaguely described as 'neither a gentleman nor an underling', called at the bookshop in London run by Mr Hardy and a partner. The stranger offered to sell them the original 'lost' manuscript of SP. Lawrence was known to Mr Hardy's partner, who informed him of the incident; he duly arrived at the bookshop and asked the partners to make an appointment with the man and then hold him. Inevitably, perhaps, the man did not reappear, and one is left to conjecture that it was merely a hoax, or even an elaborate charade initiated by Lawrence himself.

There are yet more versions of the loss of the manuscript. In History Lawrence writes 'All but the 1st. 9 chapters of this lost at Reading. Nov. or Dec. 1919', which presumably takes account of the survival of the Introduction, but not of the drafts of Books 9 and 10. And the artist Kathleen Scott was to recall in her memoirs an occasion, in February 1921, when Lawrence was sitting for a work of sculpture and told her that the 'manuscript he is supposed to have lost was quite unimportant notes.' (7)

If completed, this original text would, by Lawrence's reckoning, have run to about 250,000 words. The work of re-creating such a manuscript would have been a daunting proposition under any circumstances, but more seriously Lawrence claimed to have destroyed the notes from which he was working as each section was completed - an unbelievably reckless procedure.

1	L 117, November 25th, 1919
2	Biog LH, p 145
3	Biog LH, p 145
4	Letters to, 9.V.30, p 136
5	Lawrence and the Arabs, Robert Graves, Cape, 1927, p 406
6	T E Lawrence, Hamish Hamilton, 1977, p 233
7	Self Portrait of an Artist, Lady Kennet, Kathleen, Lady Scott, Murray, 1949, p 189

Next section - Second draft

The writing of Seven Pillars of Wisdom - full listing