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    Genius of Friendship: T. E. Lawrence
    Genius of Friendship: T. E. Lawrence
    Genius of Friendship: T. E. Lawrence
    Ebook65 pages56 minutes

    Genius of Friendship: T. E. Lawrence

    By Henry Williamson

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    About this ebook

    'Genius of Friendship', long out of print, is a memoir by Henry Williamson recounting his friendship with T. E. Lawrence – ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. This was a friendship through correspondence, for the two men actually met only twice. It had its beginning in a long letter critiquing Williamson's Hawthornden Prize-winning book 'Tarka the Otter' that Lawrence sent to Edward Garnett from India early in 1928, and which Garnett then forwarded to Williamson. The memoir quotes extensively from Lawrence’s letters to Williamson, which are both literary and personal in content, and make for fascinating reading. They continue up to Lawrence’s death in 1935; indeed, Lawrence’s last act, before his fatal motorcycle accident, was to send a telegram to Williamson arranging a meeting; he crashed while returning from the post office. The telegram is reproduced as a frontispiece to the book.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHenry Williamson
    Release dateJan 3, 2014
    ISBN9781873507650
    Genius of Friendship: T. E. Lawrence
    Author

    Henry Williamson

    The writer Henry Williamson was born in London in 1895. Naturalist, soldier, journalist, farmer, motor enthusiast and author of over fifty books, his descriptions of nature and the First World War have been highly praised for their accuracy. He is best known as the author of Tarka the Otter, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1928 and was filmed in 1977. By one of those extraordinary coincidences, Henry Williamson died while the crew were actually filming the death scene of Tarka. His writing falls into clear groups: 1) Nature writings, of which Tarka the Otter and Salar the Salmon are the most well known, but which also include, amongst many others, The Peregrine's Saga, The Old Stag and The Phasian Bird. 2) Henry Williamson served throughout the First World War.The Wet Flanders Plain, A Patriot's Progress, and no less than five books of the 15-volume Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (How Dear is Life, A Fox Under My Cloak, The Golden Virgin, Love and the Loveless and A Test to Destruction) cover the reality of the years 1914–1918, both in England and on the Western Front. 3) A further grouping concerns the social history aspect of his work in the 'Village' books (The Village Book and The Labouring Life), the four-volume Flax of Dream and the volumes of the Chronicle. But all of these groups can be found in any of his books. Some readers are only interested in a particular aspect of his writing, but to truly understand Henry Williamson’s achievement it is necessary to take account of all of his books, for their extent reflects his complex character. The whole of life, the human, animal and plant worlds, can be found within his writings. He was a man of difficult temperament but he had a depth of talent that he used to the full. The Henry Williamson Society was founded in 1980, and has published a number of collections of Williamson's journalism, which are now being published as e-books.

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      Book preview

      Genius of Friendship - Henry Williamson

      First published by Faber and Faber Ltd 1941

      This edition published by the Henry Williamson Society 1988 to celebrate the centenary of the birth of T. E. Lawrence

      E-book edition 2014

      Smashwords edition

      The Henry Williamson Society

      14 Nether Grove

      Longstanton

      Cambridge

      Text © The Henry Williamson Literary Estate

      Telegram reproduced by kind permission of the Henry Williamson Literary Estate

      (Beaver Photography, by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery)

      ISBN 978-1-873507-65-0 (EPUB)

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holders.

      Contents

      Genius of Friendship

      GENIUS OF FRIENDSHIP

      ‘T. E. LAWRENCE’

      In the summer of 1929, when 338171 Aircraftman T. E. Shaw, R.A.F., was generally known to be at Cattewater, Plymouth, a certain woman living in South Devon desired greatly to have ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ sit at her table. ‘ Do persuade him to come’ she begged of a mutual acquaintance. Shaw was translating Homer—‘sweating every spare hour I get over old Odysseus, a new version of whose adventures I am producing (on a cash basis) for a very rich American. Hope he likes it better than I do—but the cash will be superb when it is all over.’ At that time meeting new faces was for him worse than riding at night into the glare of headlamps, then never dropped for courtesy’s sake. Even his friends would not let ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ alone; so he could seldom lose that Frankenstein consciousness. Being extremely sensitive and kindly, he was always being with his friends what they expected him to be, reflecting their interest in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. He was thereby much self-entangled. On this particular occasion the acquaintance was persuasive. ‘They’re awfully nice people, I’m sure you’ll like them.’ At last Shaw agreed to go, and to a dinner party. ‘I don’t think I ever want to meet a famous man again,’ declared the hostess afterwards. ‘He never once looked at me, or at any other guest. He refused to shake hands. I felt a perfect fool. He said nothing. He refused to eat. Hors d’oeuvre? No thank you. Soup? No thank you. Sherry? No thank you. Some water? No thank you. Fish? No thank you. But surely you’re going to eat grouse? May I just have a little fried potato, please? "But you must have some of this delicious bird, Mr. Shaw. Really, no thank you. But don’t you ever eat normal food? Frequently. What do you like, as a rule? ’ Shaw began to feel it was funny. He told the truth. ‘ Tea and wads. Whatever are wads, Mr. Shaw? He explained, sitting motionless in chair, hands folded inertly on lap. I am sorry we haven’t a canteen here, Mr. Shaw, since so obviously you seem to prefer your own food." His face got heavier and more stupid, and I was very glad when he got up and went.’ The story as the good woman tells it is of course a self-criticism; which one day she may perceive.

      A few years earlier ‘T. E. Lawrence’ would perhaps have remained less silent or monosyllabic. One of his friends tells how, at another party, a somewhat pretentious lady was telling anecdotes, most of them about titled people to whom she referred by nick-names and pet-names. Seeing that her listener was not interested, she leaned forward and said, ‘I fear my conversation does not interest Colonel Lawrence very much?’ Lawrence bowed from the hips, and murmured impassively, ‘It does not interest him at all.’ He intended the reply as a joke, a sort of truthful joke—while realizing it couldn’t possibly come off as a joke in that atmosphere. In those days, soon after the Armistice, his power had no direction, and was used directly, personally, often scornfully; he was quicksilver; later he became impersonal, shutting off his power with uneasy people, conserving his energy, becoming inert. Later still, when he ceased to strain and had found his poise in the ranks of the R.A.F., he grew less self-insubstantial, and easily sure of himself. No longer did he have, as it were, to unscrew his eyes to look at anyone in conversation; he no longer used the retina’s sensitivity to discern his companion, as he gazed downwards with unfocussed sight. He held his head up, and one felt his sure impersonal strength, constructively critical, clear, understanding every intricacy of human impulse; because he understood the intricacies of himself. ‘I am a chameleon,’ he once said to me. Every child is a chameleon, in that sense, taking colour from its surroundings, absorbing ideas, sayings, attitudes, from its elders. So are all young mammals, birds, and even fish. Only those who have not needed to strive to maintain their life or integrity remain static.

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