When Lawrence of Arabia met Joseph Conrad

Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935), 'Lawrence of Arabia', met Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) on one occasion, and they seem to have got on well. It was in the warm summer of 1920, on Sunday 18th July, at the home of the novelist Hugh Walpole.

And, thanks to Walpole’s diary, we have a glimpse of the meeting. 

Aged 31, Lawrence was in the middle of re-writing his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, having lost the manuscript the year before. It wouldn’t be published until after he died. The exploits for which he was famous were over, and he was serving as an advisor to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office – a desk job he quickly got bored with. 

Lawrence had recently become a household name as a result of the romantic dramatization of his role in the Arab revolt, in a theatre show first produced the year before by the impresario Lowell Thomas, who popularised his role. The show had just been relaunched, in early 1920, with Lawrence in a more prominent role than in the original production. He was later to regret it, but he willingly took part in promoting the show, posing for many photographs. He was in a sense the swashbuckling hero of jingoistic magazines of the time – he describes himself as a matinée idol. 

Now, Lawrence was concerned to finish his book, wondering if his political ambitions for the Arabs he represented at the 1919 peace conference were going to come to anything. 

The 64-year-old Conrad, suffering from rheumatism or gout, and prone to depression, was also in retrospective mood. He was looking back over his work, publishing some letters and notes on his books at around that time, and only slowly beginning another book. With an eye on his legacy, he harboured hopes of being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but this never came about. 

And it’s clear from Conrad’s letters of the time that he was not enjoying writing – he wrote very little in 1920 and was distracted by his wife Jessie being ill and his sons struggling to get on in life. He wrote that he felt “uncertain and directionless, like a ship whose crew has gone to land leaving all her sails in disarray”. 

Each were at the peak of the fame they would experience in their lifetimes, and they perhaps shared a sense that this was passing: Lawrence in growing disillusion, and Conrad knowing that his best years were behind him. 

Here is Walpole’s diary entry. 

“Conrad very cheerful. Really has started the Napoleon novel. Showed me some of the second chapter and I was surprised to see how many foreign phrases that were in this first draft. I am thus the first person in the world, after his typist, to meet Cosmo and Henrietta. When I criticised Mrs Travers a little, he said: “Of course, mon cher, it is not very good. I did my best work long ago.” Cunningham Graham and Lawrence the Arab man came down. The latter mild, small, modest, with fine eyes. Said the legend about him all untrue. Talked of printing and the Crusades.” 

And there are two more glimpses of the encounter. One is mentioned in a letter by the architect Sir Herbert Baker who knew Lawrence at around this time, who said that “when meeting Conrad he probed him on the methods of his craft; Conrad admitting but little conscious design. Lawrence would say that he himself had over-studied his own craftsmanship.” 

The other is a description of Conrad by Lawrence years later, in 1935, in a letter to the artist Bruce Rogers: “What I shall always remember is his lame walk, with the stick to help him, and that sudden upturning of the lined face, with its eager eyes under their membrane of eyelid. They drooped over the eye-socket and the sun shone red through them, as we walked up and down the garden.” 

How curious that each man’s eyes are remarked on. 

Of course they talked about writing, but perhaps while walking up and down the garden and not in Walpole’s hearing. Lawrence may have mentioned his admiration for The Mirror of the Sea, which he told people was his favourite Conrad book, on a par with Moby Dick. He received a signed copy from Conrad two years later. And Conrad may have mentioned his current project, Suspense, which is the Napoleon novel Walpole referred to. It was never finished, though. Instead, Conrad was soon working on what would be his final novel, The Rover. This is a story about age and retirement, with obvious autobiographical ideas in the tale of a retired sailor who questions his own purpose before being dragged into one last adventure. 

Whatever else they might have discussed, beyond “printing and the Crusades”, they seem to have found each other good company. 

And they did have some things in common. They both had an interest in the intelligence services, for example. Laurence had served in this capacity in the War, while of course Conrad had explored the subject in The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes. And the sort of ambiguous life that Lawrence had lived, in two cultures, with his increasing sympathy with the ‘native’ culture, is exactly the topic of The Heart of Darkness.

In the months following the encounter, Lawrence abandoned his efforts on behalf of the Arabs in the post-wat settlement, and he seems to have experienced a kind of mental breakdown, perhaps out of frustration or guilt. His life turned a corner soon after, when he joined the RAF under an assumed name, trying to escape his own fame. 

In his memoir of his father, written in 1970, Conrad’s son Borys describes a man of old-fashioned values who discouraged displays of emotion in his family. Perhaps he was often reticent with visitors, especially when feeling as unsettled as he did around the time that Lawrence visited. Yet, as we read in Walpole’s diary, it was a good day: he was “very cheerful”. He enjoyed the meeting. 

--------------------------

The Letters of T. E. Lawrence, ed. David Garnett (London: Cape, 1938) 

The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad: Volume 7, 1920–1922 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/247648/pdf 

Joseph Conrad and T E Lawrence, Ton Hoenselaars and Gene M. Moore, Conradiana Vol. 27, 1 (Spring 1995) 

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-1-349-09387-8_54.pdf

See also: 

When Dr Johnson met Flora Macdonald

When James met Eliot

When Keats met Wordsworth

When Shaw met Kiping

When Dr Johnson met Flora Macdonald

In 1773, while on his tour of the Hebrides, Samuel Johnson met the legendary Flora McDonald. And while he stayed in her house he slept in the bed that Charles Edward Stuart, 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' (or the Young Pretender) had used while on the run after the Battle of Culloden. 

Johnson's itinerary with Boswell was dictated by where they could stay - they hopped between the houses of the local gentry, who were invariably hospitable, and presumably sometimes curious to meet the famous Dr Johnson. So, for example, they were unable to visit the island of Muck because, although “this island well deserved to be seen, the Lairds’s absence afforded us no opportunity “. However, at Sky, they were well looked after. 

"We came to Kingsborough, a place distinguished by that name, because the King lodged here when he landed at Port Re. We were entertained with the usual hospitality by Mr. Macdonald and his lady, Flora Macdonald, a name that will be mentioned in history, courage and fidelity be virtues, with honour. She is a woman of middle stature, soft features, gentle manners, and elegant presence." 

It's a succinct account of the woman who had become famous after helping Charles Edward Stuart to escape capture, and Johnson is right that her name would be "mentioned in history": then she was well-known, but a century later she was elevated to heroic status by the Victorians. 

In a letter to Mrs Thrale a little time later, Johnson repeats his favourable impression of Flora. He says she was: "of a pleasing person and elegant behaviour. She told me that she thought herself honoured by my visit; and I am sure that whatever regard she bestowed on me was liberally repaid." 

To have only this much about their meeting would be only tantalising. But thankfully we also have Boswell's account. As usual, he is more gossipy in his description of the encounter, at the house of the "gallant highlander" Alan Macdonald. 

"There was a comfortable parlour with a good fire, and a dram went round. By and by supper was served, at which there appeared the lady of the house, the celebrated Miss Flora Macdonald. She is a little woman, of a genteel appearance, and uncommonly mild and well-bred. To see Dr Samuel Johnson, the great champion of the English Tories, salute Miss Flora Macdonald in the isle of Sky, was a striking sight; for although somewhat congenial in their notions, it was very improbable that they should meet here." 

Johnson retired early (though presumably after Flora had done so) and slept in the same bed that the Young Pretender had slept in nearly 30 years before. He was in a mood that Boswell describes as "quiescent". 

Were they "congenial in their notions"? It seems so. There was some banter between them, as Flora explained that Johnson had been described to her as a "young buck", which he enjoyed hearing. At any rate, Johnson was impressed by the significance of the meeting, because, as Boswell tells us, "upon our table in the room I found in the morning a slip of paper, on which Dr Johnson had written with his pencil these words: 'Quantum cedat virtutibus aurum' ('with virtue weighted, what worthless trash is gold!') - presumably a reference to Flora's choice of allegiance over the financial reward of giving up the fleeing Jacobite. 

So Flora lived up to Johnson's expectations, his Tory political convictions leading him to a certain sympathy with Jacobites as "true Britons", unlike the hated Whigs. (Although Flora had not been a Jacobite rebel, she always said, rather someone who had simply helped Charles out of compassion.) 

In the morning, there was the opportunity for more relaxed conversation before the travellers moved on, and in fact Flora gave Johnson an account of the famous escapade. Boswell says that "perceiving Dr Johnson's curiosity, though he had delicacy enough not to question her, [she] very obligingly entertained him with a recital of the particulars that she herself knew of that escape" and Johnson "listened to her with placid attention". 

The travellers departed after breakfast, taking leave of their hostess and escorted onwards by Macdonald for a few miles. Whatever their thoughts about the encounter at the time, it inspired Boswell to digress at length in his memoir about the rights and wrongs of the Jacobite cause. 

Alan and Flora were soon to leave for a new life in America, as part of what Johnson described earlier in his journal as "this epidemical fury of emigration". They had to return after the venture failed and Flora died in 1790, aged 68. 

Johnson and Flora were brought together again after death. A monument to her was erected at her grave in Kilmuir on Sky, and much later the epitaph was added using Johnson's own words: 'Her name will be mentioned in history and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour'.

See also:

When James met Eliot

When Keats met Wordsworth

When Shaw met Kiping

When James met Eliot

 

For Henry James - a great (though sometimes reluctant) admirer of George Eliot - visiting her was an important highlight of his European tours in 1869 and 1878. 

She was already revered for her novels (even before Middlemarch was published in 1871-72 she was immensely famous), while he was an aspiring writer with little yet published. Writing about Eliot in 1885, James described her as a women "before whom, at middle age, all the culture of the world unrolled itself, and towards whom fame and fortune... pressed with rapidity". 

But while James’ visits made such an impression on him that he was still talking about Eliot on his deathbed, there's no evidence that she took much notice of him. 

James met Eliot on three occasions, as far as we know. Two were at her secluded house near Regent's Park, The Priory, where she lived with her life partner, George Henry Lewes. Because of their unconventional living arrangements (not being married), there was a frisson of scandal about the place, which also meant that invitations were issued with some diplomacy. 

These visits were precious moments for those who were granted an audience. James paid Eliot backhanded compliments in his detailed accounts of his visits. He was clearly torn between hero worship and his high opinion of himself. He seems to have resented her influence. 

James gossiped eagerly about the first meeting, on 9th May 1869, in a letter home the following day. As he explained, "she is much hedged about with sanctity and a stranger can go only under cover of a received friend". This was the art critic Charles Eliot Norton. "I was immensely impressed, interested & pleased" he wrote, noting she has "a broad hint of a great underlying world of reserve, knowledge, pride & power". But he describes her in an enthusiastic series of contrasts, as if he resents the hero worship welling within him. 

Eliot, he says, is "magnificently ugly", yet "in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty" that makes him "fall in love" with her: "behold me literally in love with this great horse-faced blue-stocking." She has "a great feminine dignity & character in these massively plain features, a hundred conflicting shades of consciousness & simpleness — shyness & frankness — graciousness & remote indifference." And "her manner is extremely good tho’ rather too intense". 

In return, we know almost nothing of what Eliot thought of him. Although we know she did read The Europeans at least, in all of her correspondence there is just one reference to him. In 1880, while on honeymoon with John Cross (Lewes had died two years previously) , she noted "a graceful letter of congratulation from Mr Henry James". 

James' visit was actually also rather dramatic. In his letter home he explains that "Mr Lewes’s second son [Thornie], an extremely pleasant looking young fellow of about twenty four, lay on the drawing-room floor, writhing in agony from an attack of pain in the spine to which he is subject. We of course beat a hasty retreat, in time to have seen G. H. Lewes come in himself in all his ugliness, with a dose of morphine from the chemist’s." 

Thornie had just arrived home the day before. Eliot wrote in her journal: "Poor Thornie arrived from Natal, sadly wasted by suffering" but she says nothing about the day of James's visit. No doubt she and Lewes were much more preoccupied with Thornie than their probably inconvenient visitors.

[Indebted to this article by Rosemary Ashton]

Also: When Keats met Wordsworth  |  When Shaw met Kipling