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Journal of the T. E. Lawrence Society
ISSN 0963-1747

Vol. I, No. 1, Spring 1991

Edited by Jeremy Wilson

Book review: Oriental Assembly

Sir Ronald Storrs

Originally published in 1939.

Oriental Assembly is an admittedly mixed bag which many Lawrence fans all over the world will desire to possess; if only because few documents are more revealing than the early, unrehearsed, unrevised jottings of the great, before greatness has imposed upon them its inevitable stimulus - and limitations. And truly these first hundred-odd pages recording one month's diary, from July 12 to August 12, 1911, do predict, illustrate and so confirm many, though far from all, of the varied contours and aspects of what was destined to become a world- famous portrait.

Foremost will be noted the extent - assumed rather than explained - to which Lawrence could 'keep under his body and subdue it.' Neither aching bones, blistered hands and feet, attacks of dysentery, nor fainting fits deterred him from completing his arduous and self-imposed archaeological programme. Even had he enjoyed fair health, the extra infuriating effort involved by daily recording will be realised by anybody who has attempted to keep a journal, however simple, after a hard day's work in a Mesopotamian summer. Nor was the strain allowed to diminish his meticulous accuracy of method:

. . . a long walk of about twenty-seven miles, with the goat-track thrown in: feet a little sore, but no other damage. Average length of pace after first hour 2ft 7in.; afterwards lengthened, till in last hour 2ft 9½ in.

Dust on the Plain
As an example of his natural and constantly perfecting taste for observation and description: 'In the plain was interested these last two days to watch how the wind twists in spirals, often throwing up a thin column of dust many hundreds of feet'; the self-same feverish-violent whirling which was remarked by Dante six hundred years before:

Come la rena quando a turbo spira

and which in spring gathers suddenly and towers high over the Mount of Olives. He drinks in the 'wind-noise, rustling up and down the trees. Like Blake's "innumerable dance of leaves"'; and continues, under that intolerable yearning for a particularly unprocurable book that haunts the wanderer in waste places, 'Thought a good deal of his Jerusalem, must have a copy sent out for the winter.' His literary range must always have been high, and broad as well as wide, for, a few pages later, 'Packed also my Rabelais, Holy Grail, Rossetti and Roland,' attaining, as he maintained to the end, the full gamut of the Shakesperian outlook.

His patience is great but, like his admired Doughty's, not unlimited: 'In the evening felt a little better, and got down to dinner all right: there summed up enough irritation to tell my vis-à-vis he was a pig.'

The essay on 'The Changing East,' though rendered partially obsolete by the tremendous achievement of Mustafa Kemal (the only modern Dictator who has preserved his glory by ceasing to expand it), is nevertheless worth studying for its brilliance of Arab characterisation: 'There is no record of any force except success capable of breaking them.'

The predictions for Zionism, though apparently written after the Easter riots of 1920, are optimistic, and oddly coupled with the probable 'course of events in Russia.'

Study of Revolts
But the most important section of the whole book remains, beyond doubt, 'The Evolution of a Revolt,' which develops with inexorable logic Lawrence's original conception and working out, not only of his own handling of the Arab revolt, but of revolts in general theory and practice, and which should find a permanent place, off the shelves of Staff and Staff College libraries all over the world. (This chapter also provides a gloomy but not, I think, altogether despairing commentary upon the recent and present situation in Palestine.) No such importance can be attributed to the suppressed introductory chapter for Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Here I am unable to see that the editor has shown cause why the suppression, under the patriotic advice of Mr. Bernard Shaw, should not have been indefinitely prolonged.

Lawrence's rare and arresting blend of protagonist and artist-recorder is once more exemplified in the instinct for balance and design revealed by the hundred-odd photographs which close the 'Assembly,' and with which many owners of The Revolt or of Seven Pillars will be tempted to grangerise their copies - undaunted by the combination of the bibliophile upon all who slice books without putting them out of their pain by destroying the mutilmted trunk.

It has been objected that Oriental Assembly is little more than a re-hash of old or previously published Lawrenciana: that there is a growing danger of a noble subject being buried so deep in paper, not always of the utmost significance, as to become an item of bibliographical research rather than of biographical interest. Too many such books have indeed been written, about him and about; but I cannot admit the objection here. More than half of the 'Assembly' is new to the public; and for the rest, who has the time, chance, or knowledge to disinter articles, sometimes unsigned, from the back files of highly specialised magazines? Above all, this stuff is not 'what the soldier said,' but from beginning to end the authorised, authentic, authoritative writing of Lawrence himself.

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