LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935) - photo 1
LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935) - photo 2
LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935) - photo 3
LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935) - photo 4
LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935) - photo 5

LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935)

Lot 233
13.07.2022 10:30UTC +00:00
Classic
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£ 50 400
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 794471
Lot 233 | LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935)
Estimate value
£ 20 000 – 30 000
LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935)

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. [London: Privately Printed], 1926.

Lots 233 to 235 are offered by descent from Samuel H. Brodie, a lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery (R.F.A.), who served under T.E. Lawrence during the Arab Revolt, 1917-1918. Based at Azrak, the oasis near Aqaba, from where Lawrence led the raids to disrupt the Turkish Army’s Hejaz Railway, Brodie commanded, along with his fellow officer George C. Pascoe, the Ten-Pounder Talbot Battery attached to the Hejaz Armoured Car Company (see 'Nominal Roll: Hejaz Armoured Car Company', Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Appendix I).



Quarto (249 x 186mm). Four folding coloured maps, i.e. two maps in duplicate, of which one bound in as frontispiece, and 27 (of 66) plates, many coloured or tinted, of which one double-page, by Eric Kennington, William Roberts, Augustus John, William Nicholson, Paul Nash and others, and 58 illustrations in the text, one coloured, by Roberts, Nash, Kennington, Blair-Hughes-Stanton, Gertrude Hermes and others, initials by Edward Wadsworth (2 maps creased at fore- and bottom edges, maps with linen reinforcement at folds on verso, some light finger-soiling confined to margins). Maroon three-quarter morocco by Roger de Coverley & Sons, spine and top edge gilt, pictorial endpapers with Eric Kennington illustrations (extremities lightly rubbed), with a contemporary roan chemise (worn, with front lower flap torn and defective, spine slightly soiled). Provenance: authorial ink inscription at foot of p.XIX, and presentation inscription in a secretarial hand on preliminary leaf dated December 1926 to: – Samuel H. Brodie –by descent to the present owner.



Privately printed edition, one of 32 'incomplete' subscriber's copies, presented by Lawrence to Brodie. O’Brien gives a total print run of 211 copies; a few were bound and ready by November 1926, but the vast majority were signed off by Lawrence on 1 December 1926 and then sent to the binders, from whence they were to be distributed; T.E. then departed for India in January 1927. A number of copies were bound up either with only a portion of, or wholly without, the plates for presentation to those who had served with him during the desert campaign. (The omission of the plates was intended to prevent these copies from devaluing the subscribers' copies.) 'I'm sending free copies of my Arabian yarn to the fellows who helped in the business' (letter to H.W. Bailey, sold Christie’s 27 September 2006, lot 122). This copy is inscribed by Lawrence on p.XIX ‘Incomplete copy I.XII.26 TES’, and although lacking the majority of the plates called for the in the List of Illustrations, this copy does include the 'Prickly Pear' plate. In this copy, page XV is mis-paginated as VIII. O'Brien A040.



Lawrence’s description of Brodie’s artillery unit gives the reader a flavour of the men and machines:



‘… the mountain-gun section on Talbots … was an odd unit which General Clayton had seen in Egypt, and had sent down to us in an inspired moment. Its six Talbots, specially geared for heavy work, and were good, but inferior to the Rolls in having artillery wheels (unstable in our changing climate) and only single wheels in front. This made them less nimble than the armoured cars over treacherous surfaces, and in addition their torque-rod brackets were too weak and were continually breaking, until at last the railway workshop in Cairo made us a set in phosphor-bronze, and forever cured that difficulty.



'They carried two ten-pounder guns, and were manned by British gunners who were technically excellent. It was wicked to have given good men such rotten tools; yet the inferior weapons were hardly noticeable in the greatness of the spirit of the men. Their Captain [sic] Brodie was a silent Scotsman, never very buoyant or very anxious, a man whom difficulties were shameful to notice, and who stamped himself on his subaltern, Pascoe, and on his men. However hard the duty given them, they attacked it with such untroubled determination that their will always prevailed. Brodie seemed able to pick up his unit, and carry it forward with him over every obstacle. On every occasion and in every crisis they were always in place at the right moment, perspiring but imperturbable, with never a word in explanation or complaint.’ (Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Oxford ed., p.517; 1935 ed. p.458).



Lawrence himself was an exponent of mobile armoured warfare, and laid out his thoughts in ‘Evolution of a Revolt’, first printed in the Arab Bulletin, and then reprinted in Oriental Assembly (1939, pp.126-7).





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