Cultural Escapes

The phrase is in ancient Greek and colloquially means “Who cares?”. Herodotus In Book VI of the “Histories”, relates that Hippoclides of Tisandro “the wealthiest and most handsome man in Athens” was among the most accredited of the suitors for the hand of Agoriste, daughter of Clistene, the despot of Sicione.
Candidate trials lasted a year and at the final banquet those who remained had their musical and other talents put to the test. The wine flowed and Hippoclides, “who quite excelled the others called on the flautist to play him a tune. The flautist obeyed and set him dancing”. The dance made him appear increasingly self-obsessed and frenzied. Clistene found this somewhat unseemly.
“Son of Tisandro, you have danced away the marriage” he boomed when the exhibition had ended. “Who cares?” replied Hippoclides.
This response is incised in the entrance pediment of Clouds Hill, the cottage that T.E. Lawrence first rented and then bought on his return to his homeland at his re-entry, in two stages and under a false name, into the ranks of the British Army.
It embraces a philosophy of life that was congenial to him: follow your instincts, do not worry about others nor the consequences, and do not lend any importance to the things of this life.
If there has ever been anyone who did not care about the things that everyone else frets about - success, glory, comfort, career, recognition – it was this Lawrence of Arabia.
At two and a half hours by train from London, surrounded by the oak trees and rhododendrons of Dorset, Lawrence's house is small but elegant,- reflecting its owner's image. Everything is simple

and informal but never unkempt. On the ground floor in the reading room, as if it were a sofa, a large bed stands out, covered in leather and designed by him. The sleeping bag that he used instead of sheets was labelled “meum”; there was also a “tuum” for a guest. A bedside cabinet and a Romer armchair with appended bookrest completes the furnishings. The built-in bookshelves today contain books by him and about him as well as those originally owned: classical Greek and Latin works, Lucrezio, Virgil, Caesar, Plutarch, Herodotus; Italian works of Dante, Boccaccio, Bandello, Machiavelli; the poetry of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Elliot and Pound. A narrow staircase leads to the bright, three-windowed “music room”, with an E.M.G. loudspeaker gramophone, two-seater divan and two small armchairs.
Everything is in ebony and walnut, some candles are fixed to the beams (the cottage had no electric lighting), an oil painting by H. Tuke hangs above the red-painted stone fireplace and portrays Lawrence as a young cadet at the beach in Newpoorth and about to dive. A small bathroom beside the entrance and, on the upper floor and covered by aluminium sheeting to ensure winter warmth and summer cool, a sort of ship's cabin with portholes, sailor's cot and wall cupboard, completes the lot.
Clouds Hill is a highly personal abode, not to be meddled with nor intruded upon. He wrote to a lady friend: “Please, no furniture. I drew great satisfaction, and a little exasperation, from building what there is”. And to Lady Astor: “A gem of gems in the eyes of its owner. As ugly as my sins, angular, small and unstable,- just like its owner. But I love it.”
In 1933, two years before leaving the RAF, he let his mother know: “I have added a water cistern, bath, boiler, bookshelves, swimming pool (tiny, but I can splash about in it): all of Earth's pleasures. On the other hand I've eliminated the bed and the cheap kitchen and I've ignored the absence of sewerage. Give me the luxuries and I'll make do with less essentials”.The swimming pool is not attached to the property but is sited beyond the road on rented land that was proposed for him to buy. Also nearby is Bovington Camp, where Lawrence met his death. The surroundings have not changed. It is a military zone and tank manouvres still take place. Lawrence had few friends among the tank regiment, his comrades-in-arms. His opinion of the Army was no better, “dung, stench and a desolate disgrace”. He complained about the behaviour of another soldier to a comrade. “about those capable of using slingshots against cats.” “Why, what do you use?”

was the reply.
Some soldiers did, however, participate in the Clouds Hill afternoons, “those few who are interested in abstract things, like music”. The testimonies, whether from simple soldiers or famous writers like E.M. Forster, agree in their recollections. Chatting, listening to Beethoven, sipping Chinese tea (there was no alcohol offered), eating stuffed olives, costly almonds, peanuts, some boxed delicacies. It was Lawrence who led the conversations, chose the topics, patiently answered all kinds of questions, looked after the music, kept the fire going. Some sat in the chairs, others on the floor, Lawrence on the edge of the fireplace. A violin sonata by Bach, if darkness had fallen, brought the get-together to a close. There was a remarkable range of records: all of Mozart, Beethoven, Pergolesi, Schubert, Wagner.
But there is another, darker legend, though

containing much truth, of rather less intellectual encounters at Clouds Hill. Lawrence's misogyny is known about. “The presence of women leaves me cold, this is why I can resist them”, he would write to Sidney Cockerell. And he would ask of his friend the painter Erik Kennington, “Do you actually like naked women? They express so little.” But his disgust of sex was also known about, meant as the trysts, intertwined bodies, promiscuity. His official biographer, Jeremy Wilson, is responsible for the very important recent publication in three volumes of the first edition of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The 1922 manuscript had been printed, reviewed and abridged in 1926 and Wilson, comparing the two versions, has established how some parts would have been corrected by the author because they were evidently too personal. E.g. in the famous account of the violence suffered by the Turks, a very important passage is omitted from the definitive 1926 edition – “it was not the defiling feelings, since nobody held the body in more dishonour than I did. Probably it was a question of surrender of the spirit, due to that raging pain that agitated my nerves, that degraded me to the level of a beast when it forced me to lie face downwards and that has travelled with me ever since; a fascination, a terror and a delicate yearning, lewd and perhaps depraved, like a butterfly against the fire that attracts it.”
After Lawrence's death, his brother Arnold sent diaries and letters to the Bodleaian Library. In these, Lawrence, the moth tempted and consumed by the flame, recounted in detail the flagellation regime he had imposed at Clouds Hill. The writings will be available for consultation in the year 2000.
For all its errant and discontented existence, however, Clouds Hill remained for Lawrence an enchanted place.
There he would write his books and oversee the translations. Everything around it speaks of him.
A few hundred meters away, there is a plaque recording his fatal accident.

His grave is in the nearby town of Moreton. At Wareham, in the small, Saxon, St. Martin's church, there is a sculpture by Erik Kennington, illustrator of the Seven Pillars, dedicated to him and portrayed as a Prince of Mecca; he has a camel's saddle for a pillow, sandals on his feet, a sword with golden hilt; next to his head there is a Greek anthology, the Death of Arthur of Malory, a volume of English poems. It seems like the statue of Guidarello Guidarelli, a boy warrior.
At the funeral the finest epitaph was by George Ambrose Lloyd, the last great colonial official: “He was one of those rare beings who seem to belong to the morning of the world. He would have liked how he died,- an impetuous race, a sudden end.”

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