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

Vol. VI, No. 1, Autumn 1996

Edited by Philip Kerrigan

The Ways of Transgressors
Harold Orlans

Many letters and papers by and about T. E. Lawrence in the Bodleian Reserve Collection are in good order, especially those used by E. M. Forster and David Garnett in their, respectively, aborted and completed work editing Lawrence's letters. Other material is jumbled in boxes with papers still folded in envelopes. Thus, the writers and scholars who have examined the collection apparently overlooked a poignant, undated, two-page typed document in an envelope on which this is written:¹ 

'To my Sons, 
(But not to be opened except Mother and I are dead.) - OR when Mother desires to. 

My dear Sons, 

I know this letter will be a cause of great sorrow and sadness to you all, as it is to me to write it. The cruel fact is this, that your mother and I were never married. 

When I first met mother, I was already married. An unhappy marriage without love on either side though I had four young daughters. Your Mother and I unfortunately fell in love with each other and when the exposé came, thought only of getting away and hiding ourselves with you Bob, then a baby. There was no divorce between my wife and myself. How often have I wished there had been! Then I drank and Mother had a hard time but happily I was able to cure myself of that. You can imagine or try to imagine how your Mother and I have suffered all these years, not knowing what day we might be recognised by some one and our sad history published far and wide. You can think with what delight we saw each of you growing up to manhood, for men are valued for themselves and not for their family history, except of course under particular circumstances. My real name when I met your Mother was Thomas Robert Tighe Chapman (see Burke's Peerage, under Chapman) and by unexpected deaths I am now Sir Thomas Chapman Bart but needless to say I have never taken the Title. There is one little gleam of sunshine in the sad history, namely, that my Sister who married my cousin Sir Montagu Chapman, and my brother Francis Vansittart Chapman of South Hill (my father's place; the life interest of which I agreed to sell) were always loving to me and it is thro' their goodness that I have been enabled to leave you the greater part of the sum I have left. My brother at his death left me £25000, and my sister in her Will has bequeathed me £20000, but owing to the wording of her Will I shall not receive this £20000 if I die before her. She is alive but a great invalid and no fresh Will of hers would be valid though I know she intended and wished this £20000 to go to you all, if I should die before her. She for many years gave me £300 a year, which, with my own fortune, enabled us all to live fairly comfortably and saved Mother and me great pinching to make ends meet and also kept me from drawing on my Capital for every day expenses. 

Bob's name was registered in Dublin (near St. Stephen's Green) as "Chapman"; hence his name in my Will, I should recommend him to retain his name of Lawrence; a man may change his sirname [sic] anytime and need not take legal steps to do so, except he is expecting to inherit places or moneys from others, who know him by his former name. 

I can say nothing more, except that there never was a truer saying than "the ways of transgressors are hard". Take warning from the terrible anxieties and sad thoughts endured by both your Mother and me for now over thirty years! 

I know not what God will say to me (your Mother is the least to be blamed) but I say most distinctly that there is no happiness in this life, except you abide in Him through Christ and oh I hope you all will. 

Father'

This letter is, I believe, the longest document by Thomas Lawrence that has yet been published. Because T. E.'s mother Sarah was the dominant parent and outlived Thomas by 40 years and T. E. by 24, she received more attention from biographers than his father. The letter provides fresh evidence on several points involving Lawrence's family and raises again the question of when T. E. learned that his parents were not married.

Thomas Chapman confesses that he formerly 'drank' - implying, but not saying too much - and that he and 'Mother' lived in fear of being discovered and publicly shamed. The debatable assertion that, in class-conscious Britain, 'men are valued for themselves and not for their family history' could hardly cushion the blow the letter would inflict on any of his sons to whom the 'cruel fact' it disclosed was not already known. Stressing 'how your Mother and I have suffered' and 'the terrible anxieties and sad thoughts' they endured, the letter says nothing about any suffering, anxiety, or sadness his sons may face. The father asks neither his sons nor his God for forgiveness. He gives Sarah the right to keep their guilty secret from their sons (as she seems to have done from Robert and Arnold) and declares that she had little or no responsibility for their liaison - 'your Mother is the least to be blamed.' That was not how T. E. felt when he told Charlotte Shaw his mother 'had carried [his father] away jealously from his former life and country, against great odds,' and kept him 'as her trophy of power'.² 

The statement that his sister Caroline 'intended and wished' her £20,000 bequest 'if I should die before her' (which he did) 'to go to you all' confirms Jeremy Wilson's supposition that this sum (never, in fact, inherited) was meant 'to pass, ultimately, to his sons'.³ 

That Caroline 'for many years gave me £300 a year which, with my own fortune, enabled us all to live fairly comfortably' confirms Wilson's and Arnold Lawrence's position that the Lawrence family lived quite comfortably and did not have to pinch pennies, as numerous biographers - e.g., Liddell Hart, Flora Armitage, Phillip Knightley and Colin Simpson, Desmond Stewart, Michael Yardley - have stated.⁴ They were apparently misled by T. E., who mistakenly told Charlotte Shaw that his family 'had. . . never more than £400 a year' ⁵ and Liddell Hart that, 'The father's self-appointed exile reduced his means to a craftsman's income'.⁶ In fact, the father's yearly income may have been as high as £1,500.⁷ How much of that, if any, went to his wife and daughters in Ireland is undetermined. 

On the face of it, the document bolsters Jeremy Wilson's contention that Lawrence first learned the full truth of his illegitimacy in 1919, when he went home to Oxford from Paris just after his father's death. Yet I believe the weight of evidence indicates that Lawrence understood the facts of his parents' situation much earlier, when he was a boy, though this can not be established conclusively. Let us review the relevant evidence. 

Wilson states:

'During early childhood he had become aware that there was something irregular about the circumstances of his birth . . . by his own account he had concluded, before he was ten, that he must be illegitimate. At that age, however, he could not possibly have understood the full implications. . . 

'All Lawrence's written statements about his illegitimacy were made much later, after he had heard his mother's version of the facts. [Following his father's death in 1919.]⁸ There is therefore nothing to justify the common assumption that since childhood he had known the full story. On the contrary, such evidence as there is suggests that he did not. Notes written by C. F. Bell indicate that while Lawrence knew before the First World War that he was illegitimate, he had completely misconstrued his parents' situation.

'. . . Bell wrote: "the details. . .imparted by T. E Lawrence to Hogarth. . .and repeated by him to me. . .amounted to this: that the 'father', Mr Lawrence, . . .was not the boys' father at all, but that Mrs Lawrence. . .was their mother. . .Mrs Lawrence had been governess in the house of a man of some position who was the father of the boys - or at least of the elder ones. Mr Lawrence married her later and adopted the children.". . .

'Whatever the extent of his knowledge, it is clear that during adolescence he knew that he was illegitimate. . . .[I]t is important to bear in mind that he might not have believed, before 1919, that Mr Lawrence was actually his father'.⁹ 

Mr Lawrence came down with influenza around 1 April 1919; on 5 April, the doctor said he had pneumonia. Arnold Lawrence wired, 'COLONEL LAWRENCE BRITISH DELEGATION PARIS FATHER HAS PNEUMONIA COME IF POSSIBLE - LAWRENCE'. Mr Lawrence 'had a great fight for breath and died this morning' (Tuesday, 7 April).¹⁰ T.E. arrived home two hours too late. 

Did Sarah Lawrence then show T. E. his father's letter? Wilson says 'he. . .heard his mother's version of the facts' and, again, 'the true facts, which his mother told him. . .' ¹¹ He gives no source, but it is hard to think of one other than Arnold Lawrence, who was evidently not present at the critical meeting. That can be inferred from the remark in T. E.'s 15 September 1927 letter to David Hogarth, 'I don't think my elder brother knows anything of that story of our origins which I sent you. I told A. [Arnold] a little of it, three years ago, when I had an opportunity'.¹² It is only a surmise, yet it would not be easy for a dominating, distraught mother to speak to her son about her deep, lifelong shame. I surmise she showed only T.E., not his brothers, the letter their father had prepared. 

The memorandum of Charles Francis Bell, Keeper at the Ashmolean, 1909-31, Wilson's sole source, is a tertiary record of what Bell recalled Hogarth had said T. E. told him: the type of source that Wilson, a stickler for primary documents, usually discards. It is undated, but, prompted by the recital of Lawrence's ancestry in Liddell Hart's biography, was presumably written in 1934. It starts, 'The first 25 pages of this book are fantastic. If Lawrence gave Mr Hart any of the materials upon which the narration is based [Lawrence wrote the whole section and Liddell Hart reproduced it word for word.¹³], and this I can scarcely believe, his memory must have betrayed him to an incredible degree.' Referring to his memorandum in a February 1939 1etter, Bell adds, 'Everybody who knew Hogarth will agree that he was a man of the strictest truthfulness, very matter-of-fact and quite incapable of romancing. I have no doubt that T.E.L. did tell him this fantastic story. . .The impression I have received [after reading David Garnett's collection of Lawrence's letters] is that, in certain phases of his mind, he was capable of saying almost anything about himself '.¹⁴ For our present purpose, Hogarth's honesty is less in question than Bell's initial comprehension or subsequent recollection of what he said, or perhaps Hogarth's discretion and accuracy (he made a number of errors in what he wrote about Lawrence). 

Bell does not say when Lawrence confided in Hogarth or when Hogarth repeated the story to him. Lawrence's 15 September 1927 letter cited above suggests it was shortly before that date, when he undoubtedly knew the full facts. If Lawrence then gave the account Bell records in his memorandum, he would have deliberately lied to Hogarth, which would be inexplicable at a time when he had told and was telling others the truth. 

In 1924, Lawrence wrote Robert Buxton, his bank manager and former wartime colleague, 'My father was called Chapman (Sir T.R.T.C. Bt.; Irish) but changed, for family reasons, but privately, not by deed poll or other instrument. . .My mother was not his wife'.¹⁵ In April 1927, he wrote Charlotte Shaw that, 'They [his parents] thought always that they were living in sin, and that we would some day find it out. Whereas I knew it before I was ten, and they never told me; till after my father's death something I said showed Mother that I knew, and I didn't care a straw'.¹⁶ In June 1927, he wrote Robert Graves, 'My father didn't like his wife: so he left her for my mother. No divorce. . . .Father took name of Lawrence. . .'¹⁷ Writing to his solicitor, Edward Eliot, about legally changing his name to Shaw, he said, 'My father and mother, who were not married: - or rather he was, but not to her - called themselves Lawrence. . . .My father was a younger son of an Irish family called Chapman. . . .His own place was called Southhill. ..His widow, Lady Chapman, and her daughters still live there'.¹⁸ 

These statements were all made after 1919. However, if Bell is correct, it would follow that Lawrence lied to his mother when 'I. . . showed. . .that I knew' and also to Charlotte Shaw, in claiming 'I knew it before I was ten'.¹⁹ I do not think T.E. lied to his mother while his father lay dead nearby or that he lied in his confessional letter to his alter-mother. 

Indirect evidence supports the view that, years before 1919, Lawrence indeed knew that his parents were not married. Arnold Lawrence was 'convinced his brother understood. . .their illegitimacy by the time he was nine or ten'.²⁰ Mrs Elsie Newcombe stated that, in 1914, Lawrence told her husband, Stewart Newcombe, that 'his parents were not married'.²¹ An astute youngster might have deduced that from the fact that, both in public and at home, the careful parents referred to each other as 'Tom' and 'Sarah', or 'the boys' father' and 'mother', not 'my wife' or 'husband'. For example' in November 1917, when Lawrence was awarded the Croix de Guerre for the capture of Akaba, E. T. Leeds encountered his father seated in the Union Society and congratulated him. 'It was news to him', Leeds recalled, 'and. . .shaking with pride, [he was] speechless until at last he rose to his feet saying "I must tell his mother", and hurried away'.²² 

Mr Lawrence visited Ireland periodically; Irish visitors came to discuss legal, financial, practical, and personal matters concerning his Irish relatives and holdings; and, of course, the parents also discussed these matters. Did - could - they always do so without being overheard or uttering an incautious word that disclosed more than they realised? 'No matter how scrupulously discreet they may have been', John Mack reasons, 'they could well have underestimated what a lively-minded and intensely curious child like Ned could pick up and piece together from bits of conversation'.²³ Making sense of isolated bits of information was one of Lawrence's special talents. Reading Robert Graves' remark, 'His memory for details is extraordinary, almost morbid', he noted, 'I have the faculty of correlating what I do know. So a small knowledge seems uncanny to those who facts don't hold together and help each other'.²⁴ 

As a young man, T. E. was markedly critical of Ireland and of his father's visits there. 'By the way, what meant an isolated sentence in Will's letter that "Father was still in Ireland"? Why go
. . .to such a place', he wrote home from Carchemish in June 1913. Some months later, he told his father, 'Don't go to Ireland, even to play golf. I think the whole place repulsive historically: they should not like English people, and we certainly cannot like them'.²⁵ This may be the only direct rebuke of his father on record and the animus against Ireland is scarcely credible in a young man with such quick understanding and sympathy for foreign peoples. One possible explanation is his awareness of the reason for his father's visits. 

If, as a boy, T. E. thought Thomas Lawrence was married to Sarah, had adopted him and his older brother Robert, and then had three more sons, he would have been substantially shielded from the taint of illegitimacy. The married parents and their family would have been respectable, the three younger sons would have been legitimate, and the adopted sons would have been, for most or many public purposes, legitimized. The family's history would have been quite different. The married parents would not have lived in isolated locations and moved frequently to avoid detection. In Oxford, they would have been more sociable and less obsessed with the sense of sin and the fear of discovery, shame, and ostracism. The fear was real. Some acquaintances recognised that there was something peculiar about the alliance of a well-spoken gentleman and the much younger and stricter working-class woman with a marked Scots brogue. 'Sir Basil Blackwell, a classmate of T. E.'s. . . , stated bluntly that the family was ostracized'.²⁶ Arnold Lawrence wrote, 'The children's illegitimacy mattered desperately to their parents, who were convinced of sin. It had the practical effect of depriving the children of their due place in society, as T. E. soon became aware'.²⁷ 

Wilson argues that, at the age of nine or ten, T. E. 'could not possibly have understood the full implications' of his illegitimacy. That is doubtless true; full understanding is granted to few children or adults. However, a boy of nine can readily understand and be deeply troubled by the hypocrisy of fundamentalist, God-fearing, convention-abiding parents who purport to be married and yet are not. 
Other facts (whose authenticity or meaning are debated), taken altogether, lend credence to the assumption that Lawrence, as a boy, knew his parents' secret: his flight from home to join the army; the building of his bungalow; and the conflict which probably underlay both events. 

Robert, T.E.'s older brother, said, 'We [five brothers] had a very happy childhood, which was never marred by a single quarrel between any of us'.²⁸ That fraternal harmony, if true,²⁹ did not extend to T.E.'s relations with his mother. Conflict between the strong-willed boy and his equally strong-willed mother led her to whip him often and severely.³⁰ T. E.'s father, the more relaxed of the parents, evidently did not discipline him. 

T. E.'s references to 'the discordant natures of herself [his mother] and my father' and 'Father and Mother discord'³¹ indicate that the differences in the parents' background and temper sometimes erupted into open conflict. 'Father and Mother discord' was the explanation Lawrence gave Liddell Hart of why he ran away from home. 

Lawrence's statements that, as a youth, he served 'six' or 'eight' months in the army have not been confirmed by reliable evidence.³² John Mack and Jeremy Wilson suggest that he served, but for a shorter period. Wilson states, 'probably in the autumn of 1905 [when he was 17], tension reached such a pitch that Lawrence ran away'.³³ Despite his belief that Lawrence misunderstood his parentage, Wilson allows that 'Knowledge of his illegitimacy may also have played a part in his decision to run away'.³⁴ Independent evidence points in the same direction.³⁵ 

The building of a bungalow for Lawrence at the back of the garden is also, I believe, indirect evidence of the conflict with his mother and the secret knowledge which exacerbated it. The bungalow plan was filed and approved in mid October 1908 and, when the building was ready, Lawrence studied and slept there during the rest of his time at Jesus College. 

Why was the small, two-roomed bungalow built? Wilson states, 'there were no spare rooms available in the house' and Lawrence 'needed a separate study'.³⁶ Yet the house had 16 rooms on four floors, counting the basement,³⁷ enough room, it would seem, for the five sons, parents, and live-in servant. If more space were needed, it would normally go to Robert, the eldest son, almost three years older than T. E. For some reason, T. E. received special treatment. 

Paul Marriott reasons that, at college, Lawrence, 'becoming more of a hermit and a loner' and working 'all night, alone' needed a place to study at night without disturbing the household.³⁸ A light behind a closed door and turning the pages of a book would disturb no one, whereas entering and passing through the house at 11 or 11.30 p.m., as Lawrence did nightly to get to the bungalow, might.³⁹ 

Again, it can only be a surmise, one line of reasoning against another, both with insufficient facts. A boy who, at 17, cannot tolerate his mother and runs away, is not more likely, at 20, to tolerate her. Aside from serving as a place of study, the bungalow served to put some distance between T. E. and his mother, enabling him to remain in, yet apart from, the family. 

I should point to a fact (the only one I know) that may support Wilson's position. In an April 1907 letter to his mother from Wales, Lawrence says he was 'at last discovering where I got my large mouth from; it's a national peculiarity.' Noting this passage (deleted by Robert Lawrence from the published letter), Mack observes, 'The comment implies, or at least conveys to the mother that Lawrence considered himself, at eighteen and a half, to have some Welsh parentage or ancestry. This conflicts to a degree with his later claims that he knew his parents' situation "before I was ten."'⁴⁰ That may be true; and, evidently, Robert Lawrence later saw in the passage a significance that he wanted to keep private. However, it may also have been an attempted witticism into which we later, like Robert, read a meaning that was not intended. In August 1920, Lawrence was still saying he had some Welsh blood. However, by 1927 and 1933, when Robert Graves and Liddell Hart were working on their biographies, he told them he had none.⁴¹ 

If Jeremy Wilson is correct, it follows, as I have noted, that Lawrence lied to or at best dissembled and misled even close friends and relatives - among others, his mother, Charlotte Shaw, and D.G. Hogarth - about this important personal matter. I think this is unlikely, but it is not impossible. 
Both T. E. and Arnold Lawrence had an affection for their father that they did not show for their mother. T. E. certainly heeded his advice that 'a man may change his sirname anytime and need not take legal steps to do so,' though he took those steps in 1927. T. E. also, probably, had a degree of sympathy for and perhaps pity at his father's subjection to Sarah. 'If my father had been as big as you,' he wrote Sir Hugh Trenchard, 'the world would not have had spare ears for my freakish doings'.⁴² The ways of these transgressors and, it must be added, of at least one of their sons, were undoubtedly hard. 

References
1. Bodleian ref. MS. Res. c.569. By one of those accidents that seem ordained for those whose time in an archive is limited, I came upon this envelope in the last half-hour of my first days in the Bodleian. Scribbling furiously, I could not finish and had to complete the copying on a subsequent visit. Though I have tried hard to reproduce the original precisely, sad experience requires the warning that one or another letter or punctuation mark may be amiss. [Note. The reason that this document was not published in Jeremy Wilson's Lawrence of Arabia, the Authorised Biography, was that it was added to the Bodleian collection at a later date].   
2. 14 April 1927 letter (MB, p. 325). 
3. Wilson, p. 944. Wilson says that the money went to the Chapman daughters because Thomas predeceased Caroline. 
4. Liddell Hart said that 'the family's very necessaries of life were straitened. They existed only by the father's denying himself every amenity, and by the mother's serving her household like a drudge' (Colonel Lawrence, The Man Behind the Legend, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1935, p. 3). Flora Armitage stated, 'the family. . .had to practice rather stringent economies' to manage 'on an income of three hundred pounds a year' (The Desert and the Stars, New York, Henry Holt, 1955, pp.18, 20). Knightley and Simpson and Michael Yardley used the £300 figure and Desmond Stewart, £300-£400. 
5. 14 April 1927 letter (MB, p. 325). 
6. B:LH, p. 78. 
7. Wilson notes that, in exchange for signing over his Irish estates to his younger brother Francis, Thomas Chapman received a yearly annuity of £200 plus an estimated income of £1,000 a year on £20,000 capital (the estimates are for 1916). Thus, 'Mr Lawrence's revenues during the boys' childhood amounted. . .to much more than the £400 per annum that Lawrence spoke of ' (Wilson, p. 943; see also note 28, pp. 983-4). Nonetheless, Wilson, too, speaks of 'the family's income of £300-£400 a year'! (p. 31). 
8. The bracketed sentence is a footnote (Wilson, p. 29). 
9. Wilson, pp. 29-30, and C. F. Bell, British Library, Add MS 63549. 
10. Copy of telegram from Oxford and 7 July 1919 letter from 'Arnie' to Lawrence, B(r) C569. 
11. Wilson, p. 30. 
12. B(r). 
13. See B:LH, p. 78. 
14. 2 February 1939 letter to Dr Flower of the British Museum (BM RP63550). 
15. 25 November 1924 letter, B(r); these lines are deleted in the version published by David Garnett (DG, p. 470). 
16. 14 April 1927 letter (MB, p. 325) 
17. Wilson, p. 795. 
18. 16 June 1927 letter (MB, p. 333). 
19. In a 1958 BBC broadcast, Jock Chambers, Lawrence's RAF friend, quoted Lawrence as saying, 'I knew I was a bastard when I was ten, Jock, my father told me' (Maurice Brown, producer, 'Lawrence of Clouds Hill,' 25 page mimeograph script of 3 December 1958 BBC Third Programme, Ransom Humanities Center, University of Texas). To be sure, Chambers' recollection of what Lawrence said more than thirty years earlier has no stronger evidentiary value than Bell's recollection. 
20. John Mack, A Prince of Our Disorder, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976.) p. 27. 
21. ibid., p. 29. 
22. T. E. Lawrence: Letters to E. T .Leeds, (Andoversford, Whittington Press, 1988) p. 114. In 1954, Celandine Kennington observed that Mrs Lawrence, then 92, 'never refers to her husband, she always speaks of him as "Tom" or. . ."the boys' father." ' (30 July 1954 letter to Lady Hardinge, copy in Knightley-Simpson papers, Imperial War Museum) . 
23. Mack, p. 27. 
24. B:RG, p. 64. 
25.11 June 1913 and 16 October 1913 letters (HL, pp. 256,269). 
26. Mack, p. 12. 
27. A. W. Lawrence, 'Biographical Notes,' two pages, typed and signed, 12 May 1985, B(r). 
28. Friends, p. 31. 
29. Robert censored remarks that offended him, when editing T. E.'s letters home, and was not a good judge of T. E.'s feelings. Thus, he said, 'The statement has been made that Ned did not enjoy his schooldays, but that is quite a mistake. He was happy. . .' (Friends, p. 34). Whereas T. E. wrote that his school years 'were miserable sweated years of unwilling work. . .such happiness as I've had began after schooldays' (14 July 1927 letter to Dick Knowles, B(r)). 
30. See Mack, p. 33. 
31. 14 April 1927 letter to Charlotte Shaw (Brown,p. 32.6) and Liddell Hart, notes on a 12 May 1929 conversation with Lawrence (Humanities Research Center, University of Texas). 
32. Counting eight references by Lawrence to the duration of his service, including 'a while' and 'three to four months', Paul Marriott puts the maximum period at three months and places it between January and April 1906 (Marriott, The Young Lawrence of Arabia, 1888-1910, Oxford, Marriott, 1977, p. 31). 
33. Wilson, p. 32.. 
34. ibid., p. 33. 
35. In 1954, Celandine (Mrs Eric) Kennington visited Ireland and spoke with relatives and acquaintances of Thomas Chapman to gather information that might counter the denigrating picture of Lawrence in Aldington's forthcoming biography. Florence Chapman, Lawrence's half-sister, told her that T. E. learned about his illegitimacy 'because of an examination he had to take when he was about 16 and he had to produce his birth certificate, and it was then that it all came out and he had to know. And he was in such a way about it, such a trouble[d]. . .' (Celandine Kennington, 8-page typed manuscript, 'Re Chapmans of Killua', I7 October 1954, Bodleian and Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin). This story contains errors; writing to Edward Eliot in June 1927, Lawrence said, 'I've never seen my birth certificate,' which appears to be true, because he did not know if the name Chapman or Lawrence (it was Lawrence) was on it (MB, p. 333). Nonetheless, Florence Chapman may well have recalled a garbled version of a story, originally told by her father, about a blow-up when 'it all came out'; 'about 16' (or, more likely, 17) would be when T.E. ran away from home. 
36. Wilson, p. 52.. 
37. Edwards Metcalf, T. E. Lawrence Symposium, Malibu, Pepperdine University, 1988, p. 67. 
38. Marriott, pp. 49, 66. 
39. 'He usually got home about 11 to 11.30. The outer door was always left unlocked and the key of the inner one was kept on a ledge over a window in the porch. When he came in he locked the outer door and passed through the house into the garden.' (Sarah Lawrence, Friends, p.28). 
40. Mack, p. 478, note 3.
41. '. . .I'm a mongrel, with Welsh and Irish, Dutch, Norwegian, and Italian-Spanish strains in me besides. . . but practically, the mixture makes me English!' he told Robert Cunninghame Graham in a 29 August 1920 letter (National Library of Scotland). Lowell Thomas also noted Welsh ancestry in his 1924 With Lawrence in Arabia (New York and London: The Century Co., p. 11) , presumably reporting information obtained in earlier conversation with or about Lawrence. In a 20 February 1921 diary entry, Lady Kennet (Kathleen Scott) makes no mention of Welsh (or Irish) blood: 'He [Lawrence] says he is Scotch, Dutch, Italian, and a bit of Spanish and some Norwegian' (Self-Portrait of an Artist, London, John Murray, 1949, p.190). Graves's 1927 draft account of Lawrence's ancestry, which Lawrence approved, states that he was 'of mixed blood, none of it Welsh' (B:RG, p. 60); Liddell Hart's version, which Lawrence wrote, states, 'Wales of the Atlantic coast had no share in him, after his first year' (B:LH, p. 78). 
42.1 May 1928 letter, B(r). 

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