Ou φροντiς Shaw of Dorset!

For me, this Greek phrase sums up the life and persona of T.E. Lawrence. (I was crazy enough to have it permanently tattooed on my arm!) But what exactly do the words οu φροντiς mean? In essence the phrase means “no care” or “no worry”. After the war, T.E. changed his name to Shaw and moved into his small cottage called Clouds Hill in Dorset, where he carved those words above the door. 

Here are a couple quotes by T.E. himself…

“In Athens was a gentleman called Hippocleides who became engaged to a rich merchant’s daughter: and they arranged him a slap-up and splendid marriage. The feast preceding it was too much for his poor head, though. He stood on his head on the table and did a leg-dance, which was objectionable in Greek dress. ‘Hippocleides, Hippocleides’ protested the shocked merchant 'You dance your marriage off.’ 'Wyworri?’ said Hippocleides: and Herodotus tells the tale so beautifully that I put the jape on the architrave. It means that nothing in Clouds Hill is to be a care upon its inhabitant.”

“Nothing in Clouds Hill is to be a care upon the world. While I have it there shall be nothing exquisite or unique in it. Nothing to anchor me.”

In the the original Greek, Hippocleides replies Ou φροντiς Hippokleídēi which means Hippocleides doesn’t care.

it looks fucking awesome that’s what it looks like

T.E. Lawrence, pictured left, trying on Dahoum’s clothes

One of T.E. Lawrence’s closet friends was Dahoum, who he met and worked with in Carchemish before WWI. People like to speculate on their relationship and I have often wondered just how close they were.  Were they simply very close platonic friends, or was it something deeper? 

T.E. doesn’t often talk about Dahoum in his correspondence with his friends, especially after the war (Dahoum died before the end of the war). He told most of his deepest secrets to Charlotte Shaw through the form of letters, many of which have been compiled. I don’t believe there are any letters detailing his relationship with Dahoum. Did the subject simply never come up, or was Dahoum less important to T.E. than we think?  On the other hand, perhaps T.E. was too heartbroken to mention him to anyone.  Another possibility is that any such letters were destroyed or never published.

What evidence do we have regarding their relationship?

The biggest indication of T.E.’s love for Dahoum comes from the almost universally accepted fact that the dedicatory poem in Seven Pillars was addressed to Dahoum. (His given name is often stated as  Salim Ahmed)

TO S.A. I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house, that your eyes might be shining for me When I came Death was my servant on the road, till we came near and saw you waiting: When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me and took you apart: Into his quietness So our love’s earnings was your cast off body to be held one moment Before earth’s soft hands would explore your face and the blind worms transmute Your failing substance. Men prayed me to set my work, the inviolate house in memory of you. But for fit monument I shattered it, unfinished: and now The little things creep out to patch themselves hovels in the marred shadow Of your gift.

T.E.  mentions in numerous letters how one of his motives in the Arab Revolt was a personal one. 

“I liked a particular Arab very much, and I thought that freedom for the race would be an acceptable present." 

The epilogue in Seven Pillars also mentions how his first motive "was dead before we reached Damascus’, hinting at Dahoum’s death.

Were they physically close? 

In T.E.’s later life he often remarked on his aversion to physical contact with other people. He wrote to E.M. Forster how he had never had any sexual relations with anyone. In regards to Forster’s short story called Dr Woolacott regarding a homosexual encounter, he writes

"Perhaps there is another side, your side, to the story. I couldn’t ever do it, I believe: the impulse strong enough to make me touch another creature has net yet been born in me.”

This was after T.E. had been beaten and raped in Deraa during the war. His aversion to physical touch was probably greatly due to this experience. Is it true that he was a virgin and literally not interested in such things even before the war, or had he blocked out any sexual urges due to his utter shame from the rape? In Seven Pillars he hints at getting sexual pleasure out of the beatings which would certainly add to his shame. There were rumours at Carchemish that T.E. and Dahoum might have been romantically involved, though they could have had a very close, even romantic relationship, void of any physical contact. 

In those days the two bottom rooms were full of firewood and lumber. We lived upstairs, and the sitting room there looks now much as did then, though the gramophone and the books have gone, and the fender with its bent ironwork has been remodelled. It was, and it is, a brownish-room – wooden beams and ceiling, leather-covered settee. Here we talked, played Beethoven’s symphonies, ate and drank. We drank water only or tea–no alcohol ever entered Clouds Hill … and we ate–this sounds less romantic–out of tins. T.E. always laid in a stock of tinned dainties for his guests. There were no fixed hours for meals and no one sat down. If you felt hungry you opened a tin and drifted about with it… T.E. slept in camp, coming out when he could during the day, as did the rest of the troops. It was fine being alone in Clouds Hill at night: so silent… 

I don’t know whether I’m at all conveying in these trivial remarks the atmosphere of the place–the happy casualness of it, and the feeling that no one particularly owned it. T.E. had the power of distributing the sense of possession among all the friends who cam there. When Thomas Hardy turned up, for instance, as he did one sunny afternoon, he seemd to come on a visit to us all, and not specially to see his host. Thomas Hardy and Mrs. Hardy came up the narrow stairway into the little brown room and there they were–the guests of us all. 

To think of Clouds Hill as T.E.’s home is to get the wrong idea of it. It wasn’t his home, it was rather his pied-a-terre, the place where his feet touched the earth for a moment, and found rest. 

T.E. Lawrence wrote this letter to E.M. Forster after reading Forster’s short story Dr. Woolacott. The story would not be published until after his death because of the homosexual subject matter. TE later went on to write,“There is a strange cleansing beauty about the whole piece of writing. So passionate, of course, so indecent some people might say: but I must confess that it has made me change my point of view. I had not before believed that such a thing could be so presented. The Turks as you know did it to me, by force: and since then I have gone about whimpering to myself Unclean, unclean. Perhaps there is another side, your side, to the story. I couldn’t ever do it: the impulse strong enough to make me touch another creature has not yet been born in me. Meanwhile I am in your debt for an experience of such strength and sweetness and bitterness and hope as seldom comes to anyone.”

Everyone, do yourself a favour and read Dr. Woolacott, in E.M. Forster’s collection ‘The Life To Come and other stories’

“He believed that the mind should control the body and he never seemed to feel pain. Or perhaps it was that he had a power of neutralizing physical suffering.  Once when he held his wrist and I knew it was hurting him I said: ‘Why don’t you do something…see a doctor about it?’ he replied: ‘It doesn’t matter enough”.  - Clare Sydney Smith speaking about T.E. Lawrence