T. E. Lawrence exhibition at Dorchester Museum (June 2007)
Originally posted on the T. E. Lawrence Studies list on 23 June 2007. Images linked from this post open in new windows.
Derek Norwell, one of the main contributors to the telawrence.net project, stayed with us last night. This morning he drove me across to Dorchester (40-miles from here) to look at the T.E. Lawrence exhibition at the Dorset County Museum.
The exhibition, which runs from 16 June to 29 September, is called The Man and the Myth: Lawrence of Arabia. A publicity flyer reads: ‘Soldier, scholar, hero, recluse… from exploits in Arabia to quieter times in Dorset, T E Lawrence continued to reinvent himself. The Man and the Myth explores his extraordinary life story through photographs, letters and personal effects.’ I had no idea what to expect.
Unlike a previous Lawrence exhibition held at the museum some years ago, this one occupies the museum’s main room for temporary exhibitions. In the past I have visited art shows there. It is quite a big space, as the photographs show. By comparison with the Imperial War Museum’s densely-packed exhibition T.E.Lawrence, The Life, the legend (1985-6), the room seemed airy. Also, we arrived soon after opening-time, before the summer tourists.
General view of the exhibition room seen from the entrance
The right-hand wall seen from the entrance
The journey round the exhibition is shaped - to some extent - by a number of wall panels that provide an outline biography. Topics include:
‘Early years’ (photo)
‘Family and Oxford’
‘The Arab Revolt’
‘Lawrence the celebrity’
‘Lawrence the soldier and airman’
‘Lawrence the writer’
‘Clouds Hill’
‘Death of the man - birth of the legend’
The panels seemed to me to strike the right balance between text-length and illustration. They are supplemented by captions for the individual exhibits.
As you walk in, the first thing you see is a Brough Superior motorcycle. This, it turns out, is not one of Lawrence’s Broughs. Nevertheless, it makes a powerful statement - as Lawrence’s did. A Brough Superior is a Brough Superior, whoever it belongs to. Astride a Brough Superior, Lawrence was no ordinary aircraftman.
Brough - front view
Brough - rear view
The organisers have assumed that most people will start circulating round the room from left to right. So the first panels on the left-hand wall cover Lawrence’s background and youth. There is a showcase containing the two volumes of Crusader Castles (Golden Cockerel Press, 1936) followed by material from the Palestine Exploration fund on the Sinai survey. This includes photographs and facsimiles, but also some original items including plans.
The approach has been to show interesting sample material, not to be comprehensive. That doubtless reflects the space and resources available, and the relative ease of borrowing exhibits from some institutions, but not form others. Thus Lawrence’s archaeological work is represented by the Wilderness of Zin expedition, rather than photographs or materials from Carchemish.
The next case contains wartime material brought back to England by V.D. Siddons, who first served in the Hejaz as member of ‘C’ Flight, 14 Squadron RFC. Material from the collection is normally on display at the Bovington Tank Museum, where it is on long-term deposit.
After the Siddons showcase the layout of the exhibition leaves visitors with several options. Ahead, to the left, is a children’s activity area. Children are invited to dress up in Arab costume and look in a wall mirror to see whether they look like Lawrence. Next to that is a deep sand box, from which you can dig up archaeological finds. Opposite, in a kind of tent, there is a low table with a colouring pad and map-jigsaw. There were no children during our visit, but I assume the museum would not give up so much space if these features were unpopular.
The children’s area reminded me of another thing: few children were expected to visit the IWM’s exhibition, even though they paid no entry fee. The IWM is normally packed with parties of school children but, as Lawrence is not on the National Curriculum, teachers had no incentive to show them the exhibition. At Dorchester, however, children come in to the museum with their parents. So they may get a wider education.
Leaving the children’s area aside, where should the visitor go next? As the Siddons material is wartime, maybe it is logical to go to the war photographs displayed along the right-hand wall. Some at least of these come from the Pearman lecture slides. A few years ago I gave a talk presenting the slides at the Museum. They include some interesting images not present in the Imperial War Museum photo collection. Here is a picture of damage to the railway, and another (apologies for the reflected ceiling lights showing in the photos).
The central showcase contains a mixture of material, including the Museum’s most unusual Lawrence-related object, a lock of his hair cut off when he was a small child and later given away by his mother.
A peninsular showcase at the far end of the gallery contains books by Lawrence and facsimiles of some letters to a distant cousin (mis-described in captions as his aunt).
This error is one of only two I noticed (though I did not read all the exhibit captions). The other was a statement on the panel about Lawrence as a writer that claimed that The Mint was his first attempt at writing after the war. True, Lawrence wrote the Uxbridge notes on which Parts I and II of The Mint are based in the autumn of 1922, four years before he issued the subscribers’ abridgement of Seven Pillars - but before he went to Uxbridge he had completed the polished 1922 version of Seven Pillars, which many regard as his greatest literary work.
A final item is the wooden bier that carried Lawrence’s coffin from the church to the graveyard.
I hope the description and photographs above will give a fair impression of the exhibition. Summing up is not so easy.
The exhibition is not addressed to people who already know a lot about Lawrence. Its main audience will be the museum’s general visitors, many of whom know almost nothing about the subject. For this audience, I think it probably does a good job. If you have paid £6 to visit the Dorset County Museum (well worth visiting in its own right) the Lawrence exhibition, which has no additional entry charge, should be an attractive bonus. You could spend an enjoyable half hour or so viewing the exhibits and their captions, and might learn quite a lot.
That said, the range of exhibits does not represent all Lawrence’s significant activities. I don’t recall seeing any exhibits, for example, that reflected his lifelong interest in fine printing, or his work on the revision and production of the subscribers’ Seven Pillars - even though much of his work on the latter took place at Clouds Hill nearby.
A visitor more knowledgeable about Lawrence’s biography might find the exhibition a little thin. Lack of resource - and possibly the cost of insurance - left gaps that could easily have been filled. There is certainly space to spare. Moreover, the exhibition does not fulfil the promise implied by its title. The myth is hardly touched upon, except briefly in a wall panel as the ‘birth of a legend’.
My recommendation would be to look at the exhibition if you are in Dorchester and intend to visit the Museum anyway. However, it is probably not worth travelling any distance specially to see it.
There is, incidentally, a range of Lawrence-related articles in the museum’s shop.
Jeremy Wilson