[Hardy-l] Hardy & T.E.Lawrence

[Keith Wilson]

I should preface what I'm, probably unwisely, about to say by indicating that I couldn't really care less whether T. E. Lawrence was homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, heroically celibate, indifferent to sex, or favoured camels.  But I do think we may be encountering on two counts a slight tonal problem for an academic listserv.
 
The first accompanies Tony Fincham's original unqualified assertion that Lawrence was homosexual (for which, as Ronald Knight indicates, there is no conclusive evidence, hence the contradictory lines on the subject that different commentators have been able to argue, but always to a non-proven -- and I suspect by now non-provable -- conclusion). I think, incidentally, there was a secondary unqualified assertion in Tony Fincham's original posting, which referred to "the oft-quoted gay scenes in Hardy -- the two Cythereas, Henchard and Farfrae etc."  I don't know what the "etc." adumbrates, but the examples mentioned are not "gay scenes."  They are in the case of the Cythereas one scene in particular, in the case of Farfrae and Henchard a quality in the relationship that some commentators have found suggestive of homoeroticism (indeed, it would also have to be suggestive of incest, since a key part of Henchard's warmth of feeling about Farfrae is that he reminds Henchard of his dead brother). To flatten either of these into the reductively absolute "gay scenes" is to ride roughshod over textual subtlety and substitute assertion for the much more rewarding exercise of critical speculativeness.  Incidentally, it's particularly salutary to bear the virtues of critical caution/qualification in mind at this point in Hardy studies, given the farcically ill-supported and unedifying spectacle of the supposedly syphilitic Hardy to which we were all treated in the pages of the TLS a couple of years ago.
 
But surely the second tonal problem comes in Ronald Knight's response.  If someone were to assert -- on no firmer grounds than Tony Fincham's original counter-assertion -- that Lawrence was heterosexual, I can't begin to imagine a context in which ardent homophiles would feel moved to say "None of the many who knew him closely have ever made that accusation."  Why in a contemporary socio-scholarly climate is the possibility that Lawrence may have been homosexual an "accusation?"  The reason I feel strongly enough to comment on this curiosity of phrasing goes back to another allied impulse that recurrently crops up in Hardy circles: those, often themselves committed Christians, who rush to defend Hardy against the "accusation" that he was an atheist (there was a long thread about this some years back on this listserv).  I've never understood why that's an "accusation" either.  Both designations seem to me merely putative descriptions, in their application to a favoured writer carrying no moral obloquy against which a defence has to be launched.  But the clear presupposition behind the use of the term "accusation" is precisely that defence is required.
 
It's undeniably true that, in the absence of firm proof, scholars shouldn't absolutely assert that T. E. Lawrence was homosexual, though I see no need for him to be defended against purely descriptive, non-accusatory claims that aspects of available evidence suggest that this may have been his sexual orientation. It's also probably true that people like me shouldn't absolutely assert that Hardy ended up an atheist (though I've done so on a number of occasions, and will probably continue to do so), though I see no need for him to be defended against the purely descriptive, non-accusatory claim that available evidence suggests he may well have been.
 
In short, why do a public figure's sexual orientation or lack of religious belief still seem to elicit the desire among admirers to defend them against a perceived "accusation"? Surely their predispositions in such matters are not ours to "defend,". merely to speculate about if we feel so moved and if there is a bona fide intellectual reason for doing so..
 
Keith Wilson
 
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