Beschreibung:

Sir Ronald Storrs
Papers and Correspondence relating to the Middle East, Cyprus, and T.E. Lawrence, 1900s-1950s
Including important material relating to the Middle East during World War I, the government of Jerusalem during the early years of British Mandate Palestine, Storrs’s Governorship of Cyprus, Rhodesia and other colonies where Storrs served, the posthumous reputation of T. E. Lawrence (mostly correspondence relating to Storrs’s defence of Lawrence in response to Richard Aldington’s hostile revisionist biography) and Storrs’s own autobiography, Orientations; correspondents including Sir William Rothenstein (series), Eric Kennington (series), Maurice Baring (series), Dorothy Sayers (series, chiefly retained copies of letters by Storrs to Sayers), Siegfried Sassoon, Roy Campbell, Stephen Tennant John Buchan, Margot Asquith, Sir Winston Churchill Robert Graves Basil Liddell Hart (series), and friends and family members of T.E. Lawrence; housed in twelve boxes (inventory below); sound condition, general wear and tear through use, a few items crudely repaired with tape
Sir Ronald Storrs (1881-1955) was a key figure representing British interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East in the 1910s and 20s. He entered the Egyptian service in 1904 and was highly regarded by Kitchener (who was Consul General to Egypt, 1911-14). Storrs's was an influential voice in the shaping of British policy towards the Arabs after the outbreak of World War I and he was a member of the Arab Bureau from its formation in December 1915. He worked closely with T.E. Lawrence in the years that followed, and in late 1917 was appointed military governor of Jerusalem. He remained in the city until 1926, serving as civil governor of Jerusalem and Judea from 1920. He was inevitably caught by the competing claims of rival communities in Jerusalem and was unpopular with the Zionists. From 1926-32 he was governor of Cyprus where he was faced with the nascent enosis movement, most notably anti-British riots in 1931 when Government House was burnt down, taking with it Storrs’s art collection and some of his papers, including his letters from T.E. Lawrence. Storrs retired from colonial service in 1934, after a brief stint in Rhodesia.
The current archive traces Storrs's whole career, from early letters to his mother on the political and military conditions in Egypt in 1914 ("…This account is private, confidential and secret and must be shown to no-one, but I thought you would like to know the last inner workings of that rambling old machine now about to be placed on the scrap heap - the British Occupation of Egypt…”), through to papers relating to his postings around the eastern Mediterranean and in southern Africa, and to his own writings after his retirement. Storrs’s 1937 memoir, Orientations, was highly successful and the archive includes letters of appreciation on the book from figures ranging from Tom Driberg to Axel Munthe. He maintained correspondence with a number of literary figures, most notably Horace Walpole Maurice Baring and Dorothy Sayers (whose translations of Dante he valued highly).
T.E. Lawrence is a key figure in the current archive. There are a number of letters and papers from the time of T.E. Lawrence’s death, including a copy of a memorandum written by Storrs recalling his visit to Clouds Hill for the funeral. The bulk of the material relating to Lawrence responds to Richard Aldington's hostile 1955 biography, Lawrence of Arabia, which stirred Storrs into leading a coordinated public defence of his old friend. There are letters by prominent writers of World War I, including Sassoon and Robert Graves with the latter offering his own theories on Lawrence's "painfully realistic cerebral sex-life" and critique of his writing ("…He ruined The Seven Pillars by his rewriting. It began as clean reporting and ended gorblimey…”). The inimitable Roy Campbell also wrote Storrs a vituperative letter misunderstanding his correspondent’s position entirely (he congratulates Storrs on his imminent attack on "that foul little sadistic panzie and sodomite T. E. Lawrence" and his "Seven Mountains of Ballocks"). The archive includes sympathetic letters by artists - Eric Kennington Augustus John and William Rothenstein - who had worked with Lawrence. Basil Liddell Hart figures strongly as he co-ordinated the defence of Lawrence and ensured that many other public figures were drawn into the dispute about, in the words of Nancy Cunard, "Aldington's beastly book about Colonel Lawrence". Perhaps the most interesting and moving letters, however, come from Lawrence’s family and especially men who served alongside Lawrence in Arabia such as L.H. Gilman, who had commanded the Hejaz Armoured Car Battery and was fiercely loyal to Lawrence’s memory.
For the related archive of Sir Harry Luke see lot ***.
The collection is housed in twelve numbered boxes, as follows:
Box 1 (5 files)Cyprus: letters and papers, 1928-1935; Maurice Baring: letters, satirical verse, 1934-1950; Honours: correspondence on honours, 1929-54; Hugh Walpole: largely letters by Storrs to Walpole, late 1930s-40s; Talks on Doughty and T.E. Lawrence: lectures, notes, and related correspondenceBox 2 (4 file)Southern Rhodesia: correspondence with H.U. Moffat, G. Martin Huggins, and others, 1933-35; Northern Rhodesia: correspondence and papers, 1932-33; T.E. Lawrence obituaries: newspaper cuttings, La Table Ronde, no. 83, November 1954 [including an article on Lawrence]Box 3 (4 files)Miscellaneous press cuttings, 1900s-1950s; Photographs and postcards; Printed ephemera; Obituaries of StorrsBox 4 (2 files)Private/ Misc: Letters to Storrs, and some retained copies of outbound letters, 1910s-30s; Egypt: correspondence, official reports, related papers, 1910s-20sBox 5 (2 files)Private/ Misc: Letters to Storrs and other papers, 1900s-50s; T.E. Lawrence/ Aldington: Correspondence about T.E. Lawrence, chiefly in response to Storrs’s hostile review of Aldington’s revisionist biography, including by many who knew Lawrence, draft reviews of Aldington’s book, and related papers, mid-1950sBox 6 (3 files)All relating to Jerusalem: memoranda and reports, correspondence, on Zionism and Jewish settlement, typescript copy of memoranda on three conversations between King Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud and “Mr Crane”, February-March 1931, chiefly 1930s-40sBox 7 (3 files)All relating to T.E. Lawrence: Correspondence, printed ephemera, manuscript notes, including letters by family members and friends, and material relating to Lawrence’s death including a typescript account of viewing his corpseBox 8 (3 files)New Storrs papers: subsequent acquisitions, comprising correspondence, typescripts, and printed matter, on Zionism, the Middle East, and other subjects; Misc Press Cuttings etc; Unknown material: photographs and concert programme, 1976Box 9 (4 files)Dorothy L. Sayers: c.24 letters by Storrs to Sayers, 1948-55; Two files of letters sent to Storrs following the publication of Orientations, 1937: 83 letters, 1937-51; Private memorandum on the abdication of Edward VIII: detailing a conversation with Lord Brownlow describing the abdication crisis, Edward VIII’s final days as sovereign, and his experience accompanying Wallis Simpson to France, 10 pagesBox 10 (2 files)Hugh Walpole: 15 letters by Walpole to Storrs, 1937-41; T.E. Lawrence: letters, chiefly relating to the Aldington biography, notably by Kennington, Churchill, A.W. Lawrence [others in box 5], Liddell Hart, Robert Graves Nancy Cunard, also a photograph of Lawrence’s corpse, copy letters, letter by the Archbishop of Canterbury on Storr’s speech on Lawrence, 49 itemsBox 11 (5 files)Account of the attempted assassination of Sultan Husayn, 11 April 1915, 3 pages; Letters to his mother: 7 letters by Storrs on the political and military situation, Cairo, September 1914-January 1915; Harry Cust: 2 letters on the political situation in the Middle East, 1913-15; Warrants and appointments: 4 documents, 1919-54; Edward Keeling: 2 letters by Keeling to Storrs, 1915Box 12 (7 files)Brevet conferring the Order of Nahda (First Class) on Storrs, 1922; Miscellaneous correspondence: including General Smuts, William Rothenstein and others, 14 items, 1915-1950; Appointments and honours: four items, 1904-1920; Papers related to Jerusalem: letter to his mother on a visit of the Duke of Connaught (29 March 1918), a report on his posting in Jerusalem (late 1919), memorandum on food supply in Jerusalem (1918-1919); Papers related to Rhodesia: typed letters (two long letters by his predecessor J.C.Maxwell), memoranda, and a photograph, seven items, 1932-1934; Maurice Baring: 37 letters from Hon. Maurice Baring to Ronald Storrs, 1925-1940; Notes from Orientations and other miscellaneous items: manuscript notes, typescripts
PROVENANCESotheby's, London, 24 July 1978, lot 152