Lawrence in Effigy

The late great Colonel T. E. Lawrence of Arabia admired the arts. He also had a hankering to see himself as others saw him. On both counts he liked to have his picture drawn. Most tireless limner of Lawrence was stocky, dark-mustached Eric Kennington, who did the firm-jawed bust Lawrence used as frontispiece for his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and endless drawings of him and his Arab friends.

After Lawrence died in 1935, catapulted over his motorcycle's handlebars at high speed, persistent Sculptor Kennington began carving him a monument. For four years he chipped away at a two-ton block of Portland stone. The completed work was lately placed in Wareham Church, near Lawrence's rhododendron-bowered Dorsetshire cottage. Its unveiling was postponed for the war's duration, but last week photographs of it reached the U. S.

Many a quiet English church boasts a Crusader's tomb topped by a recumbent effigy of the knight in armor, grasping a sword, a favorite hound at his feet. Kennington's Lawrence (see cut) is a 20th-century Crusader. But his prototypes would roll on their tomb-tops if they could see him wearing the Arab garb of the race they warred against.

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