Of course Cecil may have felt it was his obligation to be polite to Lady Cynthia about her father, but nobody else who was present at the meeting seems to have commented on the incident, and this fact raises a certain amount of doubt about Lawrence’s story. Indeed, given how influential Curzon was, and the importance of Lawrence’s meeting with the committee, why on earth would Lawrence have gone out of his way to attack him?

Against this must be set the rumor that Curzon burst into tears in 1923 when Lord Stamfordham, the king’s private secretary, informed him that George V had decided to choose Stanley Baldwin instead of Curzon as prime minister, after Bonar Law announced his retirement. If Curzon could burst into tears on that occasion, then he could presumably have burst into tears in front of Lawrence and the members of the Eastern Committee of the war cabinet; but even so there is a certain gloating quality in Lawrence’s letter to Graves, which makes one uncomfortable. In addition, Lawrence’s suggestion that Graves should attribute the story to “a late member of the F.O. Staff” when he himself is the source of it seems rather devious for a man who set such high standards for himself.

In Scottish courts there used to be a verdict falling between “guilty” and “not guilty,” namely “not proven.” Lawrence’s story about Curzon bursting into tears seems to fit into that category perfectly.

The day after Lawrence’s appearance before the Eastern Committee of the war cabinet, he was involved in an even more controversial meeting at a much higher level. Allenby’s letter to Clive Wigram had produced a private audience with the king, who was in any case, given his interest in military affairs, curious to meet young Colonel Lawrence. Allenby had also recommended Lawrence for the immediate award of a knighthood, a Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath (KCB), which was one step up in the senior of the two orders that Lawrence had already been awarded. Lawrence had already made it clear to the king’s military secretary that he did not wish to accept this honor, and that he merely wished to inform the king about the importance of Britain’s living up to the promises made to King Hussein, but whether this information was passed on accurately is uncertain. It seems unlikely that two men as realistic as General Allenby and Lord Stamfordham would have hidden from the king Lawrence’s unwillingness to receive any form of decoration—perhaps the most important part of Stamfordham’s job as a courtier was to ensure that the king was spared any kind of surprise or embarrassment, and Allenby was an ambitious man who would not have wished to offend his sovereign.

Once Lawrence arrived at Buckingham Palace, he learned that the king intended to hold a private investiture, and present him with the insignia of his CB and his DSO. It seems very likely that this was the king’s own idea, that he intended it as a thoughtful gesture toward a hero. Once he made up his mind to do it, neither Stamfordham nor the military secretary attempted to confront him over the matter—George V’s stubbornness and sharp temper were well known, and when he had made up his mind to do something he was not easy to divert. Thus Lawrence was ushered in to see the king and left to explain himself that he would not accept any decorations or honors, either old or new.

We have Lawrence’s account of what he said to the king, in a letter he sent to Robert Graves with corrections he wanted Graves to make in his biography: “He explained personally to his Sovereign that the part he had played in the Arab Revolt was, to his judgment, dishonourable to himself and to his country and government. He had by order fed the Arabs with false hopes and would be obliged if he were relieved of the obligation to accept honors for succeeding in his fraud. Lawrence now said respectfully as a subject, but firmly as an individual, that he intended to fight by straight means or crooked until the King’s ministers had conceded to the Arabs a fair settlement of their claims.”

“In spite of what has been published to the contrary,” Lawrence added to Graves, “there was no breach of good relations between subject and sovereign.” In later years, the king, who liked to improve a good story as much as Lawrence, would tell how Lawrence unpinned each decoration as soon as the king had pinned it on him, so that in the end the king was left foolishly holding a cardboard box filled with the decorations and their red leather presentation cases. In fact the king seems to have been more curious than offended. Lawrence explained, with his usual charm, that it was difficult to serve two masters—Emir Feisal and King George—and that “if a man has to serve two masters it was better to offend the more powerful.”

At first the king was under the impression that Lawrence was turning down the KCB because he expected something better, and offered him instead the Order of Merit, a much more distinguished honor—it has been described as “the most prestigious honor on earth"—in the personal gift of the sovereign, founded by King George V’s father and limited to a total of twenty-four members. (Past members have included Florence Nightingale, and subsequent ones Graham Greene, Nelson Mandela, and Lady Thatcher.) This was not an offer to be taken lightly, but Lawrence refused it, at which point the king sighed in resignation, and said, “Well, there’s one vacant; I suppose it will have to go to Foch.”

The interview was cozy rather than formal. It had begun with the king “warming his coat tails in front of the fire at Buckingham Palace, the Morning Postin his hands, and complaining: ‘This is a bad time for kings. Five new republics today.’ “ Lawrence may have consoled the king by saying that he had just made two kings, but this seems unlikely—Hussein had made himself a king without Lawrence’s help, and Feisal had not yet been made one.* Lawrence had brought with him as a present for the king the gold-inlayed Lee-Enfield rifle that Enver Pasha had presented to Feisal, and that Feisal later gave to Lawrence in the desert. The king, an enthusiastic and expert shot and gun fancier himself—apart from stamp collecting, guns were his favorite pastime—was delighted with the rifle, which remained in the royal collection of firearms for many years until it was presented to the Imperial War Museum, where it is now a prized exhibit.

Later, Lord Stamfordham, in a letter to Robert Graves from Balmoral Castle, the royal family’s summer residence in Scotland, confirmed most of Lawrence’s account of the interview, and since Stamfordham and Lawrence dined together amicably at one point afterward, it does not seem likely that George V was offended—Stamfordham would hardly have dined “amicably” with somebody who had offended his sovereign. The two people at court who wereoffended were the queen and the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VIII and then the duke of Windsor), both of whom resented what they interpreted as discourtesy to the king, a resentment that Edward expressed strongly all his life.

During the course of the conversation, Lawrence expressed the opinion that all the members of his majesty’s government were “crooks,” not an uncommon opinion so long as Lloyd George was prime minister. The king was “rather taken aback” but by no means shocked or offended—his own opinion of Lloyd George was no better than Lawrence’s. “Surely you wouldn’t call Lord Robert Cecil a crook?” he asked, however, and Lawrence had to agree with the king that Cecil was certainly an exception.

In his letter to Graves, Stamfordham also made an interesting point: Lawrence had explained to the king “in a few words” that “he had made certain promises to King Feisal, that these promises had not been fulfilled and, consequently, it was quite possible that he might find himself fighting against the British Forces, in which case it would be obviously impossible and wrong to be wearing British decorations.”