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Frankly, it didn’t, not then. In those days Colonel Lawrence was just on the cusp of the international celebrity that would soon be his. And in any case, I was distracted by how expensive this telephone call would be; Lillie never seemed to worry about things like that.
“There’s a sort of Chautauqua lecture about him at the Palace on Thursday evening,” she said. “We’ll swing by to pick you up—”
“Lillie, no! Friday is a school day. I can’t—”
“Oh, Agnes, you must come. It’ll be wonderful!”
Lillie had a way of saying wonderful. Her tone carried the thrill of the word, its element of marvel and surprise.
“It will be like visiting the Holy Land,” she said, “and you can tell the children about it in class. Anyway, we’ve already bought your ticket, so don’t argue, darling. Just be ready at six forty-five.”
And she was right, of course. It was a splendid evening. Truly unforgettable, for so many reasons.
She and Douglas drove in from Oberlin and left their boys with Mumma before picking me up at Mrs. Motta’s. Lillie was like a school-girl—so excited and full of chatter—and she gave a little shriek when we saw the theater marquee.
LOWELL THOMAS presents
With Allenby in Palestine
and with Lawrence in Arabia!
Douglas left us girls in front of the theater and rattled off to park their ancient electric car. He kept talking about replacing it, but an Oberlin professor’s salary was not quite up to one of the newer gasoline models. A light drizzle was falling, and we hurried inside to wait for Douglas in the lobby. By the time he arrived to escort us to our seats, the theater was almost full.
You might have thought we’d all had enough of war, and that was true in some ways. No one wanted to think about the horrors of the trenches, or those poor Romanov girls, or the ugly revolution in Ireland, but this was different. This was the rousing story of General Al-lenby, the modern Crusader, and his conquest of the Holy Land, and a glorious tale about the young man Mr. Lowell Thomas called “the uncrowned king of Arabia.”
The presentation had received rave reviews in London. Drawn by the biblical setting and the tour publicity, Americans had flocked to the lecture in city after city. Now it was Cleveland’s turn, and goodness gracious! Didn’t we see a show!
Pots of incense were set alight; a captivating musky fragrance pervaded the hall. As the house lights dimmed, there was a swell of organ music, which resolved into a haunting Levantine melody. Mr. Thomas stepped onto the stage and into the spotlight. With a magician’s flourish, our host proclaimed an irresistible invitation: “Come with me to lands of history, mystery, and romance!”
The curtains swept back to reveal the Nile awash in artificial moonlight that faintly illuminated distant painted pyramids. For the next two and a half hours, Mr. Thomas took us to places in Arabia that no Christian among us had previously seen, and he did so with the world’s first aerial motion photography. Gasping, we viewed the pyramids—from above! We felt vertigo when “our aeroplane” banked and flew along the very roads upon which had marched the armies of Godfrey de Bouillon and Richard Coeur de Lion, eight centuries before. Hands at our lips, we felt we witnessed with our own eyes a thrilling charge by the massed cavalry of the Australian Light Horse and Imperial Camel Corps.
Lillie loosed a tiny excited squeal at the first image of the slim young Englishman she’d known in Jebail. She held my hand while Mr. Thomas related his own first glimpse of “Shareef Aurens,” the boy my sister knew as Neddy.
“My attention,” Mr. Thomas recalled sonorously, “was drawn to a group of Arabs walking in the direction of the Damascus Gate. My curiosity was excited by a single Bedouin who stood in sharp relief from his companions. He was wearing an agal, kuffieh, and aba such as are worn in the Middle East only by native rulers. In his belt was fastened the short, curved, golden dagger of a prince of Mecca.”
It was not this person’s marvelous costume that interested Mr. Thomas. “The striking fact was that this mysterious prince looked no more like a son of Ishmael than an Abyssinian looks like one of Stefansson’s Esquimaux. Why, this chap was as blond as a Scandinavian in whom flows cool Viking blood! My first thought,” Mr. Thomas assured us, “was that this might be one of the youngest apostles, come to life. His expression was serene, almost saintly in its selflessness and repose.”
“He was a lovely young man,” Lillie allowed, sounding amused.
“But saintly?” Douglas asked rhetorically, and shook his head.
They were both firmly shushed by the gentleman who sat behind us. Mr. Thomas, unaware, continued his encomium. A brilliant young archaeologist before the war, Lawrence was “a born strategist who out-thought and outwitted the Turkish and German commanders in practically every engagement.” At the head of his troops, in the thick of every battle, Lawrence rapidly rose from junior lieutenant to full colonel. “But he dislikes titles,” Mr. Thomas told us, “and prefers to be known as plain Lawrence to general and private alike.” In fact, this modern Galahad was rather shy, Mr. Thomas confided. “Indeed, the Terror of the Turks can blush like a schoolgirl.” Those terrified Turks had put a princely price on his head, but so beloved was the twenty-eight-year-old commander, no one had betrayed him. Thus, we were told, the blue-eyed scholar became, in less than a year, the most powerful man in Arabia, leading the greatest army raised in that land in five centuries.
Indeed, Mr. Thomas seemed to have forgotten General Allenby entirely, and gave young Neddy Lawrence personal credit for the downfall of the entire Ottoman Empire. “Mesopotamia, Syria, Arabia, and the Holy Land—all freed after centuries of Turkish oppression! Why, I would not be surprised,” Mr. Thomas concluded, “if centuries from now, Lawrence of Arabia stood out as a legendary figure along with Achilles, Siegfried, and El Cid.”
Well, my goodness! You can just picture us emerging from the theater, dazzled by what we had seen and heard, astonished to find ourselves back in plain old Cleveland. Unwilling to let the evening end, little groups congregated on the street: strangers drawn together by shared experience. The earlier drizzle had turned to a cold, spitting rain, just this side of sleet, but we were so caught up in the moment! Illness was the last thing on our minds.
Go to any symphony hall, any cinema, and you’ll hear a few who cough through the event, just as we did that night. You don’t think a thing about it, and neither did we. During the 1918 influenza, some cities had passed laws requiring everyone who went out in public to wear surgical masks over the lower face. Most people refused, or forgot and left the masks at home. In any case, the epidemic seemed over and done with. It would have felt absurd to take any such precautions in Cleveland that night.
Lillie and I were nearest a man who sneezed and wheezed through the lecture, but it was Douglas who sickened first. Maybe he had shaken the hand of an acquaintance when he was entering the theater after parking the car. Or maybe one of his students was coming down with the flu and had exposed him earlier that day. Who knows?
Unsuspecting, Lillie and Douglas drove back to Mumma’s to pick up the boys after dropping me off at Mrs. Motta’s boardinghouse, on Mayfield Avenue. I myself went to school as usual on Friday, eager to share with my students what I had learned the prior evening. Instead, I shared something I did not know I had.
That afternoon, I developed an awful headache but put it down to being up so late the night before. God forgive me, I spread the flu to my students. Several died, including one of my favorites. Elisabeth Maggio. I’ll never forget that poor child’s name, but I remember very little of the days that followed.