Featured Riders On The Storm

Lawrence met his untimely death while riding the Brough Superior a 1932 1000cc 58100 (GW 2275) he named George VII.

From September 1922, Lawrence owned eight Brough motorcycles; he had names for each of them:
1922 -'Boa', short for Boanerges 'Sons of Thunder', the title Jesus gave to disciples James and John.
1923 - George I that cost £150, more than the price of a house at the time._
1924 - George II.
1925 - George III.
1926 - George IV.
1927 - George V (RK 4907).
1929 - George VI (UL 656).
1932 - George VII (GW 2275). This machine has been in the sole possession of Mr John Weebly of Ringwood for the past 23 years.

George VIII was being built when to Lawrence died and it was never delivered.

these passages include his Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw 1922-1926 (Woodgreen Common, Castle Hill Press) where he describes his bikes and riding them in letters to Charlotte.

Lawrence was in Edinburgh in August 1926 visiting Bartholemew, map-makers who were producing a map for the Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

(Boanerges - Son of Thunder - was another name he gave to his bikes)

'Tomorrow morning I will see them and tomorrow afternoon I will be in Cranwell. It takes 7 1/2 hours, on Boanerges, going respectably. The respectability is mine. Boanerges would go madly, if I would. Alas, surely I grow old. Again and again, this morning, when we came to a piece of road which invited ninety, I patted his tank and murmured 'Seventy only, old thing', and kept to it. The excuse I gave myself was that Edinburgh was a long way and that there must be no open throttle on a long journey. Indeed that was once my maxim: but today I kept the maxim without being vexed thereby: and that is significant. Or is it only that I have ridden too many hundreds of miles this last week?

I then put Boanerges upon the London road. Whether it was the ham and eggs, or Durham, or the morning, or the hope of London and the music tonight I don't know: but after a mile or two I said to B ˜We are going to hurry' and thereupon laid back my ears like a rabbit, and galloped down the road. Galloped to some purpose too: Cranwell (160 miles) in 2hrs 58 mins. It seemed to me that 65 miles an hour was a fitting pace. So we kept down to that where the road was not fit for more: but often we were 90 for two or three miles in end, with old B trumpeting ha ha like a war-horse.'

And later, from The Mint:

'I let in the clutch again, and eased Boanerges down the hill along the tram-lines through the dirty streets and up-hill to the aloof cathedral, where it stood in frigid perfection above the cowering close. No message of mercy in Lincoln. Our God is a jealous God: and man's very best offering will fall disdainfully short of worthiness, in the sight of Saint Hugh and his angels.

Remigius, earthy old Remigius, looks with more charity on and Boanerges. I stabled the steel magnificence of strength and speed at his west door and went in: to find the organist practising something slow and rhythmical, like a multiplication table in notes on the organ. The fretted, unsatisfying and unsatisfied lace-work of choir screen and spandrels drank in the main sound. Its surplus spilled thoughtfully into my ears.

By then my belly had forgotten its lunch, my eyes smarted and streamed. Out again, to sluice my head under the White Hart's yard-pump. A cup of real chocolate and a muffin at the teashop: and Boa and I took the Newark road for the last hour of daylight. He ambles at forty-five and when roaring his utmost, surpasses the hundred. A skittish motor-bike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocation, to excess conferred by its honeyed untiring smoothness. Because Boa loves me, he gives me five more miles of speed than a stranger would get from him.

At Nottingham I added sausages from my wholesaler to the bacon which I'd bought at Lincoln: bacon so nicely sliced that each rasher meant a penny. The solid pannier-bags behind the saddle took all this and at my next stop a (farm) took also a felt-hammocked box of fifteen eggs. Home by Sleaford, our squalid, purse-proud, local village. Its butcher had six penn'orth of dripping ready for me. For months have I been making my evening round a marketing, twice a week, riding a hundred miles for the joy of it and picking up the best food cheapest, over half the country side.'

The style of Lawrence's writing can be a bit challenging to present day ears, but the sensation I am left with is the visceral, dangerous 'thrill' or madness of riding a motorcycle at speed in the 1920's (100mph on that bike must have felt like being battered, and some).

Beerman