TE Lawrence, the adventurer immortalised as ”Lawrence of Arabia” for leading an army of desert warriors, paid two-thirds of his salary to a mysterious woman for more than a year, according to newly released files.
The information, contained in confidential Royal Air Force records made public this week, already is generating a new round of speculation about Lawrence’s little-known private life, which has been the subject of fierce debate among historians and biographers.
Thomas Edward Lawrence was a British archaeology scholar, military strategist and author best known for his legendary war activities in the Middle East during World War I, and for his memoir about them, ”The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.” During the conflict, he helped lead Arab guerrillas fighting Turkish forces allied with the Germans.
Lawrence was wounded many times, captured, and tortured. He endured hunger, the extremes of desert life, and disease. He also took part in atrocities against the enemy, which were common on both sides then.
He claimed to have been the victim of a brutal homosexual rape after being captured in Arab dress by the Turks in 1917, and it was believed to have left him physically and emotionally scarred.
After Lawrence’s death in a motorcycle accident in 1935, a friend, John Bruce, told reporters he had been paid to beat Lawrence with a birch over a period of 12 years because of a ”flagellation disorder” he had developed.
And the new RAF files give some credence to this claim, containing medical records saying that he had ”scars of both buttocks,” and a set of payments Lawrence had made to Bruce, described as his ”minder.”
Disappointed with his country’s strategies in the Middle East, Lawrence turned down honours and was demobilised in 1919.
He tried to disappear from public view, enlisting in the Royal Air Force and the Royal Tank Corp. as low-ranking servicemen under assumed names such as John Hume Ross and T.E. Shaw to escape his growing fame.
But the press sometimes found out, and the newly released secret files raise more questions about his peculiar private life.
They described payments he made to a woman in Newark, England, in the mid-1920s while Lawrence was serving as Shaw. Two-thirds of his meagre three-shilling daily salary (the equivalent today of 15 pence or 22 US cents) was paid to a Miss Ruby Bryant. The payments, from September 1925 to November 1926, occurred while Lawrence was serving at a nearby British military base. Bryant has never been mentioned in any of Lawrence’s biographies, and his relationship with her and the reason for the payments are not known.
Some biographers speculate that Lawrence was homosexual, but that is strongly disputed by others. In its story about the files, London’s Times newspaper used the headline: ”Did Lawrence of Arabia secretly wed this woman?” and said the payments to Bryant were made under marriage allowance arrangements.
But the paper also quoted Lawrence biographer Jeremy Wilson as saying the adventurer never had a relationship with a woman, or lived with anyone from either sex. Wilson also said Lawrence often gave money from his salary and his royalties as a writer to poor people.
Whatever their relationship, Bryant knew Lawrence’s real name, according to a letter she wrote to the Air Ministry saying that one of the payments she was expecting from him was late.
To add to the intrigue, the day Lawrence cancelled the payments to Bryant, he ordered a new set of payments to another mystery character, WJ Ross of London. They continued for another year until Ross told the Air Ministry they were no longer required.
The files also show how unhappy Lawrence was about the fame that his wartime heroics had generated, especially regarding Hollywood.
In one letter to Sir Philip Sassoon, then undersecretary at the Air Ministry, Lawrence was furious about a proposal by the film mogul Alexander Korda in 1934 to make the movie ”Lawrence of Arabia.”
”Presumably he means me, and I have strong views as to the undesirability of any such film. So I have sent him word that perhaps he ought to discuss his intentions with me before he opens his silly mouth again,” Lawrence wrote.
When director David Lean finally made the film in 1962, starring Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness and Omar Sharif, it won eight Oscars. – Sapa-AP