If he had really wished his identity to remain secret, he need not have befriended George Bernard Shaw – one of Britain’s most famous writers – nor any of the other powerful souls he corresponded with, including Churchill, Lord Trenchard, Leo Amery – First Lord of the Admiralty – and even the former Prime Minister, Lloyd George. The humble Aircraftman, fresh from his pig-swilling and scrubbing, would inform the hero of his youth, Charles Doughty – with just a soupзon of patronage – that of the current Ministry (of Defence), ‘three or four are Fellows of All Souls, and most of the others are friends of mine. The Duke of Devonshire, & Lord Salisbury, & Amery and Wood and three or four others.’ 16What Doughty thought of this is not recorded: he appreciated Lawrence’s attempts to help him re-issue his book Arabia Deserta, and to obtain a civil-list pension for him, but he returned Seven Pillarswithout comment: this, perhaps, was comment enough. Lawrence also pestered Air Vice-Marshal Sir Oliver Swann, the RAF Chief of Personnel and Training, whom Trenchard had ordered to arrange his enlistment, but who had strongly disapproved of the matter. Since Lawrence was now on the lowest rung of the RAF ladder, it must have given him exquisite delight to address the Air Vice-Marshal as ‘Swann’, knowing that, lowly as he was, he had the backing of the highest in the land. Although Lawrence claimed to have left ‘Colonel Lawrence’ behind, the contrast between his two identities ‘Lawrence of Arabia – national hero’ and ‘Aircraftman Class 2 Ross’ was an endless source of pleasure and amusement to him. It made a travesty of the social hierarchy – the class snobbery which had marred the lives of his parents – and became a hugely enjoyable game. Just as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ had been able to flit from ‘Prince of Mecca’ to ‘British Intelligence Officer’, so Ross could now navigate in the course of a day from ‘pig-stye keeper’ to international diplomat: ‘In case I’m wanted by the Colonial Office,’ AC 2 Ross wrote the glowering Air Vice-Marshal, casually, ‘I’ll send you a note as often as I change station.’ 17Swann was not amused, and sensed, perhaps, that he was a pawn in Lawrence’s private games: ‘One would think from the letters, that I was a close correspondent of [his],’ he wrote, ‘possibly even a friend of his’ … ‘But as a matter of fact … I disliked the whole business … I discouraged communication with him … his eventual discovery at Farnborough was solely due to carelessness at the Colonial Office and Lawrence’s unfortunate love of drawing a veil of mystery about himself.’ 18
The end began in November, when Lawrence was moved suddenly from Uxbridge to the RAF School of Photography at Farnborough. At first he was delighted, and wrote to Swann that he had ‘almost burned down the camp with joy’ when the news of his transfer had arrived. When he reached his new posting, however, his mood quickly changed, for he discovered that the current photography course was already under way and that he would have to wait until January for the next one. He complained to Swann, making it clear that unless he could begin training as a photographer at once, he wished to be posted elsewhere. He confessed that he was glad to get away from Uxbridge because the physical side of the training had been knocking him up, but though Farnborough was by comparison ‘a jolly rest cure’ it was not the kind of RAF he wanted to write about, and without the photographic training he would simply be bored. For ten days he filled in as orderly in the Adjutant’s office, until an order came down from the Air Chief Marshal that AC 2 Ross must be put on the current course at once. By this time many of the staff of the School of Photography were aware of Ross’s ‘secret identity’, and the presence of an international celebrity posing rather half-heartedly in their midst as a lowly private naturally disturbed the officers, who suspected that he had been planted as some kind of Air Ministry spy. Lawrence continued to exhibit his self-imposed suffering to the gallery of high society, writing to E. M. Forster, for instance, that he ‘hated’ the ‘dirty living’ of the barrack-room, and could not bear to think of the years of poverty which stretched endlessly before him. He confessed that he was physically afraid of his colleagues, hated their noise and ‘animal spirits’, but insisted – as if begging contradiction – that he was exactly like them, declaring that he would not leave the RAF for any other job. The effect was rather like that of a man locking himself in a filthy prison-cell and crying through the bars that the conditions were terrible, but that this was where he really belonged and that he would do anything rather than come out. It is clear, however, that Lawrence was not as committed to remaining in the ranks as he maintained. Indeed, at Farnborough he started to become openly provocative with his officers – once, when a young subaltern criticized his turn-out, replying to him in Arabic or ancient Greek, making him a laughing, stock in front of the men. While Lawrence later claimed to have been ‘sold out’ to the press by one of his officers, it is much more likely that he deliberately exposed himself. In fact, he had begun giving away his pseudonym and address quite freely, and had even, in a fit of unadulterated self-destructiveness, written to R. D. Blumenfeld, editor of the Daily Express,giving full details of his enlistment and beseeching him not to reveal it to the public. This was asking too much of a professional newspaperman, and Blumenfeld may have realized that Lawrence was flashing a subliminal green light. He probably gave a tip-off to one of his reporters, for on 27 December 1922 the Expressprinted on its front page a story entitled Uncrowned King as Private Soldier,revealing Lawrence’s ‘hiding place’ to the world and making it impossible for him to continue in the RAF. In January 1923 – much to his apparent chagrin – he was obliged to leave. By this time, however, his disappointment was genuine, for in the meantime he had become romantically attached to an attractive blond-haired young airman named R. A. M. Guy, whose radiant good looks were likened by one of his colleagues to those of a ‘Greek god’. Lawrence himself called Guy ‘angelic’ but noted snobbishly that his beauty was marred by his ‘vile’ Brummie accent – as if Greek gods had naturally spoken Oxford English. Just as Lawrence had seen his attachment to the Arab cause partly as an expression of his relationship with the ‘noble’ Dahoum, so his admiration for the air force as an organization began to grow through his idealization of Guy. He thought Guy embodied all that was best in its ranks, and was soon waxing enthusiastic about the infinite superiority of the young men in the RAF to those in the army. Though his relationship with Guy was probably as platonic as his association with Dahoum, they were becoming emotionally intimate when they were forced to split up: ‘You and me, we’re very un-matched,’ Lawrence wrote to Guy later, ‘and it took some process as slow and kindly and persistent as the barrack-room communism to weld us comfortably together. People aren’t friends till they have said all they can say, and are able to sit together, at work or rest, hour-long without speaking… We never got quite to that, but we were nearer it daily … and since S.A. died I haven’t experienced any risk of that happening.’ 19