Gertrude Bell

Although Gertrude Bell is often cited as the first woman to achieve a "first" in history at Oxford, that is not strictly true. Now she was the first woman to pass the requirements for a first, but this was in 1888 when Gertrude was twenty. Since women were not allowed to get degrees at Oxford until the early 20th century, she never got the sheepskin. But for all practical purposes, Gertrude did have a first.

Gertrude's big claim to fame, though, was because of her time and travels in the Middle East. So it's only natural that after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, there was renewed interest in her life and career, Some reviewers of the more recent biographies have expressed irritation that the books come off more as hagiographic praises rather than impartial objective history. Certainly the casual reader may be a bit wary seeing the superlatives which pepper the titles, phrases like "Desert Queen", "Queen of the Desert", "Adventurer", "Adviser to Kings", "Shaper of Nations". Although the "queen" accolade is given illustratively, of course, she was pretty much everything else. Still, one has to be careful of painting her as a superwoman surrounded by bumbling, inept idiots like Winston Churchill and T. E. Lawrence. Gertrude was a person like everyone else and had good points and bad points. But no one can honestly deny she was influential in shaping the modern Middle East.

As her achievements at Oxford proved, Gertrude was never interested in simply landing a hubby and settling down to the life of a typical rich Victorian matron. Her folks certainly tried, though. Hugo, her dad, was a wealthy iron manufacturer, and he and Gertrude's stepmom, Florence, sent their daughter on trips to visit various relatives in Europe hoping she'd find a suitable swain. Although Gertrude certainly enjoyed meeting the young men at the various salons, dances,and dinners, Mom and Pop always seemed to disapprove of anyone Gertrude really liked. So in 1892 and at the advanced age (for the era) of twenty-four, Gertrude was still single.

Despite their overprotectiveness in matrimonial matters, both Hugo and Florence were otherwise quite progressive parents for the time and place (hence them letting Gertrude attend college). Since she hadn't yet found a suitable (for them) husband, and Gertrude was fascinated (as were many of her contemporaries) with the romantic "Orient", why not let her travel to Persia (now Iran) with her uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, and her aunt? Sir Frank was the British ambassador in Tehran, and Gertrude had a fine time, learning the language, talking to the people, and visiting with a young foreign office diplomat named Henry Cadogan.

Henry was clearly impressed with both Gertrude's beauty and her brains. They went on picnics, walks, and rides, talked about the Middle East culture, literature, and poetry. Things got serious, and on one of their outings, Henry asked Gertrude to marry him and she said yes. She happily wrote to her parents with the good news.

Well, Papa - again - nixed the match. Hugo, as fathers are wont to do, had done some checking on his prospective son-in-law. Alas, Henry's reputation was not good. He did not have an adequate income (in Hugo's opinion), and he had difficulty with debts. Hugo also learned - or at least heard - that Henry's financial woes were due to what is now politely called a gambling addiction. Hugo certainly didn't want anyone draining the family fortunes any more than England's frequent economic crises did. So he told Gertrude that Henry was not for her and to get herself home.

Gertrude, who had great respect for both her father and stepmother, bowed graciously to their wishes. She even wrote that she understood her father's position, and that if she and Henry got married, Hugo who would end up supporting another household. So she quit seeing Henry and returned to England. But it look her a long time to get over their forced separation, and she was devastated when Henry died of pneumonia a year later.

If Gertrude had married Henry we probably would never have heard of her. As long as Henry could get on sound financial footing, the union would likely have been a happy one. Gertrude would then have settled down to be the helpmeet of a proper English diplomat. Certainly she would not have gone trapsing about the Middle East for the next thirty years and becoming one of the foremost authorities on the region.

Gertrude was clearly not happy back home, so Florence suggested that she take her diaries and letters and write a book about her time in Persia. Although initially not interested, Gertrude eventually sat down and wrote Persian Pictures. Florence found a publisher, and the book issued anonymously in 1894. Gertrude followed this book with a translation of Persian poetry, The Diwan of Hafiz which had a preface by Dennison Ross, the head of the London School of Oriental Studies. Clearly Gertrude was a young lady of accomplishments. But rather than settle down to be a new poet and author, Gertrude wanted to get back out of the house.

So in 1897 Gertrude began her real globe hopping career. At first she went about with her brother Maurice and half brother, Hugo, Jr. She liked traveling with Maurice even though he teased her mercilessly about how to be a proper Victorian lady. But on a trip in 1903 to India, Japan, and America, she got into an argument with Hugo, Jr., who was going to enter the ministry. Muhammed and Buddha, she told him, were as great men as Christ. But all of them, she said, were men, no more, no less. She also argued for the equality of all people which was a concept offensive to many uppercrust English men and women of the time. Once the trip was over, Gertrude and Hugo, Jr., really didn't have much to do with each other.

For the next couple of years Gertrude spent her time fairly close to home. She didn't just lay about though. She became interested in moutaineering and started climbing the peaks of Europe. Soon she gained quite the reputation as one of the leading women Alpine climbers. And yes, she scaled the Matterhorn (in 1904).

It was also at the century's turn that she became involved in the votes-for-women movement - but not as you might think. She was decidedly against giving women any direct voice in politics. The ladies she knew, thought Gertrude, were all far too flighty to be given such responsibility. She didn't change her mind for quite a while (if ever), and in 1908, she officially joined the anti-suffrage movement. Lest people be shocked, shocked, that Gertrude could be against women's rights, we need to remember that Gertrude's attitude was widespread and considered by many to be the right way to protect the dainty ladies of the time. Even super-liberal attorney for the damned, Clarence Darrow, thought votes for women would be a disaster. In her last years, though, one of her friends said Gertrude was bemused at her earlier intransigent attitude.

But it was in 1900 that Gertrude began her tramps through the Middle East in earnest. She received an invitation to visit an old friend, Nina Rosen, whose husband was the German consul in Jerusalem. At that time, the Middle East was ruled by the Turks and the whole conglomeration of lands from Turkey through Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and on down into Arabia was called the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire ruled its territory with the proverbial iron hand, and sad to say, regularly crossed the line to outright despotism. Any hint from the various ethnic groups for greater autonomy was met with brutal repression. In particular the loyalty of the local Arab population was most suspect (the Turks, ethnically and linguistically, are a distinct people from Arabs), particularly since there was a vigorous, underground, and growing Arab resistance movement. Among the ways of dealing with rebels was to hang anyone caught, often forcing fellow Arabs to watch the executions. One young Arab officer in the Turkish army, Feisel ibn Hussein, once became so enraged at watching the stranglings of a twelve year old boy (who had been caught carrying a message between rebel leaders) that he physically attacked one of his Turkish superiors who was standing nearby. Feisel was imprisoned and expected at any moment to be taken out and hanged. However, since he was the son of the Arab ruler of the Hijaz region in Arabia, he was released and allowed to return home to Mecca.

The Turks, on the other hand, saw themselves as enlightened leaders who were bringing their empire into the 20th century. They needed expertise and money and were obtaining European aid (mostly from Germany) to help build modern infrastructures. They simply couldn't waste their time pandering to the starry-eyed liberals who thought abstract concepts like independence mattered. Instead the Turks were focusing on their Grand Project, the Hijaz railroad which was going to run from Damascus all the way to Mecca. Their reliance on Germany, though, was to have major - and for them - disasterous consequences. When Gertrude began her Middle East travels, no one would have forseen that in less than twenty years the 600 year old Ottoman Empire would be no more.

In Jerusalem, the first thing Gertrude did was arrange for nearly daily lessons in Arabic. She found it a tough language particularly trying to pronounce the Semitic pharyngeal h (the sound in a stage whispered "hah!"). But unlike many English tourists she enjoyed talking with the "natives", as the indigenous inhabitants were termed. She loved to be on the go and spent a good deal of her time out on trips to the surrounding areas. She made visits to the land of Moab to the Dead Sea and into Jordan to the ruined cliff-city of Petra where she and her group ran out of food and had to scrounge. On returning to Jerusalem she and her hosts headed north to see Roman ruins at Bosra (now in southern Syria). That put her at the edge of Druze territory, but that was fine with her since she had also wanted to visit that region as well (one of her favorite guides was Druze). She asked for and received (reluctant) permission to go into the Druze area proper and meet the people although the official reason for her visit was to study the ancient ruins. The latter explantion was always a good thing to tell the local officials, particularly if you were English and Oxford educated.

Much of Gertrude's success in making friends was she understood the importance of following the proper local courtesies (which including smoking the occasional shisha or water pipe with its mixture of tobacco, marijuana, and opium). So Gertrude was received politely by the Druze as she generally was by other local inhabitants. She never condescended to the people, and if anything, she tended to over idealze them. She was also unique compared to other European travelers in that she could speak with the women as much as with the men. She had charm and tact and generally made a good impression on everyone.

Gertrude finally returned to Jerusalem via Damascus and was back in England by June. In addition to learning Arabic well enough for routine conversations, another lesson she took home was that any further desert travels would be in traditional garb. The costumes of the Arabs, she had quickly realized, were utilitarian and not just crafted to conjure up images of the romantic bedouin garbed in flowing robes as they rode in from the desert to rest at the Oasis of the Low Slung Palms. Dressed as a European tourist, she got one heck of a sunburn.

Gertrude had just barely gotten started. She returned to the Middle East five times, roughly every two years. She trapsed through Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Turkey, and in 1909 she made it as far east as (then) fabled Baghdad. Gertrude wrote up what she saw in books and papers. She was also a skilled photographer in a day where photography really required skill. She took photographs of ancient sites and ruins, photographs which to this day are the best record of the buildings and structures, many of which have fallen further into disprepair or disappeared. Seven thousand - that's seven thousand of her photographs have survived and are held in the University of Newcastle archives. So Gertrude was no mean tourist and made real contributions to the history and archeology of the region.

On one of her trips she bumped into Jane Hogarth, a friend from England and Jane's husband, David. David was an Oxford archeologist and appreciated both Gertrude's brains and her grit. In 1911 she stopped by the dig at Carchemish to see David, but he was no longer there. She did, though, meet a young (22 years old), short (5' 5"), blond, and blue-eyed recent graduate of Oxford who was working at the site as an archeologist. That was T. E. Lawrence whom later Gertrude would join in the military. Although she lectured the men that their techniques of digging were old fashioned, she impressed them well enough. In later years T. E. may have had mixed feelings about Gertrude, but at the time he wrote home that "Gerty" had been a hit with the boys .

Of course, the place every traveler to the "Orient" wanted to go was to the Arabia Deserta of Charles Doughty and Sir Richard Burton (it was Richard who in disguise sneaked into Mecca and Medina, the two forbidden holy cities of Islam). So on one of her last trips, Gertrude decided to pack her bags and head south into the Arabian peninsula. She got as far as the village of Ha'il (now a good sized city of over a quarter of a million) where she was not allowed to leave for eleven days. Her detention may very well have been simply prudence on part of her host who knew that there were unpleasant political (and family) disputes going on between the leaders of the region. The sheikh finally redeemed Gertrude's letters of credit (the usual way for a traveler to avoid carrying cash), so she could buy supplies to return north.

This trip cemented Gertrude's reputation as a bonafide Arabist. She now knew the travel routes, which people were friendly to the British and which were hostile, and who was in charge of what area. She was well aware that her knowledge would be of interest to Britain's leaders and was only too happy to tell what she saw and learned. It was her loquaciousness in official channels that has led some writers to dub Gertrude a spy. Of course, like Humpty Dumpty said, a word means what we want it to mean, no more and no less. If you consider Gertrude telling bigwigs in the British government what she saw is being a spy, well, then she was a spy. But then so were virtually all the British archeologists of the region. At the same time, since Gertrude did not engage in covert activities or disguise her identity, it's highly doubtful that Gertrude's activities really meet the modern definition for espionage.

If you read Gertrude's letters, you might think she was practically traveling about by herself. That was by no means the case, and it's easy to huffily rant that Gertrude was simply another English romantic poseur wrapped in Arab robes and play acting at being a bedouin. Instead, we learn that Gertrude went about like a proper Englishwoman should - with an entourage of servants, chefs, and armed guards. Even when roughing it she carried her own private (canvas) bath tub (with a servant designated to block the view), dined off fine china, and ate haut cuisine served with proper first-to-last-course protocol. Like all eternal truths, such a picture of Gertrude is both true and false.

Certainly Gertrude liked to travel in comfort (who doesn't?), but there were times that she had to accept cuisine that was barely edible. One time her drinking water was so filthy that the only way she could get it down was to imagine she was drinking what today would be called a fruit slush. If she took pains to protect herself with properly outfitted guards, all that means is 1) she could afford it, and 2) she was no dummy. The regions she traveled in were often dangerous, and she was once robbed of pretty much everythng (although the purloined items were soon returned).

At this point it's worth mentioning that we may indeed be dealing with a bit of a double standard here. Critics of Gertrude don't seem to gripe about a famous (male) American contemporary who also came from a rich family and who had decided on a miltary career. However, once he was commissioned as a (low paid) second lieutenant, he used his inherited wealth to live well beyond the style of his military peers. Like Gertrude he dined in an elegant manner attended by servants whom he paid out of his own pocket. He regularly supplemented issued items with those he purchased, and he believed making a phony show of poverty a bunch of [bunk]. His name was George Smith Patton, III.

On June 28, 1914, Austria's Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated while on a visit to Sarajevo by a young Serb who wanted independence for the Slavic regions of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. The Austrians retaliated by invading Serbia, and the Russians, with a mutal defense pact with the Serbs, moved in to fight against the Austrians. Germany, who also supported Serbia, declared war on Russia, and then in the now increasingly popular "pre-emptive" attack, went on to invade Belgium. The French, who were allied with the Serbs, said they would join the fight against the Austrians and Germany, and Britain, allied (amazingly when you think about it) with the French, responded by saying they would join the fight against those who attacked small nations like Belgium. So by August 4, the whole Euoppean mishmash of intercountry alliances, defense treaties, and international rivalries had blown up into the First World War. Expected to be short - four months was one estimate - it lasted four years and cost 16 million lives.

Oh, yes. The Turks - that is the Ottoman Empire - sided with the Germans. So they found themselves at war with England, France, and later America.

As you might expect, Gertrude wasn't going to be content in serving at the home front with the other ladies. Although she did work briefly for the Red Cross in Europe, Wyndham Deedes, then a young officer serving in the Middle East, wrote Gertrude and asked if she would write a report about what she learned in her travels. In particular, he wanted to know, which groups would look favorably on the British in the upcoming war. Her report was not only lucid and to the point, it was also exactly what the officials wanted to hear. The Arabs would favor the British over the Germans and the French, Gertrude said. Soon she was asked to join Wyndham in Cairo. Although she started off as a civilian advisor, she soon joined the military and attained the rank of major.

By the standards of the time, Gertrude, 46 years old and unmarried, was what people called a "spinster" ("old maid" was the American equivalent). Although middle aged, never-married women were by no means unknown, they were still considered odd and at best objects of mild derision. However, Gertrude's marital status was really pretty much an artifact of simply not finding the right fellow at the right time. She certainly had no objection to male companionship.

In fact, through much of the time of her travels and studies and now in starting her government career, Gertrude had been carrying out an affaire de coeur with a British officer, Colonel Charles Doughty-Wylie. Dick, as he was known, was an army officer who at the start of the war was stationed in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, Dick was already an unhappily married man, and in that day and age (and for that British social class), once you got married you were pretty much stuck. As far as we can tell, Gertrude's and Dick's "affair" was almost totally by correspondence and it's not clear how many times they actually met. Certainly any tête-à-tête's (closed door or not) were rare, if indeed, they occurred at all. Like her romance with Henry, this (probably) unrequited love affair ended sadly when David was killed at Gallipoli (with a lot of others young men). Gertrude never did marry.

In Cairo Gertrude found that one of her fellow soldiers in the office was her young acquaintance from Carchemish, T. E. Lawrence. Of course, in a few years (thanks to American journalist, Lowell Thomas), he was catapulted to international celebrity as "Lawrence of Arabia", leader of the Arab revolt. T. E., far more than Gertrude, is a controversial figure, and to what degree he "led" the Arab revolt is the subject of many spittle flinging diatribes. Alternately idolized or villified in the West, T. E. is seen by most Arab historians as a liason officer who did indeed aid the revolt by showing the Arabs how to blow up trains and who gave them with arms, ammuntion and money. But the actual insurrection, they say, was led planned by Arab strategiest and carried out by Arab armies led by Arab officers, including the former Turkish officer, Feisel ibn Hussein. To be fair, this - quote - "revisionist" assessment of the Arab contribution of the revolt is nothing more than T. E. himself stated in his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He also added - in what some T. E. debunkers think is false modesty - that other British officers had as important roles as he did.

So here's the deal, the British told the Arabs. Join with us, fight the Turks, and you'll get your independence. In the Arab view this would meant the areas of Syria and Mesopotamia would become a single Arab kingdom, and Arabia proper would remain as their religious homeland. So after the Arab armies reached Damascus and the war was over, Feisel, whom T. E. had fought with and whose army had been formally absorbed into the British ranks, was declared "King of Greater Syria". (Feisel, by the way, did talk to Chaim Weisman and was open to the idea of a Jewish state in at least parts of Palestine).

There was a slight glitch. England's Mark Sykes and France's Francois Picot had already met and decided that the Middle East would be better administered if the lands were divided between their respective countries. The French, they agreed, not the Arabs, would be in charge of Syria. The British already had Egypt, and during the War had occupied Mesopotamia and weren't about to leave there either. In addition, England was now handed control of Palestine which about thirty years later, she gave up all too happily. Feisel (and virtually all other Arabs) objected to the so-called Sykes-Picot agreement, and the French booted him out of Syria. For a short time, Feisel lived in England, a very unhappy man.

After the war, Gertrude decided not to return to her homeland. Still with the Foreign Office, in 1916 she had moved to Baghdad as an advisor to Sir Percy Cox, who had been Consul General to the Ottoman Empire since 1904. Once it was clear the war would be won, Britian had decided that the regions of the historical Mesopotamia should unite into a single country. You had the central region of Baghdad, the southern region near of Basra where the Eurphates runs into the Persian Gulf, and the northern area around Mosul, where a number of separate ethnic groups and minorities lived. Irak was as good a name as any for the country, although the spelling was later regularized to Iraq to better fit the Arabic phonology.

Gertrude, like the other British officials (particularly head of the Foreign Office, Winston Churchill), thought they needed to arrange the government to be run by members of the Sunni sect of Islam (founded by Muhammad's friend and partner, Abu Bakr) although the population was a Shi'a majority (founded by Ali, Muhammad's nephew). The Shi'ites, she (and the rest of the western leaders) thought, were religious fanatics who could not be trusted, while the Sunni's - more modern and friendly to - quote - "civilization" - unquote - could give the country needed stability until the Arabs were capable of governing on their own. The key was to install a Western style constitutional monarchy friendly to England. Fortunately, there was a king ready and waiting. So Feisel was offered the kingship of Iraq. If not entirely happy with the deal, Feisel agreed.

So began the tradition that leaders in Iraq were Sunni muslims ruling over a Shi'ite majority. Of course picking political leaders from a minority (and in this case a monarchy from an entirely different country) is always a bit risky for long term political stability. But it seemed like a good enough idea at the time.

The purpose of England wanting the upper hand in Iraq - officially - was to provide stability to the region which would allow the people to achieve their (eventual) independence when they were ready to rule. Of course, if they put in a goverment friendly England, then that means they were ready to rule. If not, then they weren't. A factor - very minor (of course) - was during the recent war the British navy had switched from powering their ships by coal (which was found in England) to oil (which before the North Sea discoveries, she had none). Oil burning ships had ten times the the efficiency of coal fired boats. No longer did you need stokers continuously shoveling coal into the furances, and the ships could travel faster and further. So if all that benevolence toward the Arabs now helped England get oil at cut rate prices, well, that was just one of the perks of winning the war. Iraq - at least for a number of years - became Winnie's big victory.

Gertrude worked with Sir Percy and was actively involved in defining the borders and administration of Iraq. In the end, despite her sympathy and respect for the people of the Middle East, she and her colleagues - T. E., Percy, Winston, and the rest - worked for Britain. But then, as one Arab author pointed out, whose interest do you expect English citizens to work for?

Gertrude has had her critics although it's easy enough to dismiss much of it as male jealousy, and some of it no doubt was. Lawrence thought she was not a good judge of people or situations, although she seems to have been at least as good as T. E. was. Mark Sykes - whose views of the inhabitants of the Middle East must be classified as condescendingly imperialistic at best and disgustingly racist at worst - made comments about Gertrude that today if sent by E-mail would have got him in a heap of trouble. Gertrude's own personal style also did not fit in the with laconic, stiff-upper lip style of speaking common among the menfolk in diplomatic circles. Her voice was a bit shrill, and she had a tendency to chatter, a style of conversation which the fellows sometimes mocked behind her back.

One area where Gertrude was way ahead of her time was when she helped write up the antiquities laws for Iraq. She believed that the antiquities excavated in the country should stay there, a shocking bleeding heart liberal attitude in 1920. This was the time, we should remember, that a 50/50 split of found antiquities was considered a virtual right of European and American archeologists. But with Gertrude's direction, the Iraq National Museum became the home of some of the worlds most priceless antiquities although it lost an indeterminate number during looting during the American invasion in 2003.

By 1926, Gertrude had been friend and advisor to soldiers and sheiks, presidents and prime ministers, and even the occasional king. But her busy (and at times hard) life took its toll. When she was on the go in the Middle East, people reckoned her age about a decade yonger than it was. But by the time she reached her mid-fifties she looked far older than her years.

Gertrude never thought of retiring to England. Living in Baghdad and in failing health - possibly due to the cigarettes she had chained smoked her whole life - on the night of July 11, she took an overdose of sleeping pills. Whether it was accidental or intentional isn't known, but the consensus is generally the latter. She was found dead the next morning.

References

Ahead Of Their Time: A Biographical Dictionary Of Risk-taking Women Joyce Duncan, Greenwood Press (2001). The biography of Gertrude is very good. This is a good place to start to learn about Gertrude although the article's reference to the "satanic Yezidis" is a bit disconcerting to read in a modern text referring to this too-often persecuted Middle Eastern minority.

Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations Georgina Howell, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2007). The most recent biography of Gertrude this has struck some reviewers as a bit unrestrained in its praise. Admittedly there is a bit of the Gertrude-must-have-felt type speculation and the picture of T. E. Lawrence isn't particularly flattering. But you do get the facts and it quotes extensively from Gertrude's many letters.

Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia, Janet Wallach, Talese (1996). Again you get the facts in this older book and it's similar to the later biography in tone and (obviously) title.

Actually the author of CooperToons does not own either volume. He actually [gasp!] went to the local library and checked them out. Amazing. You can still check books out and for nothing. Of course, with gas the price it is, you can order a $1 book online and the postage will be about what the gas would cost for the drive. But your attic can fill up awful fast.

The Gertrude Bell Project, University of Newcastle, http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/ You can read Gertrude's letters and diaries and see her photographs. Quite an undertaking and the website has no animation or ads. Bully!