A Woman in Arabia (2 page)

Since civilization began, Mesopotamia had been a melting pot of races, with inevitable and frequent conflict. Of course she knew that Iraq would risk continual disruption. She was fulfilling the promise of self-determination, but it must not be forgotten that Gertrude had another urgent reason for wanting Iraq established. Had Britain evacuated Iraq after World War I, as Winston Churchill advocated, the Turks would have surged back from the north to exact revenge and reinstate the institutionalized corruption and the appropriation of taxes of their old Ottoman Empire. There was a very real threat from the Russian Bolshevik army, planning to drive the Communist revolution south to conquer the Middle East. In the south, Ibn Saud and his fearsome Wahhabis were already attacking the borders. Without western endorsement and British support, Iraq would have faced three powerful enemies without an army to defend it. The peoples of the Middle East who had failed to make their case for nationhood or political identity at the time of the Paris Peace Conference—for instance, the Kurdish people—remained at the mercy of massacres and incursions by their neighbors. The country needed to be inclusive enough and large enough to raise an army capable of repelling enemies.

Her influence spread beyond the borders of Iraq, to Palestine and southern Arabia. There had been Jewish settlements in Palestine before World War I, and some of those had been attacked by the Arabs. In November 1917, Lord Arthur James Balfour, Prime Minister Lloyd George's languid foreign secretary, issued a declaration sympathetic to the Zionist cause, stating that the British government approved “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” When the first draft of the Balfour Declaration had been put to the Cabinet, the secretary of state for India, Sir Edwin Montagu, mounted a violent opposition despite being Jewish himself. In support of his argument he read to the Cabinet a strongly argued letter from Gertrude against it, forecasting future trouble without end.

 

This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government

Circulated by the Secretary of State for India

SECRET

Zionism

1. I am sorry to bother the Cabinet with another Paper on this subject, but I have obtained some more information which I would like to lay before them.

2. We have received at the India Office a series of valuable papers on Turkey in Asia from the pen of Miss Gertrude Lowthian Bell, the remarkable woman who, after years of knowledge gained by unique travel in these regions, is acting as Assistant Political Officer in Baghdad. She writes:—

Not least among the denationalising forces is the fact that a part of Syria, though like the rest mainly inhabited by Arabs, is regarded by a non-Arab people as its prescriptive inheritance. At a liberal estimate the Jews of Palestine may form a quarter of the population of the province, the Christians a fifth, while the remainder are Mohammedan Arabs. Jewish immigration has been artificially fostered by doles and subventions from millionaire co-religionists in Europe; the new colonies have now taken root and are more or less self-supporting. The pious hope that an independent Jewish state may some day be established in Palestine no doubt exists, though it may be questioned whether among local Jews there is any acute desire to see it realised, except as a means of escape from Turkish oppression; it is perhaps more lively in the breasts of those who live far from the rocky Palestinian hills and have no intention of changing their domicile. Lord Cromer took pleasure in relating a conversation which he had held on the subject with one of the best known English Jews, who observed: ‘If a Jewish Kingdom were to be established at Jerusalem I should lose no time in applying for the post of Ambassador in London'. Apart from the prevalence of such sentiments two considerations rule out the conception of an independent Jewish Palestine from practical politics. The first is that the province as we know it is not Jewish, and that neither Mohammedan nor Arab would accept Jewish authority; the second that the capital, Jerusalem, is equally sacred to three faiths, Jewish, Christian and Moslem, and should never, if it can be avoided, be put under the exclusive control of any one local faction, no matter how carefully the rights of the other two may be safeguarded.

Sir Edwin went on to list some hundred prominent Jews who were anti-Zionist and to make the point that the bond that united Israel was not one of politics but of a common religion. This paper, headed by Gertrude's contribution, achieved the change of a single word in the Balfour Declaration: Palestine would become
a
home for the Jews—not
the
home. Even this minimal change probably prevented both the slaughter of those Jews already living in Palestine and sympathetic Arab uprisings elsewhere. She continued to affirm: “Palestine for the Jews has always seemed . . . an impossible proposition. I don't believe it can be carried out—personally I don't want it to be carried out, and I've said so on every possible occasion . . . to gratify Jewish sentiment you would have to override every conceivable political consideration, including the wishes of the large majority of the population.” As early as 1922 the Arabs, refusing to accept the Balfour Declaration, massacred Jews in their settlements.

Gertrude warned the British government of Ibn Saud's growing power even before the war. In the east, it would have been next on his agenda to invade the Gulf states to control the flow of oil down the Persian Gulf. Britain provided the funds that persuaded him to keep his territorial ambitions in check. After the war he went on to take Mecca and the Hejaz.

Lawrence said that he thought Gertrude was “born too gifted.” The extraordinary range of her talents and abilities highlighted in this book do not tell the whole story. As Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol wrote in her obituary, “With all the qualities which are usually described as virile, she combined in a high degree the charm of feminine refinement, and though only revealed to a few, even amongst her intimates, great depths of tender and even passionate affection.” She adored clothes, bought many dresses from Paris, and from Iraq would continually ask Florence and her sisters to send her the clothes she had no other way of buying. Other books of her quotes could be collected concerning her quest for perfect clothes and her love for flowers: she was enchanted by the sheets of wildflowers she discovered in the desert after the rains, by a rare iris hidden among the ruins of an Anatolian temple, or by a knot of violets under an Alpine rock. She sent home mandrakes and cedars of Lebanon to be planted on the lawns of Rounton Grange, the huge and splendid family house built by architect Philip Webb for Hugh's father, the great ironmaster Isaac Lowthian Bell, at the height of the family fortunes. There, in a wood of beautiful old trees, Gertrude created a rockery of mountainous boulders surrounding a lake and a network of little streams. Once a showcase garden and now ruined and overgrown, it still produces unexpected plants in the spring. In Baghdad, she planted cottage garden flowers, ordering the seeds from England.

Her legacy includes the Iraq Museum, from which fifteen thousand items were looted immediately before and during the invasion of 2003, and half recovered later. She had collected items from seven thousand years of Mesopotamian history, including clay tablets recording the invention of the written word. Through her position as honorary director of antiquities for Iraq she supervised the teams of foreign archaeologists who came to dig the precious sites of Ur and Babylon—the latter eventually bulldozed for an American military base. She kept the most interesting pieces for Iraq, allowing the world's museums to take the pieces that they would better be able to reconstruct and conserve.

In all, she traveled an unbelievable twenty thousand miles through the deserts on camel or horse, mapping terrain, photographing archaeological sites, and passing on intelligence to the government. Toward the end of her last, longest, and most dangerous journey, she questioned whether the adventure was worth it: “It is nothing, the journey to Nejd, so far as real advantage goes, or any real addition to knowledge.” She had no idea that in the years to follow, this expedition would open the way into the most exciting and rewarding part of her life.

Gertrude would never know the happiness of having a husband and children, which she once said she would have preferred to all her triumphs and achievements. As her best woman friend, Janet Courtney, said of her: “She was, I think, the most brilliant creature who ever came amongst us; the most alive at every point, with her tireless energy, her splendid vitality, her unlimited capacity for work, for talk, for play. She was always an odd mixture of maturity and childishness, grown up in her judgement of men and affairs, child-like in her certainties, and most engaging in her entire belief in her father and the vivid intellectual world in which she had been brought up.”

It is her own voice, so personal, visionary, and humorous, that this book has been designed to serve. The text is arranged by subject to highlight the diversity of her talents and abilities, and I have been led by her writings in deciding how to frame the chapters. In the case of some subjects, her observations over the years needed only a short headnote. In others, where history or her personal story developed in reaction to events, I have set her writings in an explanatory narration. The Chronology at the beginning of the book provides the time line necessarily missing from this approach.

The majority of her quotes come from letters to her beloved father and stepmother, to whom as a sacred duty she wrote almost daily. In letters written to her great friend and mentor Sir Valentine Chirol, she often exposed her emotional state more clearly than to her parents, whom she always tried to protect from anxiety about her well-being. In addition to letters, there are extracts from her books, diaries and official papers, reports, reviews, and bulletins. I hope this volume will stand in for the autobiography she never wrote.

Formidable as she could be as a stateswoman and figurehead, she was the most devoted family member, affectionate friend, and loyal aide. Her favorite sister, Elsa Richmond, wrote this of her:

“Eternally young, she lived every moment to the full. The years went by, but they could not chill her warm heart. To the end of her life she remained what she was at the beginning: self-willed, impatient, infinitely loving, pouring herself out in devotion to those dear to her. And now all her brilliance, her waywardness, her sympathy, her affection lie buried in the sandy cemetery of Baghdad, the memory of that vital nature remains as a possession to those who knew and loved her.”

GEORGINA HOWELL

Most of Gertrude Bell's letters, diaries, and papers are reproduced here by kind permission of the Robinson Library, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Her appendix to “Self-Determination in Mesopotamia” and her letters to Valentine Chirol are reproduced by kind permission of Durham University Library. The majority of the letters are taken from
The Letters of Gertrude Bell,
selected by Lady Bell, DBE, first published by Ernest Benn Limited, London, in September 1927. Many letters not included in Lady Bell's collection have been taken from
Gertrude Bell: From her Personal Papers, Volume 1, 1889–1914
, and
Volume 2, 1914–1926
, edited by Elizabeth Burgoyne. Both volumes were published by Ernest Benn Limited, London, in 1961. T. E. Lawrence's letter of November 4, 1927, written to Sir Hugh Bell more than a year after Gertrude's death, is included by kind permission of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust.

Other works of great importance to this volume include a summary of Gertrude's life compiled by the Robinson Library's late archivist Lesley Gordon to accompany a 1994 exhibition based on Gertrude's archaeological work, titled “Gertrude Bell 1868–1926”;
Gertrude Bell: The Arabian Diaries, 1913–1914
, edited by Rosemary O'Brien, published by Syracuse University Press in 2000; and
A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence
by John Mack, published by Harvard University Press in 1976.

Unless otherwise stated, all letters quoted in this volume are addressed to Gertrude's father and stepmother.

Gertrude's spelling was not her strongest point, and on desert journeys in unmapped areas, or guided by inadequate maps, her rendition of place names was inconsistent. This book maintains her spelling throughout, whether in English or when quoting Arabic. Similarly, she sometimes found it difficult to keep track of the date. After her death, her stepmother wrote: “Gertrude hardly ever dated her letters except by the day of the week, sometimes not even that.” The dates have been clarified where possible.

Whenever Gertrude mentions monetary amounts, they are given in British pounds as she wrote them, followed in brackets by a figure adjusted first to the 2014 value for British pounds by the change in the Retail Price Index (RPI), then converted into U.S. dollars at a value of £1 = $1.60 (www.measuringwealth.com, 2014).

There are many people to thank for making this book possible. I was fortunate that John Siciliano at Penguin Random House wanted to include the writings of Gertrude Bell among the eminent publications in the Penguin Classics. I want to thank him and Emily Hartley in his office for their enthusiasm, guidance, and patience throughout. Nancy Bernhaut's meticulous copyediting has brought consistency to the book, which draws on Gertrude's huge and varied output ranging from political papers to family letters. Thanks also to artist Paul X. Johnson for the cover image of Gertrude Bell; it evokes wonderfully the character of the young Gertrude. Cartography for the maps of Gertrude Bell's journeys in the Middle East was done by Raymond Turvey.