A Woman in Arabia (32 page)

Gertrude's health continued to deteriorate and, combined with the results of heat exhaustion, illness was a frequent problem.

March 29, 1923

I write from a bed of sickness from which however I am rapidly preparing to rise. It is nothing but a cold, with a touch of laryngitis which entirely extinguished my voice for two days. I caught it dining with the King on the 23rd. That night the Maude Bridge was swept away; and on Saturday the dykes burst 17 miles above the town on this bank and we now have 300 square miles under water. . . . Rather stupidly I yielded to curiosity on Sunday and rode out to see the waters. I found some officers of the Arab Army in need of a messenger so I galloped about getting things for them, and then I met the King and stopped and talked to him, so I stayed out too long. Then I had a dinner party . . . and behold no voice next day!

October 22, 1924

I have had a bad cold and a little fever too, which makes me miserable. However Sinbad and his wife are looking after me wonderfully.

The cold turned to bronchitis, unfortunately coinciding with the arrival of her half-sister Elsa and her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, visiting Baghdad on an official cruise in October 1924. Her other sister Molly's son George Trevelyan was also expected and would stay with Gertrude.

October 29, 1924

I've little to write about because I have been seeing so few people. The disappointment was that I was still in bed when George arrived and could not have him here. I was really crumpled up and Sinbad said I wasn't fit for company, so George went to the Residency. . . .

She had rapidly became so ill that Sinbad felt it necessary to visit her twice a day. The good-hearted Lady Dobbs not only invited George to stay at the Residency but lent her car to Gertrude so that as she improved she could drive the Richmonds around Baghdad and show them the sights.

November 5, 1924

Elsa is so delicious always and it has been so endlessly enjoyable to have her to talk to. . . . What with trying to be well and trying to work in the office and go about with the Richmonds, I've had as much as I could do. But it has been so heavenly having Elsa—I always feel when I am with her that there's no one in the world I love more.

She had always made light of her illness in letters to her parents, just as she had once made light of the dangers she had run when crossing the desert.

December 10, 1924

You mustn't bother, darling Father, about my health. Sinbad says I have the most surprising power of sudden recovery, so much so that he sometimes feels inclined to accuse me of having been shamming! I know I was very much run down when Elsa first came, but in the ten days she was here I had recovered and I am now perfectly well.

The Richmonds had told Gertrude of the Bells' financial worries. The economic depression, combined with strikes, had hit the family fortunes hard. Amalgamated with their competitors Dorman Long by Gertrude's grandfather in 1901, the sale of the shares and the chemical companies, together with the combining of the Bell rail interests with the North East Railway, had once provided huge amounts of money into the family. Gertrude's gift from her grandfather of £5000 ($752,000 RPI adjusted) had funded her six-month expeditions into the desert. But now the Bell empire was on the point of collapse. The share values of Dorman Long & Co., in which Sir Hugh Bell and Sir Arthur Dorman owned the most stock, had begun to fall. To boost the price of the shares, each had begun to buy them up, but the decline of the company only accelerated.

It's most tiresome that Dorman ordinary shares still don't pay. I wonder if you've got any of the big railway orders I read about in Reuters today. I have been very economical and I haven't had a new gown for eighteen months; I am feeling a little dingy this winter but I hope my bankbook looks brighter.

Added to personal financial and health worries, Gertrude was preoccupied with the briefing of the League of Nations' Turkish Boundary Commission, which had arrived in Iraq both to secure the strategic border of the armistice line to prevent incursions by the Turks and to protect the oil fields. At the dinner given in their honor in January 1925, she was the only woman among fifty-eight guests and wore black velvet with her orders and diamonds.

Now that her family had seen the frail state of her health for themselves, her father and stepmother redoubled their efforts to persuade her to return to England. Worn-out, she capitulated wearily to their demands.

“If I come home . . . I don't want to pay a round of visits on all my relatives and friends, but to be peaceful at Rounton. So will you [to Lady Bell] tactfully discourage other suggestions!”

In the summer of 1925, Gertrude finally returned to England, accompanied by her maid, Marie Delaire.

Florence wrote that Gertrude arrived home July 17, 1925, in “a condition of great nervous fatigue, and appeared exhausted mentally and physically.” The doctors who were asked to see her, Sir Thomas Parkinson and Dr. Thomas Body, took the same view: that she required a great deal of care and ought not to return to the climate of Iraq. It was a serious warning—perhaps even more than that. Her old Oxford friend Janet Courtney was horrified by how thin and white-haired Gertrude had become since the portrait drawn by John Singer Sargent on her previous trip two years earlier. Her niece Pauline was to recall Gertrude at this time, always cold, always in a full-length fur coat, standing with her back to the fire smoking a Turkish cigarette in a long holder, the center of conversation.

Gertrude found her beloved father pained and harassed by the Bell financial misfortunes. Had she been told privately by the doctors that her heavy smoking had at last taken its toll and that she had only months to live, perhaps she might have spared him that knowledge.

On the other hand, something of significance certainly did pass between Gertrude and her stepmother in those last few weeks at Rounton, and it resulted in a closer bond between the two of them than had ever existed before. Perhaps Gertrude, finding that she now needed support and affection of the kind she had always half shrugged off, felt able to tell her stepmother what she had not been able to tell her father. Florence, with that unflinching contemplation of the verities of life and death natural to an experienced mother and grandmother, would have met Gertrude's revelation calmly and stoically,
and perhaps conspired gratefully to keep Hugh in ignorance. They talked many times, and it was a changed Gertrude who set off once more for Iraq, writing to Florence of “this last summer” perhaps in more senses than one.

October 21, 1925

Darling Mother,

I must write a word to thank you for your letters of October 1st and 6th. I do so love to think that you liked me to come in to the library [at Rounton] in the mornings, even though I was interrupting you horribly. You know I feel as if I had never known you
really
before, not in all the years. It was perhaps because of the general crisis we were going through and my immense admiration for your courage and wisdom. Whatever it was I feel certain that I have never loved you so much, however much I may have loved you, and I am so thankful that we were together this last summer and that we both have the sense of its having been a wonderful experience.

In England she had caught up with her best friends and closest relations. Janet Courtney had suggested that Gertrude should stay in London and stand for Parliament.

August 4, 1925

You dear and beloved Janet,

No, I'm afraid you will never see me in the House. I have an invincible hatred of that kind of politics. . . . I don't cover a wide enough field and my natural desire is to slip back into the comfortable arena of archaeology and history. . . . I think I must certainly go back for this winter, though I privately very much doubt whether it won't be the last. . . .

Goodbye, my dear . . .

Did Gertrude mean her last winter in Iraq, or her last winter?

She left Rounton and went to the Bell house in Knightsbridge at the end of September to say her good-byes. As if alerted by Florence, a crowd of her friends and admirers came to wish her well.

95 Sloane Street

Darling Mother,

Before I go to bed I must tell you how I passed the day. It began at 9 by the welcome appearance of Pauline
*
just after I had breakfasted. At 10.15 Milly
*
appeared and accompanied me to all the places I had to go about tickets and reserved seats. I came in after one and went straight off to a lunch with Esme Dobbs at the Grosvenor Hotel. She
was
such a dear. As I left she said: “You must be a habit, like a drug or something which one can't do without once one has begun it.” At 4.30 came Aunt Maisie.
*
Just as she went came Sir Percy Cox (complete without wife) and I had a delightful half hour alone with him. He was such a dear. Then came Domnul and very agreeable conversation
à trois
till Sir Percy left, and I had a quarter of an hour alone with Domnul till Mr. Montague Bell (Near East) appeared. By that time it was getting late and I only let him stay about twenty minutes for Marie was grappling with boxes and I wanted to see what she was doing. At eight I went to dine with the Amerys—Faisal and an A.D.C. and Madge Talbot
*
the party. Mr. Amery was most encouraging and H.M. beaming—a successful evening. Now I'm going to bed, but not before I've told you that a library of beautiful books has arrived for me to read on the journey and that I love you more than words can say.

She wrote a quick line to her father, who had helped her with train reservations.

Dearest. Your letters were most useful and if you could contrive to make Mr. O'Connor (Enquiries Dept. of the Southern Railway) prime minister it would barely meet his deserts. He has secured me all my seats in crowded trains and is sending an omnibus at 9.45. I've told Mother about all my doings and the only thing I have to say to you is that I'm always and always your most loving daughter.

Gertrude embarked for the journey back with her cousin Sylvia Henley, who was to travel with her in stages and stay in Baghdad. Unfortunately, Sylvia reacted so badly to the Iraqi climate that she became ill and soon had to return to London. Marie came separately.

Baghdad, October 14, 1925

It has been so wonderful coming back here. For the first two days I could not do any work at all in the office, because of the uninterrupted streams of people who came to see me.

She was delighted to see King Faisal again.

November 25, 1925

We had the King and Zaid
*
to dinner, with Lionel Smith and Captain Holt. The King was as gay as could be and the final touch at dinner was some prunes oversoaked in gin. After two of them H.M. became uproarious and insisted that we should all eat two likewise. The effect was electric. Even the correct Captain Holt gave way to childlike fun.

At the weekends she often joined the king and Ken Cornwallis for shooting parties or a picnic and swimming in the Tigris. She visited his new acquisition, a farm in the north, about twenty miles from Khanaqin on the edge of the Persian mountains. She went there with a small party for Christmas 1925, already suffering from a cold, and wrote to her parents:

December 30, 1925

. . . I had a terrific cold in the head last week and when I wrote to you I had been indoors for two days, but I didn't tell you not “wishing to trouble you.” . . . On Sunday I put on more clothes than I have ever worn before, and with a hot water bottle on my knee, went up with the King and Ken and Iltyd
*
in a closed trolley to Khanaqin. We got to the farm about sunset, found some of the new furniture arrived and spent a happy time arranging it, the King and I. I began then to feel very tired and went to bed immediately after dinner. Next morning I felt rather bad; they all came in to see if I wanted things and were in favour of not going out shooting. However I shooed them off. . . . I felt rather better and had them in before dinner to play a game of Bridge with me in bed. But the next day I was pretty bad so Ken sent for the very good local doctor only to find that he was spending Xmas away and immediately, without telling me, telegraphed to Baghdad for a doctor. By that time I wasn't taking much notice, except that I had a general feeling that I was slipping into great gulfs. Ken sat in my room all the afternoon reading. . . . Finally at 6 arrived . . . Dr. Spencer! Sinbad was away. . . . He brought with him a charming nurse, Miss Hannifan, who sat up with me all night. They were both of them convinced that I had got pneumonia, but not a bit of it. Next morning it was clear that it was no worse than pleurisy and a pretty general congestion. So they delayed the departure of the morning train by an hour, thus do we behave with our railway management, and took me down to Baghdad. Ken is very useful on these occasions because he lifts
you about so easily, and Iltyd is so useful because he talks so charmingly. They sat a good deal in my compartment and amused me. . . . An ambulance met me at the station and took me straight to hospital. . . . I have had a night nurse up to now, but I feel sure I shall not need her after tonight—Miss Isherwood, I like her very much too but Miss Hannifan is a nurse who almost makes it worth while to be ill. And lest you may think that I'm tottering about on the edges of graves, I may tell you that . . . all declare that if I hadn't the most remarkable constitution I should certainly have now been dangerously ill with pneumonia.

February 1926, Letter to J. M. Wilson
*

It seems that I just didn't have pneumonia, chiefly through being made of steel springs. I spent Xmas Day in bed, with H.M., Iltyd and Ken nursing me when they weren't out shooting, and the next day I was so bad that they telegraphed for a doctor and a nurse. You need not mention these details to my family, to whom I have not retailed them.

One more thing—I can't bear the thought of leaving Baghdad and I put it out of my mind as much as possible. It makes me so miserable.

Gertrude was having to say good-bye to many of her friends in Iraq, now leaving for good. Lady Sinderson was moved to tears by the sight of Gertrude standing alone on the platform, waving, small and frail “like a leaf that could be blown away by a breath.”

Increasingly lonely, often ill, Gertrude was devastated by the news of the death of her half brother Hugo, a clergyman in the Church of England, who died in February soon after returning to London from South Africa.

February 16, 1926

Darlingest Mother,

Thank you so much for your wonderful letter. It was good that I didn't have to wait for it long after the telegram. My mind has been so full of Hugo but the thing which comes uppermost is that he had a complete life. His perfect marriage and the joy of his children and then at the last his seeing you again—it was better so, if it had to be at all. I wonder if we should be happier too if we thought we were all to meet again. I never could bring myself to it even when I lost what was dearest to me. The spirit without the body would be as strange as the body without a spirit. One feels the lovely mind behind, but what one knows are the little gestures, the sweet smile, the expression of the mind. But it's no good wondering or thinking why one can't believe in the unbelievable: one just can't.

For the first time in her life, Gertrude had to think about money. With the May 1926 British General Strike only months away, and her family making drastic cuts in expenditure, she could not afford to resign her post as Oriental secretary and lose her salary along with the major part of her house rent, which was paid by the secretariat. Her parents had been worried about money since 1922, but when she had been with them, far from her preoccupations with Iraq, it had hit home how much their lives had been reduced. A month after Hugo's death, Hugh and Florence did what they had long been contemplating. They shut down Rounton Grange and moved to Mount Grace Priory, into the prior's small house set in the ruins of the Carthusian monastery, which stood on Hugh's property. Not only did Gertrude hate the idea of returning permanently to England with nothing to do, but she was unwilling to ask her father to support her financially. She worked on the annual report for the League of Nations and devoted herself to collecting and cataloging artifacts for the Iraq Museum.

June 16, 1926

I had a nice little ceremony on Monday when the King opened the first room of the museum. Today it was open to the public and as I came away at 8.30 this morning I saw some fifteen or twenty ordinary Baghdadis going round it under the guidance of the old Arab curator.

But the same day Gertrude wrote to J. M. Wilson:

My horizon is not at all pleasant. The coal strike hits us very hard; I don't know where we [her family and its fortunes] shall be this year. I have been caught in the meshes of the museum . . . and I can't go away leaving it in its present chaos. So I shall probably stay here through the summer and when I come back, come back for good. Except for the museum, I am not enjoying life at all. One has the sharp sense of being near the end of things with no certainty as to what, if anything, one will do next. It is also very dull, but for the work. I don't know what to do with myself of an afternoon. . . . It is a very lonely business living here now.

Griefs, loneliness, and a sense of frustration added to a depression that is clear to see in her letters home.

May 13, 1926

I think it is extremely unlikely that I can afford to come back and out again this summer—it's a very expensive business.

May 26, 1926

I hope you won't think I'm wrong in saying that I can't go away and leave all my antiquities unarranged and unguarded. . . . It isn't because I don't immensely want to see you and Father, but
I know you will understand that it means a very great deal to leave everything that I have been doing here and find myself rather loose on the world. I don't see at all clearly what I shall do, but of course I can't stay here for ever. . . . I'm not at all necessary in the office.

Her father wrote to Gertrude urging her to come home. In return she wrote:

Baghdad, June 2, 1926

I do understand that things are looking very discouraging and I am dreadfully sorry and unhappy about you. But I don't see for the moment what I can do. You see I have undertaken this very grave responsibility of the Museum. . . . I had been protesting for more than a year that I must have a proper building; this winter one fell vacant and they gave it to me, together with a very large sum of money for fittings, etc. Then first I had to reroof it and next I was held up at least 2 months by the floods. . . . Now all the very valuable objects—they run into tens of thousands of pounds and incidentally they would never have been taken out of the ground if I had not been here to guarantee that they would be properly protected—have been transferred pell-mell into the new building and there is absolutely no one but I who knows anything about them, since J. M. Wilson left. . . . It's a gigantic task. . . . But I can't resign from my post as Oriental Secretary. . . .