Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations

Georgina Howell was given a magazine assignment to write a feature on her hero, someone she always admired.  She knew immediately who her subject would be—Gertrude Bell. 

Bell was a linguist, a gardener, a mountain climber, a published poet, an explorer, an author, an archaeologist, a photographer, a cartographer, a skilled administrator, a British spy, and a major in the British Army.  Howell’s original article about Bell grew into this scholarly, yet highly readable, biography. 

Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations

by

Georgina Howell

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006

In the early twentieth century, Bell was one of the most powerful women in the British Empire and played an instrumental role in the establishment of Iraq, yet many people in the United States have never heard of her.  More people are familiar with her younger male contemporary, T. E. Lawrence of Arabia.  Upon meeting Lawrence, Bell described him as “an interesting boy, he will make a traveler.” 

Bell was born 1868 in Yorkshire, England, into a wealthy family, but polite society bored her.  Even as a child, Bell had a restless mind and couldn’t sit still.  Her mother died when she was a toddler, but her father remarried a woman who would raise his two children by his first wife and go on to have children of her own.  Bell’s family introduced her into society as a debutante, practically required for a young lady in her social class, but at the same time, her father encouraged Bell to be adventurous and supported her desire for an education.  She was the first woman to be awarded a First in Modern History at Oxford’s Queens College.

When Bell was 30, she discovered mountain climbing.  She was average in height at 5’5” but strong and athletic.  With the assistance of local guides, she went on to climb some of the highest peaks in the Alps.  She climbed a 13,068’ mountain in her underclothes, because there was no mountain gear for women.  When she reached her destination, she pulled out her skirt and put it on.  Later she acquired a pair of men’s trousers for climbing.  One mountain climbing expedition required that she and her guides cut steps in the ice for 3 ½ hours.  She found herself in many precarious situations in her life, but her friends described her as fearless. 

Bell spoke 6 languages fluently, including Persian and Arabic.  She wrote eight books, including a translation and biography of the lyric poet Hafiz, one of Persia’s most famous poets. 

Bell also became interested in “hardy gardening,” the precursor to the English gardens of today, rather than the hothouse gardening then popular in England.  She developed a rock garden and later a water garden at the family home, then wrote a book about it. 

While Bell was accomplished in so many areas, she never had much success in love. The first young man she fancied had a gambling problem and died young.  The love of her life was already married.  He was later killed in WW I, but they were able to spend time together before he went to the front.  She later had an unrequited infatuation with a young male co-worker.

Even with all her previous accomplishments, it was Bell’s “love affair” with the vast area known as Arabia that brought her into her own. Bell described her first sight of the desert:

Oh the desert around Teheran!  Miles and miles of it with nothing, nothing growing; ringed in with bleak bare mountains snow crowned and furrowed with the deep courses of torrents.  I never knew what desert was till I came here; it is a very wonderful thing to see; and suddenly in the middle of it all, out of nothing, out of a little cold water, springs up a garden. Such a garden: Trees, fountains, tanks, roses and a house in it, the houses which we heard of in fairy tales when we were little: inlaid with tiny slabs of looking-glass in lovely patterns, blue tiled, carpeted, echoing with the sound of running water and fountains.

Bell made six extended trips to the Middle East and later in her life lived in Baghdad.   She visited cities we hear on the news—Jerusalem, Amman, Basra, Damascus, Palmyra, Haifa, Aleppo, Istanbul, Mosul, Samarra—then ventured into the vast uncharted miles of desert.  She apparently was as skilled riding a camel as a horse.

While the Ottoman Empire controlled or influenced the populated areas Bell visited, the wilderness was largely uncharted.  Bell wandered throughout the desert, befriended the Bedouin sheikhs who controlled the wilderness and made copious notes about tribal alliances as the Bedouin chiefs defended their trade routes, grazing grounds, and wells from their neighbors and rivals.  Many tribesmen were totally ruthless even to other family members, but Bell spoke their language, she understood the rules of hospitality in the desert, and she was insatiably curious.  Using her knowledge of cartography, she mapped previously unknown parts of this territory.   She entered dangerous places as if there were no question that she had a right to be there. 

Her vast knowledge of the Middle East would make her one of the people responsible for the establishment of nations, especially Iraq, after WW I.  She saw this as a way to promote Arab autonomy.  Having rebelled against the Ottoman Empire, the Arabs did not want to substitute Western control for that of the Turks.  However, the old tribal and religious animosities, plus the discovery of oil in the Middle East, have led to continued problems that have not been resolved to this day.

While Gertrude Bell loved Iraq, the weather and her heavy smoking eventually took its toll on her health.  She died in Baghdad in 1926 at the age of 58. 

Howell’s book contains a helpful chronology of Bell’s life and the events surrounding her life.  The back of the book contains notes linked to pages in the book, but there are no numbers in the text to interrupt one’s reading.  A lengthy bibliography is also provided.  In the front of the book are maps of Bell’s six desert journeys that show her destinations and routes.

In addition to shining a light on a fascinating and gifted woman, Howell’s book also helped me put into context current events in the Middle East.  A movie starring Nicole Kidman, titled Queen of the Desert, was released in 2015 but it didn’t fare well with critics or at the box office.

 

www.bbc.com