Book Available from Tyne Bridge Publishing at City Library Newcastle or at www.tinyurl.com/toonbooks The Extraordinary GertrudHe BTell IG YR OP C Edited by Mark Jackson and Andrew Parkin COPYRIGHT The Extraordinary Gertrude Bell HT Obituary G Gertrude LowthianI Bell The death of Miss Gertrude Bell at Baghdad on July 11 last, closed a career which in more than one respect is unique. No other woman of recent timRe has combined her qualities – her taste for arduous and dangerous adventure with her scientific interest and knowledge, her competence in archaeology and art, her distinguished literary gift, her sympathy for all sorts and conditions of men, her political insight and appreciation of humanY values, her masculine vigour, hard common sense and practical efficiency – all tempered by feminine charm and most romantic spirit. She was, I believe, the only woman to be graded a PPolitical Officer during the Great War, and the only one after it to be Oriental Secretary to a High Commissioner. Not given to any sort of self-advertisement, she escaped, thanks to a lifelong indifference to what are called Feminist Movements, that advertisement by others which CO some distinguished members of her sex have suffered. Obituary of Gertrude Bell written by D.G. Hogarth, The Geographical Journal , 68, 1926 Acknowledgements There are several organisations to thank for the support they have provided in the production of this volume. They are the Great North Museum, the National Trust, Newcastle University and Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums. The editors are also indebted to a number of individuals who have helped during the publication process; we would like to thank Carlota González Míguez, David Hepworth, Sarah Glynn, Alex Boyd, Elizabeth Garnett and Vicky Manolopoulou. Finally we would like to thank all of the individuals who contributed their expertise to this volume, producing a wide-ranging set of papers that illustrate some of the many facets of Gertrude Bell’s extraordinary life. T GH RI © Tyne Bridge Publishing, 2015 ISBN: 9781857951622 Y All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any way oPr by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior permission of the publishers. Published by: O City of Newcastle Upon Tyne NewcCastle Libraries Tyne Bridge Publishing, 2015 www.tynebridgepublishing.co.uk Design: David Hepworth Right: Ur of the Chaldees. View of Ziggurat from a distance (November 1916). Contents 1 Andrew Parkin: Introduction 2 Susan Beaumont: Gertrude Bell, the Iron-master’s Daughter 3 Emma Short: Gertrude Bell’s Childhood Reading 4 Helen Berry: Gertrude Bell: a North-East Woman of Contradictions 5 David Lowther: Walking the Long Road. The Love Letters of Gertrude Bell and Charles Doughty Wylie 6 Mark Jackson: Gertrude Bell as an Archaeologist and Explorer 7 Mark Jackson and Emma Short: Gertrude Bell and the First World War 8 Sana al-Naimi: Al-Khatun 9 Eva Meharry: The Making of Iraq’s Antiquity Law and the National Museum 10 Christina Tsouparopoulou: Gertrude Bell and the ancient city of Ur (Tell al Muqayyar) 11 Peter Stone: The Looting of the Iraq National Museum 12 Martin Farr: Gertrude Bell in her Time and Ours 13 Lynn Ritchie and Mark Jackson: The Gertrude Bell Archive at Newcastle University COPYRIGHT Introduction Gertrude Bell (1868 – 1926) is a key figure in the shaping history from Oxford University. After Oxford she devoted of the Middle East in the early twentieth century. She much of her time to travel and writing, making extensive played a major role in the establishment of the state of trips through Europe as well as spending several months Iraq and was widely regarded as the foremost British in Tehran and taking two round the world tours. She also expert on the region in the period immediately following wrote about her experiences in Persia ( PersTian Pictures ) the First World War. Her 1920 White Paper, Review of the and produced a critically acclaimed translation of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia, is an essential Persian poet Hafiz ( Poems fromH the Divan of Hafiz ). In document for understanding British policy in the region. addition she built up a formidable reputation as a Yet, over time, her contribution has been overshadowed mountaineer pioneering a number of challenging climbs by others, in particular T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of in the Alps betweeGn the years 1899 – 1904. Arabia), who arguably did not have such a significant By the turn of the Century, Bell was increasingly drawn impact. More recent events in the Middle East following to the Middle East and spent a great deal of time there the Coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003 have led to renewed travelIling and exploring archaeological sites. In the years interest in Bell’s career and her influence on the political leading up to the First World War she immersed herself in map of the region. Rthe region, becoming fluent in Arabic as well as Any examination of Bell’s life reveals a complex developing a deep understanding of the cultural and individual whose political work in the Middle East was political life of the desert tribes. She published several only one facet of a remarkable career. BYorn into an books on her travels in the region, as well as important influential and wealthy family in the North East of archaeological work on the Byzantine churches at England she was academically Pgifted, becoming the first Binbirkillise in Turkey ( The Thousand and One Churches ) womaCn to gain a fiOrst class honours degree in modern and the Islamic palace at Ukhaidir ( Palace and Mosque at 6 Ukhaidir: a Study in Early Mohammedan Architecture ). embassy, who she met in Tehran. However her father Her intimate knowledge of the region led to her refused to give his permission for this marriage and Bell, recruitment by British Intelligence during the First World as a dutiful daughter, obeyed his wishes. In later life she War. She worked for the Arab Bureau in Cairo, producing was very close to the British soldier and diplomat Charles reports on the desert tribes, later she was transferred to Doughty-Wylie, who was known to his frienTds as ‘Dick’. Iraq to carry out similar work. Her subsequent role in the Doughty-Wylie was already married when Gertrude met post war creation of the state of Iraq was largely due to him; he was killed at GallipoHli in 1915. This doomed her war work and the important political connections she relationship caused her a great deal of sadness. made. Towards the end of her life, as her political role Gertrude Bell’s life was a rich and varied one and this waned, Bell returned to her love of archaeology, drafting is reflected in the esGsays in this book which cover different Iraq’s antiquities legislation and establishing the National aspects of her life and legacy. The volume complements museum in Baghdad. Newcastle University’s Gertrude Bell archive which Bell’s intellectual and political achievements are houseIs her correspondence, letters and photographs, as testimony to her ambition, drive and ability. Nonetheless well as her personal library, and comprises an invaluable her personal life was marred by unhappiness and she Rresource for understanding her life and achievements. In possibly immersed herself in ambitious desert journeys or addition it stands alongside an exhibition dedicated to other work as a means of escape from this. During the Bell entitled ‘ The Extraordinary Gertrude Bell ’, hosted by course of her life she formed close relationYships with a the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle upon number of men, but none of these led to the settled Tyne. married life she seemed to dePsire. She had wanted to marryC Henry CadOogan, an official from the British Andrew Parkin 7 The Iron-master’s Daughter T Gertrude Bell is said to have opposed the Suffragettes’ wealth accumulated by these families could be bequeathed cause, ‘votes for women’. Yet in one particularly through the female line: accorHdingly, families drew up important respect she espoused the same aims: Gertrude separate legal contracts to protect women’s wealth, believed that women had as much right as men to choose particularly that ofG wives, since English law continued to the direction their lives should take, a commitment she deem husbands the rightful owners of their wives’ assets. expressed in her own life. By the time that Gertrude Bell was born, unmarried Gertrude Bell was not the only incredibly determined womeIn controlled their own wealth. The fact that they woman to have been born into the remarkably were still not allowed to vote, a right denied to married enlightened society which had emerged in the North East Rand unmarried women alike, did not mean that they did of England in the late seventeenth-century and which not have a certain amount of choice over their own flourished throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth lifestyles. And, for middle class women like Gertrude Bell, centuries. Recent research places Bell withinY this, much whose family was directly responsible for achieving longer tradition, where independently-minded women industrial progress, the opportunities for women to inherited an experience of life unPiquely related to Britain’s contribute to society had widened. industrial revolution. As the daughter, grand-daughter and great grand- The North East’s archives contain a wealth of evidence daughter of three innovative ironmasters, Hugh, Isaac relating to women Osimilar to Gertrude Bell: women who Lowthian and Thomas Bell, Gertrude Bell inherited owned land, property, coal, lead and many other valuable wealth and a profound respect for it. Aged eight, she minerals, in the reign of Elizabeth I and continuously wrote of her excitement when visiting the family’s thereafCter.