November 19, 2012 • 21 mins
Gertrude Bell was the first woman to graduate with a First in Modern History from Oxford. Instead of marrying young, she went to Persia. Inspired, she traveled across the Middle East on numerous exploratory treks. But would it last in a time of war?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Delaney Chalk reboarding and I'm faired out. And if
you listen to this podcast regularly, you know we've covered
our share of explorers and adventure travelers, people like Freya Stark,
(00:23):
who traveled into uncharted territory with seemingly little regard for
their own safety and bring back useful info to enlighten
those of us who are less ambitious to say the least. Yeah,
I haven't made any desert tracks lately. You are, in particular,
very fond of explorer stories, though I do really love
explorer stories, and it's interesting sometimes when you when you
(00:47):
do subjects who are kind of in the in the
same vein to see what they have in common with
each other. And Freya Stark you just mentioned her, she
actually has a lot in common with the subject of
today's podcast, Who's Gertrude Bell, especially in terms of where
they traveled specifically, which was the Middle East, and you
might find a few other little parallels throughout their stories too. However,
(01:10):
unlike Stark, Bell's involvement in the area she explored went
far beyond documenting them and publishing works about them. Bell
also did some archaeological work in there, but was a
mountain climber too, but she's best known for a loftier
sort of thing. Working with the British government, she got
involved in Middle East politics, pitched in on some spy work,
(01:31):
and is largely credited with the founding of modern Iraq.
And it said that at one time she was the
most powerful woman in the British Empire. So that really
piqued our curiosity and we wanted to find out how
did this well healed English gal, otherwise expected to become
a proper Victorian lady, get to go pretty much where
(01:52):
no lady had gone before and have the sort of
influence that none other had had. And so that's what
we're going to look into a little bit today, and
a lot the answer seems to Lee and how she
started out. She was born Gertrude Margaret Lothan Bell on
July fourteenth, eighteen sixty eight, and a really well to
do family. According to an article in Smithsonian by Janet Walat,
(02:14):
her family friends included people like Henry James and John
Singer Sargent. Her father, who was named Isaac Lothan Bell
was a prominent industrialist and as that she had a
lot of important connections, and because of those connections, he
was able to get Gertrude into Oxford at a time
when not very many young women attended, and she excelled there.
(02:37):
In in eighteen eighty seven, she became the first woman
to graduate from there with the first in modern history,
which was the university's highest honor in modern history. Even
at that age, though she wasn't shy about voicing her opinions,
Walack writes that she shocked professors by challenging their ideas,
maybe because she was so opinionated and outspoken, though she
(02:58):
didn't have a lot of in the love department around
this time, around the time that she finished school, which
made her stand out from other women around her age
because most women married around this time. But because of
her outspokenness, as we said, because she was sort of
snobbish almost about her intelligence, she had a hard time
(03:19):
finding suitors. So at age twenty, she was sent off
to stay with an aunt and uncle in Romania. Her
uncle was a British ambassador there and it was in
the hopes that she would find a husband. I guess
the Oxford guys just couldn't handle Gertrude right. So she
didn't find any suitors in her time in Romania, but
she did realize that she just loved to travel, and
(03:40):
so in eighteen two she arranged a visit to Tehran
in modern day Ran it was Persia at the time,
where her uncle Frank Lassell was British minister. And it's
there that she got her very first glimpse of the desert,
and she just loved what she saw. This reminded me
a little bit of Louise Boy getting her first glimpse
(04:01):
of ice. Each each explorer has their own passion right.
But according to an article by Carrie Ellis in History
Today and a piece about Bell and All Things Considered,
in her first letter home, she wrote, quote, Oh, the
desert around Tehran, miles and mild of it, with nothing,
nothing growing, ringed in with bleak, bare mountains, snow crowned
(04:24):
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. So I mean that
speaks clearly how enchanted she was by something so different
from what she was used to. Right, she was smitten
with this area of the world, But while she was
in Persia, she also became smitten with something else, a guy,
(04:48):
a young British diplomat named Henry Caduggan. According to Walax article,
Bell described him as quote a very thin, agreeable, intelligent,
a great tennis player. I like him a men slate.
So he apparently liked her too, and they spent a
lot of time together, exploring the desert, going on picnics,
reading poetry. But there was one problem about their relationship
(05:12):
continuing any further, and that was that Henry was very poor,
and again, according to Walax article, Bell's father refused to
let them get married at all. He didn't think that
Cadugan earned enough to support his daughter in the manner
in which she'd become accustomed to. Um Plus, Henry had
a gambling habit, and so Bell went home to England
(05:35):
to try to convince her father in person that this
was the guy for her. But she was not successful,
and just a few months after she returned home, she
got worried from Persia that Cadugan had fallen into an
icy river while fishing and had died of pneumonia, and
she was just completely heartbroken, uh and devastated to hear
(05:56):
about the So Bell spent the next ten years or
so an England writing, including some writings about her experiences
in Persia, and she also traveled around Europe. She traveled
to France, Italy and Germany. And this is also around
the time, in the late eighteen nineties or so that
she started to earn her chops as a climber by
climbing unexplored peaks in the Alps. Walax article recounts one
(06:19):
particularly heroine experience Bell had in the Alps, and which
she and her guides were trapped by an avalanche, a
thunderstorm and blinding snow, any one of which would have
been enough to deter me, but that that all sounds bad.
They were basically huddled all roped together in a crack
between some rocks on a peak for more than a day,
(06:39):
and Bell later said that she thought, quote, it was
on the cards, we should not get down alive. But
she kept her cool and they did make it down,
and that's really something she was known for too as
a climber. Later one of her guides said that out
of all the amateur climbers that he had worked with,
including males as well as females. No one could rival
(07:00):
Bell in terms of quote, coolness, bravery, and judgment. And
I mean that seems like something that serves her well
later in her career too, not just on the mountains. Yeah,
and I just loved to picture her doing this, huddling
in between the crack and the rocks, braving out the storm,
right and even what you know, what she might have
(07:20):
looked like at the time, because there weren't any dedicated
climbing clothes for women at this time, at least when
she started out climbing, and Bell was doing her climbing
in a skirt. I mean, she wasn't wearing like decked
out an ari I gear or whatever that we would
expect today, obviously polar tech, nothing like that. Yeah, a
skirt would make things considerably more difficult, it would seem,
(07:42):
but it didn't. It didn't stop her. I mean, none
of that released stopped her. And she decided that she
wanted to start racking up some climbing accomplishments to like
some real goals. She wanted to be the first person
to climb all the peaks of the angle herner range
in the Swiss Alps, and at the accomplished that goal.
In nineteen o one. One of the mountains Gertrude Spitze
(08:04):
was named after her. But even with all the adventures
that Europe had to offer, Gertrude still longed for the desert.
She was drawn in particular to the mystery of the
Arabian Desert, and so around the turn of the century
she moved to Jerusalem to study Arabic and to gather
as much information as she could about the tribes that
were roaming around the desert. With her new know how,
(08:25):
she didn't waste any time in exploring. She rode from
Jerusalem to Jericho to Damascus, and according to Ellis's article,
one of her most notable early adventures involved dressing like
a Bedouin man and writing about hundred miles northeast of
Jerusalem in search of the Drus, which was a secretive,
militant Muslim sect that was at odds with the ruling
(08:46):
Ottoman Turks. And surprisingly, she got along quite well with
the Drus when she found them. Ellis writes that the
territory that Drews were living in was at the time
uncharted by Westerners, but Belle managed to evade the Turkish authorities.
This part reminds me of phrase Dark a little bit
a lot um and finally get to the Bell Drew's Mountains,
(09:08):
where she just charmed the Drew's king entirely. They ate together,
They talked together, and since m Bell had become fluent
in Arabic, this was something she could really really do
with ease. They even became friends, and the king apparently
asked someone later referring to her, have you seen a
queen traveling? So she made an impression yeah, And it
(09:31):
was apparently a good question to ask, because Bell did
spend the next few years traveling around the Middle East,
studying Rome, the Roman and Byzantine ruins there, and also
studying the Drews and various Bedouin tribes more in depth.
She learned a lot about the Arabs and about the
Ottoman Empire on her journeys, and she took copious notes
while she was doing that. A lot of her observations
(09:53):
made it into her nineteen o seven book The Desert
and the Zone, and it also seems that she impressed
more than just the drew Was king. According to Wallach,
the Arabs pronounced Bell quote a daughter of the desert,
and made her a quote honorary man. But in addition
to racking up these great titles and making all these friends,
(10:13):
she was really learning her future trade too. We mentioned
her studying the Roman and Byzantine ruins, which is significant
because it's during these years that Bell started getting more
and more involved in archaeology. She studied under the French
archaeologist Solomon Reinick in the early nineteen hundreds, and in
March of nineteen o seven she went to Turkey to
(10:35):
work with William Ramsay on some excavations there, and the
work they did actually resulted in a joint publication in
nineteen o nine book called A thousand and one Churches, which,
according to ellis really solidified Bells standing as a quote
serious archaeologist. So she's not a lady explorer anymore. She's
somebody who's out there doing real work with well respected
(10:59):
archaeologist and becoming well respected in her own right. In
January of nine nine, Grotrude set out from Mesopotamia, which
included what is today Iraq as well as Syria, Turkey,
and Iran. Her goal was to map out uncharted territory
so Wallock outlines a few of the things that Bell
took along for the ride, and I just have to
(11:19):
mention this, Yeah, it says so much about the time
it really doesn't, and so much about what's important to
the person I think so. So we'll just quote this
from from Wala's work. She says, her trunks packed with pistols,
her saddle bags crammed with books. She was accompanied by
an entourage of male servants, baggage animals, horses, and a
(11:42):
plethora of equipment cameras, tents, a folding bed, and a
canvas bath, mosquito netting, rugs, provisions for a month, quinine,
camphor cigarettes, an entire set of wedgewood china, crystal and
silver for proper or dining. And this reminded me so
much of the Champagne Safari that was before you were
(12:05):
a co host, but before it was a similar packing
list bringing things that Again, I mean, she may not
have had the ri I gear for her climbing and
special high tech fabric for desert wear, but she wasn't
dining with like tin plates either, was she. So with
all of this equipment, with all of these luxuries prepared,
(12:28):
she set off on a journey that lasted about seven months,
and the land she traveled across was so brutally dry
that her party often had to stop and seek refuge
with local tribes and as their guests. Sometimes they would
eat things that maybe they weren't expecting to see on
their wedgewood china um really bitter coffee out of the cups,
(12:50):
smooth they had. Wedgewood comes into sheep's eyes on their plates,
things that we're probably welcome if they were looking for
a fuge in the in the desert, but also real
travelers stuff. In March, she came across an amazing and
as yet undocumented ruin, a sixth century stone and wood
(13:11):
castle known to Arabs as Buca Deer. I hope I'm
saying that correctly. I'm not sure. Bell spent hours and
hours of painstakingly photographing, measuring, and sketching these ruins. She
even got down on the ground and her petticoat to
make sure that she was taking very precise measurements. And
she was taking this so seriously because since the ruins
(13:31):
hadn't been documented before, if she were the one to
come out with this discovery and have it so documented
and write about it first. It would be this huge,
big win for her, something that would establish her archaeological
reputation beyond a shadow of a doubt. She didn't exactly
rush off quite yet though. With her finding. She went
on to Babylon and wrote about Babylon thing it was
(13:54):
quote the most extraordinary place I've seldom felt the ancient
world comes so close. From there, she went on to Baghdad,
which was about five hundred miles from her starting point
just give you a sense of of how far she
roamed on this. On this trip, there she met the Nikkib,
which was the city's one of the most important Islamic
(14:16):
figures in the city who rarely spoke to women, and
again just sort of like the King of the Drews.
She really charmed this guy. He ended up inviting her
to meet his family. So from Baghdad she went on
to Constantinople and that's where she got some really bad news.
She found that a French archaeologist had scooped her on
the Kadir find, and she was upset about this, but
(14:40):
because she had at least spent so much time documenting
it in the form of drawings, her name was at
least going to be associated with the discovery. The French
archaeologists had written about it first, but she had all
of this information, all these pictures, to really back up
the find. Just eighteen months later, she went back to
the desert again. She wanted to visit a friend, David Hogarth,
(15:04):
who was working on an excavation in the ancent city
of Carchomish for the British Museum. When she got there, though,
Hogarth had left and his two assistants, two young British
archaeologists were waiting for her instead. They were Campbell, Thompson
and a twenty three year old graduate student named Thomas
Edward Lawrence. And that name may sound kind of familiar
(15:25):
to you, and that's because it's the same Lawrence that
would later be known as Lawrence of Arabia. And these
guys were eager to impress Bell with the work they've done.
It started out rocky for them, though, according to Ellis,
Bell took a look at their excavations and immediately called
their methods quote prehistoric. She then proceeded to tell them
how a dig should be done, but they eventually won
(15:47):
her over with their conversation, in which they showed off
substantial local knowledge, something that always appealed to Bell, and
knowledge of architecture, among other things. She ended up calling
Lawrence quote an interesting boy. He is going to make
a traveler very on point. Gertrude just an interesting side
note because this group, they sort of seemed like an
(16:09):
odd couple, don't there? Or an odd group of three.
But apparently the locals who didn't know what to think
about a woman traveling alone like Gertrude Bell often did,
and knowing that Lawrence was a bachelor, originally thought that
Belle had arrived to be his bride, even though she
was at this point something like twice his age. It
(16:31):
just seemed like the most logical solution to explain this party. Sure,
why not? Also interesting to note about this independent lady
traveling alone, she had been active in the anti suffrage
movement back home in the early nineteen hundred's. She was
actually the honorary secretary of the Women's Anti Suffrage League,
according to Ellis, and apparently she believed that she was
(16:53):
the equal of any man, but didn't think the same
was true of all women anyway. We just thought that
was worth a mention, and for those who look up
to her as a feminist role model. It's not totally
black and white here. You can't expect her to to
be the perfect role model I right, as with any
historical figure or figure of any kind. But as we'll
(17:14):
learn in the second part of this podcast, there were
others who also thought that Bell was a singular kind
of lady and allowed her to be part of what
was perhaps the ultimate all boys club right the military
at a time when it really mattered too, because in
the next part of this podcast, we're about to go
to war World War One and talk about Bell's political
influence in the Middle East, the stuff that she's probably
(17:37):
best known for. There is a little bit of romance
in there too, though, because we haven't talked about gertrude
second notable love affair yet, And we'll also talk a
bit about how she made a lasting impression on Iraqi culture.
So all sorts of things to come in our second
part of this Gertrude Bell story. So a few weeks ago,
(18:02):
we did an episode on the mystery writer Agatha Christie,
and we heard from a lot of Agatha fans out there,
But we also heard from a lot of Doctor Who fans.
And this is not the first time, we have inadvertently
covered a subject also covered on Doctor Who. Neither of
us watched the show, so we're not up to date
(18:22):
with the plot lines. But I think at this point
we really need to start tuning into Lena. Well. I
think we're already so in sync. It might be interesting
if we just don't start watching it and see if
we continue along this path. Yeah. But we have a
letter here from our listener Anna from Charlottesville, Virginia, and
she says, when I checked the podcast and saw the
(18:43):
mysterious disappearance of Agatha Christie, I got very excited because
I love Doctor Who. Why because in one episode, the
doctor meets Agatha and they solve a murder together and
then she loses her memory. The details about the actual
situation are a bit off, but the overarching theme is
the same. I suggest you watch this because even though
it is mostly wrong, and also the nature of the
(19:05):
show has some really strange characters, it is a really
interesting look at what could have happened to Agatha. The
episode is The Unicorn and the Wasp, starring David Tennant
as a doctor and Catherine Tate is Donna Noble. So
again another another recommendation. From a listener. I think there was.
We got a lot of mail around the Madame da
Pompadour episode, so I wonder now that we have the
(19:28):
Chevalier deal coming out to people will be writing again
about Doctor Who and Madame da Pompadour. They probably will,
but this one sounded sounded fun. I'd like to see
a take on what Agatha does during her her mysterious disappearance. Um. Yeah,
I'm intrigued to know that I've read this better than
than just the spa explanation, right, yeah, absolutely So if
(19:54):
you guys ever have something fun like that to share,
we're always interested. We are a history podcast at discover
dot com. We're also on Twitter, that's where a lot
of people share their television show connections. We're at Misston History,
and we are on Facebook. Um and of course if
you just have suggestions to non television related we're always
(20:15):
happy to get this as well. And if you want
to learn a little bit more about some of the
topics that we talked about in part one of this episode,
you can look at an article called how archaeology works
on our website and it is written by the great
Sarahdality herself. I'm blessing to be and it's a great article,
so you should check it out. You can look that
(20:37):
up by visiting our homepage at www. Dot how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Do
(21:02):
do do
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Delaney Chalk reboarding and I'm faired out. And if
you listen to this podcast regularly, you know we've covered
our share of explorers and adventure travelers, people like Freya Stark,
(00:23):
who traveled into uncharted territory with seemingly little regard for
their own safety and bring back useful info to enlighten
those of us who are less ambitious to say the least. Yeah,
I haven't made any desert tracks lately. You are, in particular,
very fond of explorer stories, though I do really love
explorer stories, and it's interesting sometimes when you when you
(00:47):
do subjects who are kind of in the in the
same vein to see what they have in common with
each other. And Freya Stark you just mentioned her, she
actually has a lot in common with the subject of
today's podcast, Who's Gertrude Bell, especially in terms of where
they traveled specifically, which was the Middle East, and you
might find a few other little parallels throughout their stories too. However,
(01:10):
unlike Stark, Bell's involvement in the area she explored went
far beyond documenting them and publishing works about them. Bell
also did some archaeological work in there, but was a
mountain climber too, but she's best known for a loftier
sort of thing. Working with the British government, she got
involved in Middle East politics, pitched in on some spy work,
(01:31):
and is largely credited with the founding of modern Iraq.
And it said that at one time she was the
most powerful woman in the British Empire. So that really
piqued our curiosity and we wanted to find out how
did this well healed English gal, otherwise expected to become
a proper Victorian lady, get to go pretty much where
(01:52):
no lady had gone before and have the sort of
influence that none other had had. And so that's what
we're going to look into a little bit today, and
a lot the answer seems to Lee and how she
started out. She was born Gertrude Margaret Lothan Bell on
July fourteenth, eighteen sixty eight, and a really well to
do family. According to an article in Smithsonian by Janet Walat,
(02:14):
her family friends included people like Henry James and John
Singer Sargent. Her father, who was named Isaac Lothan Bell
was a prominent industrialist and as that she had a
lot of important connections, and because of those connections, he
was able to get Gertrude into Oxford at a time
when not very many young women attended, and she excelled there.
(02:37):
In in eighteen eighty seven, she became the first woman
to graduate from there with the first in modern history,
which was the university's highest honor in modern history. Even
at that age, though she wasn't shy about voicing her opinions,
Walack writes that she shocked professors by challenging their ideas,
maybe because she was so opinionated and outspoken, though she
(02:58):
didn't have a lot of in the love department around
this time, around the time that she finished school, which
made her stand out from other women around her age
because most women married around this time. But because of
her outspokenness, as we said, because she was sort of
snobbish almost about her intelligence, she had a hard time
(03:19):
finding suitors. So at age twenty, she was sent off
to stay with an aunt and uncle in Romania. Her
uncle was a British ambassador there and it was in
the hopes that she would find a husband. I guess
the Oxford guys just couldn't handle Gertrude right. So she
didn't find any suitors in her time in Romania, but
she did realize that she just loved to travel, and
(03:40):
so in eighteen two she arranged a visit to Tehran
in modern day Ran it was Persia at the time,
where her uncle Frank Lassell was British minister. And it's
there that she got her very first glimpse of the desert,
and she just loved what she saw. This reminded me
a little bit of Louise Boy getting her first glimpse
(04:01):
of ice. Each each explorer has their own passion right.
But according to an article by Carrie Ellis in History
Today and a piece about Bell and All Things Considered,
in her first letter home, she wrote, quote, Oh, the
desert around Tehran, miles and mild of it, with nothing,
nothing growing, ringed in with bleak, bare mountains, snow crowned
(04:24):
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. So I mean that
speaks clearly how enchanted she was by something so different
from what she was used to. Right, she was smitten
with this area of the world, But while she was
in Persia, she also became smitten with something else, a guy,
(04:48):
a young British diplomat named Henry Caduggan. According to Walax article,
Bell described him as quote a very thin, agreeable, intelligent,
a great tennis player. I like him a men slate.
So he apparently liked her too, and they spent a
lot of time together, exploring the desert, going on picnics,
reading poetry. But there was one problem about their relationship
(05:12):
continuing any further, and that was that Henry was very poor,
and again, according to Walax article, Bell's father refused to
let them get married at all. He didn't think that
Cadugan earned enough to support his daughter in the manner
in which she'd become accustomed to. Um Plus, Henry had
a gambling habit, and so Bell went home to England
(05:35):
to try to convince her father in person that this
was the guy for her. But she was not successful,
and just a few months after she returned home, she
got worried from Persia that Cadugan had fallen into an
icy river while fishing and had died of pneumonia, and
she was just completely heartbroken, uh and devastated to hear
(05:56):
about the So Bell spent the next ten years or
so an England writing, including some writings about her experiences
in Persia, and she also traveled around Europe. She traveled
to France, Italy and Germany. And this is also around
the time, in the late eighteen nineties or so that
she started to earn her chops as a climber by
climbing unexplored peaks in the Alps. Walax article recounts one
(06:19):
particularly heroine experience Bell had in the Alps, and which
she and her guides were trapped by an avalanche, a
thunderstorm and blinding snow, any one of which would have
been enough to deter me, but that that all sounds bad.
They were basically huddled all roped together in a crack
between some rocks on a peak for more than a day,
(06:39):
and Bell later said that she thought, quote, it was
on the cards, we should not get down alive. But
she kept her cool and they did make it down,
and that's really something she was known for too as
a climber. Later one of her guides said that out
of all the amateur climbers that he had worked with,
including males as well as females. No one could rival
(07:00):
Bell in terms of quote, coolness, bravery, and judgment. And
I mean that seems like something that serves her well
later in her career too, not just on the mountains. Yeah,
and I just loved to picture her doing this, huddling
in between the crack and the rocks, braving out the storm,
right and even what you know, what she might have
(07:20):
looked like at the time, because there weren't any dedicated
climbing clothes for women at this time, at least when
she started out climbing, and Bell was doing her climbing
in a skirt. I mean, she wasn't wearing like decked
out an ari I gear or whatever that we would
expect today, obviously polar tech, nothing like that. Yeah, a
skirt would make things considerably more difficult, it would seem,
(07:42):
but it didn't. It didn't stop her. I mean, none
of that released stopped her. And she decided that she
wanted to start racking up some climbing accomplishments to like
some real goals. She wanted to be the first person
to climb all the peaks of the angle herner range
in the Swiss Alps, and at the accomplished that goal.
In nineteen o one. One of the mountains Gertrude Spitze
(08:04):
was named after her. But even with all the adventures
that Europe had to offer, Gertrude still longed for the desert.
She was drawn in particular to the mystery of the
Arabian Desert, and so around the turn of the century
she moved to Jerusalem to study Arabic and to gather
as much information as she could about the tribes that
were roaming around the desert. With her new know how,
(08:25):
she didn't waste any time in exploring. She rode from
Jerusalem to Jericho to Damascus, and according to Ellis's article,
one of her most notable early adventures involved dressing like
a Bedouin man and writing about hundred miles northeast of
Jerusalem in search of the Drus, which was a secretive,
militant Muslim sect that was at odds with the ruling
(08:46):
Ottoman Turks. And surprisingly, she got along quite well with
the Drus when she found them. Ellis writes that the
territory that Drews were living in was at the time
uncharted by Westerners, but Belle managed to evade the Turkish authorities.
This part reminds me of phrase Dark a little bit
a lot um and finally get to the Bell Drew's Mountains,
(09:08):
where she just charmed the Drew's king entirely. They ate together,
They talked together, and since m Bell had become fluent
in Arabic, this was something she could really really do
with ease. They even became friends, and the king apparently
asked someone later referring to her, have you seen a
queen traveling? So she made an impression yeah, And it
(09:31):
was apparently a good question to ask, because Bell did
spend the next few years traveling around the Middle East,
studying Rome, the Roman and Byzantine ruins there, and also
studying the Drews and various Bedouin tribes more in depth.
She learned a lot about the Arabs and about the
Ottoman Empire on her journeys, and she took copious notes
while she was doing that. A lot of her observations
(09:53):
made it into her nineteen o seven book The Desert
and the Zone, and it also seems that she impressed
more than just the drew Was king. According to Wallach,
the Arabs pronounced Bell quote a daughter of the desert,
and made her a quote honorary man. But in addition
to racking up these great titles and making all these friends,
(10:13):
she was really learning her future trade too. We mentioned
her studying the Roman and Byzantine ruins, which is significant
because it's during these years that Bell started getting more
and more involved in archaeology. She studied under the French
archaeologist Solomon Reinick in the early nineteen hundreds, and in
March of nineteen o seven she went to Turkey to
(10:35):
work with William Ramsay on some excavations there, and the
work they did actually resulted in a joint publication in
nineteen o nine book called A thousand and one Churches, which,
according to ellis really solidified Bells standing as a quote
serious archaeologist. So she's not a lady explorer anymore. She's
somebody who's out there doing real work with well respected
(10:59):
archaeologist and becoming well respected in her own right. In
January of nine nine, Grotrude set out from Mesopotamia, which
included what is today Iraq as well as Syria, Turkey,
and Iran. Her goal was to map out uncharted territory
so Wallock outlines a few of the things that Bell
took along for the ride, and I just have to
(11:19):
mention this, Yeah, it says so much about the time
it really doesn't, and so much about what's important to
the person I think so. So we'll just quote this
from from Wala's work. She says, her trunks packed with pistols,
her saddle bags crammed with books. She was accompanied by
an entourage of male servants, baggage animals, horses, and a
(11:42):
plethora of equipment cameras, tents, a folding bed, and a
canvas bath, mosquito netting, rugs, provisions for a month, quinine,
camphor cigarettes, an entire set of wedgewood china, crystal and
silver for proper or dining. And this reminded me so
much of the Champagne Safari that was before you were
(12:05):
a co host, but before it was a similar packing
list bringing things that Again, I mean, she may not
have had the ri I gear for her climbing and
special high tech fabric for desert wear, but she wasn't
dining with like tin plates either, was she. So with
all of this equipment, with all of these luxuries prepared,
(12:28):
she set off on a journey that lasted about seven months,
and the land she traveled across was so brutally dry
that her party often had to stop and seek refuge
with local tribes and as their guests. Sometimes they would
eat things that maybe they weren't expecting to see on
their wedgewood china um really bitter coffee out of the cups,
(12:50):
smooth they had. Wedgewood comes into sheep's eyes on their plates,
things that we're probably welcome if they were looking for
a fuge in the in the desert, but also real
travelers stuff. In March, she came across an amazing and
as yet undocumented ruin, a sixth century stone and wood
(13:11):
castle known to Arabs as Buca Deer. I hope I'm
saying that correctly. I'm not sure. Bell spent hours and
hours of painstakingly photographing, measuring, and sketching these ruins. She
even got down on the ground and her petticoat to
make sure that she was taking very precise measurements. And
she was taking this so seriously because since the ruins
(13:31):
hadn't been documented before, if she were the one to
come out with this discovery and have it so documented
and write about it first. It would be this huge,
big win for her, something that would establish her archaeological
reputation beyond a shadow of a doubt. She didn't exactly
rush off quite yet though. With her finding. She went
on to Babylon and wrote about Babylon thing it was
(13:54):
quote the most extraordinary place I've seldom felt the ancient
world comes so close. From there, she went on to Baghdad,
which was about five hundred miles from her starting point
just give you a sense of of how far she
roamed on this. On this trip, there she met the Nikkib,
which was the city's one of the most important Islamic
(14:16):
figures in the city who rarely spoke to women, and
again just sort of like the King of the Drews.
She really charmed this guy. He ended up inviting her
to meet his family. So from Baghdad she went on
to Constantinople and that's where she got some really bad news.
She found that a French archaeologist had scooped her on
the Kadir find, and she was upset about this, but
(14:40):
because she had at least spent so much time documenting
it in the form of drawings, her name was at
least going to be associated with the discovery. The French
archaeologists had written about it first, but she had all
of this information, all these pictures, to really back up
the find. Just eighteen months later, she went back to
the desert again. She wanted to visit a friend, David Hogarth,
(15:04):
who was working on an excavation in the ancent city
of Carchomish for the British Museum. When she got there, though,
Hogarth had left and his two assistants, two young British
archaeologists were waiting for her instead. They were Campbell, Thompson
and a twenty three year old graduate student named Thomas
Edward Lawrence. And that name may sound kind of familiar
(15:25):
to you, and that's because it's the same Lawrence that
would later be known as Lawrence of Arabia. And these
guys were eager to impress Bell with the work they've done.
It started out rocky for them, though, according to Ellis,
Bell took a look at their excavations and immediately called
their methods quote prehistoric. She then proceeded to tell them
how a dig should be done, but they eventually won
(15:47):
her over with their conversation, in which they showed off
substantial local knowledge, something that always appealed to Bell, and
knowledge of architecture, among other things. She ended up calling
Lawrence quote an interesting boy. He is going to make
a traveler very on point. Gertrude just an interesting side
note because this group, they sort of seemed like an
(16:09):
odd couple, don't there? Or an odd group of three.
But apparently the locals who didn't know what to think
about a woman traveling alone like Gertrude Bell often did,
and knowing that Lawrence was a bachelor, originally thought that
Belle had arrived to be his bride, even though she
was at this point something like twice his age. It
(16:31):
just seemed like the most logical solution to explain this party. Sure,
why not? Also interesting to note about this independent lady
traveling alone, she had been active in the anti suffrage
movement back home in the early nineteen hundred's. She was
actually the honorary secretary of the Women's Anti Suffrage League,
according to Ellis, and apparently she believed that she was
(16:53):
the equal of any man, but didn't think the same
was true of all women anyway. We just thought that
was worth a mention, and for those who look up
to her as a feminist role model. It's not totally
black and white here. You can't expect her to to
be the perfect role model I right, as with any
historical figure or figure of any kind. But as we'll
(17:14):
learn in the second part of this podcast, there were
others who also thought that Bell was a singular kind
of lady and allowed her to be part of what
was perhaps the ultimate all boys club right the military
at a time when it really mattered too, because in
the next part of this podcast, we're about to go
to war World War One and talk about Bell's political
influence in the Middle East, the stuff that she's probably
(17:37):
best known for. There is a little bit of romance
in there too, though, because we haven't talked about gertrude
second notable love affair yet, And we'll also talk a
bit about how she made a lasting impression on Iraqi culture.
So all sorts of things to come in our second
part of this Gertrude Bell story. So a few weeks ago,
(18:02):
we did an episode on the mystery writer Agatha Christie,
and we heard from a lot of Agatha fans out there,
But we also heard from a lot of Doctor Who fans.
And this is not the first time, we have inadvertently
covered a subject also covered on Doctor Who. Neither of
us watched the show, so we're not up to date
(18:22):
with the plot lines. But I think at this point
we really need to start tuning into Lena. Well. I
think we're already so in sync. It might be interesting
if we just don't start watching it and see if
we continue along this path. Yeah. But we have a
letter here from our listener Anna from Charlottesville, Virginia, and
she says, when I checked the podcast and saw the
(18:43):
mysterious disappearance of Agatha Christie, I got very excited because
I love Doctor Who. Why because in one episode, the
doctor meets Agatha and they solve a murder together and
then she loses her memory. The details about the actual
situation are a bit off, but the overarching theme is
the same. I suggest you watch this because even though
it is mostly wrong, and also the nature of the
(19:05):
show has some really strange characters, it is a really
interesting look at what could have happened to Agatha. The
episode is The Unicorn and the Wasp, starring David Tennant
as a doctor and Catherine Tate is Donna Noble. So
again another another recommendation. From a listener. I think there was.
We got a lot of mail around the Madame da
Pompadour episode, so I wonder now that we have the
(19:28):
Chevalier deal coming out to people will be writing again
about Doctor Who and Madame da Pompadour. They probably will,
but this one sounded sounded fun. I'd like to see
a take on what Agatha does during her her mysterious disappearance. Um. Yeah,
I'm intrigued to know that I've read this better than
than just the spa explanation, right, yeah, absolutely So if
(19:54):
you guys ever have something fun like that to share,
we're always interested. We are a history podcast at discover
dot com. We're also on Twitter, that's where a lot
of people share their television show connections. We're at Misston History,
and we are on Facebook. Um and of course if
you just have suggestions to non television related we're always
(20:15):
happy to get this as well. And if you want
to learn a little bit more about some of the
topics that we talked about in part one of this episode,
you can look at an article called how archaeology works
on our website and it is written by the great
Sarahdality herself. I'm blessing to be and it's a great article,
so you should check it out. You can look that
(20:37):
up by visiting our homepage at www. Dot how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Do
(21:02):
do do
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