August 10, 2019 • 26 mins
Today revisits a 2012 episode from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina. After a childhood spent roaming Europe, Freya Stark began saving money to take Arabic lessons. Once fluent, she traveled into areas few outsiders had ever been, documenting her travels in best-selling books.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. We have a new podcast launching on
our network. It is called Parklandia, and it's about the
journeys of Brad and Matt Kirowack, who bought an r
V and they are traveling full time, trying to visit
as many national parks as they can and documenting their
journey as they go. So in the spirit of that theme,
today we are going back to our episode on Freya Stark,
(00:22):
who's also known as Freya of Arabia, who spent much
of her life traveling and documented her travels in a
series of best selling books. And stay tuned at the
end to get a sneak peak at Parklandia. Welcome to
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:49):
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Choker Boarding. And not
too long ago, we talked about a few real Indiana
Jones possibilities and one of the guys who made our
short list. We didn't go into too many d tales
about him, but one of the guys who made our
short list was the very famous T. E. Lawrence, better
known of course as Lawrence of Arabia, and I think
Lawrence of Arabia could still make a really great solo topic.
(01:11):
But today we're going to discuss someone who's occasionally associated
with him, Dame Freya Stark, who's sometimes called the female
Lawrence of Arabia. To me, though, Stark really reminds me
less of Lawrence of Arabia and more of another podcast
subject we've discussed, Ottoman traveler Eleachellaby. They explored mostly different
(01:32):
areas of the world. They were obviously separated by several centuries,
but they really stand out from other adventures we've talked
about before because of their attention to detail. They were
almost more writers before they were travelers, you know, that
that was what they were really focusing on. They bothered
to meet all different types of people and learned local customs,
(01:53):
speak people's own languages, and they always preferred the slow
road to I think if you remember when we talked
about Evlia, he didn't like ships kind of because he
was scared of them, but it made his travel really slow.
And the same is true for Freya, who could have
taken a car a lot of places, but preferred to
travel by donkey or by mule. You know, really take
her time with it. There were some differences between them,
(02:16):
though Chellaby ultimately produced one epic travel account and one
very impressive map. Stark, writing in the modern age, broke
her accounts down into volumes. In her one hundred years,
she produced twenty four travel books and autobiographies and eight
volumes of letters. Many of them were best sellers, depicting
(02:37):
arrest by the French, trips to the Fortress of the Assassins,
the Secret Life of Harems, and a month long siege
at the British embassy in Baghdad. But her personal life
and her penchant for wild hats is really just as
interesting as this sort of professional life she had. It
all starts in an appropriately bohemian fashion. She was born
(02:58):
in January thirty one, eighteen ninety three, in a mom
watch studio, to artistic parents who were also first cousins.
When she was only two years old, her parents started wandering,
carrying her and her baby sister over the Alps in
a basket. Yeah, very romantic sounding life. The most settled
period of her childhood, though, was spent in her father's
(03:18):
home at Devonshire, where she slept in a bed her
mother had painted with ships, again, all very romantic and
appropriate for her later life. But the family basically lived
all over Europe, and she grew up speaking English with
an accent, which is kind of ironic considering she was
often thought to be the quintessential english woman. Um German
(03:38):
was really her first language. She also knew French and
Italian as a child, and learned a few other languages
later on. As we'll see, it wasn't really quite as
fun as it sounds, though, this life of childhood wandering,
but it really did make Freya resourceful. She didn't have
very much formal education, and she and her sister would
instead study with occasional governesses, pick up a few things,
(04:00):
and just read as much as they could. According to
Jacqueline McLean and Women of Adventure, she later said quote,
our wandering life made us precocious and pretty tough. But
when Freya was ten years old, her mother left her
father for a twenty three year old broke Italian count
and took the kids with her to northern Italy. Before
her mother's money was cut off, the count bought a
(04:22):
rug and basket factory, and the family managed to make
a meager living off of that. Then just before FRA's
thirteenth birthday. While visiting the factory, she got her hair
caught in some machinery. It pulled her up to the
ceiling and mangled her scalp and her right ear before
she could finally be freed, so horrible infections almost killed her,
(04:43):
but doctors in turn ultimately were able to save her
life with skin graphs that came from her thighs. But
the accident really made her quite self conscious. She would
dress her hair over the right side of her face,
and later she would wear large hats. You know we've
mentioned that already, But um it also gave her some
time to recover too, and some time to start exploring
(05:05):
new things. While she was recovering, she started to read
adventure stories and get really fixated on the idea of travel,
something um I guess she had grown up doing but
wasn't really doing by this point, just sort of stuck
in northern Italy, where she was pretty unhappy. Eventually, though,
her father, who was now living far off in Canada,
(05:25):
agreed to send her to college in London, where she
studied English literature and history. She wasn't there for long, though,
before World War One began and she had to return
home to Italy, and there she became a nurse during
the time that she was gone, though her younger sister, Vera,
who was just eighteen at the time, married her mother's
Italian count boyfriend. Kind of a strange situation there is, indeed,
(05:49):
according to Claudia roth pier Point in The New Yorker,
there's some disagreement between Stark's biographers about how this actually
played out. Some of them suggests that account for courted Freya,
or that he simply chose Vera instead, and that whatever
the case, they had a very happy life together with
four children, and this left Freya feeling either that she
(06:11):
had made the wrong choice or that she had been
passed over. Others suggests, though, that Vera had a horrible
life with the count, and that Freya was instead troubled
by her sister's unhappy situation. Still, I mean, I'll say
it again, just kind of a strange situation more than kind.
It's definitely odd to have your father stepfather become your
(06:32):
husband and brother you had known since you were ten.
But Freya had her own broken engagement to While she
was acting as a nurse in Italy, her fiance had
left her when she got typhoid. But after the war
was over, Freya and her mother lived in a house
on the Italian riviera and they were just barely scraping by.
They were very poor. Freya grew flowers so that she
(06:54):
could sell them and supplement their income. Again, she was isolated,
she was bored, and to get away from this really
claustrophobic life, she got into mountain climbing and started scaling
the Alps, and she started studying again, something I guess
she had sort of put aside for a while. While
she was nursing, a teacher of her suggested, well, why
(07:15):
don't you learn a new language. You know, she already
spoke English, German, French, Italian. Why don't you learn a
language that's a little bit outside of the ordinary. And
he suggested maybe Icelandic would be a cool one to learn.
But Freya had a smart hunch that there was potentially
more promise in learning Arabic. So after World War One,
(07:45):
the Ottoman Empire had been broken up and the British
and the French controlled much of the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq,
Jordan's and Freya knew that large parts of the air
speaking world. We're starting to open up. Two travelers, archaeologists, cartographers,
and p B doing government work. And so she hoped
that knowing Arabic would get her interesting work and quote
(08:05):
lead me out into some sort of fairyland of my own.
Plus she had romanticized notions of Arabian nights from her
readings as a girl. Yeah, she was hoping it would
be some grand adventure in a way for her to
go somewhere new, someplace far away from where she was.
So she took her study very seriously. She saved you know,
we mentioned she was barely scraping by here, but she
(08:27):
saved her lessons at the London School of Oriental Studies
and added Persian to her repertoire too, as well as
improving her Arabic. But it wasn't until nineteen six, after
her sister Vera died from a miscarriage that Frey had
decided that it was time to put her skills into practice,
time to go for it and travel like she had
(08:49):
always wanted to. So she started off by taking a
cargo ship to Beirut, and she recognized that that was
a good starting place for her because it had a
strong French influence. It wouldn't be completely foreign. She could
work her way in, she could keep studying Arabic, and
she was really welcome when she came to town because, um,
she said that people thought she was their quote, neither
(09:12):
to improve nor to rob, just to learn stuff, just
to observe and really practice her language. By March of
now confident in her language skills, Freya traveled to Damascus.
According to McLean, this was kind of the first bubble
popping of that romantic Arabia idea that she had. She
found this city war torn, cold, full of fleas, and
(09:36):
herself sick with dysenterry. But she also proved her early
Traveler's Medal by not letting any of that stop her
from exploring ruins and wandering the city. Yeah, she really
got out there and did what she had hoped to do.
But of course she didn't get her eventual reputation as
a bold explorer for just powering through dysentery, you know,
getting out there, and it is admirable, But um, she
(10:00):
had to do more than just wander around an already
well known city. She got that reputation because she went
to places where she wasn't supposed to go in the
first place, and her first major expedition like this was
south of Damascus to the Druis tribe in a region
that had rebelled recently rebelled against French control and had
(10:22):
been suppressed by the French. And then the French had
actually placed the entire area under martial law and bar
travelers from entering, so she was definitely not supposed to
be visiting there. But Freya and a British friend slipped
at the border and dodged the French authorities as long
as they could. When they were finally caught, Freya and
her friend played dumb traveler lady. They were just kind
(10:43):
of like, oh, my goodness, are Thomas cook guide book?
Must have misdirected us? How did we get here? Shouldn't
be Yeah, I didn't know. That didn't quite work though.
The French authorities thought that they might be spies, and
so they were sent to the Army barracks, but Freya
managed to charm her way out of there. She uh
took part an Army Dinners horse rides. She even got
(11:05):
permission to keep traveling, and most importantly, she had drew
street cred. Now since she had been arrested by their enemies,
the French. She was cool with the Drews now So
Her next trip, which took place in nineteen nine, started
in Baghdad, which at the time was British controlled but
very diverse. It was filled with Arabs and Greeks, Turks, Jews, Armenians, Kurds, Persians,
(11:28):
and she really took advantage of that diversity too. She
upped her study of Persian. She began learning folklore. She
was very interested in history and literature and that type
of thing, and this improved Persian of hers prepared her
for the main goal of this trip, which was to
visit the El Boor's Mountains in modern Iran, which held
(11:50):
the ruined fortress of the Assassins. And Um. I think
I've heard the Assassins in conjunction with it's how we
have our word assassin or assassinate um, But I didn't
know too much about them, and I think they could
make a pretty cool podcast subject on their own. But
they were a murderous medieval sect that would do just
what you'd expect them to do infiltrate groups and then
(12:12):
assassinate somebody. So traveling in what became her signature style,
no servants, view guides, lots of medicine, lots of little presents,
and embossed letters of introduction. Start set out with mules.
The fortress had already been explored, but Stark updated maps,
she relocated a misplaced mountain, and she documented all the
(12:34):
people that she met along the way. She also popularized
the place writing the Valleys of the Assassins and other
Persian travels, which became a hit not just for the
main attraction, which of course was the assassins, but for
the other personal details that contained, like an account of
a poor woman offering Freya the only tomatoes from her garden,
but secretly slipping her son the leftover juice that came
(12:57):
out of slicing them. And I think this is a
good point to mention too, that Stark is really well
known for her depiction of women's lives. And according to
Roth Pierpont that New Yorker article we mentioned earlier, um
she'd often be the first European woman in an area.
So the first people who would be really interested in
her were of course the the local women. You know,
(13:17):
they were interested in seeing their first European lady, and
so she would make friends with them. Start talking with
them first, and learn about bridal customs and clothes and
jewelry and harems and kids and just day to day life,
and through them ultimately gain access to the men's world,
but pick up a lot about uh kind of an
unexplored aspect of life in the meantime. So after a
(13:40):
third two year trip, Stark began to be seen as
a Middle East expert. Back home, the Royal Geographic Society
honored her and began to help fund future trips of hers.
So in ninety four she decided her next trip would
be less about mapping and more about discovery. She really
wanted to find an ancient trading spot believed to be
(14:01):
the origin of the Frankinstance trade route and possibly the
capital of the Queen of Sheba. Pretty Much any foreign
explorer we should say here, um, pretty much any explore
in the Middle East at the time wanted to find
Sha Boa, which was believed to be buried. But the
area was a harsh, desert and contested ground between two
warring tribes, so it's pretty dangerous to attempt this, And
(14:24):
to make matters worse and even more difficult, Stark would
have to cross into independently controlled northern Yemen, where foreigners
were not welcome, and so she'd have to do it
in secret. So she went traveling with Bedouin guides and
um got you know, decent ways before she caught measles
from a child in a harem on a stop along
(14:45):
the way. She got pretty near to Chabla, but she
got thick again, this time with malaria, and then she
made a bad mistake about mixing medications. She combined her
malaria medicine with her dysentery medicine, which caused major heart
problems and um she ultimately had to be evacuated by
the Royal Air Force, but while she was in the
(15:07):
hospital this mussage has been so disappointing. While she was
in the hospital, a German photographer found the fortress ruins.
She did later get credit from the guy who explored
them more fully, but she didn't get to see them
or discover them herself. Rather, when World War Two began,
Freya chose her English alliances over her Italian though her
(15:27):
home was in Italy and her nieces and nephews were
all Italian. She joined the Ministry of Information and was
posted to add In as the South Arabia expert. Her
job was basically to keep Yemen and later Cairo and
Baghdad pro British or at least neutral, so she essentially
became a pr woman, a propaganda woman. She'd battle Nazi
(15:49):
or fascist propaganda with pro British propaganda, trying to convince
people that the British could win the war, which was
something that was a little bit on the fence. In
the early years. She had also helped disseminate news, she'd
translate Reuter's reports for broadcast, and she'd even personally arranged
propaganda exhibitions herself. In northern Yemen, for instance, she snuck
(16:12):
in a projector claiming that it was some sort of
portable commode, and made friends with the minister there, or
made friends with the minister's wife there. She would have
tea with her, chat with her and Arabic to sort
of get comfortable with everybody. Movies and recordings were forbidden
there for religious reasons, but Stark found a way around
(16:34):
that by describing the movies to the ladies of the Harem,
and she must have done it enticingly enough that the
ladies were eventually allowed to watch. They eventually pressured somebody
to allow them to watch the movies, and soon enough
the men were also watching these pro British propaganda films,
and uh Many credits Stark for at least partially being
(16:55):
responsible for keeping Yemen neutral during World War Two. In Cairo,
she recruited members for an anti fascist pro democracy group
called Brotherhood of Freedom, and she had just gotten to
Baghdad to start a new chapter there when a pro
(17:17):
Nazi coup took place in April. Most British allied foreigners
tried to hunk her down at this point, but Stark
just took a jount to Tehran and then remarkably came
back to Baghdad because she was worried about all her
embassy friends. She was arrested by frontier police, but managed
to talk her way out of it, claiming that she
(17:38):
couldn't possibly stay without a lady's maid. And she kind
of flattered the guard a little bit um And this
was just the ladies made part of it was really
it was opposite to her actual way of living. She's
so good at talking her way out of these situations,
even if it involves saying something completely counter to what
(17:59):
she really believed. So the guard did send her on
her way to Bagdad, where she slipped into the British
embassy just as they were stand backing the doors for
a month long siege. So Frey spent the next month
with three d and fifty other people inside that embassy.
Since the Royal Air Force Base had been closed by
the Iraqi Army, the British were attempting to uh shell
(18:20):
the base try to reclaim it so they could get
their folks out, But despite sniper fire and summer heat
and obviously close quarters in the embassy made people were
sleeping on the lawns, Stark, who was after all by
this point kind of a British celebrity, really tried to
keep morale up and keep folks entertained. There were already
piano concerts and things that would be staged, but she
(18:42):
gave a lecture about her travels. She made sure that
the ladies were gonna have soap and face powder, even
though in that request was granted, Even though one Iraqi
policeman supposedly said he couldn't imagine why the harem inside
would bother thinking about something like face powder, because they
were all about to be murdered. Um when the siege
(19:02):
finally did end. According to rough Pierrepont, Hitler was only
able to commit two squadrons of planes because he had
been in the process of sending these huge numbers of
troops to the Soviet Union. So when the siege finally
did end, Stark promptly headed out, but three new hats
and um, just kind of a side note there too.
(19:23):
She was really into not only hats but clothes. She
apparently wrote, there are few sorrows through which a new
dress or hat will not send a little gleam of hope. However, fugitive,
I think that's kind of a surprising reminded me of
Louise Boyd almost with her flowers she would wear in
the Arctic on her Arctic expedition. Um that this lady,
(19:45):
who obviously could rough it for a while, was still
pretty interested in hats with clock patterns on them, and
interesting clothes and that type of thing. Well, in she
took those hats with her on the road when she
was sent on a tour of the US to try
I had a influence American politicians to oppose the creation
of a Jewish state in Palestine. While she was welcomed
(20:06):
as a famous writer. Her speeches did not go over
well at all, nor did her assertion that immigration required
Arab consent. She was really dismayed that many people considered
her an anti Zionist and was horrified to be considered
anti Semitic. While she wrote a book during this period,
it was her last on Arabia. Politics just turned out
to be not really her thing. She preferred history instead,
(20:29):
and she preferred just traveling to After the war, she
moved back to Italy. She found that Fascist officers had
been living in her house, and she got married. This
is a very odd interlude in her life. She married
a historian and diplomat who she had met through her
wartime work and who had she had known for a
few years. Unfortunately, he was known to be gay by
(20:51):
pretty much everybody except for her, and the marriage was
not what she was anticipating. She had not been expecting
a marriage between friends, and the two separated pretty soon after.
Though she did continue calling herself Mrs Freya Stark, which
I think is an unusual little nod to her married state.
(21:12):
She didn't get divorced either. She must have really liked
to have that and Mrs title, but have her own
name attached to it. She was made a Dame of
the British Empire at age seventy seven. Wrote until her
death in nineteen at age one hundred, traveled until she
was ninety three, visited much of Iran, retracing the route
of Alexander the Great's army, going to remote spots in
(21:34):
Afghanistan in her seventies and uh In her eighties and nineties,
she stuck mostly to Europe, escorting her many god children
on travels as well, so she sort of passed on
the travel bug in a way. It sounds like she
did some of her god children to have even written
about her accounts, And of course later in life too,
she was doing a lot of photography and was considered
(21:54):
pretty great at documenting places in an interesting, interestingly architectural way.
For such a lifelong traveler, though, it's maybe not too
surprising that she even saw her own death as as
a type of journey. She told a friend quote, waiting
for death, my dear, is very much like being in
an old fashioned steam train setting out on a journey.
(22:16):
Her story and her fame are more remarkable too, and
you consider that she wasn't a great explorer, as in
she didn't make many important discoveries per se. Her bigger
contribution was really her ability to observe and to document change,
you know, paved roads, new states, things like that, as
well as traditions of all classes, men and men and women.
(22:39):
And her books are filled with incredibly descriptive passages. And
she could convince people to open up to her, and
that was a real talent, partly because she spoke their language,
and many of the people she met on her travels
became lifelong friends of hers too. But I think what
might be the most notable thing about Frese Stark's life
was her almost complete disregard for danger. She just threw lea,
(23:00):
didn't care. She could almost always get out of things.
I think a great illustration of this was when she
was exploring ancient graves in what is today Iran and
she crossed yet another border illegally seems to be a
common theme here and was stopped by the police. When
she was delivered by the police to the governor, he
was more amazed than angry because she was alive, and
(23:23):
she had been in this area that was riddled with bandits,
and in fact, she later learned that murders had been
stalking her right before she was captured by the police.
And I think that's a such a strange example because
we've seen all these ones where she talks her way out,
but how many near misses were there too? That's true.
It's interesting too that she seems to have really like
(23:44):
embraced this aspect of her personality of the thirst, and
it's really indicative, I think in this quote of hers
where she said I wanted space, distance, history, and danger.
So there you go. Thank you so much for joining
us on this Saturday. If you have heard an email
(24:07):
address or a Facebook you are l or something similar
over the course of today's episode, since it is from
the archive that might be out of date. Now, you
can email us at history podcast at how stuff Works
dot com, and you can find us all over social
media at missed in History and you can subscribe to
our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the I heart
Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff
(24:34):
You Missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. The National
Park system is home to some of the most beautiful
land and wildlife you are ever going to see, and
(24:54):
they belong to everyone, including you. I'm Bred and I'm
Matt and on our show Parkway India, we're bringing you
on the road with us as we explore the wonders
of the Everglades, Petrified Forest, yellow Stone and many more.
Join us as we go beyond your typical sightseeing guides
for conversations about ecology, climate change, life on the road,
and of course, the fun you can have as we
(25:15):
explore the culture in and around the parks. All from
the perspective of two former city dwellers who bought in
r V and live on the road full time, just
the two of us and our dog Fin. Basically, South
Florida is the perfect place to go shop for Gucci
bags and then kayak with croc Ailes. That classic one
two punch's quite comfortable if you're wearing like a light
jacket or a sweater like it's actually also really comfortable
(25:35):
if you're wearing a bath suit or whatever that's bandex
thing that Robin wears. You know, Oh yes, this is
perfect superhero spandex climate. You have this one aspect of
our v living that we've really come to an understanding
and agreement to is that spending quality time alone is
also super important. Yeah. I feel like we relaxed and
recharge in different ways. I wish I could relax. I
(25:58):
wish I was capable of just like chilling. No um
docksins plus kayaks they don't really go well together, but
it would be cute to see him in a life est.
The terrain is mostly dry sand and rocks, but it's
all dotted with small greenery like these spiky looking Mescow plants.
I love me some my scale. That made things worse
because while I was out there suffering, it just made
me thirsty for Mescow cocktails. If you want to refreshing,
(26:21):
relatable look at the outdoors, listen to park Landia coming
August seven, to Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app,
or wherever you get your podcasts. You don't have to
be an expert camper to enjoy going outside
Happy Saturday, everybody. We have a new podcast launching on
our network. It is called Parklandia, and it's about the
journeys of Brad and Matt Kirowack, who bought an r
V and they are traveling full time, trying to visit
as many national parks as they can and documenting their
journey as they go. So in the spirit of that theme,
today we are going back to our episode on Freya Stark,
(00:22):
who's also known as Freya of Arabia, who spent much
of her life traveling and documented her travels in a
series of best selling books. And stay tuned at the
end to get a sneak peak at Parklandia. Welcome to
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:49):
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Choker Boarding. And not
too long ago, we talked about a few real Indiana
Jones possibilities and one of the guys who made our
short list. We didn't go into too many d tales
about him, but one of the guys who made our
short list was the very famous T. E. Lawrence, better
known of course as Lawrence of Arabia, and I think
Lawrence of Arabia could still make a really great solo topic.
(01:11):
But today we're going to discuss someone who's occasionally associated
with him, Dame Freya Stark, who's sometimes called the female
Lawrence of Arabia. To me, though, Stark really reminds me
less of Lawrence of Arabia and more of another podcast
subject we've discussed, Ottoman traveler Eleachellaby. They explored mostly different
(01:32):
areas of the world. They were obviously separated by several centuries,
but they really stand out from other adventures we've talked
about before because of their attention to detail. They were
almost more writers before they were travelers, you know, that
that was what they were really focusing on. They bothered
to meet all different types of people and learned local customs,
(01:53):
speak people's own languages, and they always preferred the slow
road to I think if you remember when we talked
about Evlia, he didn't like ships kind of because he
was scared of them, but it made his travel really slow.
And the same is true for Freya, who could have
taken a car a lot of places, but preferred to
travel by donkey or by mule. You know, really take
her time with it. There were some differences between them,
(02:16):
though Chellaby ultimately produced one epic travel account and one
very impressive map. Stark, writing in the modern age, broke
her accounts down into volumes. In her one hundred years,
she produced twenty four travel books and autobiographies and eight
volumes of letters. Many of them were best sellers, depicting
(02:37):
arrest by the French, trips to the Fortress of the Assassins,
the Secret Life of Harems, and a month long siege
at the British embassy in Baghdad. But her personal life
and her penchant for wild hats is really just as
interesting as this sort of professional life she had. It
all starts in an appropriately bohemian fashion. She was born
(02:58):
in January thirty one, eighteen ninety three, in a mom
watch studio, to artistic parents who were also first cousins.
When she was only two years old, her parents started wandering,
carrying her and her baby sister over the Alps in
a basket. Yeah, very romantic sounding life. The most settled
period of her childhood, though, was spent in her father's
(03:18):
home at Devonshire, where she slept in a bed her
mother had painted with ships, again, all very romantic and
appropriate for her later life. But the family basically lived
all over Europe, and she grew up speaking English with
an accent, which is kind of ironic considering she was
often thought to be the quintessential english woman. Um German
(03:38):
was really her first language. She also knew French and
Italian as a child, and learned a few other languages
later on. As we'll see, it wasn't really quite as
fun as it sounds, though, this life of childhood wandering,
but it really did make Freya resourceful. She didn't have
very much formal education, and she and her sister would
instead study with occasional governesses, pick up a few things,
(04:00):
and just read as much as they could. According to
Jacqueline McLean and Women of Adventure, she later said quote,
our wandering life made us precocious and pretty tough. But
when Freya was ten years old, her mother left her
father for a twenty three year old broke Italian count
and took the kids with her to northern Italy. Before
her mother's money was cut off, the count bought a
(04:22):
rug and basket factory, and the family managed to make
a meager living off of that. Then just before FRA's
thirteenth birthday. While visiting the factory, she got her hair
caught in some machinery. It pulled her up to the
ceiling and mangled her scalp and her right ear before
she could finally be freed, so horrible infections almost killed her,
(04:43):
but doctors in turn ultimately were able to save her
life with skin graphs that came from her thighs. But
the accident really made her quite self conscious. She would
dress her hair over the right side of her face,
and later she would wear large hats. You know we've
mentioned that already, But um it also gave her some
time to recover too, and some time to start exploring
(05:05):
new things. While she was recovering, she started to read
adventure stories and get really fixated on the idea of travel,
something um I guess she had grown up doing but
wasn't really doing by this point, just sort of stuck
in northern Italy, where she was pretty unhappy. Eventually, though,
her father, who was now living far off in Canada,
(05:25):
agreed to send her to college in London, where she
studied English literature and history. She wasn't there for long, though,
before World War One began and she had to return
home to Italy, and there she became a nurse during
the time that she was gone, though her younger sister, Vera,
who was just eighteen at the time, married her mother's
Italian count boyfriend. Kind of a strange situation there is, indeed,
(05:49):
according to Claudia roth pier Point in The New Yorker,
there's some disagreement between Stark's biographers about how this actually
played out. Some of them suggests that account for courted Freya,
or that he simply chose Vera instead, and that whatever
the case, they had a very happy life together with
four children, and this left Freya feeling either that she
(06:11):
had made the wrong choice or that she had been
passed over. Others suggests, though, that Vera had a horrible
life with the count, and that Freya was instead troubled
by her sister's unhappy situation. Still, I mean, I'll say
it again, just kind of a strange situation more than kind.
It's definitely odd to have your father stepfather become your
(06:32):
husband and brother you had known since you were ten.
But Freya had her own broken engagement to While she
was acting as a nurse in Italy, her fiance had
left her when she got typhoid. But after the war
was over, Freya and her mother lived in a house
on the Italian riviera and they were just barely scraping by.
They were very poor. Freya grew flowers so that she
(06:54):
could sell them and supplement their income. Again, she was isolated,
she was bored, and to get away from this really
claustrophobic life, she got into mountain climbing and started scaling
the Alps, and she started studying again, something I guess
she had sort of put aside for a while. While
she was nursing, a teacher of her suggested, well, why
(07:15):
don't you learn a new language. You know, she already
spoke English, German, French, Italian. Why don't you learn a
language that's a little bit outside of the ordinary. And
he suggested maybe Icelandic would be a cool one to learn.
But Freya had a smart hunch that there was potentially
more promise in learning Arabic. So after World War One,
(07:45):
the Ottoman Empire had been broken up and the British
and the French controlled much of the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq,
Jordan's and Freya knew that large parts of the air
speaking world. We're starting to open up. Two travelers, archaeologists, cartographers,
and p B doing government work. And so she hoped
that knowing Arabic would get her interesting work and quote
(08:05):
lead me out into some sort of fairyland of my own.
Plus she had romanticized notions of Arabian nights from her
readings as a girl. Yeah, she was hoping it would
be some grand adventure in a way for her to
go somewhere new, someplace far away from where she was.
So she took her study very seriously. She saved you know,
we mentioned she was barely scraping by here, but she
(08:27):
saved her lessons at the London School of Oriental Studies
and added Persian to her repertoire too, as well as
improving her Arabic. But it wasn't until nineteen six, after
her sister Vera died from a miscarriage that Frey had
decided that it was time to put her skills into practice,
time to go for it and travel like she had
(08:49):
always wanted to. So she started off by taking a
cargo ship to Beirut, and she recognized that that was
a good starting place for her because it had a
strong French influence. It wouldn't be completely foreign. She could
work her way in, she could keep studying Arabic, and
she was really welcome when she came to town because, um,
she said that people thought she was their quote, neither
(09:12):
to improve nor to rob, just to learn stuff, just
to observe and really practice her language. By March of
now confident in her language skills, Freya traveled to Damascus.
According to McLean, this was kind of the first bubble
popping of that romantic Arabia idea that she had. She
found this city war torn, cold, full of fleas, and
(09:36):
herself sick with dysenterry. But she also proved her early
Traveler's Medal by not letting any of that stop her
from exploring ruins and wandering the city. Yeah, she really
got out there and did what she had hoped to do.
But of course she didn't get her eventual reputation as
a bold explorer for just powering through dysentery, you know,
getting out there, and it is admirable, But um, she
(10:00):
had to do more than just wander around an already
well known city. She got that reputation because she went
to places where she wasn't supposed to go in the
first place, and her first major expedition like this was
south of Damascus to the Druis tribe in a region
that had rebelled recently rebelled against French control and had
(10:22):
been suppressed by the French. And then the French had
actually placed the entire area under martial law and bar
travelers from entering, so she was definitely not supposed to
be visiting there. But Freya and a British friend slipped
at the border and dodged the French authorities as long
as they could. When they were finally caught, Freya and
her friend played dumb traveler lady. They were just kind
(10:43):
of like, oh, my goodness, are Thomas cook guide book?
Must have misdirected us? How did we get here? Shouldn't
be Yeah, I didn't know. That didn't quite work though.
The French authorities thought that they might be spies, and
so they were sent to the Army barracks, but Freya
managed to charm her way out of there. She uh
took part an Army Dinners horse rides. She even got
(11:05):
permission to keep traveling, and most importantly, she had drew
street cred. Now since she had been arrested by their enemies,
the French. She was cool with the Drews now So
Her next trip, which took place in nineteen nine, started
in Baghdad, which at the time was British controlled but
very diverse. It was filled with Arabs and Greeks, Turks, Jews, Armenians, Kurds, Persians,
(11:28):
and she really took advantage of that diversity too. She
upped her study of Persian. She began learning folklore. She
was very interested in history and literature and that type
of thing, and this improved Persian of hers prepared her
for the main goal of this trip, which was to
visit the El Boor's Mountains in modern Iran, which held
(11:50):
the ruined fortress of the Assassins. And Um. I think
I've heard the Assassins in conjunction with it's how we
have our word assassin or assassinate um, But I didn't
know too much about them, and I think they could
make a pretty cool podcast subject on their own. But
they were a murderous medieval sect that would do just
what you'd expect them to do infiltrate groups and then
(12:12):
assassinate somebody. So traveling in what became her signature style,
no servants, view guides, lots of medicine, lots of little presents,
and embossed letters of introduction. Start set out with mules.
The fortress had already been explored, but Stark updated maps,
she relocated a misplaced mountain, and she documented all the
(12:34):
people that she met along the way. She also popularized
the place writing the Valleys of the Assassins and other
Persian travels, which became a hit not just for the
main attraction, which of course was the assassins, but for
the other personal details that contained, like an account of
a poor woman offering Freya the only tomatoes from her garden,
but secretly slipping her son the leftover juice that came
(12:57):
out of slicing them. And I think this is a
good point to mention too, that Stark is really well
known for her depiction of women's lives. And according to
Roth Pierpont that New Yorker article we mentioned earlier, um
she'd often be the first European woman in an area.
So the first people who would be really interested in
her were of course the the local women. You know,
(13:17):
they were interested in seeing their first European lady, and
so she would make friends with them. Start talking with
them first, and learn about bridal customs and clothes and
jewelry and harems and kids and just day to day life,
and through them ultimately gain access to the men's world,
but pick up a lot about uh kind of an
unexplored aspect of life in the meantime. So after a
(13:40):
third two year trip, Stark began to be seen as
a Middle East expert. Back home, the Royal Geographic Society
honored her and began to help fund future trips of hers.
So in ninety four she decided her next trip would
be less about mapping and more about discovery. She really
wanted to find an ancient trading spot believed to be
(14:01):
the origin of the Frankinstance trade route and possibly the
capital of the Queen of Sheba. Pretty Much any foreign
explorer we should say here, um, pretty much any explore
in the Middle East at the time wanted to find
Sha Boa, which was believed to be buried. But the
area was a harsh, desert and contested ground between two
warring tribes, so it's pretty dangerous to attempt this, And
(14:24):
to make matters worse and even more difficult, Stark would
have to cross into independently controlled northern Yemen, where foreigners
were not welcome, and so she'd have to do it
in secret. So she went traveling with Bedouin guides and
um got you know, decent ways before she caught measles
from a child in a harem on a stop along
(14:45):
the way. She got pretty near to Chabla, but she
got thick again, this time with malaria, and then she
made a bad mistake about mixing medications. She combined her
malaria medicine with her dysentery medicine, which caused major heart
problems and um she ultimately had to be evacuated by
the Royal Air Force, but while she was in the
(15:07):
hospital this mussage has been so disappointing. While she was
in the hospital, a German photographer found the fortress ruins.
She did later get credit from the guy who explored
them more fully, but she didn't get to see them
or discover them herself. Rather, when World War Two began,
Freya chose her English alliances over her Italian though her
(15:27):
home was in Italy and her nieces and nephews were
all Italian. She joined the Ministry of Information and was
posted to add In as the South Arabia expert. Her
job was basically to keep Yemen and later Cairo and
Baghdad pro British or at least neutral, so she essentially
became a pr woman, a propaganda woman. She'd battle Nazi
(15:49):
or fascist propaganda with pro British propaganda, trying to convince
people that the British could win the war, which was
something that was a little bit on the fence. In
the early years. She had also helped disseminate news, she'd
translate Reuter's reports for broadcast, and she'd even personally arranged
propaganda exhibitions herself. In northern Yemen, for instance, she snuck
(16:12):
in a projector claiming that it was some sort of
portable commode, and made friends with the minister there, or
made friends with the minister's wife there. She would have
tea with her, chat with her and Arabic to sort
of get comfortable with everybody. Movies and recordings were forbidden
there for religious reasons, but Stark found a way around
(16:34):
that by describing the movies to the ladies of the Harem,
and she must have done it enticingly enough that the
ladies were eventually allowed to watch. They eventually pressured somebody
to allow them to watch the movies, and soon enough
the men were also watching these pro British propaganda films,
and uh Many credits Stark for at least partially being
(16:55):
responsible for keeping Yemen neutral during World War Two. In Cairo,
she recruited members for an anti fascist pro democracy group
called Brotherhood of Freedom, and she had just gotten to
Baghdad to start a new chapter there when a pro
(17:17):
Nazi coup took place in April. Most British allied foreigners
tried to hunk her down at this point, but Stark
just took a jount to Tehran and then remarkably came
back to Baghdad because she was worried about all her
embassy friends. She was arrested by frontier police, but managed
to talk her way out of it, claiming that she
(17:38):
couldn't possibly stay without a lady's maid. And she kind
of flattered the guard a little bit um And this
was just the ladies made part of it was really
it was opposite to her actual way of living. She's
so good at talking her way out of these situations,
even if it involves saying something completely counter to what
(17:59):
she really believed. So the guard did send her on
her way to Bagdad, where she slipped into the British
embassy just as they were stand backing the doors for
a month long siege. So Frey spent the next month
with three d and fifty other people inside that embassy.
Since the Royal Air Force Base had been closed by
the Iraqi Army, the British were attempting to uh shell
(18:20):
the base try to reclaim it so they could get
their folks out, But despite sniper fire and summer heat
and obviously close quarters in the embassy made people were
sleeping on the lawns, Stark, who was after all by
this point kind of a British celebrity, really tried to
keep morale up and keep folks entertained. There were already
piano concerts and things that would be staged, but she
(18:42):
gave a lecture about her travels. She made sure that
the ladies were gonna have soap and face powder, even
though in that request was granted, Even though one Iraqi
policeman supposedly said he couldn't imagine why the harem inside
would bother thinking about something like face powder, because they
were all about to be murdered. Um when the siege
(19:02):
finally did end. According to rough Pierrepont, Hitler was only
able to commit two squadrons of planes because he had
been in the process of sending these huge numbers of
troops to the Soviet Union. So when the siege finally
did end, Stark promptly headed out, but three new hats
and um, just kind of a side note there too.
(19:23):
She was really into not only hats but clothes. She
apparently wrote, there are few sorrows through which a new
dress or hat will not send a little gleam of hope. However, fugitive,
I think that's kind of a surprising reminded me of
Louise Boyd almost with her flowers she would wear in
the Arctic on her Arctic expedition. Um that this lady,
(19:45):
who obviously could rough it for a while, was still
pretty interested in hats with clock patterns on them, and
interesting clothes and that type of thing. Well, in she
took those hats with her on the road when she
was sent on a tour of the US to try
I had a influence American politicians to oppose the creation
of a Jewish state in Palestine. While she was welcomed
(20:06):
as a famous writer. Her speeches did not go over
well at all, nor did her assertion that immigration required
Arab consent. She was really dismayed that many people considered
her an anti Zionist and was horrified to be considered
anti Semitic. While she wrote a book during this period,
it was her last on Arabia. Politics just turned out
to be not really her thing. She preferred history instead,
(20:29):
and she preferred just traveling to After the war, she
moved back to Italy. She found that Fascist officers had
been living in her house, and she got married. This
is a very odd interlude in her life. She married
a historian and diplomat who she had met through her
wartime work and who had she had known for a
few years. Unfortunately, he was known to be gay by
(20:51):
pretty much everybody except for her, and the marriage was
not what she was anticipating. She had not been expecting
a marriage between friends, and the two separated pretty soon after.
Though she did continue calling herself Mrs Freya Stark, which
I think is an unusual little nod to her married state.
(21:12):
She didn't get divorced either. She must have really liked
to have that and Mrs title, but have her own
name attached to it. She was made a Dame of
the British Empire at age seventy seven. Wrote until her
death in nineteen at age one hundred, traveled until she
was ninety three, visited much of Iran, retracing the route
of Alexander the Great's army, going to remote spots in
(21:34):
Afghanistan in her seventies and uh In her eighties and nineties,
she stuck mostly to Europe, escorting her many god children
on travels as well, so she sort of passed on
the travel bug in a way. It sounds like she
did some of her god children to have even written
about her accounts, And of course later in life too,
she was doing a lot of photography and was considered
(21:54):
pretty great at documenting places in an interesting, interestingly architectural way.
For such a lifelong traveler, though, it's maybe not too
surprising that she even saw her own death as as
a type of journey. She told a friend quote, waiting
for death, my dear, is very much like being in
an old fashioned steam train setting out on a journey.
(22:16):
Her story and her fame are more remarkable too, and
you consider that she wasn't a great explorer, as in
she didn't make many important discoveries per se. Her bigger
contribution was really her ability to observe and to document change,
you know, paved roads, new states, things like that, as
well as traditions of all classes, men and men and women.
(22:39):
And her books are filled with incredibly descriptive passages. And
she could convince people to open up to her, and
that was a real talent, partly because she spoke their language,
and many of the people she met on her travels
became lifelong friends of hers too. But I think what
might be the most notable thing about Frese Stark's life
was her almost complete disregard for danger. She just threw lea,
(23:00):
didn't care. She could almost always get out of things.
I think a great illustration of this was when she
was exploring ancient graves in what is today Iran and
she crossed yet another border illegally seems to be a
common theme here and was stopped by the police. When
she was delivered by the police to the governor, he
was more amazed than angry because she was alive, and
(23:23):
she had been in this area that was riddled with bandits,
and in fact, she later learned that murders had been
stalking her right before she was captured by the police.
And I think that's a such a strange example because
we've seen all these ones where she talks her way out,
but how many near misses were there too? That's true.
It's interesting too that she seems to have really like
(23:44):
embraced this aspect of her personality of the thirst, and
it's really indicative, I think in this quote of hers
where she said I wanted space, distance, history, and danger.
So there you go. Thank you so much for joining
us on this Saturday. If you have heard an email
(24:07):
address or a Facebook you are l or something similar
over the course of today's episode, since it is from
the archive that might be out of date. Now, you
can email us at history podcast at how stuff Works
dot com, and you can find us all over social
media at missed in History and you can subscribe to
our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the I heart
Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff
(24:34):
You Missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. The National
Park system is home to some of the most beautiful
land and wildlife you are ever going to see, and
(24:54):
they belong to everyone, including you. I'm Bred and I'm
Matt and on our show Parkway India, we're bringing you
on the road with us as we explore the wonders
of the Everglades, Petrified Forest, yellow Stone and many more.
Join us as we go beyond your typical sightseeing guides
for conversations about ecology, climate change, life on the road,
and of course, the fun you can have as we
(25:15):
explore the culture in and around the parks. All from
the perspective of two former city dwellers who bought in
r V and live on the road full time, just
the two of us and our dog Fin. Basically, South
Florida is the perfect place to go shop for Gucci
bags and then kayak with croc Ailes. That classic one
two punch's quite comfortable if you're wearing like a light
jacket or a sweater like it's actually also really comfortable
(25:35):
if you're wearing a bath suit or whatever that's bandex
thing that Robin wears. You know, Oh yes, this is
perfect superhero spandex climate. You have this one aspect of
our v living that we've really come to an understanding
and agreement to is that spending quality time alone is
also super important. Yeah. I feel like we relaxed and
recharge in different ways. I wish I could relax. I
(25:58):
wish I was capable of just like chilling. No um
docksins plus kayaks they don't really go well together, but
it would be cute to see him in a life est.
The terrain is mostly dry sand and rocks, but it's
all dotted with small greenery like these spiky looking Mescow plants.
I love me some my scale. That made things worse
because while I was out there suffering, it just made
me thirsty for Mescow cocktails. If you want to refreshing,
(26:21):
relatable look at the outdoors, listen to park Landia coming
August seven, to Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app,
or wherever you get your podcasts. You don't have to
be an expert camper to enjoy going outside
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com