Desert Queen

by Janet Wallach

  The Turkish Government, riddled with corruption and bribery, was in dire financial straits. It had borrowed money to fight the Balkan Wars and depended upon loans from European countries to survive. The Germans had been particularly helpful, financing and constructing the important railway line from Berlin to Baghdad. But the aggressive German presence in the Middle East was threatening the British, who had always been concerned with protecting their routes to India.

  Now Britain’s interest in the region had become even greater. Its unrivaled navy delivered goods around the world and brought home three quarters of England’s food supply. To maintain its superiority, in 1911 the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had ordered a major change, switching the nation’s battleships from coal-burning engines to oil. Far superior to the traditional ships, these new oil-burning vessels could travel faster, cover a greater range, and be refueled at sea; what’s more, their crews would not be exhausted by having to refuel, and would require less manpower.

  Britain had been the world’s leading provider of coal, but she had no oil of her own. In 1912 Churchill signed an agreement for a major share in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, with its oil wells in southern Persia and refineries at Abadan, close to Basrah. It was essential for Britain to protect that vital area, yet with the Ottoman Empire so weakened, the region was highly vulnerable, particularly susceptible to German-sponsored attack.

  Gertrude was eager to report her findings on the desert Arabs to the British Ambassador in Constantinople. Despite British hopes that, should war break out, the Turks would remain neutral, suspicions were rife that Turkey might ally itself with Germany. She had seen with her own eyes how loose the Ottoman rule had become over the Arab tribes, and she believed that the British could take advantage of the situation. Well-informed friends had convinced her that the Arabs in Syria were favorably disposed to British rule. She had heard, too, that in Arabia, the increasingly powerful Ibn Saud, who had spent his years in exile in Kuwait, an area friendly to the British, was eager to ally himself with England.

  Sir Louis Mallet listened carefully. Intrigued by her story, he immediately wired Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary. He described her trip, her impressions of Ibn Rashid, what she had heard about Ibn Saud, and the limp rule of the Turks. There was not a shadow of authority, he noted; “the tribes under Ottoman rule were out of hand. Miss Bell’s journey, which is in all respects a most remarkable exploit, has naturally excited the greatest interest here.”

  Rumors of Gertrude’s adventures quickly spread around town, and acquaintances from earlier trips were eager to hear her tales. Her stay in Constantinople was brief, but she dined at the home of Philip Graves, a Times correspondent (his wife agape as Gertrude puffed away on a cigarette), and saw the newly married young diplomat Harold Nicolson and his pregnant wife, Vita Sackville-West.

  But socializing was not Gertrude’s desire, and on May 24, 1914, she was back in London, recipient of the prestigious gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society. Returning to Rounton, she sought only tranquillity, recuperating from the emotional and physical exhaustion of her trip. Yet in England, too, she found that life was in a state of flux: society was changing. During her absence, controversial books had been published: Proust had written Swann’s Way, D. H. Lawrence had brought out Sons and Lovers and James Joyce produced Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; George Bernard Shaw’s boisterous play Pygmalion had opened at His Majesty’s Theatre in April 1914, with its shocking line “Not bloody likely” parroted across the nation. The Suffragists were still battling, but women had already been released from the bondage of whalebone and steel and were enjoying the freedom of elasticized brassieres. On a more somber note, the world was on the edge of turmoil, only two months away from war.

  While Gertrude rested at home, shattering news arrived in England: the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Ferdinand, had been assassinated. The murder had taken place on June 28, 1914, in the Serbian capital of Sarajevo; the assassin, a Bosnian sympathetic to the Serbs’ demand for independence. The incident, that “damned fool thing in the Balkans,” was just the kind of spark that the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had predicted would inflame the world in war. The stunning event touched off a series of pacts and alliances that had been signed by the leaders of the major European nations.

  The Anglo-French Entente of 1904 had allied England and France against the aggressive nation of Germany. It followed on the heels of the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, uniting England and Russia, two governments that were highly suspicious of each other but even more fearful of the Germans. And it wasn’t just paranoia that made England, France and Russia sign a Triple Entente. War was “a biological necessity,” proclaimed General Friedrich von Bernhardi, one of the leading German military thinkers. Germany now had the second most powerful navy in the world (Great Britain still had the first), and German businessmen and politicians licked their lips at the prospect of bigger markets, expanded territory and the possibility, as they saw it, of becoming the world’s greatest power. The British, the French and the Russians all feared that war-hungry Germans would march across the Continent, both to the east and to the west, on their way to conquer the world.

  The assassination of the Austro-Hungarian archduke brought an immediate reaction. Austria-Hungary, hoping to annex Serbia as she had annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, declared war on Serbia. But Russia, which considered itself a Slavic nation, expressed outrage at the idea that the Slavic Serbs would be swept up into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Russian declaration of war touched off a German promise to come to the aid of Austria-Hungary. German mobilization, German forces pressing against the borders of France, and a German fleet prepared to enter the English Channel produced an angry response: France and England had no choice but to activate their forces and join together in the war against the Germans. By August 1, 1914, guns and cannons boomed across the Continent.

  On the Eastern Front, the Turks soon allied themselves with the Germans. The British Government was particularly concerned with protecting both its precious routes to India and its petroleum fields in the Persian Gulf, now susceptible to enemy aggression. Gertrude, once the bane of British officials, became a source of vital information about the East. She was asked for a full report on what she had learned in Syria, Iraq and Arabia, and on September 5, 1914, she sent her assessment to the director of Military Operations in Cairo, who immediately passed it on to Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey:

  Syria [she wrote], especially Southern Syria, where Egyptian prosperity is better known, is exceedingly pro-English. I was told last winter by a very clever German named Loytved, an old friend of mine now at Haifa, that it would be impossible to exaggerate the genuine desire of Syria to come under jurisdiction. And I believe it.…

  On the whole I should say that Iraq would not willingly see Turkey at war with us and would take no active part in it. But out there, the Turks would probably turn their attention to Arab chiefs who had received our protection. Such action would be extremely unpopular with the Arab Unionists who look on Sayid Talib of Basrah, [the sheikh of] Kuweit, and Ibn Saud, as powerful protagonists. Sayid Talib is a rogue, he has had no help from us, but our people (merchants) have maintained excellent terms with him. Kuweit depends for his life on our help and he knows it. Ibn Saud is most anxious to get some definite recognition from us and would be easy to secure as an ally. I think we could make it pretty hot for the Turks in the Gulf.

  Her report was studied with deliberation at both the War Office and the Foreign Office in London and at Military Intelligence in Cairo. In Europe the battles were already raging; in another few weeks, Britain, France and Russia would be at war against the Turks. Now, in September 1914, even before the men who ran the government had decided on their policy toward the Ottomans, Gertrude presented them with a strong recommendation to organize the Arabs in a revolt against the Turks. She wanted desperately to be on the scene in the East. But for more than a year she
was refused permission; the area was considered too dangerous for a female. Being a woman was a major obstacle.

  Gertrude Bell, aged three, just after the death of her mother in 1871. (University of Newcastle)

  Gertrude, aged eight, reading to her bored brother, Maurice. (University of Newcastle)

  Gertrude, aged four, with her adored father, Hugh Bell. “Obstacles are made to be overcome,” he often told her. (University of Newcastle)

  Gertrude, aged nine, and her brother, Maurice, with their stepmother, Florence Bell. (University of Newcastle)

  Gertrude, aged sixteen, before going away to Queens College in London. (University of Newcastle)

  Billy Lascelles, Gertrude’s first love. (University of Newcastle)

  Gertrude with family and friends at Rounton after a game of lawn tennis. Seated center: Gertrude, Hugh Bell. To their left: Molly Bell, Maurice Bell, Valentine “Domnul” Chirol (wearing sailor’s cap), Gerald Lascelles, Florence Bell. (University of Newcastle)

  Vice-Consul Dick Doughty-Wylie with his wife, Judith, in their garden in Konia, Turkey, July 1907. Dick and Gertrude would become more than just good friends. (University of Newcastle)

  Dick Doughty-Wylie, 1914. Soldier, statesman, poet, adventurer, he was everything Gertrude dreamed of in a man. (University of Newcastle)

  Gertrude, dressed in her cotton frock, with her servant Fattuh outside her tent in Turkey, June 1907. (University of Newcastle)

  Gertrude taking measurements at her major archaeological discovery, Ukhaidir, Iraq, 1909. (University of Newcastle)

  The high-columned guest house at Hayil where Gertrude was kept prisoner, 1914. (University of Newcastle)

  Gertrude’s caravan ready to leave the walled city of Hayil, headquarters of Ibn Rashid, 1914. (University of Newcastle)

  Gertrude Bell and Percy Cox give Arabian warrior Ibn Saud a royal tour of Basrah, November 1916. (University of Newcastle)

  Hugh Bell reading the newspapers in the sitting room of Gertrude’s house in Baghdad, 1920. (University of Newcastle)

  Arnold T. Wilson, 1920. Gertrude’s main adversary, he made life difficult for her in Baghdad.

  Sir Percy Cox negotiating with Ibn Saud over the border between Iraq and Kuwait, 1920.

  Gertrude’s servants and her saluki dogs stand in the walled garden of her house in Baghdad, 1920. (University of Newcastle)

  Gertrude in her feathered hat and fur boa. (University of Newcastle)

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A Tragic End

  In the seaside town of Boulogne, France, Gertrude rented a room in a small hotel and settled into a daily routine, taking a brisk walk each morning near the water, then hurrying along the cobblestone streets to 36 bis Rue Victor Hugo. Her work was at the Red Cross; the call of the suffragists (for and against) had been blotted out by the cries of war. Like many, she had volunteered to help and followed her friend Flora Russell to France.

  She found her office dreary and choked with papers, and try as she might to cover over the drabness with wallcloth and chintz, or brighten it with jars of fresh lilac and narcissus, the job itself was too gloomy to allow much room for cheer. Each day was a painful struggle to trace soldiers who were wounded or lost in battle. From nine in the morning to nine at night, and sometimes later, she filed and indexed names and corresponded with the families of missing soldiers. Heart-rending letters from parents drove her to search for their loved ones. Often the task was impossible—their sons were missing or, worse, no longer alive—but she wrote to the families, gently, struggling to find any good news to report. And by Christmas 1914 she had taken charge of the office and reorganized the files.

  It was only a way of marking time. She still ached for Dick, and no amount of work could numb the pain of being apart from him. He remained at his post in Ethiopia, and although her family encouraged her to return to Rounton, Gertrude rejected the notion of going home without him. “I shall not come to England for the present,” she wrote to Domnul. “At any rate I can work here all day long—it makes a little plank across the gulf of wretchedness over which I have walked this long time. Sometimes even that comes near to breaking point.”

  If she wished to be anywhere else, it was in the East. The Turks were now in alliance with Germany (despite attempts by the British Government to neutralize them), and by December 1914, British troops in Egypt were prepared for a Turkish attack on the Suez Canal. In Mesopotamia, a fleet of forty-seven troop transports—the largest ever—sent from India, had already seized the vital city of Basrah from the Turks, and the British army was now on its way to try to take Baghdad as well. Only a few months before, Gertrude had felt so at home in Iraq; now there seemed to be no place for her out there. She wrote to Domnul, who was traveling through the Orient: “If only I were arriving in Mesopotamia at this moment! I do so long to hear of the occupation of Baghdad. You will see there will be little opposition.… I pine for details.”

  What details she did hear were the grisly fragments of the bloody tapestry of war. At her desk in the dreary office or over lunch at the cafés in town where some of the soldiers gathered, she listened to wrenching stories about the men at the front. They are “knee-deep in water in the trenches, the mud impassable,” she reported. “They sink in it up to the knee, up to the thigh. When they lie down in the open to shoot they cannot fire because their elbows are buried in it to the wrist.” Although the women who worked for the Red Cross were not allowed at the local hospital, Gertrude talked her way in and saw the horrors: adolescent soldiers, too innocent to grasp what the bombs had blown away, missing arms or legs or blinded by shrapnel. “A happier New Year,” she wished her parents on January 1, 1915. She celebrated the evening at work at her desk, pausing only to eat some chocolates.

  A few doors down from the office, in her small room at the Hôtel Meurice, she spent most nights overwrought, reading letters. A note from Dick arrived, filling her with ardor, and she answered feverishly:

  “Dearest dearest,” she wrote, “I give this year of mine to you and all the years that shall come after it. Will you take it, this meagre gift—the year and me and all my thought and love.… You fill my cup, this shallow cup that has grown so deep to hold your love and mine. Dearest when you tell me you love me and want me still, my heart sings—and then weeps for longing to be with you. I have filled all the hollow places of the world with my desire for you; it floods out, measured to creep up the high mountains where you live. And when you walk in your garden I think it touches your feet. No, don’t thank me. Take your own, hold it and keep it—fold me into your heart.”

  As poetic as her words were, his were filled with lust and wanting. But in his own crude way he tried to respond to her fears. “Is sex so much?” he asked, “and the senses and the contact and those bewildering things. They can be much—but not the best, they are only the landscape, the other thing is the sun we see it by—You once said you would still love me if I had a dozen wives—they would not matter—and that is true my dear that thing you knew by sunlight.… it’s not a great thing sex—not really—it’s always grossly overrated like chastity—which is only the faint beginning of a virtue and often a positive view.…”

  “Ah Dick love me,” she answered. “I live only for you.”

  And then, like a starving waif suddenly handed a box filled with chocolates, she turned from despair to joy. Dick was coming back from Ethiopia. He would probably stop in France before going on to England to receive new orders, he wrote, but it was his wife whom he would see in Boulogne (ironically, Judith was working in the same city as a nurse). Never mind: there was no reason for concern; Judith would not leave her work, he reassured Gertrude, urging her to be with him in London.

  Thrilled with the news, she left for England in mid-February so that they could have four intoxicating days together. Seeing him, touching him, she was enraptured, more certain than ever that he was everything she ever wanted: intelligent and understanding, gentle and caring, protective and strong. She took refuge
in his arms. As they embraced, her smoldering dreams of the last year burst into flame. His lips pressed against hers, and she melted against his soldier’s muscular body. He told her she was life itself, a fire that burned with passion. He needed her. He hungered for her. She listened in ecstasy, and more than anything, she wanted to give herself to him. Willingly, she began to yield, but as she did, some force, even stronger than all the desire burning inside her, rose up and held her back. In a panic, she recoiled. Then once more the yearning and the lust overwhelmed her, and they embraced and kissed. But again the force rose up and held her back. At the end of their tryst their love remained unconsummated.

  In agony, a few days later she wrote to him:

  Someday I’ll tell you, I’ll try to explain it to you—the fear, the terror of it—oh you thought I was brave. Understand me; not the fear of consequences—I’ve never weighed them for one second. It’s the fear of something I don’t know: no man can really understand it; you must know all about it because I tell you. Every time it surged up in me and I wanted you to brush it aside—it’s only a ghost, the shadow of a ghost. But I couldn’t say to you, Exorcise it. I couldn’t. That last word I can never say. You must say it and break this evil spell. Fear is a horrible thing—don’t let me live under the shadow of it. It’s a shadow—I know it’s nothing.… Only you can free me from it—drive it away from me, I know now, but till the last moment I didn’t really know—can you believe it? I was terribly afraid. Then at the last I knew it was a shadow. I know it now.