Letters From Baghdad

by Bell, Gertrude

  I am, Yours faithfully, W. M. RAMSAY)

  CHAPTER XI

  1905-1909 - LONDON-ASIA MINOR-LONDON

  [In the following June Gertrude was in London again, enjoying herself there as usual. She spent the summer at Rounton. She was extremely keen about the garden and especially greatly absorbed in starting a rock garden which afterwards became one of the show gardens of the North Riding. It was exquisitely situated, formed round a lake, from the shores of which was a view of the wide amphitheatre of the Cleveland Hills.

  In the autumn she went to Paris to study with Reinach again.]

  To F. B.

  PARIS, October 24, 1905.

  On Saturday I came over by the 10 o'clock train and arrived rather late, so I sent a word to S. Reinach that I would appear after dinner... I went in and found him and Mrs. S. R., who extremely friendly. She is a pleasant woman. After a bit Reinach and I went into his library and I showed him my plans And photographs and we settled some details about publication and illustrations. I came back to my hotel at 11 — it's only a step from the Reinach's. This morning, a heavenly bright frosty day, I went to Reinach's at 9:30 and waited till 11:30 when Dussaud the Syrian traveller came to see me, we had a most delightful hour's talk. I'm going to his house to-morrow to look over some Nabathean and Safaitic inscriptions and discuss what is to be found in Nejd. After he went we lunched, I then took a little stroll with the two Reinachs in the bright sunshine. We walked towards the Bois. R. and I came back at 3 and I looked through travel books and inscriptions till 6. It is perfectly enchanting having everything at one's hand, and R. to suggest and lay more books before me. He is delighted with the first article and is going to send it to press at once. To-night he has asked Yves Guyot to dinner because I said I wanted to see him, so we shall have a little 'relâche' from archaeology... .

  I don't feel I could be doing this work under better conditions.

  [Gertrude and her father left Plymouth on December 16th, 1905 — Gibraltar, Tangiers, Spain, Marseilles, Paris, etc., and so to London.

  We have no letters from Gertrude in 1906. That year she seems to have spent between London and Rounton, enjoying mightily having people to stay during the summer, seeing the rock garden grow and writing her book of travels — The Desert and the Sown — which came out the following year.

  Among her special friends who stayed with her that summer were Major (now Sir Frederick) O'Connor, Aubrey Herbert, Sir Hugh and Lady Barnes, Lady Arthur Russell, Elizabeth Robins, the William Tyrrells, Sir Valentine Chirol and Mr. and Mrs. Wilton Phipps.

  On December 20th of that year she and her father left London and went via Marseilles to Cairo. There her father was ill. They returned to England at the beginning of February, 1907, and early in April she is in Asia Minor again

  The technical results of Gertrude's work with Sir William Ramsay were shown in the book they wrote together, " The Thousand and One Churches," published in 1909, in which the plans and measurements of the more important churches and architectural remains were given.

  From her letters from Asia Minor in 1907, therefore, I have taken extracts relating to her personal experiences only, on the road. Although travel in Asia Minor is not so adventurous as crossing the deserts of Arabia, it has an adventurous and picturesque side of its own. In Asia Minor she was again befriended by the kind Whittall family.]

  To F.B.

  CAIRO, Tuesday, January 1, 1907

  The great event is Hugo's arrival yesterday. [Hugo had been to Australia.] He is extremely cheerful and full of interesting tales. We talked all the afternoon and he came up into my room and talked till dinner time. It's quite delightful .having him. We dined with the Cromers — Lady C., Lady Valda [Machell] and I were the only women so I sat on the other side of Lord C. and had a quite enchanting talk with him. He is the nicest person in the world, without doubt. He was very eager to know if there was anything I wanted and when I said I wanted to have a good talk with a learned sheikh, he was much concerned about it, saying to Mr. Machell across the table, " Look here, Machell, you must find us a good sheikh. Just think who is the best." So they are thinking. The immediate result was that they arranged that we should see the Azhar to-day. It is the great university of the Mohammedan world, where they are sometimes rather tiresome about letting women in. However, I found a friend on the doorstep, and we fell into one another's arms and he took us all over. Indeed, we were invited to dine there by an old party from Bagdad who lives there and I'm invited to breakfast on Saturday if I like, so anyway I feel I may come and go as I Please in the Azhar. Hugo talked to Lady Valda all the morning yesterday, and I to Sir W. Garstin, who is very pleasant and interesting, so we all enjoyed ourselves. Father and I had a charming dinner with the Machells, too; Sir W. G. was there also. Yesterday we lunched with the Bernstorffs and we are going to their box at the opera to-night. On Friday, Father and I spent the whole morning with Ernest Richmond, seeing Coptic churches — most pleasant.

  To F.B.

  CAIRO, Friday, 12 th January, 1907.

  I had an interesting talk with Moritz while he was teaching me to take squeezes of inscriptions after a manner of his own (an excellently simple one, by the way).

  To F.B.

  SMYRNA, April 4th, 1907.

  I hope I shall get off on Monday. My preparations are really all finished but I have to wait and hear about the head man for my diggings whom Mr. Richard Whittall is engaging for me. As this is the most important matter of all I cannot leave without settling it. Then to call on all my Whittall friends. They have the bulk of the English trade in their hands, bran offices all down the southern coast, mines and shooting boxes and properties scattered up and down the S.W. coast of Asia Minor and yachts on the seas. They all have immense quantities of children. The sons, young men now in the various Whittall businesses, the daughters very charming, very gay. The big gardens touch one another and they walk in and out of one another's houses all day long gossiping and laughing. I should think life presents itself nowhere under such easy and pleasant conditions.

  To F.B.

  MAGNESIA AD MEANDRUM, Wednesday, April 9, 1907.

  I've just been visiting the ruins of this town in the company of a pleasant Greek who talked Turkish, so we managed to have a little conversation. But it is such a bore not talking the language properly. I must hurry up and learn. of course, one ought to know Greek too, but for the moment I feel one new language is a good deal more than I can manage. I've just been giving my friend the Greek tea in my carriage. The station master came in and joined the party. The station masters on this line are supposed to know English and accordingly as he entered he said cheerfully, " Goodbye!"

  To F.B.

  MILETUS, Friday, April 12, 1907.

  Often when one sets out on a journey one travels by all the roads according to the latest maps, one reaches all the places of which the history books speak. Duly one rises early and turns one's face towards new countries, carefully one looks and laboriously one tries to understand, and for all one's trouble one might as well have stayed behind and read a few big archaeology books. But I would have you know that's not the way I have done it this time. I said to myself: I will go and see the Greece of Asia, the Greece Grote didn't know. And I have found it. The seas and the hills are all full of legends and the valleys are scattered over with the ruins of the great rich Greek cities. Here is a page of history that one sees with the eye and that enters into the mind as no book can relate it.

  To F. B.

  MILETUS, April 12, 1907.

  In this sort of travel one goes on very short commons. One starts early and one gets in late; there is no time to cook, and there is no meat to be had if one could cook it. So I have lived mostly on eggs and rice and sour milk, not a bad diet of its kind if you have enough of it, and to-night's dinner (soup and a chicken) was the best meal I have had for some days... .

  I gave up thinking .... . for the crossing of that river was itself sufficient matter for thought. There was no bridge
— if there had been one it would have been broken — the water was deep and the ferry-boat was a buffalo cart. The river came nearly over the buffaloes' backs; we had to take everything off the horses and lead them behind us — the buffaloes didn't care, they plodded steadily on and held up their noses to keep them out of the water. Now a buffalo can't hold up his nose very far; a little more and they would have been drowned, but they did not think of that. At the other side we changed horses and rode 25 miles into Aidin, all good going till we came to the Meander valley where it was the very devil. Before we reached it, as we rode along the high road, there came a sound of crying and presently we saw a heap of something on the broad road. It was a dead man, lying as he had fallen with a tattered coat thrown over his face, and beside him a ragged child, a little girl sitting all alone in the sun, and wailing, wailing — you have never heard the east Mourning, it is always the same and always more melancholy than any other sound. A man passed just before we reached the child, he merely drew his horse aside and rode on. Eh! a man more or less in the world, and a gypsy at that. We stopped and questioned her. They had sent on news to Aidin, her brother had gone, she didn't know when they would come. And so she took up her dirge again. We rode on to the ferry over the Meander and tried to hire a cart to bring in the dead man's body, but no one would go — no, he must stay there till his people came, that was the custom. The girl? She could stay too to keep the dogs off and if night fell and she was afraid she would come in to the nearest village. Yes, someone would go and watch with her if I would give him two mejidis. But I knew that was no good as he would come away the moment my back was turned. So I rode on too; the child will come into the village at nightfall and the man is dead and does not care how long he lies alone. But I felt a beast, all the same. We crossed the Meander in a ferry — the bridge was broken, I need scarcely say, and the high road beyond was all under water. So we splashed for an hour along a narrow cobbled path running between bottomless swamps. We came to Aidin about 5, it is against the hills and all shining in the sun. But what makes it chiefly memorable is that I got Elsa's telegram here saying she was engaged to Herbert Richmond, and am thinking of it with such mixed feelings. But there it is, and there's nothing else for it but to put up with it and try not to think what a difference it will make. I can't come home now because I can't leave Ramsay in the lurch and I shall hear no more from you till I get to Konia, bother it! I've written to Elsa since there is no way of telegraphing.

  To F.B.

  BODJELI, April 24th, 1907.

  I have got your letter telling me of E.'s engagement. Yes, in a way it's easier perhaps not to be at home. it is unsatisfactory for the family rather, still I rather wish I were with you all the same. Meantime I shall continue to tell you of my adventures, if you have time to think of them! One rides for hours over beautiful well watered country without seeing an inch of ploughed ground. We are riding towards a high Snowy range of mountains, at the foot of which Aphrodisias lies. The town must have been distinguished above all other places for the elaborate beauty of its architecture; every doorway was covered with scrolls of fruit and flowers with birds and beasts entwined in them.

  I slept! Oh, if you could have seen where I slept! It was in the khan, a tiny room separated by a rough wall of planks from the 30 or 40 muleteers and camel drivers who were lodging there for the night. It was quite empty, however, and I put my camp bed in and was as happy as possible, — One wall was all window — I closed half of it with a shutter when I went to bed, and until then I sat and watched the village unloading its camels, cooking its evening meal over wood fires lighted in earthenware bowls, saying its evening prayer on a little raised platform in front of the khan and after having seen the temple under the moon I went to bed and no number of talking, smoking muleteers could have kept me awake. Fattuh, however, was not at all happy. He did not think it a suitable lodging for my Excellency... .

  To F.B.

  ISDARTA, April 28th, 1907.

  I don't suppose there is anyone in the world happier than I am or any country more lovely than Asia Minor. I just mention these facts in passing so that you may bear them in mind. We rode and rode over the hills and down to the edge of a great lake of Buldur. Bitter salt it is and very blue, and mountains stand all round it, white with snow, and the fruit gardens border it, pink and white with peach and cherry. And SO we Came to Buldur, a fine town standing in a rich land, and there we pitched camp in a green field at the edge of the town. All the authorities came down in turn — begged me not to spend the night in the wilderness and entreated me to share their flea-y houses and told me that my next day's journey was quite Out of the question because of the snow and the mountains and I don't know what, till finally I said I was going to bed and sent them all away. Said Fattuh: "What sort of Soldiers are these? They fear the cold and they fear the mountains and they fear the rivers-perhaps they fear the rabbits and the foxes." And he went away shaking his head mournfully over the degeneracy of the Turkish army and muttering in Turkish "Nasl arkar! nasl arkar! what sort, what sort of soldiers!" To-day I started off at 5:30 and, leaving Fattuh to bring the camp by the straight road, I took a soldier and rode into the hills, a wonderful, wonderful ride... .

  It is now night and the moon has not yet risen. Fattuh has gone to look for horses and I am left with the soldier who is our guard to-night. I think he feels rather anxious at being left alone here in the dark for he has crept in close to the light of my tent and has been telling me, half in Turkish and half in broken Arabic, of his 10 years in Yemen and of how, praise be to God! he did not die there though he was wounded twice.

  Tuesday, April 30th. We have not made much way to-day as the crow flies because the road along the eastern shore of the lake is not yet finished and we had very rough going which delayed the baggage animals. It was instructive to see how road making is conducted in Turkey. It's a very hilly road, up and down and in and out over the mountains. They had one old man and three younger ones with a few little boys working at one end and at the other unfinished end there were some 30 men who were engaged in baking and eating bread on the hill-side. Also they take no count of the streams that cross the road continuously, the country being mountainous as YOU Will understand. These streams therefore wash away the work as soon as it is done. I think it will be some time before this road is joined up.

  Wednesday, May 1st. I haven't really done much to-day though I have taken a good deal of trouble about it. I had to find a fountain with a Latin inscription of which Ramsay wanted a new copy. I found it, inscription and all complete, and worked two hours at the latter without a very satisfactory result as it was much broken and lay too near the splash of the fountain so that I could not take a good rubbing. The oldest and most decrepit soldier in the world was told off at Egerdir to bear me company. He knows nothing of the country and our intercourse was confined to something like the following: Me: "Where does this road go to?" He: "Effendim, I do not know." Me: "What is the name of that village?" He: "Effendim? I could not say." Me: "How far is it to so-and-so?" He: "Effendim, I have not been." The result of which is that I have to find all my own routes by asking the people by the wayside... .

  I started at 5:45 taking with me an intelligent villager of Tokmajik the place where I had spent the night. He knew the country and was a satisfactory guide and an agreeable companion. He had been a soldier and had served mainly in Crete, an island of which he thought highly. We took a path hitherto untravelled over the hills, past two villages unknown to Kiefert (there were unfortunately no inscriptions in them though there were old worked stones) and dropped down on to the northern end of the Lake of Egerdir. There was a place which Ramsay had begged me to try and visit on the eastern shore of the lake. It is a place of pilgrimage where the Christians come once a year, in September, from all the countryside, and the probability is that it was a holy site long before the Christian era, sacred to Artemis of the Lake who was herself a Pisidian deity re-baptised by the Greeks. I found the Place, about 2 miles
down the lake, and a very striking place it Was. The rocks drop here straight into the lake and at their foot there is a great natural arch some 15 feet wide through which glistens the blue water of the lake. In the rock above is a small rock-cut chamber into which I scrambled with some difficulty and found a slab like a loculus in it. It may have been a tomb at some time but I think more probably the slab was sacrificial; at any rate the Christians use the chamber now to celebrate their yearly mass. So we rode back along the beautiful grassy shores of the lake, where the Yuruks were watching their flocks and herds, and all round the swampy northern end of the lake. Almost joined to the shore by beds of immensely tall reeds there is a little island which no one had yet succeeded in visiting. I, however, found a fisherman's hut in the swamp and near it a very old and smelly boat, so I hired the three fishermen for an infinitesimal sum and rowed out to the island with Nazmi, my Tokmajik man. it was completely surrounded by ruined Byzantine walls dropping into the water in great blocks of masonry; here and there there was a bit of an older column built into them and they were densely populated by snakes. There was only one thing of real interest, a very curious stele with a female figure carved on it, bearing what looked like water skins, and two lines of inscription above. She might have been Artemis of the Lake itself and perhaps the inscription said so, but unfortunately the whole stone was covered by 18 inches or more of shimmering water. It had fallen into the lake and there it lay. I did all I knew to get the inscription. I waded into the water and tried to scrub the slime off the stone, but the water glittered and the slime floated back and finally I gave it up and came out very wet and more than a little annoyed. It was provoking after I had taken so much trouble, wasn't it? However at any rate now we know that it's there and someone can go and fish it out. So we punted back through the reeds. One of my boatmen had been through the Russo-Turkish war — Nish, Plevna, he rambled on about all the things he had seen and done while we brushed through the reeds, looking sometimes for fish in the traps they had set, and sometimes for birds' eggs, and I sat in the sun and dried myself. It was so hot that I was quite dry before I got into camp. Then we rode north up the plain and explored a village for inscriptions as we went. There was a large farm here left by an agreeable Greek who helped me in my search and invited me into his house where his wife gave me milk; and at last at a quarter to seven we got to Kundanly where I found my camp pitched and my dinner ready. In and around Kundanly have been found (mainly by Ramsay) a very curious series of inscriptions relating to an anti-Christian Society of the second century. It was called the Society of those who showed the Sign, and the Sign was probably some act of worship of the Emperor and the old gods. I had all the published inscriptions with me and I hunted round this morning for a couple of hours and found a new one in a Turkish house — very short and I fear not very important, but I took a rubbing to the surprise and joy of the inhabitants, and shall give it to Ramsay. It was very hot again to-day. Got into camp at 3, since when I have done nothing but sleep and eat and write my diary. To-morrow is an off day and I can't say I regret it. It's very laborious being the careful traveller I don't think I do it well either. There are probably lots of things that I don't see because I don't know how to look. I remember Ramsay's telling me that the first journey he made in Asia Minor he found nothing at all. And you see I only find things under water! Fattuh loq: "Never in my life did I see such a town! May God send them to their fathers and may their women be taken captive! I paid 5 piastres for your Excellency's beans. No meat in all the town and may it be destroyed!" I: "And the chicken is less good than the chicken of Tokmajik." Fattuh (with indignant reminiscence of his culinary experiences at Tokmajik) "That chicken she eat 4 piastres of fire wood and then I cooked her 3 hours at Kundanly — God send all chickens to their fathers!"