Letters From Baghdad

by Bell, Gertrude

  I feel sure you will be glad to hear that I have got the building I wanted of all others for my museum. After addressing the Prime Minister in exalted terms, His Excellency came hurrying into my office, replete with promises. He advised me to get hold of Ken whose Ministry disposes of Government buildings. What could be easier! I hauled Ken off to the place and found him the more easy to convince because it was he who first gave me a secret hint that it might be obtainable and be is now full of satisfaction that his idea has turned out so well. So we settled it all in half an hour and to-day its former occupants have almost all turned out, and I have been settling about repairs, etc. Ken observes with complacency that the Ministry of Interior, when it once gets going, sticks at nothing and indeed I am amazed at the promptness with which it has been done. Government offices don't usually move fast I am going to lodge the Library of the American School, which will be a great advantage to us, besides being very gratifying to them, and have heaps and heaps of room to show off all our things. At present you must tumble over one in order to have a glimpse of another. Oh dear, how much I should like you to see it! It will be a real Museum, rather like the British Museum only a little smaller. I am ordering long shallow drawers in chests to hold the pottery fragments, so that you will pull out a drawer and look at Sumerian bits, and then another and look at Parthian glaze, and another for early incised, then Arab incised (which I can pick up in quantities a quarter of an hour from my door) and Arab glaze and all. Won't it be nice? It is also nice to think that I shall clear the cupboards of my house of a mass of biscuit tins full of dusty fragments...

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, March 3rd, 1926.

  ... My chief concern, at present, is that I have got the place I wanted for a museum and to-day I have been round it with the Civil Engineer of Bagdad and arranged about needful whitewashings and repairs. It is an excellent building which will give me ample space and allow me an office for the curator and an office for myself, which I ought to have, room to house duplicates till I can dispose of them and a big, fine room for large exhibits. When I come back from Ur, where I am going next week for the division of the objects found this year, I shall be able to begin getting in to it, I hope. I shall take great pride in making it something like a real museum. I always feel, when I'm back to archaeology, that I am nothing better than an antiquarian at heart.

  I had Vita Nicolson [Hon. Mrs. Harold Nicolson] with me for two days. She arrived on Saturday morning for breakfast and left on Sunday night after an early dinner...She was most agreeable.

  [I reproduce here, by Mrs. Nicolson's permission, a chapter from A Passage to Teheran describing her brief visit to Gertrude.]

  Gertrude Bell in Bagdad, by V. Sackville-West.

  "... Anyone who goes to Bagdad in search of romance will be disappointed. It is a dusty jumble of mean buildings connected by atrocious streets, quagmires of mud in rainy weather, and in dry weather a series of pits and holes over which an English farmer might well hesitate to drive a waggon. I confess that I was startled by the roads of Bagdad, especially after we had turned out of the main street and drove between high, blank walls along a track still studded with the stumps of palm-trees recently felled; the mud was not dry here, and we skidded and slithered, hitting a tree-stump and getting straightened on our course again, racketing along, tilting occasionally at an angle which defied all the laws of balance, and which in England would certainly have overturned the more conventionally minded motor.

  "Then: a door in the blank wall, a jerky stop, a creaking of hinges, a broadly smiling servant, a rush of dogs, a vista of garden-path edged with carnations in pots, a little verandah and a little low house at the end of the path, an English voice — Gertrude Bell.

  "I had known her first in Constantinople, where she had arrived straight out of the desert, with all the evening dresses and cutlery and napery that she insisted on taking with her on her wanderings; and then in England; but here she was in her right place, in Iraq, in her own house, with her office in the city, and her white pony in a corner of the garden, and her Arab servants, and her English books, and her Babylonian shards on the mantelpiece, and her long thin nose, and her irrepressible vitality. I felt all my loneliness and despair lifted from me in a second. Had it been very hot in the Gulf? got fever, had I? but quinine would put that right; and a sprained ankle — too bad! — and would I like breakfast first, or a bath? and I would like to see her museum, wouldn't I? did I know she was Director of Antiquities in Iraq? wasn't that a joke? and would I like to come to tea with the king? and yes, there were lots of letters for me. I limped after her as she led me down the path, talking all the time, now in English to me, now in Arabic to the eager servants. She had the gift of making everyone feel suddenly eager; of making you feel that life was full and rich and exciting. I found myself laughing for the first time in ten days. The garden was small, but cool and friendly; her spaniel wagged not only his tail but his whole little body; the pony looked over the loose-box door and whinnied gently; a tame partridge hopped about the verandah; some native babies who were playing in a corner stopped playing to stare and grin. A tall, grey sloughi came out of the house, beating his tail against the posts of the verandah; 'I want one like that,' I said, 'to take up into Persia.' I did want one but I had reckoned without Gertrude's promptness. She rushed to the telephone, and as I poured cream over my porridge I heard her explaining — a friend of hers had arrived — must have a sloughi at once — was leaving for Persia next day — a selection of sloughis must be sent round that morning. Then she was back in her chair, pouring out information: the state of Iraq, the excavations at Ur, the need for a decent museum, what new books had come out? what was happening in England? The doctors had told her she ought not to go through another summer in Bagdad, but what should she do in England, eating out her heart for Iraq? next year, perhaps ...but I couldn't say she looked ill, could I? I could, and did. She laughed and brushed that aside. Then, jumping up — for all her movements were quick and impatient — if I had finished my breakfast wouldn't I like my bath? and she must go to her office, but would be back for luncheon. Oh yes, and there were people to luncheon; and so, still talking, still laughing, she pinned on a hat without looking in the glass, and took her departure.

  "I had my bath — her house was extremely simple, and the bath just a tin saucer on the floor — and then the sloughis began to arrive. They slouched in, led on strings by Arabs in white woollen robes, sheepishly smiling. Left in command, I was somewhat taken aback, so I had them all tied up to the posts of the verandah, till Gertrude should return, an array of desert dogs, yellow, white, grey, elegant, but black with fleas and lumpy with ticks. I dared not go near them, but they curled up contentedly and went to sleep in the shade, and the partridge prinked round them on her dainty pink legs, investigating. At one o'clock Gertrude returned, just as my spirits were beginning to flag again; laughed heartily at this collection of dogs which her telephone message (miraculously, as it seemed to me) had called into being, shouted to the servants, ordered a bath to be prepared for the dog I should choose, unpinned her hat, set down some pansies on her luncheon-table, closed the shutters, and gave me a rapid biography of her guests.

  "She was a wonderful hostess, and I felt that her personality held together and made a centre for all those exiled Englishmen whose other common bond was their service for Iraq. They all seemed to be informed by the same spirit of constructive enthusiasm; but I could not help feeling that their mission there would have been more in the nature of drudgery than of zeal, but for the radiant ardour of Gertrude Bell. Whatever subject she touched, she lit up; such vitality was irresistible. We laid plans, alas! for when I should return to Bagdad in the autumn: we would go to Babylon, we would go to Ctesiphon, she would have got her new museum by then. When she went back to England, if, indeed, she was compelled to go, she would write another book...So we sat talking, as friends talk who have not seen one another for a long time, until the shadows lengthened and she said it was
time to go and see the king..."

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, March 10th, 1926.

  Last Thursday night I went up to Khanaqin to spend Friday with the King ...In the morning, a carpenter and I were busy laying down linoleum and arranging furniture...

  We lunched early, went a few miles down the line on a trolley to a place in the farm where we found horses waiting, and spent the afternoon riding about...

  When we got back, the drawing room and two of the bedrooms were finished. I whipped the furniture into place and the drawing room looked like a nice comfy room in an English country house. Not all the furniture is covered yet — I have now bought supplementary chintzes and silks in the bazaar to finish it off.

  After dinner I left, an A.D.C. taking me to the train. The motor car, characteristically, hadn't enough petrol to reach the station, so we had to get out and walk. But there was no danger of missing the train which would have been kept waiting for me, till I turned up, unlike the North Eastern...

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, March 16th, 1926.

  ... We got to Ur in the early morning, after about 18 hours' journey and left at five in the evening, catching the mail and getting into Bagdad at 7 a.m. So I had a very busy day dividing the things. Nor was it very easy. I had to take the best thing they have got, a small but very perfect statue of the goddess Ban who presided over the farm-yard and has two geese by her throne and two under her feet. As we walked up to Ur from the train, the sky was black with geese flighting north, and talking as hard as they flew. I felt the goddess had been well supplied with them in her time.

  I relinquished the lovely little head of the Moon goddess which was published in "The Times," and very reluctantly I relinquished two very early plaques showing sacrificial scenes...

  I'm getting much more knowing with practice. I now can place cylindrical and other seals at more or less their comparative date and value, so that I don't choose wildly according to prettiness.

  The goddess Ban is worth a great deal of money. Lionel was so anxious lest we should be robbed of her that he carried her about in his 'rucksack' and I fancy used her as a pillow, like a crossed Foreign Office Bag. I took her away when we reached Bagdad, kept her in my house for a day and on Sunday deposited her in a safe.

  To F.B.

  BAGDAD, March 23rd, 1926.

  ... I went to tea with the Queen on Sunday to say goodbye to the little Ghazi heir apparent who is going to England to be educated. I was so sorry for her. It must be hard to send your only little boy far away into conditions of which you haven't an inkling.

  I have been spending the afternoon to-day trying to learn a little about arranging a museum. Oh dear! there's such a lot to be learnt that my heart sinks. However, I know what I shall do. I shall concentrate on exhibiting the best objects properly and get the others done little by little. Meantime the new museum building has to be re-roofed, for the present mud and beams could be cut through almost by a penknife held by a determined thief. So it will be some time before I get in to the upper floor, but I shall shortly be able to begin on two downstairs rooms...

  To F.B.

  BAGDAD, April 6th, 1926.

  ... In 30 years I don't suppose there has been such a spring — slopes and rivers of scarlet ranunculus, meadows of purple stock and wild mignonette, blue lilies, black arums and once a bank of yellow tulips. These and commoner things made the world look like a brilliant piece of enamel...

  ... I went to Public Works and saw the measured drawings for my museum cases. Mr. Woolley and I (chiefly Mr. Woolley) have standardized wall cases and table cases so that one drawing does for all and the size suits the new building. But there were a good many points which hadn't been understood and the drawings needed careful revision. In the museum afterwards I found Squadron Leader Harnett who takes a deep interest in archaeology and will be very helpful when it comes to arranging the things in the cases. We sat each On a Sumerian gate socket and drew up a scheme for numbering. You see, every object must have a running museum number besides its number in its particular room — the latter for making a catalogue easily usable by the public. As yet we have only the excavators' numbers, Ur 1 to 4000, say, and Kish ditto; while objects that don't come from an excavation have no number at all. The new arrangement will be chronological not geographical, except in the downstairs rooms where all the big, heavy stone objects too heavy to carry upstairs, will stand — a Babylonian room, an Assyrian room and an Arab room are what I shall begin on downstairs when the necessary fittings are made. I foresee that I shall be very boring about Museums for some time to come! Also that I shall make innumerable mistakes... ...

  To F.B.

  BAGDAD, April 14th, 1926.

  Our chief preoccupation during the past week has been water. The two days of south wind, of which I spoke with disgust in my last letter, were being more disgusting than I knew. They were melting the snows in the northern mountains and on Thursday we were in for a terrific flood. The river was already so high that no cars or cabs were allowed to cross the bridges and one walked to office hoping devoutly that one would also be able to walk back. In fact the bridges have stood. On Thursday evening the river was almost lapping over its left bank and everybody was busy sandbagging his garden terrace lest the water should come in. After dinner, I sent my gardener round to Ken's house to help and went there myself for a better look at the flood. It was rumbling and sulking past; as we stood on the terrace it sounded as though it were pushing into the foundations under our feet. On Friday the Tigris dyke broke on the left bank — my bank — above the King's palace which it flooded. He was away at Khanaqin and his family had to be moved hastily into a house in the town. The water rushed over the eastern desert, lapping along the torn dyke and from then until now we have never been sure that it would not break through and flood the low lying parts of the town, which include my quarter! I think that risk is over now, unless the Tigris again does something very perverse, but the possibility of having 6ft. of water in one's house hasn't been pleasant. How dreadfully annoyed I should have been, to be sure. It has been difficult to think of anything else. They have brought in thousands of peasants and propped the banks with reed mats and sand bags, but the worst is when the water begins to drip in through rotten places in the lower parts of the dyke. They have electric light all along and people watching and looking night, and day. The big railway station on the east bank is under water and enormous quantities of merchandize waiting to go up to Persia spoilt...

  The Arabs are so incurably careless; they won't shut their channels when the flood is coming down and then it finds a way in and breaks through. ...

  This is a country of extremes. It's either dying of thirst or it's dying of being drowned. Bagdad can never be made really safe, it lies in such low ground; but I expect that after this experience, following on that of 1923, they will do a great deal to make it safer. The whole desert to the east is under water for miles and miles; now the Euphrates is beginning and it's to be hoped that it won't lay under water the whole desert to the west! Anyhow it can't destroy my house, which is something.

  This is only a flood letter I'm afraid.

  I'm so sorry for the King — his nice house all spoilt. And poor Iltyd, who is in Mosul...

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, April 21st, 1926.

  I ought to have told you about it and also to look for the Arabic graffiti on the columns, in the doorways of St. Mark's. I could not read them but they obviously must have been written before the columns were carried off from the east. I liked the general aspect of St. Mark's less when I saw it again, and some of the details more...

  We are now safe from floods — as safe as we can be, for as Mr. Bury observes, Bagdad cannot ever be safe unless it is rebuilt in another place. Fortunately the Diala did not rise too high so that the Tigris water began to flow off into it. But the Baquba road is for two miles under water — they have managed to get a temporary road open across the desert three or four miles to the south. The b
reach in the Tigris was closed on Friday by throwing sandbags between rows of wooden piles. It did not look very solid but they are now building a strong earth dyke behind. The King's palace is not so bad. They got all the furniture out, though most of it will have to be recovered, and the water has now run off. But the big house on the river bank where the Queen and the family live is cracking and probably means to fall into the Tigris. The bank is undermined...The King means to get back by day into his own little palace and offices as soon as he can. Isn't it horribly boring for him.

  I also find it boring, for all the desert where I used to ride and walk is a lake...

  The Prime Minister, I can't think why, has asked me to serve on the Government Committee for distributing relief to the peasants who were washed out above Bagdad. There's a meeting to-morrow...

  Iltyd is away in Mosul where he received a telegram thus worded "On approach of the water your house fell down" from one of his Arab officers. His house has in fact collapsed into the flood but he had moved all his clothes and things into the brick barracks nearby before he left, and these are safe. All his furniture was washed away and lost.

  The only other thing I have done was to dine with Ken on Monday to meet the King, who was very cheerful considering all his troubles. But as we were six we had to play Vingt et Un (a very dull game I think) instead of bridge.

  I was exceedingly sorry to hear of Will Pease's death — it was in the papers. I've written to Ernest.

  We have all been imprisoned by very heavy rain. It's over now. On Saturday there wasn't a room in the office through the ceiling of which the rain wasn't dripping. On Sunday morning I went to the Sarai and did a lot of work in the Museum and then had a long gossip with the police about Bolsheviks, etc. An American came to lunch, he is the representative of the American school this year. We looked at pottery and flints collected by him on the southern mounds; we looked at them till four, I learnt something, I think, but he learnt more, for he knows much less about pottery than I do, which is saying that he knows very little. However, he had found some interesting inscribed bricks and these he did know about. The net result of his labours is that we don't yet know the site of an ancient Babylonian city called Isin, for he has got Isin bricks out of another mound. It's negative but it's better not to think we know when we don't.