Letters From Baghdad

by Bell, Gertrude

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, June 9th, 1926.

  ... I am enclosing the catalogue of the Babylonian Stone Room of the Museum and two picture postcards of the exhibits. No. 7 is the thing I am proudest of — there is nothing like it in any museum in the world. I forgot to mention in the catalogue that the bricks which form the pedestal of the statue (No. 1) are blue glazed bricks from the top of the Ziggurrat at Ur, remains of an upper chamber built or restored by Nabonidus the last king of Babylon. We brought away a lot of fragments and built them up into a pedestal — it is most effective. The King is going to open this room on Monday. it is the easiest of all to arrange because it consists only of a few large objects but it looks extremely well and I hope it will impress the Ministers! It has indeed all the appearance of a Museum...

  Thursday was a very nice day for I had the whole morning there (in the Museum) and came back to lunch and a good rest. There was a state dinner party for the King's birthday and a reception of about 500 people in the garden afterwards. The party was very interesting. All the deputies and senators and everyone one had ever known in Bagdad were there, the Ministers and most of the Arab civil servants in ordinary European evening dress and hatless and the religious leaders in robes and turbans. There was a wonderful diversity...

  On Sunday S/L Harnett and I had a good morning in the Museum. After tea Ken and I went out to Karradah and caught four exquisite swallow tail butterflies, the first we had seen. We were much elated.

  Haji Naji is delighted with his knife and sends you a thousand messages of thanks.

  To-night the King comes to dine and play bridge...

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, June 16th, 1926.

  My principal news you have seen in the papers — the Turkish treaty. It is almost too good to be true...

  I had a nice little ceremony on Monday when the King opened the first room of the Museum. It was open to the public for the first time to-day and as I came away at 8:30 this morning, I saw some 15 or 20 ordinary Bagdadis going round it under the guidance of the Arab curator — very gratifying. Everyone agrees that it looks like a Museum. All the other rooms are still chaos, but S/L Harnett and I are forging ahead with the numbering and cataloguing and I actually hope to add a couple of small cases this week. But it is such a stupendous job that without the support of the admirable S/L Harnett I should certainly succumb. Fortunately it is being quite comparatively cool.

  To F.B.

  BAGDAD, June 16th, 1926.

  ... Decidedly a pageant is a much bigger undertaking than a Museum. I wonder if you sometimes think, as I do, that you Will never get through with it! But it was a great satisfaction this morning to see the public actually looking at the room which the King opened on Monday. It is only open two days a week for a couple of hours because all my staff (an old Arab curator, a very intelligent Jew clerk and an odd man) is so busy. We are now beginning to see daylight through the preliminary task of numbering the objects — between three and four thousand of them.

  It is being a very grim world, isn't it. I feel often that I don't know how I should face it but for the work I'm doing and I know you must feel the same. I think of you month after month as the time passes since that awful sorrow, and realize all the time that the passage of the months can make little difference. I wish I were coming home this summer but I feel sure that when I leave I shall not want to come back here and I would like to finish this job first — indeed, I feel that I must finish it, there being no one else. But it is too lonely, my existence here; one can't go on for ever being alone. At least, I don't feel I can... ...

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, June 23rd, 1926.

  We are labouring under the difficulties presented by the four days' holiday of the big Id when all the Arab offices are closed and one can't get anything through. A holiday at this time of year is no good as far as holiday making goes, for it is too hot to go out on any expedition. By luck — and the vagaries of the moon — it didn't begin till Monday, so that I had Sunday morning in the Museum. I have to give my staff a holiday and I shall not be able to work there again till Saturday which is a bore. However, I brought back some cases of cylinder seals at which I have been working of an evening...

  We had a terrific day on Monday. It began with a levee at the palace at 6:10. I was in an ace of going without orders, but I discovered their absence as I was waiting for the High Commissioner at the end of the Maude Bridge and dispatched a Kavass hotfoot to fetch them. The H.C. being fortunately late, they arrived in the nick of time.

  I then came home, breakfasted and did an hour's work, after which I set out again on visits. First the Naqib, then the Ministers, then selected notables and finally the Queen and Ali and his family...

  It has been extremely mild for Bagdad, rarely over a hundred and the nights quite cold; but after dinner my house is stuffy and I am glad when it is time to go to bed on the roof. We are going to begin swimming which is the only agreeable form of exercise at this time of year...

  I am being much enthralled by the study of seals. In the scenes of worship and domestic life depicted on those tiny cylinders I constantly find pots and things which I have actually got in the Museum. Then I suddenly place them with a much greater sense of reality. just as I placed the mace heads in the shrine of Bur Sin — I have found them on quantities of seals standing in the shrines of other gods. That is rather thrilling, isn't it...

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, June 30th, 1926.

  ... What an enormous waste and loss two months' coal strike must mean. It's so amazing that the world seems to go on just the same — Ascot and balls and parties are what I read of in the Times — or, rather, I see they are there — and extraordinarily little about things that really matter.

  We are now well into the hot weather — temperature at 113 — but I am feeling it scarcely at all. Partly, I think, because we have begun bathing though the river is still very high and the current strong. It makes such a difference. We go up by launch to a place above the town where I have a little hut to undress in and get back after seven feeling both exercised and refreshed...It is too hot now to dine indoors and play bridge and much pleasanter to lie out on the river bank and come home by launch about 10.

  I often wonder how the old Babylonians with whom I now feel such a close connection, passed their summer. Much as we do, I daresay, but without our ice and electric fans which add immensely to the amenities of existence. The moment of the day I don't like is going home after lunch at the hottest moment, but there is no way out of it.

  In the Museum S/L Harnett and I are engaged in classifying seals. I have read books and books about them. The really important ones are usually plain sailing; one is pretty certain of their period, but there are dreadful backwaters of decadence when one is never sure whether the thing is very early or just very bad late work. Also the authorities are not in entire agreement and one has to make up one's mind whom one will follow. Still on the whole, I don't think I shall be very much out...Next week I hope to have my seal case and by that time we shall have got all the seals fairly well grouped and ready to be put in...

  Faisal has given me a bronze bust of himself by Feo Gleichen to put in the Museum. I shall set it up in the big Arab room. There, now I must go to lunch. My letters are extremely dull, but there is really nothing to recount.

  To H.B.

  2nd July, 1926.

  ... I don't see for the moment what I can do. You see I have undertaken this very grave responsibility of the museum — I have been writing about it ad nauseam for months. I had been protesting for more than a year that I must have a proper building; this winter one fell vacant and they gave it to me together with a very large sum of money for fittings, etc. Then first I had to re-roof it and next I was held up at least two months by the floods and the work they entailed which prevented work being done for me. Now all the very valuable objects- they run into tens of thousands of pounds and incidentally they would never have been taken out of the ground if
I had not been here to guarantee that they would be properly protected, have been transferred pell-mell into the new building and there is absolutely no one but I who knows anything about them, since J. M. Wilson left. It isn't merely a responsibility to the Iraq but to archaeology in general. I could not possibly leave things in this state except for the gravest reasons. I work at it as hard as I can, but it's a gigantic task — of course I love it and am ready to give all my spare time to it. But I can't resign from my post as Oriental Secretary. And as I am a civil servant, I have only about 2 months' leave owing to me, which means a little over 9 weeks in England.

  That is the whole position. In a couple of months or so I may be beginning to see daylight in the museum or at any rate a condition in which I could safely leave it for a little. Let us wait for a bit, don't you think, and see how things look.

  You do realise, don't you, that I feel bound to fulfil the undertakings I gave when, at my instance the Iraq Government allowed excavations to be begun 4 years ago. The thing has grown and grown — it can't do otherwise — and whereas until last autumn I had J.M. to help me, I now have no one. All the plans that were begun before Hugo was ill even, are now bearing fruit and I'm rather overwhelmed by them. Anyhow, father, give me a little time to get things into some kind of order and then if you want me to take what leave I can I will do so. But in that case I think I should have to come back for next winter or part of it.

  Except for the Museum work, life is very dull.

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, July 7th, 1926.

  ... It had been very hot in the morning in the Museum but we have now changed into a north room and had a fan put into it which makes it comparatively luxurious. We can work there quite comfortably without a fan on week days when we leave at 8:30, but on Sundays when we stay until 1, it is essential to have a cool room. I have got a few standard cases and hope to have the seal case this week. But there is so much to learn; one constantly finds that the things don't exactly serve one's purpose and they have to be modified. However both we and the carpenters are learning gradually.

  I have been having very busy mornings, lots of dispatches to write and long things to do. Sir Henry is delightful to work with, but he is most careful of detail and one has to pay great attention to what one is doing.

  Darling I must stop now; summer does not conduce to the writing of very long letters.

  To F.B.

  BAGDAD, July 7, 1926.

  ... photograph of you and the little boys. They are darlings. Is not the eldest one like Hugo? In this photograph I see a great likeness... ...

  I am so glad you like the pictures of my museum, and when in return will you give me the text of the Pageant? I want so much to read it. I wish I were at the point of having photographs of the upper rooms taken, but they are still in chaos — not so chaotic as they were, however for most of the objects are roughly classified and ready to be put into cases. But I find arranging cases very difficult. Even the two tiny ones which I have done so far take an enormous amount of thought and re-arrangement till one puts them approximately right. And then the writing of labels! Fortunately my Arab clerk writes them beautifully so I only have to give him a list of what has to go on each one and leave him to do it during the rest of the morning while I am in the office...

  [These two letters of July 2nd and July 7th were the last she wrote home. They reached England after her death.

  Her strenuous self-imposed work in the museum, in the terrible heat of a Bagdad summer, added to the daily round of her duties in the office, proved too much for her slender stock of physical energy. She had never really recovered from her illness in the winter.

  She died quite peacefully in her sleep, in the early morning hours of Monday July 12th, 1926.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CONCLUSION

  The tidings brought an overwhelming manifestation of sorrow and sympathy from all parts of the earth, and we realised afresh that her name was known in every continent, her story had crossed every sea. There had clustered round her in her lifetime so many fantastic tales of adventure, based on fact and embroidered by fiction, tales of the Mystery Woman of the East, the uncrowned Queen, the Diana of the Desert, that a kind of legendary personality had emerged which represented Gertrude in the imagination of the general public, to the day of her death.

  When the crowning sequel came to those times of desert adventure, when she saw her dreams of the Arab resurgence turn into reality, she was one of those who helped to achieve it. She was at the throbbing centre of the events which lead to the dramatic leap into history of the Kingdom of Iraq with an Arab prince on the throne.

  During the years that followed, when she became a servant of the State, her abilities were again conspicuously displayed in what was to her the entirely new field of official life. But her officialdom was always tinged with ardour and romance, and it was an unceasing interest to her that her congenial Post as Oriental Secretary to the High Commissioner enabled her still to keep in close touch with the Arabs of the desert as well as with the increasing number of their kinsmen in the town.

  At the news of her death messages were received at the High Commissioner's office from all parts of Iraq, from Bagdad, from the desert, from officials and representatives — and most of them seem to be no mere formal condolences, but to have in them a note of real sorrow.

  I quote here a sentence from a moving letter from Haji Naji, for whom Gertrude felt such warm friendship, and whose garden was always her delight:

  "It was my faith always to send Miss Bell the first of my fruits and vegetables and I know not now where I shall send them."

  I wish I had space enough to reproduce here many other letters from Gertrude's Arab friends.

  In her own country there was a widespread expression of regret. Telegrams and letters, all seeming to convey a sense of personal loss, poured in from every layer of the social scale. They came from the highest in the land, they came from people of distinction in the world of letters, the world of art, the political world, the social world, from the villages of her Yorkshire countryside, who were so proud of her, from the Works where she had so many friends; and her family felt that however different the senders might be from one another, and however differently they expressed themselves, they were all saying and meaning the same thing — they all really cared.

  Their Majesties sent the following message:

  "The Queen and I are grieved to hear of the death of your distinguished and gifted daughter whom we held in high regard.

  "The nation will with us mourn the loss of one who by her intellectual powers, force of character and personal courage rendered important and what I trust will prove lasting benefit to the country and to those regions where she worked with such devotion and self-sacrifice. We truly sympathise with you in your sorrow.

  "(Signed) GEORGE R. I."

  The Colonial Secretary, Mr. Amery, paid her the grate tribute of a statement in the House of Commons, recapitulating her devoted service, in answer to a question from Mr. Runciman.

  Sir Valentine Chirol, who, as shown so often in the letters, was one of her closest friends, wrote an obituary notice of her which appeared in the Times the day after she died. It was a striking portrait, written with the most profound sympathy and understanding. Sir Arnold Wilson, the " A.T." of her letters, under whom she served, wrote in the Times a generous appreciation of her work; so did Mr. Woolley, who shared her work in archaeology, so did also Dr. David Hogarth, her friend and counsellor, whose wide and learned experience of the East, added to his steadfast friendship, was always to Gertrude such a support. So did M. Salomon Reinach (writing in the Revue Archéologique) from whom Gertrude learned so very much.

  Some of the letters we received were written by people who went to her house once, perhaps, as they passed through Bagdad, and record the vivid and ineffaceable impression she made on them.

  The High Commissioner wrote the following letter to Gertrude's father about the Museum she founded in Bagdad, n
ow called the Iraq Museum — how she would have preferred that name to any other!

  6th June, 1927.

  HIGH COMMISSIONER'S OFFICE, BAGDAD.

  My dear Sir Hugh,

  King Faisal some time ago wrote to the Prime Minister of Iraq suggesting that one of the principal rooms in the Bagdad Museum should be named the "Gertrude Bell Room," and I understand that this has been accepted by the Iraq Cabinet.

  A meeting of Gertrude's friends later decided to associate her name with the whole Museum by putting in a prominent position a brass plaque with a suitable inscription, which was to be submitted to you for approval. After you had approved it they thought of asking J. M. Wilson to design the plaque... Yours very sincerely, H. Dobbs.

  GERTRUDE BELL

  whose memory the Arabs will ever hold in reverence and affection created this Museum in 1923, being then Honorary Director of Antiquities for the Iraq. With wonderful knowledge and devotion she assembled the most precious objects in it and through the heat of the Summer worked on them until the day of her death on 12th July, 1926.

  King Faisal and the Government of Iraq, in gratitude for her great deeds in this country, have ordered that the Principal Wing shall bear her name and with their permission her friends have erected this tablet.

  It is a source of deep satisfaction to Gertrude's family that King Faisal, who honoured her with his friendship and to whom she was so loyally devoted, should have suggested that her name should be associated with the Museum and should have consented to the placing of the beautifully worded plaque.

  Gertrude was buried in the afternoon of July 12th, in the cemetery outside Bagdad, with the honours of a military funeral. "A huge concourse of Iraqis and British," we were told "were present. The High Commissioner and the whole of the British Staff, civil, military and Air Force, the Prime Minister of Iraq and the members of the Cabinet, and a great number of Arab sheikhs from the desert. The troops of the Iraq army lined the road, and an enormous crowd paid a last homage to one who was honoured throughout the length and breadth of the land."