by Alan Gold
Few had met her personally, and the men in the audience were surprised by her appearance. For some reason, many had expected a portly matron, all tweeds and fox furs, yet before them stood a tall, thin, ram-rod straight, superbly elegant middle-aged lady, dressed in the most stylish of fashions, with luminous skin, a shock of red hair piled high on her head, and the greenest and most innocent eyes which somehow cut through to a man’s soul. Had they not been seated in the Royal Geographical Society, they could have been cheering the appearance of a famous actress walking on stage in Shaftesbury Avenue.
Gertrude cleared her throat, and the audience quietened to hear what she was about to say.
“My Lord Curzon,” she began, her voice clear though deep from her constant cigarette smoking, “Members of the Executive Committee of the Royal Geographical Society, my Lords and Gentlemen. I would much preferred to have begun my address in reply, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’, but there are no ladies present tonight, save myself,” she said. The audience roared in appreciation.
“Arabia is a land of great mystery. Its limitless deserts, its shifting sands, its ancient people, its immense antiquity defining mankind’s ascent from primitive farmer subsisting in the marshes between the Tigris and the Euphrates to today’s nomadic warriors, are all virtually unknown to us. We in England, this blessed land of grass and trees and orchards, can have no conception of a land so barren that a refreshing cup of water could be two hundred miles distant. And yet, Gentlemen, it is a land of almost unimaginable beauty and potency. Let me tell you a little something about my Arabia . . .”
~
Rounton Grange, North Yorkshire, Two Weeks Later
She was happy at Rounton Grange. It was a place of serenity and certainty, the anchor which secured her in time and in place. She enjoyed its link with the indolent world of her childhood, she loved roaming in the iconic English countryside of Yorkshire’s North Riding, she adored the certainty and timelessness of the gently undulating hills and meadows which in the spring were dizzying with the spray of color . . . yellow buttercups in the meadows, bluebells in the forests, tulips and daisies and marigolds and the emerald green of the grasses of the fields, and wherever she walked in her childhood, there seemed to be pink and white blossoms of fruit trees and berry bushes.
To recover from the exhaustion of her years traveling throughout Arabia, negotiating with potentates all over the Middle East, traveling to the remotest parts of Mesopotamia and living in places where only Muslim women were allowed, Gertrude spent the days after her presentation by the Royal Geographical Society in recuperation. Because the weather was particularly cold and miserable, an altogether horrid June, she spent much of her time indoors. She read Mr. Joyce’s rather unseemly book called A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. She read The Times from back to front, she wandered over the hills and called in to see those people whom she’d known when she was a child on her father’s estate.
She wrote long and detailed letters to the First Lord of the Admiralty concerning her views on the necessity for English battle fleets to be present in the Gulf of Persia. She wrote to diplomats and friends in the Lords and Commons about the great danger to English interests should the political situation deteriorate. She wrote to friends in Cairo and Alexandria and Bucharest, to diplomats and ambassadors and scholars and school friends. When she was not walking or riding, wrapped up against the cold, she was never without a book or a pen and paper in her hands.
An observer might have said this was a middle-aged spinster, a woman of high birth from a family of position and wealth, filling in her days because she had failed to find a husband all those years ago when other young women were on the marriage market at coming out balls and galas. Some might have blamed her intellect and the universality of her knowledge for the fact that she was husband and childless in her mid-40’s. Some, still, might have considered her life to be that of a Bohemian, utterly un-English, racing hither and thither around the world of the fuzzy wuzzies and doing heaven knows what in the tents of Arabs.
For Gertrude, the only things which mattered to her these days were the brilliance, bravery, and knowledge of those in whom she devoted her friendships, and by far the vast majority of these were men. Though she enjoyed being back in England, in the forefront of her mind Gertrude Bell yearned to be in the desert. She ached for the vistas, the eternity, the mystery of the tribal kingdoms. Even after a mere few days away from the desert, she began to need it again, as though it was some medicine on which her life depended, the nectar which nourished her body.
There was so much to do over there, so much to see and experience and explore, so much for her to change. Deep within her, she felt an irrepressible obligation to be the instrument by which Arabia entered the twentieth century, and enabled its women to be released from their servitude. Just as William Wilberforce a century before her had freed black slaves from Africa, so she knew her mission in life was to free Arabia from its tribal primitiveness and unite the people behind a great national leader.
So many reasons to return. There was archaeology which she was desperate to commence before some German or American adventurers uncovered ruins which should, by rights, be hers to discover. Then there was her political work on behalf of England, the importance of which only she seemed to be able to fully comprehend. Certainly there were talented men in the British Foreign Service, but only she thought out the problems of the area from both sides and attempted to come to an accommodation which worked in the interests of all parties. This had led to the tribal leaders trusting her more than any other English diplomat or viceroy.
But she also wanted to get back for a particularly pressing and personal reason. Always in the back of her mind was Mr. Thomas Lawrence, the young, fair-haired, blue-eyed Oxford man who had turned up in her life one day quite unexpectedly, and who had fascinated her. Not in a sexual way, of course, for women didn’t attract him and she wasn’t in the least bit interested in any physicality with the young man, but there was something about Mr. Lawrence, something which the others, who were busy ridiculing him for his short stature, his limp, his effeminacy, his garish dress sense, simply hadn’t seen. She had great hopes for Mr. Lawrence. Of all the Englishmen who had come within her circle, those who came out from the Foreign Office or the Indian Office to Egypt or Palestine or Mesopotamia, only Mr. Lawrence had impressed her as being totally at one with Arabia. He was a very interesting young man, passionate for the tribes and utterly desirous of seducing them away from the Ottoman Turks. Yes, she thought, Mr. Lawrence was a man of Arabia, and she had an inkling that he needed her guidance, or he would be led astray. She even toyed with the idea that he might be the catalyst for her great adventure, the agency through which she might accomplish the changes she knew must happen if Arabia was to succeed.
Her thoughts were interrupted by her father who entered the dining room in order to eat breakfast. Since returning to Rounton, Gertrude had made it a habit of deliberately waiting for him to rise in the morning before she ate her own breakfast, even if it meant going horse-riding for an hour or two in the early morning. She knew how much he liked to begin his day by eating with her, especially before her stepmother and her sister and brother rose. Sometimes it was difficult to wait, for she had a ravenous appetite, and the smells which came from the salvers heating on the buffet were always delicious. Smells of kipper and kedgeree and lambs fries and bacon and eggs and porridge. But she forced herself to wait until her father was seated before she put on her napkin.
“Morning, Gertrude, my dear,” he said as he paced into the room and kissed her fondly on the cheek. He was still a handsome man, though the years had aged him since she’d last been home. They had always been close and loving, she and Hugh.
“Morning father,” she responded, and stood to join him at the buffet.
They ate and talked about what the day held, before the butler came into the room carrying two copies of The Times on a silver tray, one for each of them.
It only t
ook a moment of reading before, as one, they both said, “Good God!”
“Sarajevo?” asked her father.
“It’s the capital of Serbia,” she said, still furiously reading about the assassination in the middle of Europe.
“Archduke Ferdinand?” he asked. “Isn’t he next in line to the Austrian throne?”
“He became heir because of the death of the real Crown Prince, Rudolph . . . well, he was mad as a meat axe and shot himself actually, along with his sixteen year old mistress . . . but that was years and years ago. The next in line was the old Archduke, Carl Ludwig, but he died a few years after Rudolph. That put Franz Ferdinand in line for the throne, and a less likely heir you’ll never meet.”
“You sound as if you’ve met him.”
“I have,” she said. “Many years ago when I was staying in Berlin with Mary and Frank Lascelles during Frank’s ambassadorship over there. The Archduke—everyone had to call him that, nobody was allowed to call him Franz Ferdinand—attended one of the embassy balls. Even though was he was very stuffy and middle-European, all starch and clicking heels, he impressed me as a reformist and wanted to modernise the Hapsburg throne, even though he held a passionate hatred of the Serbs. He was keen to reorganise the Austro-Hungarian Empire from a dual monarchy into a triple monarchy, giving the Slavs an equal voice in the empire, but the Serb nationalists hated the idea of having the same footing as the Magyars and the Germans. They formed this awful group of terrorist and assassins called the Black Hand, and Lord only knows whether they’re behind this outrage.”
She continued reading the story to delve deeper into the details, not realizing that Hugh was marvelling at her knowledge of politics. He had steeped himself in world events, but he felt like a dullard compared to Gertrude. She seemed to know the minutest details about everything.
When she came to the end of the newspaper article, she looked up at her father and said, “obviously I feel sorry about this assassination, but I have to be honest and admit that I didn’t take to him at all. He was arrogant and silly and brooding when I met him, and all night, he acted like a spoilt child. He was so demanding and vain with neither elegance nor charm and he has no social skills whatsoever.”
Hugh looked at his daughter in astonishment. How on Earth had he been graced with a daughter who was so knowledgeable, so worldly, so exquisitely sensible, and such a consummately brave person? In comparison, and despite his wealth and position, he felt provincial.
“Well,” he said, “unfortunately, like his late brother and father, he’s no more. Shot in a motor carriage. What’s the world coming to?”
But his daughter failed to answer. Instead she was again reading the article carefully, but this time between the lines of the newspaper’s report.
“Gertrude . . . ?”
Still she failed to respond.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She put down her paper. There was a look of deep concern on her face.
“What is it, my dear?”
“On reflection, I’m afraid this could turn out to be a lot worse than the newspapers are making out.”
“For England, you mean?”
She nodded.
Her father smiled. “Surely not. This incident occurred in the middle of Europe. On the border of Russia. Too far away from us in this part of the world to be of any concern, surely!”
Gertrude shook her head. “I’m afraid I have to disagree with you, father. Now I think about it, this could affect France and Russia and England very badly. Indeed, this could be just the excuse Austria-Hungary has been looking for. No doubt there’ll be a strong move to crush dissent in Serbia—that’ll involve Russia, which has borders very close, but the politics are very complicated. Germany will most certainly want to become involved on Austria-Hungary’s side. With Germany involved, France will want to join in the fray as revenge for the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian armistice agreement in Versailles, and with France and Russia involved, and the Triple Alliance in force, England will be dragged kicking and screaming into the fray, and will probably have to mobilise. And this is just the excuse Turkey needs to win back its empire. The Young Turks who have the ear of the Sultan won’t want to stay out of the action. They’ll insist that Turkey joins with Germany because these Young Turks want to re-establish the supremacy of the Ottoman Empire and quash British advances . . .”
Her father looked at her in amazement. “Are you quite mad? You’re talking about the whole world getting involved because of some minor assassination in some marginal part of the East of some minor princeling of whom nobody’s really heard. I’m sure it’s all a storm in a teacup, and it’ll be over in a week. These middle Europeans are always assassinating each other. And why on Earth do you think Turkey will become involved? The Ottomans are on the other side of the world. This has nothing to do with them. Do you really think half of Europe will go to war because some character out of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta goes and gets himself shot?”
She looked at him, and shrugged her shoulders, almost in apology. “What’s that expression, father, ‘large oak trees out of tiny acorns do grow’. Half the people who run half the countries of Europe are itching for war. The Kaiser wants to show who’s boss, the French want to give the Germans a bloody nose, everyone knows that the Ottomans are on their last legs and Young Turks won’t stay in their barracks much longer. They’ll have some kind of revolution, and to avoid it the government in Constantinople will rattle its sabres because the Balkans are on their northern borders. And of course, the poor Tsar is so overwhelmed by this hideous priest, Rasputin, that he’s allowing the country to go to rack and ruin . . . the serfs are up in arms and there’s been gunshots heard in St. Petersburg and Moscow. And after what Karl Marx and his friend Friedrich Engels have written in their manifesto for the Communist League about revolution, and the Russians’ hatred of the Tsar . . . its more than likely that Russia will explode.
“I tell you, father, that in Europe today, things are so agitated that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand will be like throwing a lighted match into a barrel of gunpowder.”
Hugh shook his head. “I pray to God you’re wrong. But if you’re right, I pray to God that Mr. Asquith is wise enough to keep out of it.”
“I’m afraid he might not be able to. We have treaties, you see, and we’re committed to going to the aid of countries like Belgium if they’re attacked. We might be forced to enter the fray, if one arises.”
“Belgium? Good God, surely you don’t really believe that England will go to war to defend Belgium? Didn’t we learn enough from Waterloo?”
He sighed deeply, and continued to eat his breakfast.
FIVE
Whitehall, London, Geographical Section,
General Staff Headquarters, 1914
There was a bit more hustle and bustle, a bit more concern on peoples’ faces, but aside from these minor differences, there was little else which had changed to inform the British public that they were now in a state of war with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Judging by the behaviour of the citizens of London, Great Britain could just have easily been involved in a cricket match as in a war. But closer to the buildings from which the war effort was organised the signs of war were more obvious. Men dressed in their khaki uniforms stood guard, sailors in their dress whites and the occasional army nurse wrapped in her red cape walked hurriedly and urgently. Military flags, vehicles, and motorcycle couriers weaved in and out of traffic with an earnestness normally reserved for motorcab drivers and eager young swains on their way to a weekend in the countryside.
But the reality of war was more prominent the closer citizens came to the military headquarters building in Whitehall, the Admiralty, and the roads occupied by the residencies of the Prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer.
Certainly there were posters on almost every street corner portraying the stern and uncompromising face of Lord Kitchener pointing at the consciences of young men and reminding those wh
o hadn’t yet enlisted that their country needed them, and the night-time newspaper vendors shouted out the headlines from The Star, The Evening News, and The Evening Standard, announcing the most recent details of the dastardly doings of the Kaiser. But aside from that, London was London. There was no perceptible air of tension, no tortured look on the faces of passers-by, no torment in people’s attitudes, and no appreciable deviation from the way in which Londoners went about their business yesterday, last month and last year.
The cabs continued to ply their trade, motor cars and omnibuses were increasingly ubiquitous and fume-laden, the theatres continued to disgorge their silken patrons onto the streets at the end of a performance, diners still flocked to the hotels and restaurants of the nation’s capital, prostitutes in absurd black lacquer hats adorned with garishly colored paper flowers still stood in the demi-lit recesses of street corners. The costermongers and barrow boys plied their trade from side-roads, coke braziers cooked chestnuts, and everybody went about their business.
Almost everybody. Because for the particularly observant witness there were additional military personnel standing rigidly at attention on the pavements, bayoneted rifles in their hands, carefully scrutinising those who entered the Headquarters building. Groups of middle and upper-class women dressed in long woollen coats and hats to protect themselves from the cold of the streets gathered at intersections and on corners with collection boxes, chiding passers-by who failed to donate to the war effort. The windows of some of the larger department stores no longer carried their normal displays of dresses or cigarettes or cigars or hats and gloves, but had donated some of the space to dummies dressed in military uniforms with patriotic messages like, Support our gallant fighting lads, and Let’s all fight for King and Country.