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Is it possible that this
is "the greatest
woman of
all time"? |
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The ‘Great Men’ of modern times, from heroic to evil, are easily identified. But what of the ‘Great Women’ of modern times - or of all Time?
There are very few, simply because they were not tolerated by mankind – including their own kind – and those women who dared to assume public leadership in their own right instead of from behind the shoulder of some male were usually ridiculed into submission. If they failed to submit, they were ignored.
Only now are some of the real talents of remarkable women being identified. One of these is Gertrude Bell whom a friend described as “the greatest woman of our time, perhaps amongst the greatest of all time”.
Gertrude who?
This is a breath-taking claim! Gertie is ‘greater’ than Joan of Arc? Queen Elizabeth the First? Catherine the Great? Greater than icons such as Florence Nightingale; Madam Curie, ‘the Virgin Mary, mother of God. . . The list is endless.
The enthusiasm and loyalty of some little woman friend is hard to take seriously in this matter, but researcher and writer Georgina Howell believes her, and has written a 500-page biography to support the proposal.
What the author is quickly able to establish, as just one example, is that Gertrude Bell had all the brains and most of the courage that made “Lawrence of Arabia” famous nearly a century ago. Gertrude’s reputation as a fearless, daring explorer and exceptional diplomat was deservedly greater than T.E. Lawrence’s - without her ever promoting it. Lawrence’s reputation eclipsed hers only in 1920, and this only because of a somewhat sensational biography.
Georgina Howell writes: “I loved the way she dressed and lived - so stylishly, a pistol strapped to her calf under silk petticoats and dresses of lace and tucked muslin, her desert table laid with crisp linen and silver, her cartridges wrapped in white stockings and pushed into the toes of her Yapp canvas boots. She was not a feminist; she had no need or wish for special treatment. . . she took on the world exactly as she found it. Only this was in the 1880s, when women were hardly educated or allowed to prove themselves outside the home.”
Gertrude Bell, a compulsive writer who penned private letters and confidential reports daily throughout her life, had no use – a deep revulsion for – publicity or self-promotion, and shrugged off the public honours she eventually received. But she did want respect from her equals, of whom there were few. She did want to be recognised by her peers as “a Person” (her term), but only through her accomplishments. That was enough. To her, celebrity status was nothing.
Her range of accomplishments was astonishing.
Against all odds as a girl student, she was able to read history at Oxford – and achieve a First in two years instead of the usual minimum of three.
She went mountaineering, travelling alone to do so. In Switzerland she hired two professioinal guides, persuading them to attempt rock climbs which none could achieve – even when she removed her obligatory tight, full length skirt and climbed to stand on one guide’s shoulders while the other stood on hers and stretched desperately for a hand-hold high on a cliff-face. Her guides thought her one of the bravest and most skillful climbers in the Alps.
She scaled the Matterhorn. But at home little was known of her pioneering prowess as one of the finest of women mountaineers.
Already she was a poet as well as a scholar and historian. Soon she went on to master six languages, including some of the most difficult forms of Arabic. In an astonishingly short period she gained a reputation among the experts as an archaeologist, working with one of the world’s best in Asia Minor.
She also mastered cartography, and produced accurate maps of vast uncharted areas – maps that were used by later expeditions and by the British Army in wartime.
She was called upon in World War One, when the French and British armies were suffering horrendous casualties in Flanders, to do grinding, unglamorous office work near the trenches – listing the bodies that could be found and identifying the dead, the wounded and the missing. Bell transformed the Red Cross administration from chaos to an efficiently functioning system that was officially adopted by the Military in counting and announcing their war casualties.But the desert was her passion. She made seven expeditions into the wildernesses of what was then known vaguely as “Arabia” and later described as the Middle East. One lonely trek was from the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf. She lived in constant danger, with a pistol in her stocking. Her final one-woman expedition was to the heart of the Arabian desert, through the territories of several murderous tribes to a place where no official expedition was prepared to go.
She succeeded, after being forbidden by all authorities, including the British, to attempt it.Her resulting first-hand, encyclopaedic knowledge of the diversity of people and cultures and topography and lifestyles of the Middle East was unique – and priceless when the ‘Second Front’ at Galipolli failed during the Great War, and the Allies tried to attack Turkey through Mesopotamia.
She suddenly found herself enlisted as a spy and was appointed Britain’s first woman army officer. At least four generals were reluctant to accept her until they were instructed that she was “a very clever woman, with the mind of a man”! Major Miss Bell then took active service with British Intelligence.
Her life’s work had just begun.
In her book, Daughter of the Desert*, Georgina Howell writes:“Lawrence kick-started the Arab Revolt, but it was Gertrude who gave the Arabs a route to nationhood. She cajoled and intruded, guided and engineered, and finally delivered the often promised and so nearly betrayed prize of independence. While she remained dedicated to this mission through thick and thin, Lawrence agonized, faltered, and finally abandoned the Arab issue and tried to escape from his own tortured personality, to reappear in the nondescript persona of one Aircraftsman Shaw.
Gertrude Bell stuck to her ambition for the Arabs with a wonderful consistency. She showed her clever but floundering colleagues of the Cairo Intelligence Bureau how to win their bit of the Great War; she guided the fledgling British administration of Mesopotamia to a thriving future, hand in hand with the Arabs and to their mutual advantage. And she stuck to her guns when her colonialist chief tried to have her sacked, when Churchill wanted to pull the British out of Iraq altogether, when political machinations in Europe brought all her achievements to the brink of disaster, and when, playing her last card, she kept King Faisal from throwing it all away in the name of Arab supremacy.
She established the public library and the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, of which the principal wing was dedicated in 1930 to her memory. The museum still guards the remaining treasures of a country whose origins were those of the first civilizations. While Iraq's future is desperately uncertain, one fact remains indisputable. Dying in 1926, Gertrude Bell left behind a benevolent and effective Iraq government, functioning without institutionalized corruption and intent on equality and peace. In days when 'Empire' and 'colonialism' are dirty words, Britain has little to be ashamed of in the establishment of Iraq, in which the promise of Arab independence was finally honoured.
Bell's biographer concluded: "I have come to agree with her old friend from Oxford, Janet Hogarth, who wrote of her: 'She was, I think, the greatest woman of our time, perhaps amongst the greatest of all time.'
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*Daughter of the Desert”, by Georgina Howell (Macmillan 2006).
Gertrude Bell is one of the best-documented women of all time . . but among the least publicised of public figures. Only today is she becoming part of Britain’s school history syllabus.
The author of this book uses Bell’s prolific letters;’ diaries; intelligence position papers; her eight books and her magnum opus The Review of the Civil of Mesopotamia, to bring alive her crystal-clear mind, her humour and her very private emotions. Through the letters, Georgina Howell is also able to trace Gertrude’s four-day love affair that transformed her life and almost destroyed it.
The book offers wider and deeper insights. It reminds us of the complexities of the Middle East, the lessons of history – and of how some-one with the mind of Gertrude Bell might have handled more sensitively and successfully the current tragedies of Iraq.
No biography of Bell would be complete without a summary of the Iraqi political situation in her life-time. See 'Bell Iraq' |
