bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1997) — Winter 1997 // Hiver 1997, pp. 42–43
DESERT QUEEN — THE EXTRAORDINARY
LIFE OF GERTRUDE BELL: ADVENTURER,
ADVISER TO KINGS, ALLY OF LAWRENCE
OF ARABIA by Janel Wallach, Nan A. Talese
Doubleday, 1996, 377 p. $36.95
Reviewed by Jim Gould
I read this book with a sense of real delight. It is a good solid read. While not academic in the sense it does not get caught up with footnotes and references, the book is based upon the public and private writings of the principal herself. It deals with an era of great adventure and romance (at least to those of us who loved the movie “Lawrence of Arabia’) and one that shaped much of the Middle East as we know it today. It is full of fascinating characters, Churchill as Colonial Secretary, Lawrence from an archaeologist to his post-war days, St. John Philby who later “turned Turk”,, Percy Cox with his pet bear, Ibn Saud who put his name on the kingdom he founded, and Faisal, the first king of Iraq.
Gertrude Bell herself comes across as a fascinating individual. Born in 1868 to a life of wealth and great privilege, she was educated at home, in a private school for ladies and finally at Oxford. There, with the support of her father who continued to play a key role in much of her life, she was the first woman to receive a First in Modern History.
Gertrude Bell was a proto-feminist who never accepted the barriers set before her by the society of her day, neither in Britain nor in the Middle East. She disregarded the best of advice to travel alone deep into Arabia (if alone can be the term when accompanied by a cook, a guide, several men to handle the animals, and often an armed escort) meeting tribal leaders and urban notables who later became her trusted sources of information and influence. She felt no hesitation in thrusting herself, properly dressed and topped with a hat full of flowers and lace, into the imperial councils that ruled the Middle East. Yet she decried the suffragette movement as shocking and she served as honourary secretary of the Women’s Anti-Suffrage League.
When, in 1916, she was attached to the Political staff of India Expeditionary Force ’D’ in Basra, Gertrude Bell became the only female Political officer in the British Forces. She later, in Baghdad, became the Oriental Secretary (a title that should be restored to the realm of diplomacy) to the British High I Commissioner under the mandate. She can lay claim to being the founder of modern Iraq; drawing the borders of the country, she reflected upon the complexity of a society made up of Sunni and Shiite Arabs, Kurds, Jews and Christians. She ran an intelligence service based upon the contacts she had made during her early travels through the deserts and, if her own accounts are to be believed, developed a remarkable understanding of the dynamics of desert and urban life as the region moved from Turkish occupation via British mandate to independent statehood.
Yet her attitude toward the prospect of the Arabs governing themselves was initially overtly patronizing. She believed that the only logical solution was a British High Commissioner in charge, with British advisors to an array of Arab Ministers. “The Oriental is like a very old child” she wrote and believed; later the example of Arabs governing in Syria caused her to become a partisan of the Arab nationalists. She came to believe that the more the British helped the Arabs achieve self-rule, the longer they would retain their economic and political influence.
With the establishment of the kingdom in Iraq, Gertrude Bell became an increasingly less necessary advisor to King Faisal and devoted more of her time to her duties as Iraq’s first Director of Antiquities. Even though not acknowledged by the present regime, the Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad, with its marvellous collection of Mesopotamian artifacts is her creation.
The author seems to have had some difficulty in getting close to the person inside Gertrude Ball. She never married despite what seems to have been several close and deeply felt relationships. But running throughout her life was a quest to be recognized as a “person” and what pleasure she seems to have felt when she realized that she had the respect she sought; either at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference or at the 1921 Cairo Conference where the fate of Mesopotamia, TransJordan and Palestine was determined.
But Gertrude Bell’s greatest achievement was the place she gained for herself as the khatun — the lady of Baghdad. The force of her intellect, her character and her personal courage brought her honours and respect, but also personal sorrows that in the end claimed her. Her great creation, the constitutional monarchy of Iraq only lasted 17 years.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1997) — Winter 1997 // Hiver 1997, pp. 42–43. Read the rest of this issue →
