‘A Paradox to Modern Eyes’

Abstract

Scholar, historian, mountaineer, photographer, archaeologist, gardener, cartographer, linguist, British spy, confidante to Arabian princes and kings—Gertrude Bell was a woman of many hats, try as she might to be just “a Person.” In a world governed and operated by men, and largely geared to male satisfaction, Bell “devised and ruled” over a series of high-minded endeavours—map-making, law-making, empire building, to name but a few. She followed a path unmistakably her own, always speaking her mind (which often landed her in trouble), always choosing who to follow and who to ignore or fight, never bending to others’ bidding, unless it was her father’s. A curious figure—at once a product of her times, with strong patriotic and familial loyalties, and an unmarried daughter away from her mother country for most of her adult life. Stranger still, away and astray, what with her desert wanderings, distant expeditions, and many a bloodcurdling adventure, she remained a staunch opponent of the Suffrage Movement and an outspoken critic of women’s enfranchisement. The attempts to capture Gertrude Bell’s “essence,” to neatly dissect and place her into clearly-marked categories proved a minefield for one of cinema’s giants, Werner Herzog, for the only positive thing about his 2015 biopic Queen of the Desert was that Bell’s story captured the attention of the wider public, though it was nowhere near the cult status of Lawrence of Arabia. Fortunately, the embarrassment over Herzog’s film was soon forgotten with the release in 2017 of Letters from Baghdad written and directed by Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum. Befitting the extraordinary character of Gertrude Bell, this dramatized documentary (with Tilda Swinton narrating Bell’s part) was heavily researched and meticulously prepared, and received good reviews, though its target audience was narrower and more specialised than that of Queen of the Desert. That is not to say that before 2015 Gertrude Bell was an anonymous figure in the annals of history. Whereas the renewed interest in Bell can be traced back a couple of years, there have long been several substantial biographies, collections of letters, and new editions of her works. Undoubtedly, it is thanks to Newcastle University’s Gertrude Bell Archive and the Special Collections at the Robinson Library, which are a goldmine on this “daughter of the North,” that information about her can today be easily accessed.