Desert Queen (4 page)

L
owthian Bell, as he liked to be called, was a perfect man for his time, possessing a rare combination of scientific learning and manufacturing genius. Born in 1816, he had studied physics, chemistry and metallurgy in Germany, Denmark, at the University of Edinburgh, at the Sorbonne and in Marseilles and, at the age of twenty-four, joined his father’s ironworks at Newcastle. Within a short period he pioneered the use of blast furnaces for smelting iron ore and introduced the first plant in England for the manufacture of aluminum. In 1844 he and his two brothers established Bell Brothers, a company that eventually included ironstone mines, collieries, limestone quarries and steel mills. Driven mostly by Lowthian Bell’s extraordinary energy and vision, the firm was the northeast’s largest and most important ironworks and colliery in the 1870s. It employed more than forty-seven thousand men and supplied one third of all the iron used in England.

Heads bowed when Lowthian Bell came into a room. He knew more about Northumbria’s iron and coal than anyone else and could answer any question, either on statistics or the scientific side. Far better educated than any of his peers (entrepreneurs were not noted for their learning), he was the spokesman for Northumbrian industry, a director of the North-Eastern Railway and president of five different chemical and engineering institutions. Highly regarded as a scientist, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the country’s most prestigious group of scientists, and had won the first Bessemer gold medal, along with other medals for his work in the arts, engineering and industry. He published numerous papers and authored two books,
The Chemical Phenomena of Iron Smelting
and
The Principles of Iron and Steel Manufacture
, important contributions on the manufacture of iron and steel.

A man who took a keen interest in his community, he was elected twice to be mayor of Newcastle, served as sheriff of County Durham, and held a Liberal seat in Parliament for five years. As deep as his interest was in Northumbria, however, he was always restless, traveled constantly and kept a sharp eye on the competition, especially in America, where he was even made an honorary member of the American Philosophical Institution. He was a man of the world and a man with a sense of his own place in it. Lowthian Bell not only earned the reputation as the world’s greatest ironmaster; he made enormous contributions to the British Empire and created one of Britain’s greatest fortunes. In time, his granddaughter Gertrude Bell would inherit his money, his brilliant mind, his inquisitive nature and his exuberance for life.

In 1842 Lowthian Bell had married Margaret Pattinson, daughter of a chemical manufacturer, and a few years later, in partnership with his father-in-law, opened a chemical works at Washington, a few miles from Newcastle. Down the road from the medieval ancestral home of George Washington, the young couple built an imposing Gothic house, complete with stained glass windows, terra cotta gargoyles and a large square tower. The red brick structure had enough rooms to accommodate an endless stream of guests and enough domestic servants to care for the five babies who soon arrived. Margaret gave birth to three girls and two boys; their elder son, born on February 10, 1844, was a handsome, carrot-haired, blue-eyed lad. Thomas Hugh Bell would be Hugh to all who knew him and father to Gertrude Bell.

The Bell household bubbled with activity. Visitors constantly came and went, and young Hugh was allowed into the drawing room to meet his father’s friends. The boy listened as Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley expounded their ideas on evolution, and John Ruskin, the art critic and social reformer, and William Morris, the aesthetic socialist, discussed their revolutionary ideas of how man should not just improve industry but how industry should improve the life of man. It was radical talk in the home of an industrial magnate, but Lowthian Bell was no ordinary man. He was an adventurer who believed in a solid foundation of learning and a dedication to society.

The year of the Great Exhibition, when Hugh Bell was eleven, he was sent to school in Edinburgh. Four years later he traveled to France to study chemistry at the Sorbonne and then to Germany to study organic chemistry and mathematics. Reluctantly, at the age of eighteen he returned to England to join his father’s business. As energetic as his father, and equally curious, he would someday be considered by
The Times
“a great authority on all questions connected with the coal and iron trades.” But Hugh had a broader intellect. First assigned to the head office of Bell Brothers Ironworks at Newcastle, he was soon made director of the company branch at Middlesbrough and would go on to run the entire business. But he spent much of his time promoting secondary education. He founded the Middlesbrough High School, was chairman of the Free Library Committee and chairman of the School Board. An effective speaker, he delivered speeches around the country on public education, public health and military reform and proudly pushed through a bill protecting children from dangerous work.

Vivacious and good-humored, Hugh delighted his friends with amusing stories in English, French and German and tickled his guests with his latest pun. He would sometimes come down to breakfast with a piece of paper in his hand; from the conversation the evening before, he had elaborated on an irony or sharpened a satirical story. He loved to read, enjoyed engaging in any area of conversation and could quote contemporary thinkers as easily as he could tell an original joke. A boisterous man with a generous heart, he had the charming ways and courteous manner of a true Victorian gentleman. But he was, he admitted, a “bitter free-trader,” and almost as bitterly opposed to Home Rule for the Irish; if pushed too hard, he could be mercilessly blunt. He had no fear of physical challenges, loved to ride to the hounds and climb to precipitous heights, and said frequently, “obstacles are made to be overcome.” Brilliant and incisive, he gave the impression of polished steel.

But the tall, handsome bachelor, who had an eye for the ladies, met Miss Mary Shield. A fragile-looking young woman with a gentle face, large, sensitive, wide-set eyes and a finely shaped mouth, the daughter of an important Newcastle food merchant, she married Hugh in 1867. After their wedding at the parish church near her family’s summer house in the Scottish isles, they returned to Washington, where the Lowthian Bells had added on several new rooms, including a fashionable Turkish bath, and by Christmas Mary was pregnant.

A
rrived, on July 14, 1868, the London
Times
announced: Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell. The first-born of Hugh Bell and Mary Shield Bell had reddish hair and piercing blue-green eyes, her mother’s bow-shaped lips and rounded chin, her father’s oval face and pointed nose. Of honored stock and Northumbrian heartiness, she had inherited too, from her paternal side, the energy and intellect, the drive and determination that made the Bell males so outstanding.

Under the watchful eye of her nanny, Miss Ogle, Gertrude was soon dressed in bloomers, petticoats and cotton frocks, fed her porridge, made to eat her vegetables and encouraged to play outdoors. She was reminded to obey her parents (and Miss Ogle), sit up straight, hold her knife and fork properly and speak to adults only when spoken to. The country’s greatest role model, Queen Victoria, she was taught, was “a good wife, a good mother, and a good woman … due, under God, to the training she had in childhood and girlhood.” The Queen was dedicated to her princely husband, her children and her Empire, and she set the highest example of morality, self-discipline and hard work.

It was appropriate that the Bells’ family fortune was earned through industry and toil. Britain’s great strength, after all, came from its navy, its trade, its coal and iron. Few men contributed more than the Bells. They worked not only to enhance their own communities, but to maintain Britain’s place in the sun. They took pride in the British Empire and in its role as custodian of the universe. Whether in their huge and all-important colony of India or on some tiny island in the Caribbean, the British believed it was their duty to protect the natives, uphold the trade, spread morality and defend the territory. If the British did not do it, they assumed, someone else would, and no one—not the Germans, not the French, certainly not the Russians (who lusted after India)—could ever do it as well. Theirs was a world run by men of initiative, courage and conviction. It was a world graced by women who, in their domesticity, were no less than the guardians of the English race.

Like other young women of her class, as she grew older Gertrude would be expected to stay at home (unlike her brother, who would be sent off to Eton), be taught by governesses and have accomplishments. In the prevailing belief that a healthy body was as important as a healthy mind, she would learn to ride, to swim and to play tennis; to be fluent in at least two foreign languages, preferably German and French; to be well versed in literature and knowledgeable in music and art; to be good at fancy needlework, dabble in painting and know how to play a musical instrument. Most of all, it was thought, she would aspire to be a good wife and mother. But unlike other young women of her class, Gertrude had ambitions that would go far beyond the home. Like her father and grandfather, she would be driven to reach for intellectual challenges. She would attend university, travel widely and take up more than one successful career. Like her father and grandfather, she would help the Empire sustain its greatness and even expand its rule. Like her father and grandfather, she would penetrate the unknown and explore the frontier. But unlike Hugh and Lowthian Bell, she would have no desire to make her world in Northumbria. Her world would be in the East, in Arabia, in Egypt, in Syria and, most of all, in Iraq, where she would make her mark on history.

A
t the age of two Gertrude was brought to Red Barns, her parents’ huge new mansion near Middlesbrough. From the tall casement windows in the children’s wing of the house, she kept track of her favorite gardens, her little one next to Papa’s, blooming with buttercups, hyacinths and roses. On most days she ran across the fields, climbed trees or raced to the family stables for riding lessons. Beyond the great expanse of green lawn lay the racquet court, the bicycle house and the pond, and beyond even that lay a more rugged landscape. Red Barns, in the seaside town of Redcar, was close to the rough North Sea, which crashed against the English coastline. With her crisply dressed nanny beside her, Gertrude stood at the edge of the sea and wriggled her toes in the briny waves, watching the great steamships sailing off to faraway ports. Like Kipling, she could ask:

“
Oh, where are you going to, all you Big Steamers
,
With England’s own coal up and down the salt seas?
”
“
We are going to fetch you your bread and your butter
,
Your beef, pork and mutton, eggs, apples and cheese.
”

Indoors, from the nursery Gertrude wandered through the house’s fourteen bedrooms, paid calls to the kitchen to chat with the cook or peeked into the conservatories, but the best activity was visiting with her mother. Snuggled on Mary’s lap, she nestled in the rustling layers of her taffeta dress, enfolding herself in her mother’s special scent. Secure and protected, Gertrude’s life seemed to be as smooth as her cashmere blanket. But sorrow would soon snag its pretty design.