Desert Queen (74 page)

B
efore Cox left for England he appointed Henry Dobbs as his deputy, and in early January Gertrude gave a dinner at home to introduce Dobbs to her colleague Nigel Davidson, the Judiciary Adviser, and to her intimate friend Ken Cornwallis, the King’s Adviser. The conversation focused on the Kurdish dilemma, which would continue long after the British left the scene. The Turks had denied the Kurdish claims for independence, while Faisal had indicated he would favor an autonomous Kurdish government within the boundaries of Iraq as long as the Kurds were tied economically and politically to Iraq (a position taken years later by Saddam Hussein). Faisal’s words had served to quell the insurgents, but a few weeks later Dobbs, concerned about new attacks, sent troops to the northern border to discourage Turkish aggression, and the King sent his younger brother Zaid to set up a royal household in Mosul, hoping to win the Kurds to the Iraqi side. In the meantime, an international conference, convening in Lausanne, would take up the Kurdish claim to independence.

There was little that Gertrude could do about Mosul, and she turned her attention to archaeology. A group from Chicago’s Field Museum had come to work at Kish, and a joint team had arrived from the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania to excavate at Ur. As Honorary Director of Archaeology, Gertrude took great interest in inspecting the sites. The ancient Sumerian city of Ur, biblical birthplace of Abraham, had flourished nearly six thousand years earlier, and its mound would yield archaeological riches for years of digging to come. The excavation would produce every aspect of Sumerian life, from the ziggurats—the staggered staircased towers of 2000
B.C.
—to the thin, curved canoes still being made to cross the marshes, to the most spectacular treasures in the Royal Tombs: golden statuettes, golden headdresses, golden daggers hilted in lapis lazuli, copper vases and cuneiform tablets. Seeing the excavation even in its early stages, she said, was the most thrilling sensation she had ever experienced in archaeology. Most important, under the law of excavation drawn up by Gertrude Bell, Iraq would be protected from being robbed of its ancient wealth.

In Baghdad that early spring, she busied herself with furnishings for the King’s new palace and with receptions for Sir Percy Cox. He had pushed up his retirement to May, and although it was Ramadan, the month of April swirled with a rush of farewell parties. From Haji Naji to the King, from the Indian bazaar merchants to the Royal Air Force, everyone seemed eager to host an event for the High Commissioner. Finally, on May 1, 1923, the Coxes waved goodbye. It was a sad moment for Gertrude. “I’m rather overcome with departure,” she confessed with a heavy heart. “Sir Percy left, a very moving farewell.”

He had been the most significant figure in her life for nearly seven years; the Arabs thought the world of him and called him “foxy,” but to her he was so much more; he was wise, caring and calm, a father figure and a friend, the one person in the East she could count on in troubled times. He understood her point of view, appreciated her tireless efforts, admired her abilities. He had accepted her when she first arrived in Basrah in 1916; welcomed her to join his office in Baghdad despite the objections of General Maude; relied completely on her Intelligence work with the Arabs during and after the war; defended her against A. T. Wilson’s tirades; valued her knowledge of archaeology; and always, always treated her with respect. And she was devoted to him. “I think no Englishman has inspired more confidence in the East,” she said. No Englishman except her father inspired more confidence in her. Her mentor had gone, and as Gertrude prepared warily for her own vacation at home, she felt unsure of the welcome she would receive when she returned to Baghdad in the fall.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-
FIVE

Troubles

I
t was a smaller Rounton that Gertrude returned to in June 1923; not the omnipotent universe as viewed through a child’s eyes, but the dwarfed and vulnerable world that an adult discerns. The shifting needs of twentieth-century industry, the great postwar Depression and the searing costs of labor strikes had taken their toll. The Bell family fortune was slipping away. In order to keep the costs down, part of the house had been closed off, some of the staff had been let go and a frugal accounting was being kept of all expenses. Gertrude’s own world, too, was slipping away, and even as she sat for her portrait by John Singer Sargent or corresponded with T. E. Lawrence about the publication of
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, she pondered her future. Percy Cox’s retirement had left her feeling at loose ends. She had known his successor, Henry Dobbs, from the early days of the war when, as Revenue Commissioner at Basrah, he had shared her dislike for A. T. Wilson. But unlike Cox, Dobbs was neither her mentor nor a master statesman. Not that such a man was needed anymore in Iraq. The reins of government were resting more firmly in the hands of the Arabs.

Another matter also weighed on her mind. Her frequent dealings with Faisal had nudged her closer to his trusted adviser, Cornwallis. She and Ken sympathized with each other’s frustrations and strategized over their plans. As they worked together in stride, pushing the King along the path to power, her admiration for Ken had begun to blossom into something more. His tall, lean frame, his moral strength, his gentle manner appealed to her sensibilities. She not only sought his advice; she yearned for his company and hungered for his love. At Rounton, strolling across the fields with a family friend, she compared Cornwallis to Doughty-Wylie. There would never be another man like Dick, she stressed, nor any correspondence that could ever soar to the level of passion theirs had attained. But Dick was gone; Ken was alive and vital. He was seventeen years her junior, and he had sparked the fire that lay in embers inside her.

H
enry Dobbs was pleasant and amiable, much easier to talk to than Percy Cox, Gertrude reported in September, soon after her plane touched down at Baghdad. “Yes, the atmosphere of the Residency has undergone a remarkable change,” she noted. “If we haven’t Sir Percy’s wisdom, neither have we Lady Cox’s folly and Sir Henry brings a geniality of his own. Sir Hon-ri, the Arabs call him.”

Gertrude’s life, too, was undergoing change. Instead of toiling for endless hours at the office, she fluttered around the palace arranging the English furniture she had ordered from London, despairing over the fake French antiques commissioned by someone else, still devising a heraldic coat of arms for the King. She hosted evenings for Ken or the King, fretted over Cornwallis’s well-being and stood near Faisal as he cut the ribbon on the new train line leading to Karbala. She attended shooting parties and polo matches, engaged in tennis matches, bridge games, mah jong, chemin de fer, luncheons and teas, and shared dinners almost every evening with Ken. And when Ken moved into a new house, Gertrude spent the whole Sunday helping him arrange his belongings. “My existence is one of prolonged gaiety,” she announced giddily at the end of November 1923.

Even Christmas, so often tinged with sadness, became a glorious time once again as she and Ken took off with friends for a week of hunting at Babylon. Before they left, the maid Marie, as she packed Gertrude’s riding habits and evening clothes, insisted on including her prettiest pink crêpe de Chine nightgown. “But why?” Gertrude asked. “It’s a shooting party.” Yes, said her maid, but Ken’s Sudanese servant would see them. Perhaps Marie thought he would describe the gown to Ken, or perhaps she thought there was something more; that not only his servant but Ken himself might see the nightgown. And then, after six days of relaxation and archaeological visits, Gertrude returned contentedly and announced, “I think no more delightful expedition has ever been made in Iraq.”

Despite her cheerfulness, her waning power was evident, and indeed crudely described by a railway official. In a letter to St. John Philby, the functionary wrote: “Certain it is that the ‘uncrowned queen’ is no longer first and last in the land; just where she gets off is uncertain, unless in an advisory capacity of dishing out concessions to a bevy of tell-tale
tel
diggers from all continents and countries.”

Unlike Cox, Dobbs neither asked for her advice nor allowed her to initiate actions on her own, and it wasn’t long after her return from the trip that ennui set in. Her thoughts drifted back to the great civilizations of Mesopotamia and, daydreaming about a future empire ruled by Faisal, her attentions shifted again to antiquities. In early January 1924, when the dreaded cold weather had dampened her spirits even more, she sat in her office, shivering and wrapped in a fur coat, and fancied a visit to Kish and Ur. On the way down, she planned to take a jaunt by herself in the desert. “I want to feel savage and independent again,” she declared.

The brief but adventurous journey revived her mood. She and her assistant, J. M. Wilson, had hardly driven very far when the front wheel of their car crossed over the edge of a narrow bridge and nearly fell into a canal. As they motored on, the car slid more out of control, and by the time they reached an open plain it spun around like a top. Her assistant refused to risk his life any further. It had started to rain, but she and Wilson pulled up their boots, plunged into the mud and, after trudging for more than an hour, reached the site of Kish. Mr. Mackay, the archaeologist, was waiting, and they spent the rest of the evening looking at his finds. With her baggage left behind in the car, she had only a cake of soap, a borrowed hairbrush and someone else’s pyjamas. But it didn’t matter. She went to bed in her tent and slept soundly, content to be in the desert.

The next day she set off on her own. Arriving at Warka, once the Sumerian city of Uruk, the Babylonian capital of the south, she found the archaeological mound thick with natives scavenging for treasure. Rounding up the Arabs, she asked sternly, amid their screams of fear, “Have you any
anticas
?”

“No,” they answered, “by God, no.”

“What are those spades and picks for?” she demanded to know. She would give them
baksheesh
for anything they had. The promise of money produced a marked change. One man discovered a cylinder hidden inside his shirt, another a seal, another a piece of terra cotta in his pocket. After paying a few
annas
for each, she took the objects for the museum.