Page 123 - Gertrude Bell (H.V.F.Winstone)

MESOPOTAMIA 107

in several languages combining to give her storytelling, whether
at the dinner table or an impromptu gathering, an air of confidence.
No less an authority than Lisa Robins declared that Gertrude
recited poetry better than anyone she had ever heard. During the
leisurely weeks of their Welsh holiday Gertrude and her com­
panions called on Admiral Sir William Goodenough at his
country home and that distinguished traveller recalled how she
sat on a bench in his garden with Valentine Chirol and ‘told
stories, some serious, some amusing, some almost frivolous,
while a group of children sat spellbound listening to the strange
but absolutely true things that they heard*.
She spent Christmas 1908 with the family at Rounton and
immediately after the holiday sailed for Alexandria aboard the
s.s. Equator, her objective the Roman and Byzantine fortresses and
churches along the banks of the Euphrates in Mesopotamia. She
arrived at Beirut in February 1909 where she was joined by
Fattuh, now recovered from his head injury, and they made their
way to Aleppo and the river which runs from the Anatolian
heights to the ancient sites of Babylon and Sumeria until it joins
its twin, the Tigris, and becomes the Shatt-al-Arab. This was to
be Gertrude’s most important exploratory journey. As her small
caravan made its way between Rakka and Ana along the east
bank of the Euphrates on the route from Tel Ahmar to Hit, she
was in territory much of which was unknown to the West. As
always she camped in style, the attentive Fattuh making sure that
her table was well laid with the fine linen and cutlery and platters
which she always took on her desert voyages. After her evening
meal she would work on her notebooks and maps, recording the
measurements of height and latitude she had obtained during the
day. She made copies and rubbings of Hittite inscriptions which
David Hogarth had sighted on a brief excursion the year before
and had asked her to record, and she was able to make a useful
contribution to maps of the region in the course of her first and
only journey of actual geographical discovery. But her chief
interest was not so much in the Hittite and other ruins that she
encountered on the first part of her route as in ‘the father of
castles’ about which she had heard repeated stories, lying on the
west bank of the river some 120 miles south-west of Baghdad at
Ukhaidir. The French traveller Massignon had described its
unique palace briefly and other Europeans had visited the site but
there was no detailed record of it. Here was an opportunity to use