Page 32 - Gertrude Bell (H.V.F.Winstone)

i8 GERTRUDE BELL
Her financial independence and early environment of brilliant
and free-thinking debate placed her in a category which both
friends and teachers found unusual. Mary Talbot, brought up in
an atmosphere of High Anglicanism, took some time to come to
terms with Gertrude’s animated and unreserved manner and her
‘unequivocal atheism’. Janet Hogarth, reared on less confining
beliefs, often disagreed with her but was seldom shocked by her
outspoken opinions. T had a charming lesson with Mr Hassall
yesterday,’ Gertrude wrote to her father. ‘He came in late from
riding —kept me waiting a minute or two —and we sat down in
armchairs on either side of the fire and talked hard for the first
half hour before we got to business at all. We talked politics
mostly in the intervals. He is what he is pleased to call a Demo­
cratic Tory! but I find that admits of being in thorough sympathy
with the Liberals, an admirer of Mr Gladstone and a Home
Ruler!’
Her own somewhat discriminating brand of Liberalism was
portrayed in another letter to him, written early in her second
year and showing, also, some of the social frustration of her sex
in the Oxford of the 1880s.

I had such a good evening last Thursday. Three of us went to
the Union to hear a debate in which T. P. O’Connor was going
to speak. The proposer—a little Tory who evidently thought
himself like Beaconsfield, he wore the same sort of hair and
sat in the same sort of way! — delivered a speech against Home
Rule which was not very good. Then the opposer spoke on
the other side. He was an Irishman and evidently very keen
about it... Then Mr O’Connor got up and spoke for over an
hour. His speech was of course rather more of bluster than of
fact —that was natural in addressing an audience of Under­
graduates—but it was good all round and sometimes excellent
... Dear me, he was funny. He had a rather humorous appear­
ance to begin with and a humorous Irish voice and accent. At
one point in his speech he was so irresistibly funny that the
whole room subsided into peals and peals of laughter ... He
heartily supported the plan of Campagne [nV], and I don’t
think he will leave off trying for Home Rule until he gets it...
Have you ordered my spoons? I am going to a teaparty of
Mary’s today to meet some sort of relation of hers who
married a Miss Gladstone and is Headmaster of Wellington.